What am I doing?
Shego stood on the roof of Kim’s apartment building, pacing silently.
Ever since her last fight with Kim, Shego had been on the run, but not in any way that she had ever run before. She had never been compelled to hide from herself before. She’d lived her entire life the way she wanted. Shego had bowed before no one, not even Drakken. Sure, she had tolerated him, but only because their relationship had been symbiotic in a way. Drakken would pay her exorbitant sums of money in return for her skills – nothing more. It was a wonder he had put up with her indifference and frequent hostility for so long, but it made sense once she’d learned that he hadn’t been the most honest employer. Of course, after she learned that, who could question why he had taken her abuse? Then number one rule of Megalomaniac/Sidekick relations was, “If you’re lying to your sidekick, keep her happy and keep her ignorant.” Shego had mostly stayed because Drakken catered to her every request. Clothes, money, toys…If she had only asked, he would provide. She had also stayed because if she left, she would have to take care of the menial, boring tasks such as acquiring food and shelter. With Drakken, those useless tasks were all in his tiny, black-gloved hands, and all Shego had to do was steal some kind of doodad for him every so often.
Yes, Shego’s entire life had been lived the way she wanted it, so why would she run from it?
Then again, she’d never been faced with a truth that so disturbed her normal world. Needless to say, she had found hiding from herself close to impossible to accomplish. No matter where she went and no matter what she did, her traitorous heart would follow, taunting her constantly with a reality she could not bear to accept.
And now, she found herself playing this game of Cat and Mouse with the woman who had once been her greatest enemy – the girl that she had hated more than anything else – all because of the utterly shocking truth she’d discovered upon waking up from their last fight.
Shego closed her eyes. She could remember it so clearly now.
She could still feel the uncomfortably stiff mattress beneath her body as she woke up in the pitifully under-equipped infirmary of Drakken’s lair. She could still smell the disinfectant his doctors had used on the few shallow cuts she’d sustained in that fight. That was a little redundant since Shego’s “accident” had also boosted her body’s healing rate, making her curse an out-of-balance mixed blessing. She always thought it leaned considerably more to the curse side than the other, but she tried to keep that to herself.
Shego could remember how she’d woken up disoriented and confused; that last thing she remembered was that fight with Kim Possible. She had stared into Kim Possible’s bright green eyes as she dodged a punch from the hate-filled villain to counter with a punishing left hook, and then a massive sensory overload from…somewhere – most likely her head as Kim had thrown her into one of the silo’s computer consoles. There was pain, the flash of stars, and then nothing.
(((Flashback)))
The raven-haired sidekick awoke to the sound of soft music playing by her left ear. For a few minutes, she let herself just lie on the bed with her eyes closed lightly, listening to the quiet music of her favourite radio station. She breathed in deeply, inhaling the nauseatingly stale air of the infirmary and felt her mind go blissfully blank, letting the gentle sounds wash over her.
Finally, Shego opened her eyes and looked to her left to see where the music was coming from.
Strangely, all she saw was an ordinary clock/radio. It took a moment for it to register, but Shego couldn’t figure out how the radio could be picking up that station if they were still in the Lair – two thousand miles outside the station’s broadcast range.
But then she remembered…
She’d been in the midst of fighting her nemesis, that goody-goody cheerleader, Kim Possible, when she’d been knocked out. That inevitably meant Drakken had been forced to relocate since without his sidekick he couldn’t even wipe his own nose.
That music must mean we’re in the Montreal Lair, she thought. That was fine with her. The Montreal lair had become the place Drakken would retreat to in order to plot his next bizarre and not-so-brilliant scheme. So, thanks to the ever-troublesome Kim Possible, Shego had spent most of her time in Doctor D’s employ bouncing around the complex of the Montreal lair. Although, now that she thought about it, Shego realized it was also because of the teen heroine that she had come to love this radio station so much. A mixed blessing if she thought about it.
