Aviarius watched his robotic Kamikaze Falcon Brigade emerge from the smoke barrier and head straight at the black jet. “FLY, MY PRETTIES! FLY! MWAHAHAHAHA!” he cackled.
“Kimmie, we didn't use up our machine guns back in that bombing, did we?” Shego asked.
“Uh…why?” asked Kim.
“BECAUSE WE'RE GONNA NEED THEM!” Shego pointed to the Kamikaze Falcons on the radar.
“Holy shit!” Kim immediately armed the guns. Shego banked hard right as the Falcons closed in – exploding like shrapnel around the plane. “Jesus Christ!” Kim now respected War pilots a lot more.
“Yeah, he's not gonna be helpin’ us,” Shego noted. She looked up as more Falcons appeared. “It's time to clear the grass, Kimmie!”
Kim squeezed the machine gun trigger as the black jet hurtled straight through the crowd of Kamikaze Falcons – and about fifteen separate machine gun turrets on the plane opened up, decimating the Falcons. “Holy fuck!” Kim exclaimed. “I fuckin’ love this jet!”
“Yeah, tell me about i-KEEP SHOOTING!” Shego screamed. Kim was snapped back to attention and opened fire once again as more of the Kamikaze Falcons shot towards them. What followed was an absolutely dizzying display in the skies as Kamikaze Falcons exploded like anti-aircraft shells everywhere and Shego pulled half-turns, loops, spins, corkscrew turns, banks left and right – and then some even more complex modern ace combat fighter pilot moves - while Kim mowed through the remaining Kamikaze Falcons with the massive machine gun array of the black jet's.
Finally, there were only twenty Kamikaze Falcons left flying. Kim nearly crushed the machine gun trigger—
Click.
Kim tried again.
CLICK.
She looked at the approaching Falcons.
CLICK.
“Aw, shit - SHEGEE, DIVE THIS BITCH!” Kim bellowed, even though Shego was right next to her. “Lessee if these birds can figure out the difference between us and the ground!”
Shego grinned deviously. “Hold on tight, Kimmie!” She nosedived the black jet straight towards the cliff top - unfortunately, too high up to notice she was diving towards the spot with the Titans, X, and Ron.
On the cliff top, Aviarius watched the aerobatics with glee, laughing maniacally. “Now, my Kamikaze Falcon Brigade! Now I will finally see the end! The Team Go powers will be MINE – FOREVER!”
As the black jet dove towards the ground, Kim saw the wrong person approaching them at god-knows-how-many miles per hour. “SHIT! PULL UP!” she screeched to Shego. “THAT'S RON! PULL UP!”
Shego heard her and pulled the jet up fast - but the Falcons kept diving.
“Kamikaze Falcon Brigade?” Ron watched from the cliffside below. “That's so bad.”
“Ron, normal Peregrine Falcons can dive at a max speed of 200 miles per hour!” Raven yelled.
“Saywhat?”
“GET OUTTA THE WAY!” Cyborg yelled, dive tackling Ron, the two rolling out of the way as the last twenty Kamikaze Falcons slammed into the ground behind them, single file, exploding like a line of firecrackers made with M-80's. Once they were safely in the brush, Rufus appeared, catching his breath.
“Don't let him get to that platform elevator!” Robin pointed at Aviarius. “We have to keep him topside!”
Kim turned to Shego. “Ok, remember - both of us gotta stay silent ‘til we get those powers back!”
Shego decided to start early. In response, she said nothing as she took the black jet out of the climb and headed back down to the ground, towards the cliff top.
“NO! THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!” Aviarius shrieked as he watched the rest of his Kamikaze Falcons explode without destroying their targets. He ran and attempted to hop on the platform elevator – but instead smacked straight into a dark energy wall that had appeared in front of it.
“Nice try,” came Robin’s voice behind him, “but I'd say it looks like you're ready for your cage, Aviarius.”
That dipped Aviarius’ beak as he turned and saw all the Titans, Red X, and Ron standing there. “WHY DOES EVERYBODY HAVE TO SAY THAT?” he shrieked, annoyed out of all hell.
“Don't break that gem on his staff!” warned Ron. “It's got the Team Go superpowers inside it!”
