Chapter Two: The Road to Hell
When Shego awoke, she found herself in her bed like she had most every morning since she had moved into her apartment three years ago; the sun was just rising, casting orange rays through her window, and the birds were already chirping on the summer morning. Everything was how it should be; she was laying between her beige sheets, wearing her usual lavender tank-top and panties, staring up at her ceiling from which dangled the dream catcher she made in her psychology class when she was in college. Except this wasn't her apartment, she remembered as she clutched the pocket watch in her hand. It wasn't her apartment, or her clothes, or her bed, and she never made that dream catcher which she so cherished. This was another person's universe; another Shego's universe.
With a heavy sigh, she pushed off her covers and stood up. Gravity felt the same, as did her hair as she ran her fingers through it. A familiar tea set sat atop a familiar dresser in the corner of the room, next to a familiar mirror which reflected a familiar image back to her. She opened her pocket watch; the watch ticked away quietly opposite a screen which had been placed on the inside of the top half. 'Trans-Dimensional Link Established,' it read.
She snapped it shut and walked out of the room. As expected, she entered a perfect likeness of her living room; it was small and square, about the size of her bedroom, with the television against the far wall opposite the couch, and with her computer on the wall between the two. She walked into the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cupboard where she always kept them, filling it with water from the purifier on the tap. Bringing it over to the computer, she sat, turning on the computer and plugging her watch into the USB port.
In silence she sipped her water as she listened to the soft hum of the computer as it booted up. As soon as the desktop popped up, it disappeared, changing to a readout of a dozen different statistics; she focused on the strings of numbers and text at the top. "Dimension age: 18 hours. Dimension origin: Home. Dimension relativity: -2 years, 6 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes, 28 seconds."
"Exactly where I wanted to be," Shego said to herself. She was caught off-guard as her cell phone rang. She hurried over to the counter where she kept it charging and answered it. "Genevieve Shego speaking."
"Hello Ms. Shego," said the voice of a woman on the other end. "This is Albertine Constance with Middleton High School. We've had something come up and there is an emergency meeting which you need to attend in an hour and a half. Will you be able to make it?"
"Yeah, no problem," Shego replied.
"Glad you could make it, Ms. Shego," Albertine said as Shego walked into the front office of the school. "They're waiting for you in conference room one."
Shego bowed and walked down the hall, scanning the doors for the right label. Finding it, she entered. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting; my home is quite a ways away to traverse quickly in the early morning rush."
"I hope it won't affect your arrival on normal days," one man said.
"Oh, no; it shouldn't be a problem," Shego replied, taking a seat at the end of the table. "As long as I know when I'm supposed to be here beforehand, I can make accommodations accordingly, Mister…"
"Jones," he replied. "Superintendant for the Middleton Public School System."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jones," Shego replied.
"Likewise," he said. "But down to business, you're all here because you are going to be the teachers of Kimberly Possible. Earlier this morning we found out that over the summer, her friend Ron Stoppable passed away under somewhat unusual circumstances, the details being something to which I am not privy. I need one of you to serve as a mentor to her while she recovers from the shock; someone to whom she can turn if she is having personal problems."
'Everything is just as it was before,' Shego thought to herself. "I'll do it."
"With all due respect, Ms. Shego," Jones said, "you're more here as a formality; we felt you should be informed as to the situation, but you are still rather new to this whole thing, and we believe-"
"With all due respect, Mr. Jones," Shego interrupted, "you're unaware of my prior history. Before getting my teaching degree, I received a bachelors in developmental psychology with a focus on girls her age. I received that when I was 19, id est, not much older than her. I defy you to find someone not only in this school, this district, this state, but in the whole of this country that is more qualified to deal with her than I am." 'Yeah, everything is going exactly how it did last time.'
"Excuse me; you're Kim Possible, right?" Shego asked as Kim walked into the classroom for the first time. "You're James' daughter?"
"Yeah," Kim replied, walking over to Shego's desk.
"I've got a project I'd like you to help me with," Shego said. "As a proof of concept, rather, proof that we can, I want you to help me build a particle accelerator."
"Just because my dad's a genius doesn't mean that I am," Kim said.
"Even better," Shego replied. "It's always more fun when you don't know what you're doing."
"What happened?" Shego demanded as she threw open the doors to the police station.
The officer at the front desk looked at her with a mix of perplexity and boredom. "Two shootings, a bank heist, a convenience store robbery, and a botched jeweler store robbery which resulted in the death of the perpetrators," he replied. "As well as several dozen parking tickets and a few speeding tickets. What happened with you?"
"I'm talking about Kim Possible!" she shouted, slamming her fists down on the desk. "What the hell happened with her?"