Shego felt an inexplicably familiar stab of pain in her head and grimaced, grabbing her head in one hand and tightening the other into a fist. “Ow… headache,” she mumbled to herself, rubbing her temples.
Then, as if brought on by Shego’s sudden headache, a hurricane of images flooded in from the back of her mind. Ahh!Shego couldn’t scream out loud; the violence of the spontaneous slideshow wouldn’t allow any impulses to make it from her brain to their destinations.
Shego collapsed back onto the infirmary bed and drew her legs up to her chest, curling up into a fetal position as her skull seemed to shrink on itself.
The images, thoughts, and memories that swept through her head like a tidal wave were clearly not her own, as she could recall nothing of their like having ever happened to her. She had never before been to half the places in these memories, she hadn’t ever had any of these memories, and she had certainly never been the centerpiece of a high school cheerleading squad routine.
That was the first clear memory that entered Shego’s head. She was standing atop an incredible five-story pyramid of ecstatic cheerleaders. The organization was impressive to say the least, but Shego only had a single heartbeat in time to admire the choreography of the routine before that memory was thrown to the back of her mind, taking a backseat to another image.
Whoever’s body Shego was in now was seated at a table in a restaurant. No…it was that fast-food place that Shego and Kim had almost destroyed with their first life-or-death fight. That look of confused denial had almost thrown Shego’s hatred at finally facing the cheerleader and making her pay for annihilating her ability to have a normal social life – hell anykind of social life. What was this place – Bueno Nacho was it? Shego recognised the place immediately through the haze of her headache of a thousand knives, if not its name. This tiniest clip in time showed Possible’s friend, Stoppable, attempting to cram an entire taco into his mouth while his pet rodent worked on its own horrid monstrosity – some kind of mutant combination of taco and nacho. Shego would have shuddered at the sight, if she wasn’t…distracted.
Shego had a sneaking suspicion that she knew whose body her mind had been transplanted to – who’s memories these were –, but her mind was focused too much on the images themselves and the pile driver on her head to form any coherent, word-shaped thoughts.
Then, a new flood of memories hit her like a bolt of lightning, so fast, so intense, that she could only capture a single image out of every dozen or so. This time, the memories seemed to jump between owners without any kind of order.
Kim’s little blue communicator, showing the face of her long-time hacker ally, a ten-year-old boy…a toxic waste drum – labelled with a blatantly obvious bio-hazard sticker, with lines of information about the dirty container’s contents written below it…an expression of both confusion and surprise in Possible’s eyes…a vial of bubbling, acid green liquid emptying…her own hands – red, dried, and cracked, oozing blood from dozens of lesions…Kim Possible clad in a cheerleader uniform, wearing an expression of stubborn denial…Doctor D – defeated –, running scared with a defiant Shego in tow…Shego, hands blazing green, glaring with a look of pure, undiluted hatred and rage…Kim – hands braced on Shego’s shoulders –, gritting her teeth and narrowing her eyes in concentration…Kim, eyes wide in disbelief and horror…Shego, plummeting down from the sky, blazing hands spread wide to catch her prey no matter which direction they jumped…Kim, dodging an emerald-green plasma ball… Kim leaping out of a death trap…Shego dodging a swinging arm…Kim jumping…fighting…running…
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the torrent of intrusive images ceased and Shego found herself back in her bed in the Infirmary of the Fall-Back lair. She rubbed at her eyes for a few seconds and tried to remember exactly what had happened to her before waking up…here. She remembered pacing in that missile silo control room, bored out of her mind, muttering an insult or two under her breath…and then that massive headache that had only lasted a second before Kim Possible herself dropped into the room. That headache had started the exact same way as the one just a few seconds earlier – an abrupt, sharp needle of pain in her skull. Now, waking up here and getting the same headache, but different…it was like her mind had downloaded something in the silo, but had taken in the information too fast for her conscious mind to catch. Was her subconscious replaying the information slower for her? If so, it was doing a lousy job. That…episode hadn’t been quite slow enough to give her anything more than a migraine.