“TITANS GO!” Robin shouted. Red X chucked his red x-shaped shurikens while Robin hurled some freeze discs at Aviarius. Aviarius used the green Team Go power to deflect the shurikens, then the purple power to shrink and avoid the freeze discs flying at him.
The black jet landed behind him as Starfire and Cyborg attacked the oblivious Aviarius. The attack drove him backwards to the perfect spot behind the black jet. Kim and Shego jumped out of the plane and tackled Aviarius from behind. Kim had never felt such anger - or freedom, oddly – as she repeatedly slashed and slashed away at Aviarius’ face like a rabid wild wolverine with Shego’s clawed gloves - while Shego snatched the power staff and shattered the gem.
“NOOO!” Aviarius screamed.
“Didn't you say ‘Don't smash the gem?’” Beast Boy asked Ron. Ron simply shrugged and grinned.
A sudden though flew into Shego’s mind: Would she get all the powers back now? Or would she get just the green power? Her brothers had been killed. Where exactly would their powers go? However, her question was immediately answered as all the superpower energies flowed straight back into her. Shego was incredibly relieved. Without the powers, no matter how much being with Kim kept her energy up, she never quite felt the same as when she had her powers. They gave her a boost in the energy department, big time. She laughed as she saw Aviarius’ more-than-a-little-surprised face. She’d almost forgotten all about the fact that she looked like Kim and was wearing Kim’s clothes.
“Why did all the powers return to her?” Aviarius asked, pointing at Shego.
“Because I’M their rightful heir!” Shego told him.
“But you are that - that Kim Po-”
Shego grabbed his collar and yanked him up so she was eye-to-eye with him. “Ya’ ever heard of a DISGUISE, Yolk-for-brains?” she chastised him.
“CONDOR! ATTACK!” Aviarius yelled. His giant bird, hidden in the trees, appeared, and flew at Shego - but Shego used the purple power to shrink as it passed, un-shrank, grabbed the bird's neck, and uses the blue power to wring the fleshy thing like a sponge with bones. The SNAP was not happy. However, she now had one thing left. The fire in her eyes roared higher as she turned back to Aviarius. She picked him up like he was a rag doll and used the blue power to hurl him straight across the cliff top. Aviarius smashed into the ground, face-first, his teeth leaving permanent imprints in his brain from the impact.
“AVIARIUS!” she bellowed.
Aviarius looked behind him as he slowly got up. “Huh?”
“Shegee, no!” Kim screamed as she realised what Shego was going to do.
But Shego was too pissed off, too focused to hear anything. Aviarius had interfered one too many times in her life. He had helped capture Team Go for Slade. HE’D BEEN AN ACCOMPLICE TO THE MURDER OF HER BROTHERS, THOSE WHO - even if she had despised them for quite a long stretch of time - HAD BEEN HER FAMILY.
“DIE!” she screeched. She leapt high in the air, used the red power to copy herself, fused the green and blue energies, then her and all her copies dive bombed Aviarius. Right before they all hit him, she combined all her copies back to - so that when she hit the bird villain, the final impact was an absolutely devastating ultra-super-strength punch that drove Aviarius about 100 metres down through the ground – and brought with it entire cliff top upon impact, everybody else protected by the dark energy shield that Raven hastily threw up around them.
The underground cavern was silent for a moment.
Then the ceiling exploded open. Aviarius and Shego slammed into the ground, causing the whole cavern to shake with the impact. When the dust cloud settled, Shego stepped off of Aviarius - whose neck was twisted in the most painful-looking position she had ever seen.
Everyone else landed slowly. The dark energy shield disappeared.
Kim, coming up behind her, cringed on seeing Aviarius’ body. “Aiii - yeah, I'd say he's gone, Shegee.” Then Shego didn’t look like she was feeling very good. She collapsed in Kim's arms. “Shegee?” a now-worried Kim asked her.
“Kimmie-” Shego looked up into Kim’s eyes – and as Kim was disguised as her, she couldn’t do it for long, at least at this moment. “-don't let me do that again.”
Kim smiled caringly. “Looks like we really did switch some of our personalities with this gig, huh?”
