AN: "Teen Titans," "The New Teen Titans," and related material ©DC Comics, Warner Bros., and Cartoon Network. "Kim Possible," Shego, Joss, and related characters ©Walt Disney Company. Original characters belong to Trackula, Eoraptor, or both. Not-for-Profit fan work.
Set Post Season 4 of "Teen Titans" or five years after "Kim Possible" and is an AU to both
PLEASE REVIEW AND RECOMMEND!!!
Shego the Second
Volume 1, Issue 1, chapter 2
"Enter the Drago"
By: Trackula and Eoraptor
- - -
Robin leaned back in his seat, rubbing his brow just above his mask. He knew he shouldn't be pulling another all-nighter, but that adage about old habits rang painfully true. What was worse, though, was what he'd been spending all night on. Just three minutes of video footage that he was hell-bent on committing to memory.
The scene played back over and over again in a loop; a shifting and moving point of view making its way through the vault door. The image followed behind Raven's fluttering blue cloak into the vault, but was obviously taken from well above her height. Finally it came to where the girl in her frightful dual-colored uniform sat languidly across the display case she'd just vandalized.
The image had no sound, but he knew what was being said already. Reading lips was easy enough, even though he couldn't see hers through that hideous smirking mask. He sighed when he saw himself drop down behind her and make his way across the vault floor with Beastboy following. At the time he had briefly considered simply trying to tackle the thief. But after their second encounter, he'd learned to be wary of just how attentive to her surroundings she really was.
The fight was little more than two minutes of flashing lights and acrobatics before her explosive egress, which had sent Robin tumbling headfirst into Starfire. The encounter was certainly nothing epic or particularly memorable by the standards of the Teen Titans. But it was all he had to work with.
The teen sighed, pressing play yet again after the video file Cyborg had recorded ran its course. He wasn't certain, but he had a working theory that this new Shego produced some EMP that fried all other video before it could capture her. After all, these three minutes was all they had ever captured of her, and nearly as little existed of the first mysterious Shego, who had come from Go City to Jump City years before.
Three encounters and all they had to show for it was this. All he could be certain of was that this person calling herself Shego had the same abilities as the first, but was shorter and of a different build… a bit old to be a daughter, a sister perhaps; but that was the only working theory that he had for the moment. That, and her own cocky pronouncements of working as a thief for hire.
Rolling his shoulders, Robin watched the video play through yet again, studying her movements intently. He'd have to ask if Cyborg could get audio feed next time. Something he could run a voice print analysis against.
Of course, Robin was too well informed to have any real hope of learning Shego's identity through these methods. After all, the first hadn't even bothered to wear a mask, and there was still seemingly no one who knew who she really was beyond having once been a superhero in Go. This unknown inheritor of that title was perhaps even more cautious than the first in wearing a mask.
The only sure way to unmask this thief was after she was secured in a cell. The problem was though, that all things considered she was a very low priority. She was still a criminal, but there was no vendetta as with Red X to require their full focus. And while her skill was frustrating, it also kept civilians out of harms way and she was only a thief when it came down to it.
To be honest, the boy wonder wasn't too sure why he was putting this kind of effort into capturing who would otherwise be nothing more than a petty crook.
"Resolution's better than I thought," came the deep baritone voice over his shoulder.
Robin looked around to see Cyborg with a cup of steaming coffee in each metal grip. His teammate gave him a wry smirk and handed him the cup in his right hand, which he gratefully accepted.
"Thanks," Robin smirked before blowing steam off his '#1 Sidekick' cup and taking a sip.
"Spent all night on this, huh?" Cyborg asked flatly, reaching over and pressing stop on the keyboard. "Hell of a way to spend your night."
"She got away," Robin grumbled. "For the third time."
"And that'll mean she'll get cocky, and sloppy, and we'll nab 'er," Cyborg explained. "Not the best way to go about things, but whatev'."
Robin just frowned and took another sip. Seeing that he was talking to a brick wall, Cyborg shrugged and added, "Starfire's right there with you, though. She can't wait to put Shego away… probably 'cause of that flirting she's been throwing out there lately."
"Cyborg…" Robin warned.