Sitting up slowly, Shego looked down at her hands and cautiously removed her left glove. Her hands had indeed been scarred after the accident, but the recovery abilities that toxic waste had bestowed upon her had repaired that damage within a week. Her hands had eventually returned to their normal healthy appearance, save for the pale green skin pigmentation and the whole plasma thing.
Just as she slipped the glove back on, the door to Shego’s private room in the infirmary burst open and Drakken strutted in a wide, silly grin on his face. He was probably going for malicious, but the disturbingly childish shade of his face was against him. He looked like a teletubbie sometimes. “Ah, Shego!” He beamed, stopping at the foot of her bed, “It is time to make our comeback and bring the World TO ITS KNEES!”
Shego was too drained from her recent head-trip to come up with a snide remark, although she was sure there was one she could use.
After a moment, the blue-faced mad scientist snapped his fingers at her, “Well? Chop chop, missy! I don’t have all day, you know.”
Shego scowled, imagining what her fragile employer would look like as wall paint but decided against testing her theory. Instead, she just vaulted off the bed, thanking God for one of the only times for her considerable recovery abilities. Then, while stubbornly refusing to smile at her approval of her boss’ idea, she strode out of the room, heading for her quarters. Once there, past the thick and well-recognised green-and-black steel door and in the privacy of her own four walls, she finally allowed her forbidding expression to break down, grinning in anticipation.
A come-back sounded good.
She’d deal with the memory flashes if they came again. If nothing else, returning to the action would giver her something to distract her away from the flashes and give her a chance to exert some control over them. There was something significant hidden in the tornado of thoughts and it disturbed her that she couldn’t figure it out on her own. There was definitely something in there that she wanted to know – needed to know.
And, since “returning to the action” had become synonymous with running into Kim Possible and her tag-along rodent with his mole-rat, Shego was looking forward to exacting some punishment on the heroine for yet another hateful attack on her. Was it not enough that goody-two-shoes had destroyed Shego’s hands? Now she had to douse her with some hallucinogen to torment her further? Kim would pay for this.
Shego tore off her gloves and dropped them to the carpet. Reaching out, she picked up her desk chair with one hand and watched it disintegrate under her touch. Her smile widened, her eyes almost glowing.
Yes…
Kim Possible would definitely pay for this.
(((End Flashback)))
Shego sneered at the memory.
She’d been so blind.
Over the next few weeks, the memory flashes had continued to unravel information into her head. It was mostly mundane stuff that she promptly forced herself to forget for the sake of her sanity. Each lapse had lasted longer than the previous, and Shego was able to glean a little more insight into the girl who was Kim Possible. After a while, Shego’s own memories stopped being involved altogether, and she only saw the images through her enemy’s eyes for those endless few seconds that pounded against her head, making her want to claw her eyes out – as if that would help.
After three weeks, the bombshell had finally hit her.
During yet another headache-causing head-trip, Shego had completely relived the entire scene in the toxic waste storage plant where she’d first met Kim Possible, but from the redhead’s perspective. Kim’s own thoughts and first impressions of Shego upon first meeting her had been revealed in that flashback. It had been an eye-opening few minutes, to say the least. From what she heard and felt in that memory, Shego knew without a doubt that Kim could not have infected her hands and body with any kind of toxic cocktail of mutagenic formulae.
In that fight, Kim had felt nothing but curiosity at her new opponent’s motives for throwing in with the likes of Drakken, wonder at her impressive fighting technique, excitement at the thrill of risking bodily harm for once since henchmen were so far beneath her they were subterranean, and respect for Shego’s all-too-evident skill. There had been some fear in Kim’s mind, but not for her own safety. Her blond sidekick hadn’t been seen since they entered the plant together, and Kim knew how clumsy the boy could be. That thought had raised Shego’s attention, but only briefly once a new fact drew her attention like a magnet.