"Who the hell are you?" he asked. "If you're not family or in another way responsible for the wellbeing of Ms. Possible, we can't discuss that with you."
"I'm fucking responsible for her!" Shego screamed. "Just tell me already!"
The officer kept his gaze on the seething Shego as he picked up the phone and dialed an extension. "Hey Chief, we got a gal here at the desk who says she's responsible for Ms. Possible, and she's demanding answers. Could you come up here and talk to her?" He hung up the phone. "He'll be here in a second."
Shego drummed her fingers on the desk until a man came through the door behind the desk and said, "You're here about Ms. Possible, I assume." She nodded. "Follow me." Shego went around, jumping over the small gate, and walked back to the man. "Call me Chief."
"What happened with Kim?" Shego demanded.
"First, I need to establish how you're related to her," Chief said. "Legally, we're unable to disclose personal information about an active case, and even then we're limited in what we can say."
"Listen, Chief," she said, putting heavy weight on his name, "I'm responsible for whatever happens to that girl. You will tell me whatever the fuck I want to know, and you will tell me now!"
"Kim went crazy," Chief relented. "She built a weapon out of a particle accelerator -according to her, at least - and used it to, well… There's no other way to put it; she used it to massacre the super-villain Senor Senior Sr." He pulled a file out from under his arm and opened it, showing the graphic images of Senior's body to her.
"Where is she?" Shego asked.
"We have her locked up in the high-security holding cell downstairs," Chief replied.
"Take me to her."
"I'm here to help you, Kim," Shego said as Chief opened the door to Kim's prison cell.
"Come inside now, I implore," Kim said from beyond the darkness of her cell. "Do you think you can restore the crucial pieces missing from my brain? What seems to be the matter, dear? Why do you cry and shake with fear? I've only had the best dub me insane."
"You did go off the deep end," Shego said sweetly, walking into the tiny room. Chief locked the door behind her. "You took that particle accelerator we built and turned it into a focused particle gun."
Kim laughed. "Did you see what it did to Senor Senior Sr.?" she asked.
Shego shuddered and replied with a simple, "Yeah."
"Who knew that your could turn a few spare parts from a television into something like that," Kim said as she stepped out of the shadows, on her lips a wry and wicked smile, on her body a straitjacket pulled tight. "How's Junior doing?"
"Still a babbling mess, just like you left him," Shego said. She moved back a bit as she realized just how much bitterness had edged her words. "I'm sorry; that was uncalled for."
"No, it wasn't," Kim replied. "It's well-deserved, even from you who are now my dearest friend. Guard! She's finished here." Chief unlocked the door and pulled Shego out, locking it again afterward. "Come back when you're ready to help me."
"Don't worry, Kim," Shego said through the grate on the door. "I'll go back and fix this so it never even happened."
Kim laughed again. "If that were coming from anyone else, I'd say that they deserve a place right here next to me, but you know, I think you just might pull it off. Surely you've discovered the shearing effect of counter-revolving quantum properties."
"Kim!" Shego shouted, running toward Kim as she and Ron prepared to board the small jump plane in Managua; all three were dressed in wing suits. "Hold on, Kim!"
"Uh, Ok?" Kim asked. She directed Ron into the plane before walking toward Shego.
"The Agency sent me to recover property from Senor Senior Sr.," Shego bluffed. "My name's Shego; don't worry, I can handle myself."
"What Agency?" Kim asked, skeptical of Shego's explanation. "And what property?"
"The Agency," Shego replied. "And that's classified."
"The Agency?" Kim asked. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Langley says hi," Shego said.
Kim was silent for a second before saying, "Oh."
"Yeah, that Agency," Shego replied.
"According to the schematics Wade found, there should be a control panel on the far side of the room," Kim said as she stuck the Kimmunicator back in her pocket; the three were crouching behind a cluster of metal crates in the corner of the room. "Ron, you and Rufus double back and create as much chaos as you can while I go shut off the device. Shego, you go get whatever it is that you're after."
"Hold on," Shego replied. "I'll go distract them; what I want is over that way anyway. You two should stick together."
"Right," Kim said.
"Hey, be careful, you two," Shego said as she stood. She ran out of the room and into the lobby of the large subterranean laboratory complex. "Only for you, Kim." She pulled a grenade from inside her tank-top. She stared at it intently for a minute before pulling the pin and tossing it down the hall. It landed against the elevator, and she dove out of the way into another of the lab rooms.
