Chapter 11: Emancipation Transformation

James Possible carefully, painstakingly brought Drakken's brain waves into alignment with Shego's, manipulating the sensitive sliders of the telepathic amplifier like a virtuoso. Yet every time he thought of his daughter's fight for life, and the reason for that battle, temptation arose. A single mistake, a simple error, an unavoidable accident, and both Drakken and Shego would be mindless vegetables for the rest of their lives. No one could ever prove he'd done it on purpose. This technology was untested; who could foresee such disaster?

"Maybe none of us are as good as we think we are," Drakken had told him.

He'd never been more conscious of how true that was. "Power's fluctuating," he said to a GJ agent, without looking up from the controls. "Get back there and see if the generator crew can fix that."

Without a word the man left.

He continued to make micro-adjustments to the device. A minute passed; the fluctuations stopped. Slowly the waveforms in both monitor screens came into unison.

"Shego…"

She had almost become one with the lightless, lifeless, hopeless void. There was barely any memory of where she was, why she was there, why she was being punished, or by whom. There was only the pain and the sense of shame, loss and betrayal. Even cruel Nyarlathotep had ceased its taunting, as there was no longer any tormented response to entertain the Haunter of the Dark.

"Shego…"

When, from somewhere in the endless gloom, another voice, a familiar voice spoke to her, she did not hear; not until that voice called her by another name. The name that was hers before the comet, before there was ever a Shego.

The name very few people knew, and only one was privileged to use.

Hearing that name, recognizing that voice, she came up, fighting through the fathomless depths of her subconscious, finally breaking the surface of that oily ocean of night, into a place of air and light and life.

Just for a moment she knew that wherever she was, wherever she had been, Drew had come for her, was there with her. Just for a moment, she felt warmth again, and concern, and the empathy that is love.

Just for a moment, and then nightmare engulfed them like a flood.

"There will be no interference," shrieked the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, its anger slashing into their thoughts. "You could not wait a few more minutes for your destruction, maggot? Then we will boil your brain in your skull."

He was swept away from her by the dark, ravaging tide, his mind, his soul crumbling and corroding under the demon's psychic onslaught.

"NO!" She reached out to him –

And her eyes snapped open, her arms stretched out, suspended a hundred feet above the ruins that had been downtown Middleton. Slowly, resisting the pain in every cell of her body, she spun in the air, looking straight up into the terrible face of the ultimate horror, the thing called Cthulhu. Its diabolical spells rumbled around her, its spectral tentacles lashed the sky; the malevolence it emanated, even in this half-material state, was palpable. Not hatred for her, or for the human race; an unspeakable, demented rage that it shared with all of Those from Outside. The desire to destroy existence itself.

With a wave of nausea, she realized they had infused her with that sick fury as well. Her delight in chaos, in wanton destruction, was what they had made of her with the cosmic fragment and the power it brought with it. Even the colours of her costume were no more than a reflection of the colours of Cthulhu: green and black.

The power was still streaming from her body, feeding the universe-merging vortex until the spells of Cthulhu could make it and the other Great Old Ones' material forms permanent. Nyarlathotep had revealed too much, as villains, even supernatural villains from another dimension, often did: the spell was minutes from completion, but it was not yet established. They were still dependent on her and the power they had given her to allow them entrance to this world.

And that, she knew, was their only weakness.

There had been maybe thirty seconds of complete telepathic melding, both brainwave patterns in perfect synchronization. Then, without any warning, Drakken's monitor screen had been flooded with chaotic static as all the biofeedback meters went into the red.

Simultaneously, Drakken suddenly stiffened in the truck cab, cried out in agony.

Possible tried to restore equilibrium, advanced the power as Drakken had instructed; the scrambling on the screen became even more catastrophic. Arcs of black energy burst from the control panel, driving Possible from the device.

Drakken's screaming was constant now.

Unable to approach the amplifier, the astrophysicist grabbed the power cable, yanked it out with a burst of sparks. The control board went dark, the carrier beam vanished.

That desperate act cut off all telepathic contact; it was all that saved the blue man's sanity. The cab door opened; first the helmet was flung out, then Drakken fell from the vehicle, hit the ground hard. Two GJ men ran to his aid, but he was already unsteadily getting to his feet.

Jim Possible stood there, still holding the power cable. "Drew, what was it?"

"N-not Dementor." He leaned against the truck for support. "Nothing human." He stood there a moment, catching his breath. "I couldn't save her. It was – was way more than I could handle. I couldn't save her." He stepped forward, picked up the helmet. "I'll have to go in again."

"You can't. I gave it everything we had and we didn't touch it. It'll eat you alive."

"No choice."

"I probably blew every circuit in this thing when I yanked that power cord out."

Before Drakken could respond, the roaring sound from the vortex above them became a screeching cluster of conflicting frequencies, moving slowly and steadily toward the ultrasonic. As one, the scientists and the GJ men looked into the sky, wondering what was happening now.

Across Middleton, terrified humans and conquering monstrosities did the same.

"Stop!" The hated voice was once again no more than a whisper in her mind. "You belong to us."

"Not any more."

Everything I am came from outside, she had told Kim. Everything you are came from within.

Those were Shego's words, but she had once been someone else. The name her husband had spoken in that brief telepathic moment. Someone free of the contamination that was Cthulhu and the Old Ones. And even when she gave in to that taint, reveled in the evil they had filled her with, she had still been human, still found a soulmate, still found love.