For the fiery cheerleader to both respect Shego as a person and opponent and secretly destroy her personal life by way of volatile chemistry would require her to be insane or unbelievable malevolent. And if there was one thing that Shego had known back when she’d succumbed to these oh-so-annoying flashbacks, it was that Kim Possible was perfectly sane; arrogant and violent in their fights, but sane. And, since the great Kim Possible allegedly fought on the side that was against the megalomaniacs and villains, it was a safe bet that she wasn’t evil – unless she was just biding her time. But Kim didn’t seem like the type to be patient enough for that – not as far as Shego could tell. There was also the small fact that Kim had been nowhere near the villain when the unstable chemicals were spilled on her, mutating her DNA and turning her into a human glow-worm. Ick.
It hadn’t taken a genius to move from that step to confronting Drakken about what really happened in that plant. He’d offered the information all-too-willingly after one broken finger, presumably to stave off Shego’s anger at not getting the answers she wanted. Of course, in admitting to what had actually transpired he just switched Shego’s anger for her far more unstable wrath.
Shego remembered clearly her former boss’ shrill screams as she’d thrown him around like a dodge ball, decking the few henchmen that tried to stop her with the flailing body of their own employer. And that had only been the starting round of Shego’s rampage. When she was finally finished with Drakken several hours later, his normally pale-blue skin had become several dozen shades darker, with some black thrown in at some places. The giant bruise-man had lost consciousness wailing for mercy, to which his enraged sidekick had only replied with a spinning kick that only Kim Possible had ever managed to avoid or block.
Fortunately for Drakken, Shego had been wearing her Almleti-lined leather gloves at the time, so he sustained no radiation damage. By no means had it been an act of mercy on her part, however, but simply a matter of circumstances. Shego had always worn her almleti-lined gloves in the various lairs they’d occupied in the past, switching them for a pure-leather pair only when leaving the lair or when Drakken neared completion of his current scheme, since Kim Possible had a nasty habit of usually showing up when the mad scientist was just one step away from achieving global conquest. Of course, Shego always suspected that if Kim failed to show up just once, Drakken would just end up vaporizing himself, because the cosmos seemed to simply dislike the creep. But, all the same, even when Drakken wasn’t close to finishing his latest doomsday device, Shego always had a pair of straight-leather gloves on hand – just in case.
On the other hand, it might not have been fortunate for Drakken that she’d been wearing her almleti-lined gloves. While a millimetre-and-a-half wasn’t much, that much almleti sheeting packed quite a wallop, especially with a woman like Shego behind it, caught up in the throes of uncontrollable fury. The leather outer shell of those gloves had been torn to shreds by the time she’d finally let her freshly revealed tormenter slip into the blessed sleep of unconsciousness.
The memory of Drakken’s body twitching reflexively at her feet brought a cruel smirk to Shego’s thin black lips. That bastard should have known better than to break and tell her the truth. Did he think that her three years of loyalty would hold her back? Her laughable excuse of a contract was nothing more than a piece of paper. The legal repercussions of attempted murder against her employer didn’t frighten her. She was a criminal for God’s sake!
Besides, she’d shifted enough assets to an alternate identity – buried so deep in the system not even that great hacker-nerd of Kim’s could detect her connection to the infamous Shego –, that even if Drakken found the stones to take legal action against her, she’d lose little more than thirty percent of her hard-earned and inherited money.
Of course, loose ends had a tendency to come back to bite you in the ass, but Drakken was an easy thread to cut. He had no martial arts training of any kind, no henchmen that could match her, and for some odd reason, he’d never thought that he’d have to fight his own sidekick. Add to that the fact that he was already unconscious at her feet, and Drakken was one boot-scrape away from being a corpse.
But her satisfaction had been stolen from her, by Kim Possible no less. The fact that the redheaded heroine hadn’t actually appeared physically only made it more frustrating.