The alarms rang out as it exploded, and she stuck her head out into the lobby; the doors were dented inward, ensuring that the elevator would be useless. There was the screech of metal gouging against metal as the elevator descended, getting stuck against the doors, while at the same time the sound of dozens of soldiers in Senor Senior Sr.'s private army came storming down the stairs. As they entered, Shego pulled herself back into the room and stared up at the ceiling, whispering to herself, "Either I'm really crazy, or…"
She ran out into the lobby and tackled the closest soldier; they were wearing uniforms and wielding batons, but seemed to lack any sort of real protection. As she bowled him down to the ground, she grabbed the baton and somersaulted, wrenching it from his hands. Her foes circled her as she stood, hunched forward, prepared for the fight. One charged at her from behind, attempting to crush her from above with his baton; she ducked at the last minute and brought her baton between his legs. She lifted and threw her weight forward, launching him into his allies.
Another one came at her; she swung her leg around, trying to trip him, but he jumped. She brought her baton around with force as he hung in the air, impacting it against the side of his kidneys. He fell to the ground and clutched his side in pain.
Two more came forward, discarding their batons. The rest backed away as they began to circle her. "Fair fight, boys?" Shego asked snidely. "Alright." She threw her baton at one of the two men; he deflected it. The other charged at her from behind, trying to grab her around the waist; she sidestepped at the last moment, driving her elbow into the base of his neck. He staggered and she kicked him in the small of the back, driving him into his comrade.
Another man came at her. The two locked hands, grappling as the crowd cheered him on. She dropped down and speared him in the gut, tossing him aside. The rest charged her in mass, stopping just short as a single gunshot rang out. "That will be quite enough," said an aged voice from out of sight. The soldiers parted, making way for an elderly man; Shego cringed when she saw him. "I do not believe we have met. My name is Senor Senior Sr."
"Genevieve Shego," she replied.
"It is a pleasure to meet you," he said, taking her hand and kissing it. "Now, would you kindly tell me why you are here, or will I regret informing my men to avoid at all costs the use of lethal force?"
"I'm here on behalf of The Agency," Shego said, keeping to her story. "It seems as though you have stolen something very valuable from them."
"I steal a great many things from a great many people, my dear," he replied, "but nothing recently from The Agency. Why don't you tell me why you're really here?"
Shego laughed. "You'd never believe me," she said.
"Very well," he said. He turned to one of his men. "Go get the other two before they damage my equipment." The man nodded and pointed to a few more men, and the lot of them went into the lab where Kim and Ron were working. "No matter how difficult it may be for me to believe, I would still appreciate you telling me."
"I'm from an alternate dimension," Shego said, shrugging. "I've come from my world to save Kim Possible from herself."
"Ah, but if what you save is true, then you're not really saving your Kim Possible," Senior pointed out. "You're simply preventing the fall of another version, an action admirable in its own right."
"I don't care," Shego replied. "As long as I get to see her happy, I'll-" She was cut off by an enormous explosion in the other room. She turned around and ran toward it, shoving the soldiers out of her way as she went. As she entered, she stopped, struck with grief at what she saw; the device they had been working on had exploded, and Kim and Ron were buried under a pile of rubble on the far side of the room, a small stream of blood trickling out from underneath.
She ran over to Kim and started digging, trying to free them. Kim coughed and she stopped suddenly. "I guess we weren't careful enough," Kim said. Shego bent down by Kim's side and took her hand; her right arm and head were all that were free. "Tell my…"
"Kim?" Shego asked weakly. "Kim? Kim!"
"She's dead," Senior said. "They both are." He sighed. "If what you say is indeed the truth, then go, jump back through time and fix this; the thought of having any blood on my hands, especially theirs, is an unspeakable horror."
Shego stood up and walked over to him. "Do you have a computer I can use?"
Author's Note:
I'm enjoying writing this more and more as I go along; I forgot how much I enjoy writing in my own personal brand of third-person omniscient, as I can't really wax eloquent in first-person narration and have it come out as well. And true to my inspiration, things are going to keep going from bad to worse; that was one of the terms of the challenge under which I started this story, and it makes for a good way to keep the plot moving. This also lets us see how Shego went from a slightly eccentric schoolteacher to the archduchess of martial arts badassery (losing out to Kim for queen) that she is in the series.
If you're wondering about all my other projects, here's a rundown:
Final Jump's next chapter is 90% done, but I have to write a fight scene that just isn't coming out. Like, at all. I keep trying to force it, through either just bashing my hands against the keys and hoping something good comes out or searching for inspiration, but nothing is working.
Negai - WilliamsMinxs' next chapter is about 30% done, and I'm stuck there because I'm having network troubles and can't access my Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica episodes. As soon as I get that resolved, I'll be able to look up the parts of the anime I need to reference to keep the story flowing.