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AN: To get this out of the way first, while this is officially a Kim Possible/Heroes crossover, the actual characters and concepts of the Kim Possible cartoon will not be appearing here, although I will adapt key individuals to fit the context of the Heroes universe (For example, Kim and Ron's surnames in this reality are 'Pierce' and 'Sinclair', and they do have abilities that will be explained when appropriate), and will keep the characters' core personalities as intact as possible.

End result? Don't expect me to use the likes of Duff Killigan or Warmonga as the concept of a killer golfer and an alien warrior don't fit into the context of the Heroes-verse, but a certain plasma-throwing villain and monkey-focused aristocrat may be presented in a new state in this world later on, among others…

AN 2: This story starts in Odessa, on the day of the solar eclipse depicted in "Genesis", but in a different quarry from the one where Zach filmed Claire's sixth 'suicide attempt', with a focus on another unique pair.

The Not-So-Average Girl

Watching his life-long BF as she vaulted around the old quarry, wearing her usual sleeveless green top and tight dark trousers, Ron Sinclair still had no idea how Kim Pierce could pull all those moves off. The initial paces were simple enough, and even the mid-air flips weren't that far beyond what he'd come to expect of the other cheerleaders, but somehow he couldn't picture any of the other girls on the squad neatly running up that pile of rocks without ever missing a single step, Spinning on one foot like a ballet dancer on fast-forward, star-jumping/cartwheeling through the air, a few long-distance jumps…

Seriously, more than once Ron thought he was going to see his best friend break something when she took an unexpected jump, but then she just grabbed a tree branch or some piece of the old mining equipment around this quarry and suddenly she was out of the air and back in contact with something solid.

Ron had always admired his best friend's abilities, even if he couldn't hope to copy any of them himself, but he had no real idea how she was able to do all that. She always matched the other cheerleaders when they were performing during the games, but for the last few months, when she did this kind of practise on her own, she seemed to be pushing herself to a point far beyond anything she'd been capable of before.

Looking down at a faint chittering sound, Ron smiled as he saw Rufus sitting on his leg, the naked mole rat eagerly munching at a chip he'd taken from the bag in Ron's hand.

"Cheese and onion good to you, pal?" Ron asked, smiling as Rufus looked up at him and chirped a response. He appreciated that naked mole rats were far from conventional pets, but with his father's fur allergies making it impossible to get something more normal like a cat or a dog, he'd settled on Rufus ever since the little guy had turned up in this very quarry when he and Kim had started coming here to hang out when they were kids. Kim had speculated that Rufus had escaped from some kind of laboratory, as apparently naked mole rats showed a surprising resistance to diseases for an animal of their size, coupled with his missing lower teeth suggesting he'd been subjected to some kind of surgery. Kim had been concerned about it at first, but after a few days had gone by with no news of a break-in, she had soon decided that it wasn't worth reporting one missing rat to anyone, and Ron had comfortably adopted Rufus as his pet.

Admittedly, Ron tended to keep Rufus in the pocket of his cargo pants rather than get him an actual cage because Rufus slept so much and it was safer than trying to explain to his parents why he had an East African rodent as a pet, but Rufus never seemed to mind the occasionally bumpy sleeping environment, and he was actually surprisingly easy to feed. After he had seen Kim's research on naked mole rats, Ron wondered if that lab theory explained Rufus's greater-than-predicted ability to get around in daylight and cope with the range of temperatures he encountered up here, considering how naked mole rats were meant to stay underground.

It was a puzzle, but so long as Rufus seemed happy to spend time with him, Ron had long ago decided not to worry about the fact that he had an odd pet that was strangely intelligent and didn't set off his dad's allergies.

"What's the sitch?"

"Mmm?" Ron looked up at Kim, smiling apologetically at his friend as she had evidently finished her training to sit down beside him. "Just… thinkin' 'bout Rufus; wasn't it our 'anniversary' recently?"

"We did find him four years ago, but I'm pretty sure that the exact date was three weeks before now," Kim pointed out with a brief smile.

"Really?" Ron looked at Rufus with a new sense of regret. "Uh… sorry I missed that, buddy."

He knew that it was impossible, but when Rufus looked up at him and squeaked a response, Ron could almost swear that the naked mole rat was talking to him…

"Anyway," he looked up at his friend with a smile, "getting back to the present, great moves out there, KP."

"Thanks," Kim smiled sitting down beside him with a thoughtful expression.

"Something up?"

"How did you-?"

"You got your serious face," Ron shrugged. "What's the sitch, KP?"

"Not exactly a sitch- it's definitely nothing bad, you know- but I just…" Kim replied, looking thoughtfully around the quarry for a moment before she turned back to Ron. "Have you ever felt like you're too good at something?"

"…You're kidding me, right?" Ron looked at Kim with a smile that was only half-teasing. "KP, you're talking to the guy who still needs you to double-check his math homework-"

"What about Home Ec?"