Another of Kim’s flashbacks had invaded Shego’s mind just as she was about to deal the finishing blow between the unseeing eyes of the convulsing and bleeding mad scientist. It might not have been as bad if that head-trip revealed nothing so Shego could go back to putting Drakken out of his misery. As it happened, however, this particular mental slideshow had opened the villainess’ eyes to a truth that she could never have prepared herself for. The revelations revealed to her then, in all their glaring truth, had so shaken the world Shego had constructed around herself that she’d fled from the lair, leaving the crippled scientist behind for anyone who cared to get him some medical attention. The initial terror of her new knowledge had so deeply cut at her soul that she’d left behind the snake that had destroyed her life so she could vanish into the night before Kim Possible inevitably located the lair and infiltrated it.
That spontaneous slideshow had been the last one to hit Shego, telling her that she’d learned everything she was ever going to from that second-long headache she’d gotten in the Saharan missile silo. It had contained only Shego – a thousand snapshot memories through Kim’s eyes. Shego throwing one of the thousands of punches she’d aimed at the redheaded heroine…standing atop a stack of boxes with a victorious smirk…hair flying as she herself dodged one of Kim’s punches…leaping over a kick…casually tossing a flaming ball of plasma straight at Kim…diving down from her perch on a rock in an attempt to pound Kim Possible into the dirt…smiling cruelly in the wake of one of her frequently used taunts…smirking in response to one of Kim’s witty quips…dropping down into an attack posture before exploding forward, grinning the entire time…
For the longest time, Shego had refused to acknowledge the revelation she’d had about herself in the wake of the last memory flash. After three years spent despising Kim for a crime Shego had just learned had been committed by someone else, she’d thought that it would take forever to come to terms with the realization that it was in fact she who had wronged Kim by hating her so baselessly. It made sense that she was supposed to feel like less than dirt for having hated someone so passionately without any basis for that hatred. First you learn the truth, and then you deal with it, right?
In reality, Shego discovered that she’d done the opposite. She had dealt with the fact that Kim wasn’t responsible long before she’d actually learned the truth. The older woman’s hatred for Kim had long since drifted away from the genuine, becoming an act, a reflex trained into her by Drakken’s own open dislike for the teen heroine. Any real traces of her old hatred and rage had faded away long before the fight in that African missile silo, perhaps even as long ago as one of her earlier encounters with the vigilante. As time had gone by, and she’d repeatedly encountered the alleged DNA vandal, Shego had begun to see, if only subconsciously, that Kim was no more responsible for her condition than the sidekick’s mole-rat.
Of course, on the surface, Shego had always been all-too-open with her hatred for Kim Possible – even going as far as to fall for her own habitual reaction to Kim’s presence. It was kind of funny how the subconscious could run off and do its own thing while leaving the conscious mind happy and clueless. Shego had never gotten the slightest hint about her inner being’s change of heart until the memory flashes had started up – and then ended quite abruptly.
But that last flashback had completely shaken the villain’s world not only with her own self-revelation, but with an incredible insight into Kim Possible’s mind and the heroine’s own perception of the villain. What she found there had changed not only her perception of the redheaded cheerleader-heroine, but of herself as well.
Kim Possible cared for her.
Actually cared for her. Kim Possible – the Kim Possible, teen heroine and defender against all super-villains –, had actually begun to care about Shego, her most dangerous enemy. The irony wasn’t lost on the older woman. Though the fiery redhead had fought Shego on an almost weekly basis and faced the midnight-haired villain’s inexplicable hatred and rage, she had somehow grown to respect and – appreciate Shego’s skill and conviction, how she continued to follow the side she’d chosen without regrets. The fact that the super-criminal’s choices had led her to a life that was the polar opposite of Kim’s didn’t change the reality that Shego was not a fence-sitter.
In their oh-so-frequent fights, though Shego would take every opportunity to destroy the heroine whom she perceived as the soulless bane of her existence, Kim had never retaliated in kind. She had always simply held her ground against the wild villainess, and she would never push any farther than she needed to in order to get the job done. Shego was certain that the redhead would have gotten a lot of flak from Global Justice for that. As far as the international crime-fighting syndicate was concerned, Shego was little more than a criminal without a cell – a problem they wanted very much to fix. Shego snorted. Ha…too bad the only crimefighter in existence that could take me didn’t want to kill me. I’ll bet that gave Director some headaches.