Shego smiled hesitantly, then looked away from Kim. After what she’d done, she couldn’t stand to look into her own eyes, which were what Kim had. “Just - please, Kimmie - just promise me -- don't you ever let me do that again.”
“Shegee, I-”
“Did you all really think it would be that easy to break down this facility?” The voiced boomed from every corner of the room, but nobody had to second guess who it was. Everyone was up instantly, assuming a battle-ready stance.
“-don't think I'm going to be able to make that promise to you right now…” Kim finished.
Slade's face appeared on a massive monitor, larger than any Jumbotron that had ever existed – one that was about six miles away from them. Kim was stunned. How big was this cavern, anyway?
“I must say, however,” Slade continued, “This has been quite an impressive show all of you have been putting on for us so far.”
“‘Us?’” X asked.
Wade, Brother Blood, and Dr. Drakken's faces appeared on three other monitors that were just as enormous as the first one.
Robin glared. “Them.”
Wade waved. “Hi, girls.”
Kim would’ve given anything to be in the same room with that prick right now. The hate that was burning in her heart was so fierce, she half-expected to spit up brimstone and acid as she glared at the monitor and said – in unison with Shego, who was clearly feeling exactly the same way she was – “Wade…”
“You've just breached the First Area,” Slade quipped.
“’First Area?’” asked Ron.
“Yes, the First Area,” said Brother Blood.
“Welcome to the Second Area!” Drakken gloated, throwing his hands over his head.
CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!
A titanic grid of laser beams suddenly turned on – and Kim’s wonderment of how big the cavern was was answered as she gaped at the size of the laser grid. It stretched about four miles wide to the walls of the cavern, and about five miles long, going all the way back to just before where the monitors were.
“Hole-lee shit…” Beast Boy’s jaw dropped when he saw not only how immense the cavern was, but also how many laser beams there were.
“Yes,” Slade noted, “Wade and I decided our last version of overkill wasn't adequate enough. So here we have two hundred million individual laser beams in this grid - not to mention the accompanying four hundred million infrared laser beams you can't see. Each infrared beam, if tripped, will instantly trigger a bank of, oh, say – five hundred thousand miniature Supernova Death Rays.”
Shego took out Kim’s spectrometer sunglasses. Leave it to Slade to not take any of their gadgets… And, indeed, there were four times as many beams visible when she looked through the gadget. “Spectrometer sunglasses say ‘no lies,'” she told everyone.
“So does my scanner,” Cyborg confirmed. “Fact, my scanner says the grid's set into the ground about another 100 metres or so.”
“Yes, that's to prevent any blue super strength-empowered persons from trying to use themselves as a human drill and easily slipping by our defence systems,” Drakken muttered. Shego cringed. Damn! Kim had used that move to break into Aviarius’ lair - when Aviarius had first tried to steal the blue power from Hego, Kim got in the way, and had gotten the blue power transferred to her temporarily. Come to think of it, Shego thought, it was slightly ironic… Back then, when she had still been evil, Shego had grabbed the power staff when Kim kicked it out of Aviarius’ hands - and Ron had commented that stealing the powers and using them for herself seemed to have more of the Shego vibe. Now, here she was – all her brothers dead, and she with all of their powers. It was weirdly ironic – in a very sad kind of way…
Meanwhile, Brother Blood was busy gloating more about their lovely little trap they’d set up in this cavern. “And the walls of the cavern have been completely coated with a pesticide that's extraordinarily toxic to both humans and - we just recently tested this with Starfire's sister - Tameraneans…”
He twirled his arm, clearly to some henchmen off camera. A clang of something opening rang out above them.
Señor Senior Sr. and Blackfire’s rotted corpses dropped from the ceiling above. Starfire screamed – but less because of the rotted bodied and mainly because the rotted bodies landed on the ground right smack dab in front of her. “SISTER!” Starfire screamed.
“FATHER!” Red X yelled.
