(Why yes, I did forget to update. I am tired.)
A chapter in which Drakken takes back his role as getaway driver and Shego indulges in more random chaos. uwu

16. The Nature Of – part4

Gravity shifted suddenly. Shego didn't have time to shout a four-letter word before the van groaned like a beast and came crashing onto its side. Her arms flew up to cover her face in reflex as glass and rock blew in from shattered windows, and after nearly rolling completely belly-up, the van lost momentum and came to a jarring halt in the sand.

Choking on dust and squinting against debris on her eyelashes, she reached for the wheel to find and yank the key from the ignition a moment before the damn useless airbags went off.

"Shego?" called Drakken from above her, barely audible over the ringing in her ears. "Are you dead?"

She popped the airbag with her alien fire and held out a hand to illuminate him hung up above her, still held in place by his seatbelt. He was reaching for the clasp. Her eyes widened and she barked, "Drakken – don't—!"

But he did.

With a scream – what did he expect? – the graceless idiot came collapsing down over her, crash-landing on his neck in the mess of glass and rock where her door ought to be. Instead of cursing and getting upset over the tumble, he chuckled and wriggled awkwardly around her and the wheel to get his feet under him on the door.

Shego propped herself up on an elbow, ignoring the bite of glass and rock under her arm as she did, and reached for the warm flow of wet leaving chilly streaks down the left side of her face.

"Are you alright?" he asked, reigning in his giggle fit. His hands were on her, patting up her arm and shoulder to blindly check her over in the dark. "Nothing broken?"

"No," she curtly grumbled, dabbing her sleeve at the hot sticky blood weeping from her temple.

"S'that no, nothing's broken or no, you're not alright?"

Shego grunted up at his hovering shape. "I'm fine," she reiterated. Nothing she couldn't walk off, anyway. His searching hands patting up her reached her head and he hummed thoughtfully when she winced and smacked his grubby paws away the second his fingers found the bloody cut on her scalp. "Fuck off, doc," she spat.

"All good," was his diagnosis as he took his hands back. "We should get out of here."

"Ya think?"

He shifted his weight on the crunching glass to stand as Shego unbuckled herself to collapse fully on her side against the door and debris. Between the steering wheel and his leg, she pulled herself up, shrugging away his helping hand around her arm as she rose in the confined space. In the dark, she felt more than saw Drakken stumbling past her over the seat as he ducked into the back, his footsteps sounding unnatural on the back wall that was now the floor.

She was glad to be granted a bit of space, but just as she raised a foot to finish kicking out the shattered windshield, Drakken called for a favor.

"Um. Shego? A little light?"

She groaned and lent him a hand. He grabbed her go-bag from the back, and stuffed spilled wads of cash back in the paper sack to add to her backpack for safekeeping. He also found the stray bottle of liquor and proudly announced the rum had survived before taking a hearty gulp of it.

Shego wasn't particularly enthused by the news or his continued indulgence, and redirected her glow to blast out the windshield instead rather than kick it out. She didn't need any more cuts, come to think of it.

Donuts in the desert had been a hoot while it lasted, but right now it was decidedly the stupidest idea she'd had in a long time. She couldn't even begin to think of anything to top it. She groaned and pressed her sleeve to her temple again. She hadn't sustained a concussion, she was pretty sure of that. Nonetheless, the cut would be a lasting reminder not to drink and drive.

Turning to survey the wreck in her glow, she counted herself lucky she'd only tipped the van. She could have collided with a sturdy cactus, or an outcrop of rock, or another vehicle. It could have been worse.

She stood by the smashed windshield, holding in her plasma to spare Drakken some light as he ducked back into the front to pop open the glovebox, papers and junk spilling out. He swore as something heavy struck his foot, and snatched it from the ground as he came tripping out.

"Found the flashlight," he declared, giving it a couple smacks on his palm and clicking the button, only to sigh and toss it. "But it's dead."

"Forget about it," she dismissed. She had her glow anyway. "You got a cell phone?"

"I do not," he chirped remorselessly. "Which reminds me. I never replaced yours, did I?"

"Nope," she popped.

Drakken shouldered her backpack and eyeballed the green flame in her palm. "How long will that last?"

"It's not a tiki torch," she retorted, and yanked her go-bag from him to slip it on herself, extinguishing her glow for a moment to do so.