It had almost been like Kim was afraid to cause any sort of lasting harm to her opponent – the complete opposite of Shego’s enforced perception of the heroine. So, over the three years that they’d regularly seen and fought each other, Kim had gradually grown to like Shego for the vigorous workout she always challenged her with, had actually looked forward to the call from Wade that would bring her to Drakken’s doorstep with the promise of a thorough test of her abilities.
In fact, those few times that Kim had confronted Drakken with Shego nowhere in sight to save the coward, the first thought to cross the heroine’s mind had never been relief for herself or the sidekick. Over time, when it had become evident that Kim was only confused by Shego’s unbearable hatred, an enraged Shego would use the blonde, sports-jersey-wearing freak as her pincushion. She had rarely ever actually hit the blonde doofus, but it had always seemed to bother Kim more when Shego attacked him on an intellectual level. This in turn had led to Kim always sending him off to fight Drakken alone while she dealt with the greater threat.
No, the first thought to cross Kim’s mind when she saw Drakken and not Shego was actually worry for the villainess’ welfare. God, the girl would think. I hope she hasn’t gone and hurt herself.
In looking at Kim’s feelings for her, Shego had always tried to shy away from using any word that could be remotely related to love. It was an absurd notion, really, and not one that Shego had ever imagined would come so close to the safe place she’d carved for herself out of this big unforgiving world. Eventually, however, after an entire year with nothing but her own thoughts to keep battering away at her stubborn denial, she had finally given in. For the first time in memory, Shego had voluntarily surrendered a fight when there had been no reason for it. No reinforcements had appeared to stand against her, no blows had weakened her, physical or otherwise.
No, she had just grown tired.
Tired of fighting this constant, nagging voice that always berated her with a truth she didn’t want any idea of, this infuriating fact that challenged everything she believed in, Shego had finally stared into the mirror and admitted what she had known to be true for a long time. She had simply never seen it hanging in front of her, so close she could almost see it. It had snuck up behind her and finally taken hold until she’d finally accepted it.
Kim Possible had fallen in Love with her.
Shego had never made any attempts to attract the redheaded heroine, but it had happened all the same. Somehow, in the midst of gaining respect and admiration for her, Kim had come to know Shego the person, the girl, the woman. Sometime between their first meeting and that last fight in the missile silo, Kim had come to know at least a little of what made Shego – well, Shego. The younger girl had come to see a little of why Shego hated her so much. It was obvious once she saw how little the villain could interact with anyone on a personal level. And it was also obvious that Kim believed no one should be so isolated from the world unless by choice.
And having burning, plasma-emitting hands that burned anyone she got close to was most definitely not Shego’s choice.
So, somehow, somewhere, Kim had first grown to sympathise with the tragic figure that Shego hid behind her brash and arrogant sneer. After that, the fiery redhead had come to love everything about her arch-foe – the way her hair flew around her face as they fought, the ease with which playful banter flowed across her dark-painted lips, the eye-catching contrast of the green and black in her outfit, the way her vibrant green eyes would glow with excitement in the heat of a fight…
Shego had never been able to tell if Kim was – or ever had been – aware of her own feelings, but after four years of questioning herself and pointlessly philosophising “what-if” scenarios, she had decided that it was time to get the answers straight from her own former nemesis. And now that she had finally managed to get up the courage to approach the young woman, Shego felt that old thrill return to her, reborn the moment she’d seen Kim walk into her own apartment with the wanted criminal already hanging out there. She hadn’t realized it was gone until it surged back to the front of her mind, filling every fibre of her being with a boundless energy that made her feel…alive. Now, that old excitement was back and Shego wasn’t going to let it slip away this time. This time, she would shadow her old enemy everywhere, even resorting to jacking her car if it would rekindle the flame of competition she knew was just under the surface of the former heroine’s mind. Anything to keep that thrill alive this time.
