Captain Possible and The Centurion Legacy

Chapter Twenty: Dies Irae

Kim laid in bed with only Ron's blue aura lighting her room. He was smiling down at her, running the tip of one index finger down her neck and chest. Her sculpted abdomen trembled with his touch and she let out a subdued giggle, reaching up to place a hand on his cheek. His aura gave off gentle sparks at her touch, something that had certainly gave her a pleasurable surprise the first time they had spent the night together.

"What are you thinking?" she whispered, drawing his eyes up to her face.

"Other than the obvious?" he asked slyly, his fingertip dancing around her navel. "Just... just what you said about Drakken's plan, I guess." he continued. "Do you really think he'll use the Neutronalyzer to vaporize the rest of humanity?"

Kim frowned at the question, holding her arms against her chest and rolling over into Ron's arms. "I don't know, Ron. I think he's capable of any evil. What really scares me is what Vivian said would happen before that."

Suddenly, Ron's arms began to tremble around her and she opened her eyes, pushing away from him. With a pained, fearful look on his features, he screamed in agony. His chest began to dematerialize in a burst of light that began to extend to his limbs. "Ron, no!"

Ron's body became a cloud of pixels, and his painful scream began taking on an electronic hum as his cells dispersed throughout the room.

"No!" Kim cried, sitting up in bed in a clammy sweat.

Ron stirred beside her, laying in a fetal position with his rear in the air and his sheets piled up over his head. He was drooling on his arms, his face turned toward her. "Unh?" he mumbled, struggling to wake up to her voice. "KP? Another nightmare?"

Kim bit her lip, nodding as she looked about the room. Ever since she had fought Drakken in the Net and had just had a subtle touch of Hephaestus's influence on her mind, the nightmares hadn't stopped. Was this how Josh and Vivian lived? "Same thing, different people." she admitted vaguely before cautiously lying down again and rolling over.

"The digitization thing again? Who was it this time?" Ron asked, rolling onto his side and tucking himself up close to her bare back. He blew her thick hair out of his face and placed a light peck on the back of her neck, his blue aura coming to light and enveloping them both. Despite the electrical tickle that ran down her spine as it mingled with her sweat, she couldn't muster up her usual giggle that usually resulted from Ron's mystically charged touch.

"Does it matter?" she asked with a sigh. "It's like something's telling me that everyone is going to go into that thing and there'll be nothing I can do to stop it. What's worse is that I can't tell if it's me, or something else thinking it."

Ron's soft snoring in her hair told her he had dozed off again, and his fading aura created wispy shapes in her room like sparkling blue smoke rings. She still felt safe in his arms, but the feeling had diminished after the nightmare. Before she could close her eyes in an attempt to go back to more restless sleep however, the intercomm squawked. "Hopefully I'm not interrupting anything TOO hot and heavy."

Kim growled to herself as Ron was startled awake again. "Joss, it's two in the morning!" she whined.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did Ron wear you out?" Joss asked in a pitying tone.

"What do you want?" Kim growled.

"Nothin'. I just reckoned you'd like to know that Lieutenant Dobbs just transmitted a rendevous point."

Kim snapped upright, suddenly awake. "Slammin', Joss. Get suited up, and meet me at the Kepler." she said, tossing her covers off and sliding out from Ron's arms. "Ron, little light?"