Cyborg gave a chuckle and when he saw Robin didn't seem placated, sighed and added, "For what it's worth, I bet she's just trying to get under your skin. And not into your tights."
"Cy!" Robin exclaimed standing up and glaring at his much taller teammate.
This time, Cyborg didn't even try to hold in his mirth, giving a deep laugh at his flustered leader. Although, he was smart enough to walk off as he did so. He knew he'd pushed his luck, but it'd been more than worth it.
Robin glared at Cyborg's retreating titanium-plated back as he snickered off. When he was out of site, the boy wonder sat back down in the control seat in a huff, taking another careful sip of his unsweetened coffee. Casting a look at the blown up image of the carved wooden grin across the screen, he set his jaw.
'I don't know where you are now, Shego. But next time will be the last time.'
-)SHEGO(-
'Well, here I am,' Agni thought apprehensively as she looked up at the relatively sturdy two-story public institution.
There was really no denying it. This place was a downgrade from Murakami in just about every respect. The construction (she'd read the blueprints of course), the staff, hell, even the bus service. This was a public school with a public budget. A forgettable place to get rid of one's spawn for half a day, under the presumption of education.
'This place is perfect!' Agni smirked, 'No fetishy uniforms, no expectations, no attention! Look, that girl's wearing pajama pants! To school!'
She looked down at herself for a moment, reassessing her ensemble. Currently she wore a pair of formfitting jeans, and a beige turtleneck. Nice and unassuming, if a tad constricting. Luckily, Jump City tended to get pretty chilly in autumn due to being along the shoreline, so she didn't seem overdressed. It was one of the reasons Agni preferred winter to summer.
She gave her folder a quick once over to see that all of her documentation was in order. Satisfied that she had not forgotten anything, she gave a small smile.
'Okay, bad girl... Remember. Agni is normal. Agni has no powers. Agni is not special. Agni is forgettable.'
With that in mind, she proceeded inside along with her future classmates. None of which, she noted smugly, were sparing her so much as a glance. Well, okay, one or two were sparring her a glance, but that was normal, after all, she was new, and at least a few were bound to notice that. As she walked down the hall towards the office, she allowed the crowd to guide her… right into a water fountain, which she hip checked, causing her to yelp.
'There, that got them laughing and moving along… all it cost was one bruise!' Muttering and shaking her head, she made her way inside.
-)SHEGO(-
"I'm afraid I can't help you at this time, Miss Drago."
Agni blinked, taken aback by the wholly unexpected and unwelcome answer. Suppressing a frown as best she could, the disguised teen tried to focus on the issue at hand.
Everything had gone smoothly. She had gone in to the attendance and enrollment office and was directed to the desk of a one Steven Barkin. A man who, so far as she was concerned, resembled an anthropomorphized bulldog with a buzzcut. Big, and muscular with beady little eyes and a permanent scowl chiseled onto his wide face.
Agni's first thought when she saw the rigid way he carried himself even while sitting was that the man couldn't have been more obviously ex-military if he had a neon sign strapped to his back that read; 'I used to be an army grunt.' Some of Tasha's acquaintances had military backgrounds, so sniffing one out was easy.
But anyways, she'd put on a smile, told the man she was supposed to enroll here, and gave him her folder of all the necessary documents. He'd taken it, looked through each document without a word, and then handed it back to her. His little bombshell went off a moment later.
'What the hell's his problem?! I know I didn't miss a page. Can he tell some are fake? Impossible, they're all perfect!'
Taking a deep breath through her nose, Agni resisted clenching her fist and put on her best innocently confused expression, "Um, What's the matter Mister Barkin?"
"Your guardian, Miss Drago." He looked up, raising his voice a bit, "As in you don't have one here with you. I need the signature of a parent or guardian in the presence of a school official to admit you… Security, Patriot Act, paper trail, all that."
The teen silently cursed herself, her own stupidity, and paperwork, all in one mental breath. Of course, these people were part of "the machine," as Tasaha called it. They lived and died by carbon copies! Bemoaning her fate, she sighed, "Fine, I guess I'll have to come back… Th- thank you for your time Mister Barkin."
"See that you do." He nodded, and watched her as she left. Once she was gone, Steve Barkin reexamined her papers. He couldn't understand why anyone would transfer from that private academy to one of the city's public school. "Huh, must be money problems."