"I was only asking—"

"A while," she answered vaguely, casting a glare back at the van. "Let's just get moving." They had a long walk ahead of them if they intended to get anywhere by morning. Attempting to flip the van right-side up would be a lost cause with just the two of them. She'd already established her companion didn't have her brother's superstrength. Even with her own slightly-above-average strength, she doubted he'd be any help when he was simply average. Average and drunk.

Drakken grunted, but whether in indignation or agreement was debatable. He extended something toward her then, stared at her outstretched glowing hand, and shoved the offering toward the hand that wouldn't immediately incinerate what he was trying to give her. "Tissue?" he said, polite enough he almost sounded sober.

She took it grudgingly to pat away the blood on her cheek and hold to the oozing wound on her temple, hissing as she did.

Beside her, Drakken raised the bottle to his lips and – despite everything – took yet another glug as if aiming to finish off the bottle. He was a madman, after all. She was sure most of it had spilled back in the van, but it didn't lessen her incredulous glare.

Forgetting about the tissue held to her head, she yanked the bottle from him, griping, "Give me that!" and chucked it into the dark. Like a dog playing fetch, the drunken man went bumbling after it with a shout of annoyance.

Shego still had to stifle laughter as she trudged after him in search of the highway. It took a while to find, plus a few green fireballs pitched across the expanse of sand like flares, but they eventually reached the road. While Drakken threw rocks to skitter down the pavement like skipping stones on a lake, Shego provided the invaluable service of lighting the way.

There wasn't a car in sight, and while Drakken tugged her sleeve and swore they ought to be heading toward the glow on the horizon, Shego whapped him on the shoulder to remind him the hazy glow was Vegas. They'd just come from that direction. They were heading the other direction.

He harrumphed at her, and turned on his heel to stalk off back towards Vegas anyway, despite the fact he had no source of light at his disposal and her assurance it was further than it looked. Shego rolled her eyes and continued down the lonely highway on her own, walking the faded fog line that was nonexistent in places, until she heard his yelp somewhere behind her.

"Dr. D?"

Nothing.

"Doc!" she barked out into the night, but the only answer was the nocturnal chorus of crickets.

A glare set on her face, she stalked back down the road to find the ornery drunkard. He wasn't hard to find. Rather, he found her – sort of.

After a minute of squinting into the dark at the peripheral of her emerald light, something wrapped around her tender ankle, and she yelped and nearly released a ball of plasma at the man lying in the brush at the roadside. Lucky for him, the glow was recalled on instinct when she fell and threw out her hands to catch herself.

Shego collapsed in the sand and grit as Drakken guffawed. "Jackass!" she snapped, squirming around onto her backside. She gave his shoulder a kick, but he was too caught up in choking on his laughter to pay her much mind.

He regained his composure slightly as he grinned over at her scowl, and then he collapsed back in the sand with a heavy sigh. "I'm tired," he declared through a sedated grin.

"Well, too bad. We can't rest here."

"Five minutes."

"No."

Despite denying him such leisure, he didn't move. He shut his eyes against her glow instead. After a minute, glaring at him was proving futile, so she heaved a sigh as well and fell back in the cold sand. She let her glow die to wrap her arms around herself, and Drakken let out a huff of air as she kicked her aching feet up on his stomach to elevate them.

"Start counting," she advised. The waning moon and stars offered little light, but her eyes were already beginning to adjust to the blackness. She just barely saw him raise his arm to check his watch, heard him hum, and give a dismissive shrug. Of course he couldn't read his watch in the dark.

Shego let herself slowly unwind to the therapeutic melody of crickets. She might have closed her eyes to the stars if she didn't know better. After a while, she raised her arms up in the air on a whim.

Drakken hummed. "What are you doing?" he wondered innocently.

"Giving the heavens the middle finger."

"I can see that. Why?"

"None of your business."

"Because of the comet?"

She propped herself up on her elbows and pulled her heels off his belly. She glared at him in the dark, catching the faint glint of starlight reflecting on his glasses. He was looking at her. She wanted to snap at him, ask him what he knew, maybe beat it out of him if she could, but she relaxed instead, albeit slowly. "Yeah."