Robin hung his head. He knew they’d have found Senior eventually. It was Slade…
And now it was Slade’s turn to twist the knife more. “I was confused for a moment by the identity of Red X - considering the last time I had seen him, he had been Robin in disguise. But then I traced the paths your vehicles took to get here and realised they all came to a certain cave with a mansion built over top of it. Wasn't hard to deduce who it was after my robots stormed the mansion…”
“And just in case you somehow get past this new deathtrap Wade has set up,” cackled Drakken, “let us show you what awaits you in the Third Area:” Huge doors behind the laser grid opened out sideways. A bright light in the background grew longer as the doors opened more and more. When the doors were completely open, about twenty gigantic robots holding up some huge mallets were backlit by the light. In between the robots lay a force made up of about one hundred of Drakken’s henchmen, one hundred Slade-Bots, and about one hundred HIVE-Bots. “20 Tremendous Robots On Large Leg Structures - my own designs, thank you very much, yes - one hundred of my most loyal henchmen, one hundred of Slade's robots, and one hundred HIVE robots!” Drakken cackled as the doors closed - the clang of the doors shutting echoing across the epic chasm.
“Oh, and one more thing:” said Slade. “Do any of you still how that Nibbler creature died when you people were on your little jaunt with Warp in the year 3000?”
“We know what happened.” Cyborg glared. “Blood mind-controlled him; made him snap his neck.”
Blood faked being awestruck. “Cyborg, I'm touched - however, that's not it. You see, we were testing something - a computer virus, exactly.”
“A computer virus with the filename “EPSTN.BRR.304”,” Wade cut in. “I believe you know what that virus can do, Cyborg.”
Cyborg was livid. “Oh, you did NOT do what I think you did!” he screamed at Wade.
Wade chuckled. “I did - way back when you were recharging after that little “electrical accident” incident with the Planet Express monitor's control panel.”
Beast Boy ignored the fact that Wade had just revealed he’d caused that incident. When they’d found out he’d turned, they’d all pretty much figured he’d been the one who has caused it. But uploading a computer virus? They hadn’t figured Wade would’ve done that. “Uh, what's this virus do?” the changeling asked.
Cyborg tried to explain in the simplest terms. “It's a robotic-biological hybrid virus - a nanoprobe fixed onto a cell of the Epstein-Barr virus - which can cause some throat cancers. It's also almost impossible to destroy, because of the organic material - and that organic material also makes it transmittable to humans as well. But the major way the Epstein-Barr virus is transmitted is by saliva, so everyone here would've have had to have me kiss ‘em or drool all o-”
“-or we could've taken a sample of your saliva from your unfinished meals in The Cage we collected and put a few drops concentrated with the virus on all of your subsequent meals in The Cage,” Slade noted.
Beast Boy retched. “EWWW!”
“Euggh!” Kim did not feel good all of a sudden.
“Ouch - damn, that's low…” Shego felt like puking.
“THAT IS SICK AND WRONG!” Ron screamed.
“Oh, we're not done yet,” said Brother Blood. “You see, this special strain of the virus Wade cooked up has a special chemical in a tiny capsule hidden inside the nanoprobe part. “When the nanoprobe is destroyed – via any method at all - the chemical will be released and automatically react with the organic virus component - setting off an incredibly accelerated case of nasopharyngeal carcinoma within the body of whoever's been infected!”
Everyone gasped. “So you're gonna give us throat cancer that moves at the speed of light, huh?” Cyborg asked.
“You betcha!” Drakken mocked.
“Somehow Nibbler was able to snap his neck before the cancerous growths could become visible - but we've refined it since then. It's quite the potent one now.” Slade seemed to grin under his mask.
“So you got all of this set up – when you can just press a button and kill us?” asked Cyborg.
Slade seemed put off by the remark. “I'd like to think of myself as a kind person. I could kill you at any time.”
“But you don't,” said Kim.
Slade nodded. “Correct.”
“You nine people - that is, if you include the stupid hairless gopher - you still haven't learned the meaning of the word “torture,” have you?” asked Drakken.
The monitors turned off before anybody could answer the villains. Everybody looked at everyone else.
Ron hung his head. “So - the nightmare's only just begun.”
Kim clenched her fists. “No - the nightmare's still going on. We're just at the worst part-” She glared, the fire in her eyes raging enough to burn a fortified complex in Texas. “Right before we wake up.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
END ACT THREE