Oh well, wasn't his problem. Life here in Jump City was so much simpler than Middleton. At least here, the Heroes didn't actually go to school! They stayed safely on a tower out in the bay.
"No, no students running off out of class to save the world…" He chuckled, shaking his head and setting Drago's file off to one side. "Just your basic average students, in your basic average world…"
-)SHEGO(-
"There! Right there!" The boy Wonder cheered as he pointed to a frame of Cyborg's video.
"Dude? That's a mole. I've got one! Heck, even Raven has one, I think..." Beastboy rolled his eyes. He had just been walking through the command center on his way to get a sandwich when Robin had commandeered him into looking for identifiable marks in the short run of video. Three hours ago.
"Yes, but look where it is!" he pointed at the screen, irritated at the green boy's rebuttal.
Indeed, there was a mole on the girl's torso, only exposed when she had leaned back while fighting Beastboy, causing her already tight top to ride up and expose the bottom of her rib cage.
"Identifiable. Mark." He muttered into his gloved hand.
"So, Robin… we just run around getting girls to flash us their tops until we find one with a mole?" Beastboy rubbed his hands together, grinning and plotting suddenly as it dawned how such a blemish would have to be identified.
Robin just sighed and clenched his hands.
"Robin, you're wasting your time." Cyborg offered as he entered the area as well, seeing Beastboy salivating. "Heck, I had a mole in that very spot before the accident that made me the way that I am."
Indicating the armored left side of his flank, Cyborg raised his real eyebrow to punctuate his remark. He kept it up for a comically long moment before shrugging. "Besides, it doesn't really help us, unless we do like BB suggests and ask girls to strip, or, you know, start patrolling Jump City Municipal Beach, but the swim season is over."
"Awe! Come on! I'd so totally be up for that! Babes, bikinis, sun, sand…"
"Of course you would, which is why we won't be doing it," came a dour response from the kitchenette, where Raven was steeping a mug of tea while watching the boys argue. "…and for the record, I do not have a mole. Anywhere."
Sparing her a moment's glance, Robin finally sighed, admitting defeat on this particular point. After a moment, he flipped a switch on the console, switching off the video all together. Standing up wearily, he stretched, several joints popping.
"Cyborg, any chance on getting audio the next time we run into her?"
"Shouldn't be a problem, man. But when will we? Jewel robberies aren't exactly our usual priority."
"Raven?"
"Why are you asking me? I am not exactly one of the social elite."
"You're a girl, she's a girl, you both have a thing for jewelry…" Beastboy grinned and indicated the center of his forehead, then his belt and wrists in rapid succession.
"These are mystical artifacts, Garfield. Not. Jewelry."
The sting of his real name sent the elfish Titan reeling, a stricken look on his face. Smirking softly, Raven returned her attention to Cyborg and Robin, "No, I have no idea when she might strike next. Perhaps Starfire might know. She is a bit more in touch with the social scene of the city."
Robin and Cyborg both winced.
-)SHEGO(-
Jocelyn Possible muttered as she heaved another red snapper up and over the ice chest and through the air towards the vendor. Despite being surrounded ice on all sides, she was sweating from the constant effort of fish mongering. She also stank to high heaven, and her gloved hands were covered in fish slime and various parts of pelagic anatomy.
Still, it was a good day's work, a hard day's work; and no one here was at all curious who she was or where she'd come from. It paid reasonably well for the effort involved, and she seemed to be particularly adept at hurling sea creatures dozens of feet on command, accurately. She'd have to remember to thank Cousin Kim for teaching her a little Cantonese, if she ever saw her again.
She just wished it paid well enough for her to afford an apartment with a shower of her own. She couldn't stay at a shelter for fear of someone recognizing her, and paying to shower at the truck stop out on the highway was getting expensive, especially when she had to take the bus or a taxi out there and back. Plus, she could just as easily be identified out there as at a homeless shelter.
With a sigh, the auburn haired farm girl let her shoulders sag for a moment between throws. Shaking her chilled hands and arms out from being plunged into the crushed ice and fish slime, she groaned. She might be a capable girl, but this was hard freakin' work!