She must have muttered something about the accursed thing, because Drakken spoke up again too soon. He sounded a little sad. "You wish it had never happened, huh?" he wondered, but she kept her lips zipped tight. He rolled onto his side to face her, and she set her glare straight up at the starlight. "Does that mean you wish you weren't here?"

"Lying in the dirt, stranded in the desert? No, not particularly," she answered dryly, and kicked her heels back up over his hip.

He hummed again, and she glanced down to see him fidgeting, drawing circles in the sand. His humming rose in volume, until she could decipher a tune, and then he was singing yet again. "When you wish upon a star," he warbled.

"Makes no difference who you are," she added airily, and his chuckle made it hard not to smile at the offending sky that had damned her. It almost made it worth the disaster that had wrecked her life four years ago and counting.

"Sing in tune or don't sing at all, Shego," Drakken criticized, just a touch testy.

Ignoring the sand she flicked his way, he started over with gusto. "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are," he sang for the audience of crickets, and though Shego had resigned herself to keeping her lips zipped, he rolled his wrist to cue her to join in once more.

She rolled her eyes, but he mouthed it with her as she supplied, "Anything your heart desires, will come to you." The words dropped with all the charm of rocks plunking into a pail. She wasn't sure how the rest went, stubbornly deciding he'd have to settle for her off-key hums to follow his warbling.

After a moment of dead silence, Drakken hummed thoughtfully and stroked his chin. "It could use work," he decided with a contented shrug. He cleared his throat then and fidgeted with his fingers. "Speaking of desires," he added with a nod in her general direction.

She shot a perturbed glare at him, but he pointed toward the road. She sat up to squint down the highway, scarcely visible by moonlight. A faint noise came to her attention – a motor – and sure enough, headlights popped up over a distant rise.

Leaping up, Shego grabbed her drunken companion by the arm to drag him to his feet along with her. She hastily towed him back up onto the road, and to no one in particular, she threatened that the driver had better stop or else. She kept Drakken safely pushed behind her and the fog line as she raised an arm to hopefully flag down a ride.

Hitchhiking wasn't her forte. It would never be her forte. But for once, the first car she saw tonight was also the first car to stop.

Their rescue came in the form of a weathered station wagon a decade or so old, with chipped paint and wood-panel sides, and a busted headlight to boot. Shego half-expected it to backfire and break down on the spot as it rattled to a pause on the other side of the road.

Drakken stepped up close to her, grabbing her by the shoulder. "Ooh," he cooed. "I always wanted one of those. Mother had one. My cousin scrapped it for parts."

Shego crinkled her nose at the smell of alcohol on his breath, but didn't shrug him off. "Beggars can't be choosers," she decided in a mutter.

The driver's window rolled down then and a scraggly middle-aged man leaned out. Something about the rotten-toothed smile of the tobacco-chewing driver put her ill at ease. "Need a ride?" drawled the hillbilly.

She clasped her hands behind her back in case her nerves betrayed her. Something about the guy made her itch to plasma-blast him in the face, but she couldn't put her finger on it. "Uh, yeah," she chimed before her companion could articulate anything coherent. She couldn't force a thank you out of her mouth, and Drakken didn't seem to be any more inclined to give it either. She elbowed him to move, and pushed him into the back seat of the wagon ahead of her.

She found it hard to take her unblinking stare off the driver.

Of course she'd find out why the second she finally did.

No sooner had Shego ducked in and shut her door, did a familiar click make her blood freeze over. It wasn't the sound of a seatbelt buckling. A hand instantly clasped down over hers on the seat, squeezing her fingers almost painfully tight. Drakken went stiff beside her, and for a split second, everything was still as her eyes darted up to see the silhouette of a gun aimed at her companion's head.

If it weren't for a peculiar fear flooding her now, she might have had a funny sense of déjà vu.

"You, out," said the creepy driver, leisurely smacking on his tobacco. He nudged the gun slightly toward Shego and added, "You, stay."

"We're traveling together," Drakken uttered, either too gutsy for his own good right now or completely oblivious to the driver's intent.

"You got to the count of three, bud. One—"

"Twothree," Shego blurted, and in a blink, she yanked her companion down by the neck and snapped out her other hand to shove the gunman's wrist to the roof of the car. Hero training and superhuman powers had their perks sometimes, and one of them was lightning-fast reflexes instilled in her, because sometimes life-or-death decisions like now had to be made in a split second.