Drew might be dead. Or worse. He had dared everything he had to save her. To give her a second chance.

What could she find within?

"YOU WILL OBEY. HUMAN EMOTION HAS NO POWER TO FREE YOU. IT MEANS NOTHING TO THE COSMOS."

"It means everything to us. It makes us greater than the Great Old Ones." She writhed as if impaled, trying to regain the mastery of her abilities. "My brothers withstood you –"

"We destroyed them."

"Destroy me, then. I don't think you can." Not yet, she thought, as she took a deep breath, about to attempt the impossible. The only answer she had. If the last to materialize was the first to dematerialize, her plan might work. Otherwise the battle was over before it began.

"The spells of great Cthulhu are concluded. The end of your universe begins now. YOU ARE TOO LATE, SHEGO."

"That's a lie. And Shego was another lie. I am Sherri Nicole Gordon Lipsky. And this is for real." She closed her eyes, reached up into the air, taking control of the plasma currents, defying both Nyarlathotep's commands and the excruciating pain of neural overload, drawing the unimaginable power back into herself. She felt herself disintegrating, the healing factor barely able to keep up with the cellular damage.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered now, except ending the madness she had begun.

With a screaming and throbbing of opposing frequencies, the monstrous portal in the sky began closing in on itself, lightning crackling from horizon to horizon as energy devoured energy. The mental voice of the Whisperer stopped its relentless chattering, fell silent.

Sherri Nicole Gordon Lipsky watched in triumph as the mountainous monstrosity called Cthulhu emitted a roar of outrage that was more telepathic than audible, grabbed at her with enormous but immaterial claws. Unable to continue its spell, the terrifying form blurred, wavered, reverted to liquid, to mist, to nothingness.

As the gate between universes irrevocably closed, the remaining entities from Outside would follow their lord and master, one by one, back into the void from whence they came.

The strangely coloured plasma streams came back down the spectrum as the vortex dwindled and shriveled overhead. Slowly, gradually, the tiny figure descended from the sky, surrounded by a sphere of green.

"I think you've misdiagnosed the case, Doctor Drakken," said James Possible. "It looks to me like she's back in charge."

But Drakken was running past the barricade, out across the scorched earth of Town Square. Running to meet the woman he loved.

Sherri was barely able to avoid tumbling out of the sky; mustering all the power she had, she drifted to earth, stumbled, fell across the seared and fractured earth. Lay there as the healing warmth flowed through her broken and weary body, making her wounds whole, restoring her strength. There was so much to do. So much to repair. Kim – she had to go to Kim. She could heal the young woman. She would. But first she had to see Drew. She knew he was still alive. He had to be. They would go together. And then she would accept whatever punishment the law delivered. Do her time gladly.

She rolled over on her back, looked up into the blue of the sky, the final vestiges of the vortex crackling and sputtering far above her. Closed her eyes, happy to be alive. It was all over.

Someone was standing beside her. She sensed it. Looked up, expecting to see Drew there.

Instead she saw a black, twisted, batwinged horror that viciously seized her with many jointed claws and held her in the air, its three-lobed eye aflame. She cut loose with all the power she had, throwing bolt after bolt of pure energy into its ebon form; its three mouths opened and laughed, speaking with a voice she had come to hate and loathe: "Do you think you can hurt us with the power we gave you? You were right; last to come, first to leave. We were the first to come through."

She kicked and punched it, snarling, shrieking, gasping; it held her fast, made her look into its eye as it flickered and flashed like heat lightning on a summer day.

"We remove the gifts we gave you. And we grant you something to remember us by."

Knowledge.

Where Cthulhu first ____________________ Drakken was running across the ____________________The lightless mines

came from, and why ____________________blasted landscape when he saw____________________of Yuggoth, where

half the temporary ____________________the black thing rise up, seize her,____________________ dwell the things called

stars of history had ____________________glare into her face as she screamed.____________________ Mi-Go/The sinister

flared forth/The face ____________________ Behind him came James Possible and____________________ allegory of Tao/Chaugnar

that hides behind the ____________________ a troop of Global Justice men. Before____________________ Faugn's dark hungers

Pallid Mask/Why children ____________________he could reach her, the monster raised____________________and Y'golonac's forbidden

fear the shadows in ____________________her limp body high, flung her through____________________lusts/The mystery of the

their rooms/Why Ithaqua ____________________the air to crash down hard at his feet.____________________Green Decay/The name of

carries its victims to ____________________"There is a price to pay for defiance," ____________________the Magnum Innominandum/

distant places before ____________________ the creature hissed. "We do not die____________________Ghatanothoa's paralyzing

slaying them/the Seven____________________and we do not forget. There are no____________________gaze and the legend of the

Words of Hastur/The ____________________happy endings." It faded and ____________________Medusa/Yog-Sothoth's

Sign of Koth____________________ disappeared.____________________ horrific offspring

In a recovery room at Middleton General, a young woman awakened, her eyes wide with nightmare, a woman's name on her lips. A name that meant nothing to anyone there.

It meant everything to Drew Theodore P. Lipsky, known to the world as Dr. Drakken, kneeling beneath the cloudless blue sky, holding the body of his beloved in his arms.