Reaching out when the next call came, this time for a yellow fin tuna, she picked up the sleek oceanic fish and then tossed. The toss was accompanied with a yank, a tear, and very nearly a curse as the rigid spines of the tuna caught on something.
"Great! Now, not only do Ah smell like carp, but Ah look like Powergirl!" Joss clenched a hand over the front of her stained, and now torn white tank top, trying to hide her bra and freckled cleavage, and yelled out in Cantonese what she hoped was 'break time.'
Making sure the next kid in the line knew she was stopping, so she wouldn't catch a fish in the face, Joss made her way to the small restroom at one end of the Market Street docks. By the time she got there, she was gritting her teeth and blushing intently. Even with her hand clutching the tank top tightly closed, it was pretty obvious, given the bosom she had inherited from her mother's side of the family, what was going on. People had stared, and even wolf-whistled at her the whole way.
Sighing and making sure to lock the door behind her, the farm girl started digging in one of her pockets. Finally she turned up a safety pin from the left one. "Well, t'aint perfect, but Ah think it'll get me through tha day."
With a forlorn sigh, she fastened the pin through the ruptured fabric, closing most of the hole. She then unclipped the snap on her holster and pulled out her multitool. Gripping one end of the pin between her calloused fingers, she used the pliers to twist it down, closing up most of the rest of the gap as the pin yielded and twisted into a knot.
"Well, t'aint demure by any stretch," She turned left and right before the mirror, chewing her lower lip, "But least Ah'm not hangin' out all over now."
Leaning forward and resting her hands on the sink, she let go a sigh and eyed herself in the mirror. "This what you were expectin' when ya'll took off there, Joss girl?"
'no, t'aint in the least,' she thought back to herself, letting her eyes fall away from her reflection and stare at the dingy basin. When she'd run away from the ranch in Montana, she hadn't expected to be spending her days tossing fish in Jump City…
She'd been expecting to be a hero, just like Kim and Ronnie. But when she found her belly rumbling fiercely at the end of the first week, she was forced to admit that feeding herself came before any dreams of doing the right thing for society. That, and the fact that she couldn't keep up with the likes of the real heroes in the city, who were keeping things pretty safe, and had been in the three weeks she'd been here.
"Well, nuff'a your pitty party there, Joss girl…" She sniffed slightly, restraining the tear that threatened at the edge of one eye, "Them fish ain't going to walk themselves to the vendors, and you ain't bein paid ta coddle yerself in the bathroom."
The muscular runaway readjusted the ball cap that hid her auburn hair lower over her eyes and exited the little utility bathroom to return to her fish tossing, figuring that things had to get better from here.
-)SHEGO(-
As the teen returned reluctantly to the condo, she sighed heavily. Just her luck to forget the most important part of any teenager's school career… the parent. With a sigh, she slid out of the taxi and gave the door a particularly petulant slam. Ignoring the dirty look from the driver, whom she had tipped, Agni glared at the sky and wondered for the first time this morning where the hell her mother was.
"Tasha!!! Damn it! Why couldn't you leave me one freaking clue!?" She demanded of the skyline of Jump City.
With no answer forthcoming, the teen sighed and let herself into the secured front door with her key card. She ignored Eddie, who had just been coming to greet her, blowing him off with a wave of her hand and card, and slid into the elevator.
As it ascended, she glared at her feet. Until she spotted, just at one edge of the carpet, the slightly heat-warped metal of the elevator floor. Chuckling morosely to herself, she remembered the night she had made that spot, long before the floor of the lift had been recarpeted.
-three years earlier-
Agni could barely contain herself as she and Tasha finally reached their condo and entered. She was practically quivering with energy as the events of the long night replayed over and over again in her head. In fact, some of that energy had leaked out, and left a nice sagging red weld in the floor of the elevator before she got herself under control. Fortunately, the elevators didn't have fire detectors, and someone had moved into the building that morning, her mother had said while laughing and patting her on the shoulder, so they could blame it on them.
When finally Tasha closed the door behind them, Agni could no longer contain herself in the slightest. The elder thief looked like she were about to say something, but was abruptly cut off when she was struck in the center of her chest by the full weight of a nearly squealing thirteen-year-old girl.