The gun went off, and the back window shattering was proof it wasn't a bluff.

Drakken ripped the firearm from the driver as Shego kicked her door open, her grip on the creep's wrist tight enough he screamed – or maybe that was because she twisted his arm into an unnatural position as she climbed out. She released him when she saw Drakken turning the driver's own revolver on him, and then she was throwing open his door to eject the redneck from the car, grabbing fistfuls of his overalls to all but throw him into the road.

He tumbled across the pavement as Shego jumped in behind the wheel, and between her glow and the gun aimed at him through the driver-side window, he must have thought twice about storming back to his car.

"Back up! Further!" she barked out the window at the pathetic excuse of a man holding his hands up as he sneered back at them in the dark. "Little more. Yeah, get outta my sight."

"Do as she says," warned Drakken, having rolled down a rear window to better brandish the crude weapon.

Shego swore under her breath as she illuminated the cab and took in the unfamiliar layout. Drakken uttered something in questioning, and she threw a look back at him, but not before shooting a glare out the window at the hick yelling obscenities at them, telling her to be reasonable while calling her every foul name in the book.

"Chief, do you know how to drive a stick?"

"Tell me you're joking," sputtered Drakken, leaning over the front seats to take a gander for himself. "You can drive a jet, but not—?"

"Can you or not?" she bit back at him.

"Scooch over," he grunted.

If she'd expected him to get out and come around like any civilized human being, she was sorely mistaken. This wasn't a particularly civilized situation, though. So she repeated to herself, "Beggars can't be choosers," as she helped drag his sorry butt over the seat to deposit him behind the wheel. The offender outside tried to move in while his guard was down, but Drakken was aiming the gun back out the window soon enough, firing a shot into the dark.

"I meant to do that," he muttered, and stifled a giggle as he grappled blindly for the stick without taking his eyes off the belligerent hillbilly.

The tires were spinning out and they were burning rubber a second later as the chugging car lurched forward and shot down the highway, leaving the assailant-turned-victim stranded on the roadside. Drunk as he was, Drakken almost instantly veered off the road, but he swore, and did his best to keep them between the lines from that point on.

For good measure, Shego reached over to pull his seatbelt across him before buckling herself in. Drakken was guffawing a moment later, swerving as he did, and she had to snap her hand out again to hold the wheel steady, too sober and nervous to leave him completely unassisted.

"Some night," he chortled. He took his eyes off the road – which might have been fine if she wasn't having trouble not looking back at him in turn – and he beamed straight at her. "Been a while since I've gone carjacking. Your first time?"

"I stole your car last month," she reminded.

"Oh, right, right," he uttered with a nod, and looked back to the road.

Drakken adjusted his grip on the wheel, and though he still drifted slightly into the other lane and had indulged in a questionable amount of rum on top of his cocktail and shots at the Hellhole, Shego gave him enough slack to back off and let him drive. Her wary stare wandered from the road down to the fingers he eventually left drumming idly on the knob of the gear stick.

He opened his mouth again before long, his lips splitting into a grin. "Last time I stole a car was actually about, oh…geez. It was my buddy's. We were friends. Not real good friends though," he rambled on, his speech less than clear, but mostly comprehensible as he recounted a revenge he'd enacted against a classmate some years ago. Shego had to wonder if he was drunk then too, but he swore he'd been clean, cross his heart and stick a needle in his eye.

Less than ten minutes of speeding down the highway later, before he finished giving her every detail of his elaborate scheme to sell his cousin the spiffy car for a quick buck, they reached a town centered around a junction. This time of night – midnight or so – all but one or two shops were still illuminated, one of them being a Mini Smarty Mart. The other was the gas station. There wasn't a single lamppost in town to light the street.

"D'you know where we are?" wondered Drakken, lowering his voice as he crept down the road and eyed the gas station. There was no reason to whisper.

"I thought you've been around? You should know better than me," Shego hissed back, dropping her tone as well in reflex. She cleared her throat and peeked at the gas gauge on the dark dash, lighting up a hand just to see it. "I think we need—"

"Nuh-uh," he said quickly with a shake of his head, shrinking down in his seat like a little boy. "What if that guy was a local?"