She’d spent the last six months preparing for this very night. She’d planned every detail of her scheme and executed it with an efficiency that she had never let Drakken know she possessed. Her plan was simple, yet required several key points to fall into place just…so for it to succeed. Her first objective had been to break into Kim’s apartment and surprise her there. Originally, she would have knocked the girl out, tied her up, and then started the old fight back up right off the bat, but something had told her that would be a bad idea. So, instead, she’d simply lounged on Kim’s couches for hours until she felt that familiar…aura approaching the apartment from the direction of one of the stairwells. Once that had been accomplished, the next goal was to surprise Kim and not get attacked. It had been unlikely that Kim would launch herself at the villain unless Shego first insulted her – it was just the way it always had been; Shego was always the one to make the first move, hence the scheme she’d painstakingly pieced together. Both steps had gone off rather well, and the heroine’s eagerness to play Shego’s game boded well for the rest of the woman’s plan.
The plan at the moment was to get Kim alone and off-balance so Shego could figure out how aware the ex-heroine was of her feelings for the raven-haired villain. To do that, she had to win this game of theirs. Not a difficult game to win, either. Especially when little-miss-Perfect down there has no idea what it takes to be a mouse in the cat-and-mouse game.
And speak of the Devil…
Shego heard the balcony door slide open in the sixth-floor apartment below her, and then a short burst of footsteps – boots, by the sound of them. So, Kim’s going full-hero mode, is she? Maybe this’ll be more fun than I thought… Shego crept to the edge of the roof and peered down carefully, using her sixth sense to gauge the lone woman’s state of mind.
Unlike Kim, Shego wasn’t a full telepath – but she did have her own form of ESP. It had been one of the deciding factors in her decision to become a villain and then a right-hand henchwoman, thus leading her to meet Kim, the most infuriating, frustratingly innocent, and – most inexplicable of all – irresistibly endearing know-it-all Shego had ever had the good fortune to meet.
Ever since she could string two words together, Shego had gone through periods of time when she’d copy other people’s emotions. Whenever her parents would argue, she herself would become upset and angry, causing the formerly incensed adults to turn to her in worry, resulting in a calming effect on the baby Shego. Her parents had never been able to explain it, even after Shego had finally discovered the true nature of her copy-cat personality. Once she had reached an age where she could reason – both with herself and others -, albeit in a very odd, child-logic kind of way, Shego began to see that her tendency to mimic the emotions of the people around her was, in fact, a controllable side-effect of a power she was only then beginning to understand. Over time, and with continued practice, Shego learned to block out everyone else’s feelings, leaving her with only her own. But that wasn’t all.
As it turned out, Shego’s ability was that she could actually feed off of people’s emotions. It was an unusual – and somewhat creepy – concept, but she’d learned to live with the oddity, especially once she’d grown much older and had her life turned upside down by a blue-skinned freak who thought he could con eternal loyalty without consequence. This little facet of her power had been discovered early on in elementary school. Thankfully, being able to feed off people’s fear or happiness didn’t have any kind of affect on the people she fed from – at all. And of course, Shego couldn’t get away from having to eat or drink…eventually, but she had been able to go a couple days without food and still fight in top form against her annoyingly beautiful Princess. For simplicity’s sake, Shego had decided to go with calling her power a form of empathy, but that wasn’t quite accurate since she had no power to influence anything – she was nothing more than an observer or a receiver.
It wasn’t until high school that Shego had really learned where her power had come from. To her, each emotion had its own feeling – a taste, a smell –, which fed Shego’s mind, as well as her body to a lesser extent, making her more alert, more responsive to the outside world. She’d learned to control herself so she wouldn’t succumb to the feelings of another, their sadness or anger, but the negative emotions tended to be the better ones in terms of flavour and energising power. And better still, she could feed off someone’s rage – the most filling of all emotions she’d felt – without becoming enraged herself…unless she chose to, ‘cuz let’s face it – it was just plain fun.