"Y'know, you did pick up on that pretty quickly-"

"But only after I watched you do it; you knew what you were doing pretty much the moment you got your hands on everything, but I had to… well, you had to talk me through it and it still didn't quite make sense to me," Kim shrugged. "But what I just did… I mean, I've tried going through the routines with some of the other girls on the squad, and it always feels like I'm a few steps ahead of them."

"Well, you're good," Ron shrugged. "I mean, you can't exactly complain about being hot, popular, and good at what you enjoy doing, right?"

"Maybe not, but it's just… is it weird if I feel like I'm cheating?"

"Cheating?" Ron repeated. "KP, I know for a fact you'd never even think about using drugs or anything like that, and I don't think those kung fu lessons your dad insisted you take give you that much of an edge-"

"I never said it made sense, Ron, but I just…" Kim shook her head with a frustrated sigh. "I don't even know what's getting to me right now; I think I just needed to vent or something…"

"Well, that's what I'm here for, KP," Ron smiled at her. "I mean, hey, you never ditched me even when I turned into the class loser; I'm not going to dich you when you have some kind of mid-school crisis."

"Ron," Kim smiled at him, "you're not the class loser-"

"Feels like it sometimes," Ron muttered, his good mood faltering at that self-reminder of his own issues.

"Ron," Kim put a hand on his shoulder, turning him around to look at her. "You've been there for me since you tried to stop those bullies back in pre-K; you might be a bit weird, but you're my kind of weird."

"Ah… thanks?" Ron smiled back at her.

"You're welcome," Kim grinned at him, before she stood up and stretched. "Anyway, we'd better get back; still got that report to work on, remember?"

"Right…" Ron shrugged, as he stood up and walked off after Kim, pausing only to scoop Rufus back into his pocket as they fell into step beside each other. Once they'd carefully navigated their way out of the quarry, the two friends fell into a comfortable pace alongside each other, occasionally talking about the upcoming report and other minor details of life in Odessa. The outer buildings of the city were just starting to come into view when they heard a sudden explosion, prompting both of them to glance at each other before they ran anxiously onwards.

When they reached a path looking out over the city, they each relaxed somewhat as they confirmed that Odessa itself was fine, even as hey also saw the cause of the explosion. They had no idea how it could have happened, but it looked like a train had come off its tracks, with at least one carriage blazing away with such intense heat that the two teens could already feel the heat from their current position on the hill. Running down to the bridge, Kim and Ron briefly registered a grey-haired man in a dark jacket walking away while talking on a phone, but their attention was more focused on the train below, as the fire department were already working to put out the blaze.

"Damn…" Ron whistled as he took in the crash below them. "That would be so cool if it wasn't real…"

"Yeah, I-" Kim began grimly, before her eyes widened and she pointed at something near the train. "Look!"

Following Kim's gaze, it took Ron a moment to see through the blaze of heat around the crashed vehicle, but once he realised what she was pointing at everything fell into place. Among the firefighters trying to control the blazing inferno were two figures who definitely weren't members of the fire department, one of them a man in what looked like a uniform that likely marked him out as one of the staff on the train, and the other a shorter figure with long blonde hair and wearing the distinctive red-and-white outfit of an Odessa High cheerleader.

"Whoa…" Ron said, still staring incredulously at the girl as she left the man with the firefighters and then ran off down the road, moving with an ease that made it clear she hadn't been affected by her own close proximity to the fire. "That… that was…"

"Yeah," Kim nodded, understanding Ron's questions about what they'd just seen.

She appreciated hat someone from her school- and most likely someone she knew, based on the cheerleading outfit- had just done something to help whoever was in that train get to safety, but that didn't answer the bigger questions of how someone could have run into a burning train and then run out of it that quickly.

Kim might be overthinking things, but something about what they'd just seen…

"Nuts!" she said, snapping her fingers.

"What?" Ron looked back at her.

"There's meant to be a solar eclipse in a couple of hours, remember?" Kim looked urgently at him. "Dad had Jim and Tim preparing those peephole camera things for it for most of the last week; they'll be so disappointed if we don't get there for the main event…"

"Right; good point," Ron nodded before he glanced at the burning train below them. "So… we get back to that later?"

"Definitely," Kim nodded, surprising herself with the ease at which she'd made that decision.

Seeing a cheerleader run away from a burning train wasn't something to be worried about in itself, but the fact that the cheerleader in question looked like she'd been in the train when it was on fire and had managed to get away from it…

Kim might not be as keen on following her parents into the sciences as her brothers were, but she still had an inquiring mind, and that scenario raised more than a few questions that she'd appreciate learning the answers to.

AN 3: To answer an immediate question that the more continuity-focused fans might have, the grey-haired man in black that Kim and Ron ran past on the bridge was Thompson from Primatech, in the middle of his call to the Company after he let Meredith go, and the train crash they saw is indeed the one where Claire saved someone after 'testing' her abilities with Zach.