Shego nodded understandingly, muttering, "Then they might know this car is stolen…" Everyone knows everyone in small towns, and all. Nonetheless, she strained to see into the tiny convenience store attached, curious if there was even an attendant on duty who might catch them. "Well we can't just keep going like this. We're running on fumes."

"Alright! Alright," grumbled Drakken testily, and he frowned as he gave in.

As luck would have it, the gas station attendant was present. However, he was sound asleep, and the pumps were brand new and didn't require assistance anyway to pay and fuel up, although Dr. Drakken did make the suggestion of just stealing the fuel. While he was busy making a mess and whining about dribbling gasoline on his shoes, Shego gravitated toward the shop.

She paused halfway and doubled back for her go-bag, a brilliant idea bringing a wily smile to her face.

"What are you doing?" Drakken wondered.

"Shut up and have the car ready when I come out," she advised.

He made a pathetic sort of whine, like a puppy being told to stay. And then he grunted, grumbling, "Yes, ma'am," and returned to the task of filling the tank.

Shego tiptoed inside, opening the door slowly and catching the bell before it could even tink to announce her entry. She knew there was bound to be a security camera somewhere, operational or otherwise. Search and destroy sounded appealing, but that method would only leave her mark as a dead giveaway to her identity.

So, like any sane shoplifter, she strode confidently through the aisles, taking what she pleased and knowing full well she was likely on camera, wherever it may be. She didn't hazard looking up to find it. Still, she may have been a bit too bold about her thievery, but that could be blamed on the rum still putting pep in her step.

Her bag half-full of snacks in addition to her uniform and Drakken's cash, she turned to the counter, eyeing the overweight grimy man slumped over it and snoring in a puddle of his own drool.

She helped herself to the tobacco products lining the shelves behind the counter, deciding it would save her a buck and one raid like this might do her a whole year. Bag about as full as it was going to get, she turned to scrutinize the cash register on the attendant's other side for a long moment. Through the window, she saw the tail lights of the station wagon as Drakken repositioned the car, backing up toward the front of the shop for a quicker getaway, or maybe trying to signal her with the lights.

As tempting as the till was, she opted out of squeezing past the fat man to reach it. She was looting enough of his livelihood already.

It was the zip of her bag plopped on the counter that made the attendant's chubby face twitch. He wriggled his nose as she froze, and he sniffed. Shego slung her backpack over her shoulder quickly and hopped across the counter just as the unsuspecting shopkeeper woke, and she heard a bleary bellow following her out the door as the big guy sprang into action.

Next thing she knew, the bang of a shotgun had her ears ringing, and she hoped it was only the gravel kicked up and not the spray of lead hitting her legs as she dove through the shattered rear window of the wagon in the same second tires squealed. She ducked for cover and was positive some of the birdshot struck the bumper when they were fired at again. They were lucky it didn't blow a tire.

"Why does everyone try to shoot me when I'm with you?" Shego snapped toward the front as she crawled out of the glass in the trunk and fell into the back seat.

"I don't know! I think we're tied tonight though," Drakken shouted back. There was no reason to be shouting, except maybe his ears were ringing too from the earsplitting pops.

She checked her legs quickly – braced to find the worst – but was relieved to find she hadn't been struck by pellets after all. For a moment, she lay on the cold leather seat to catch her breath and let herself come down from the adrenaline rush, but a sudden swerve cut her relaxation short. She clambered into the front to join her drunk driver on the bench.

"What was all that about anyway?" asked Drakken.

"Whadda ya think?" she shot back as she unzipped her bag. She realized, as she was rummaging in the go-bag between her knees, that the gear stick was also between her knees, which meant she was sitting a bit too close to her drifting getaway driver.

She shifted aside back to her proper spot in shotgun, and noticed him visibly relax.

"Any beef jerky?" he asked hopefully.

"Of course," she chimed lightly, as if it were obvious, and dug out a bag from beneath the packs of cigarettes.

She tore into it and handed over a hickory-smoked beef stick. While she ate her own, she tuned out Drakken humming and smacking next to her as he thoroughly and drunkenly enjoyed his. Focusing on the rearview mirror in hopes she'd see no flashing lights of the law had her preoccupied anyway.

A/N:

*deep breath* THE NIGHT'S NOT OVER YET. DON'T CARE, I HAD FUN.
I need to remember to update in a day or two. :T If no one bonks me for it, I may forget.