"Ohmygod! Omygod! Ohmygod!" Agni laughed, hugging her mother tightly. "I did it! I totally did it. I am one badass unstoppable super thief!"
Shego just smirked and reached over to pull off her daughter's wig and ruffle the black-green locks underneath, "So, had fun, Kiddo?"
Agni just rolled her eyes at her mother's wry comment. "Like you weren't watching me the whole time. I saw you behind that display case, y'know. I'm kinda surprised you left it totally to me."
Tasha smirked, "If you hadn't see me, you'd be getting an earful right now and we'd be going right back to the warehouse to work your ass off, young lady. I made sure to pick that dark red wall so you'd see my costume against it."
"Yeah yeah yeah, but I did see you, so I just get to sit back and enjoy my delicious victory!" Agni grinned giddily, playing back the whole night in her head. Her first real job, totally unaided, if supervised… a little.
Shego rolled her eyes and nodded, "Right, we can celebrate tomorrow night. But for now, what'd you do wrong?"
"Aw c'mon Ma, can't I-"
"Agni, now. You made three mistakes, so I want to hear three corrections from you."
Agni grumbled as her high was so unceremoniously interrupted, but she sighed and did the deed without preamble so she could get back to spazzing out. The job itself had been a fairly simple sneak and snatch, even if the security had been righteous. Agni had been left to everything; surveillance, materials, planning, execution… Tasha had refused to help her beyond throwing her the job. But that's what had made it oh so sweet that she'd actually accomplished it. What were a few errors in the face of that achievement by a thirteen year old girl? Even if she was the daughter of the legendary mercenary Shego?
"Okay… I spent too much time on the combination, I admit… I still hate that stupid combo-cracker! Would have been easier if I was allowed to just burn through the damn thing. I shouldn't have gone to zap that guard while he was cleaning his glasses since I showed up in the reflection and had to put him down harder than I needed to. Annnnnd… I forgot to secure my pouch when doing that backwards handspring over the laser grid so one of my micro-tools nearly fell into the beam. Happy?"
"Don't be giving me snark like these are minor things," the elder theif sighed. "Every mistake can be your last. The dropped tool could not only have set off the alarm, but you could have landed on it and cut yourself, badly. The lock had to be picked… Shego wasn't doing this job… Agni Drago was." Tasha blew a breath threw her hair. They might share the same powers, but glowing green plasma was her professional signature, not her daughter's.
"The guard was your biggest blunder…. Had you been slower, or he been faster, or you caught your foot on the carpet or something… Well, he could have beaten you, tazered you, or even shot you." She gave her offspring a concerned look, moving to sit in front of the girl.
"But all he had was a walky talky." Agni sighed and nodded, knowing that was the path of least resistance. "But I didn't know that until after I had knocked him out, did I?"
Shego shook her head at her daughter, then nodded at the correct assessment.
After a moment, Agni shot her mom an impish smirk, "But… you gotta admit that I did good, right?"
Tasha grinned and leaned back, pulling Agni into a tight hug, "Totally. Now all that's left is to deliver the haul."
"Oh yeah," Agni giggled, reaching into her pocket, pulling out the immaculate white gold and diamond encrusted pocket watch, wrapped in a simple handkerchief. She smirked and dangled in in front of her eyes for a moment, before handing it over to her mother. "There it is. Nice, huh? It's like two hundred years old, right? That's what the plaque said anyway."
"That's the story," Shego smirked, looking over the old timepiece and grinning. Then she reached out and took Agni's hand, placing the watch therein, curling her fingers around it. "There, now it's all delivered. Job complete."
Agni was about to ask what Tasha was talking about, before her eyes widened and she slumped back on her butt. "Y-y…YOU were my client!?"
Tasha grinned, watching as Agni's own smile spread to her face's stress limits. "Figured you'd want something to remember your first job by, and now there it is."
-the present-
Agni sighed and thrust her hands into her empty pockets, noting the absence of that familiar weight, and her expression darkened further. The watch had gone missing the same day Tasha had… probably destroyed in the chaos that the green teen had come home to. With a growl and a scuffing of her shoe on the dented floor of the elevator, she waited for her floor to come up and cursed her misfortunes.