So, Shego had become a villain so she could actively cause many of these sweet negative emotions, creating a veritable feast of some of the best vibes she knew of. Fear, anger, rage, despair…they were all like the finest wines to Shego, and she had loved every drop she could get.
Of course, there was one emotion she’d encountered that tasted far sweeter than any of the negative emotions, and it was neither good nor bad. It was pure excitement. An excited person gave off a scent not unlike lilies and dark chocolate, and tasted more like the chocolate than the flowers, much to Shego’s satisfaction. In fact, the delicacy of excitement was what had caused Shego to fall in love with dark chocolate and that lily-scented shampoo she’d used for years. But nothing could ever compare to genuine excitement, straight from the tap as it were.
As Shego watched Kim and assessed her emotional state, she could only taste the barest hint of excitement, buried under heaps of confusion, apprehension, and nervousness. This was a jumbled mix of bland, shallow scent- flavours that Shego wouldn’t touch with a Drakken-pole, an object she’d thought about creating only slightly less often than Drakken-paint, but only because impaling her former employer on a pole would leave his vocal chords intact while turning him into wall paint would not. Shego was mildly disappointed at the scent-flavours her old rival was giving off. Normally, Kim Possible could be counted on to provide the most exquisite of emotions, but she wasn’t delivering nearly as well as normal. The presence of these emotions that tainted the typically luscious excitement told Shego that Kim wasn’t comfortable – that she was out of her element, off her guard.
Perfect, Shego thought. Let the hunt begin…
Shego grinned as her quarry reached down with one hand to her familiar hip-holster, where she’d stowed her grappling hook launcher. Of course, the midnight-haired villain thought, glancing at the light traffic on the street six floors below. Why do anything the easy way, eh Princess?
With a small sight, Kim pulled out her launcher and aimed it across the street at the apartment building that had given away Shego’s whereabouts after four years. She watched as Kim fired off the hook at a slight inclined angle, impaling the roof across the way precisely a hand-span below the edge.
Shego smiled approvingly as Kim set to anchoring her end of the wire. Even after four years, your aim is still the best.
Instead of pulling out a motorized gripper to carry her across the wide city street, a device which Shego knew Kim would never use simply because it removed the thrill, Kim just vaulted over her balcony railing and started running across the half-centimetre thick wire, ignoring the six-story drop below her feet.
Shego’s smile widened at the sight. And just as fearless.
Her breath caught in her throat when the black and tan-clad redhead miss-stepped and started to topple off the wire, but then an unbelievable thing happened – unbelievable, that is, if you’re anyone but Kim Possible or Shego –, a display of agility and unearthly beauty that Shego hadn’t seen in four years.
Just as her left foot fell past the wire, Kim twisted herself so she fell straight down past the wire – instead of pivoting around her foot and falling away from it –. Then, reaching out her right hand, Kim grabbed onto the wire just as her right foot slipped off, and swung herself under and around to flip back up onto the treacherously slender tight rope. It was a manoeuvre so flawless, so fluid, so…mesmerizing, only Kim Possible could have pulled it off, and the entire swing-and-flip recovery was executed within the span of a single heartbeat.
And while Kim simply continued running across the wire as if she’d only hiccupped, Shego was floored by the image burned into her memory. My God, Kim – when did you become so perfect?
As she watched Kim slip once more before reaching the other side, recovering her footing the same way as before, Shego felt a strangely familiar tingle slither up her spine, accompanied by a sobering thought:
Just how much have myfeelings for her changed?
And why am I suddenly afraid?
Alright, there you have it. Is anyone still following? Is anyone still reading? Chapter 4 to come “soon”.
Modified Disclaimer: Okay, I bent the truth a little. I may not own Kim Possible, but she makes a pretty mean older sister shudder, and her friend? Definitely Shego-worthy material. Yikes…