The Trinity Sitch – Book 4: Heart of the Fury
Chapter 9: Arcus Drakken
"Sheeeeego?"
Drakken poked his head in the door of his home, searching for any sign of his wife or her cadre of 'friends.' (The thought of Shego on a shopping trip with Kim, er, what's her married name again? still made his scar twitch.) Satisfied he was alone, he went into the den and started shoving the sofa. Now, a sofa really isn't that heavy, despite its size. They're really all cushion. Then again, Drew Theodore P. Lipsky, better known as Doctor Drakken, wasn't really a prime specimen of manhood.
After much grunting and the use of many words his mother didn't approve of, the couch finally slid aside, revealing the hidden entrance to his latest lair. Gleefully he rubbed his hands together, noting for the first time that one of them was slightly damp. Before he thought the better of it, he put it to his nose to determine if it was something other than water.
It was. For perhaps the tenth time that week (and it was only Monday) he wanted to punt his wife's cat! The thing was worthless anyway! He never saw it, only smelled the fool thing's spray all over his home! Blasted feline couldn't even do its job right! What kind of cat can't catch two teen heroes when they had been shrunken down to mere inches tall?
Well, considering what the buffoon had done to the cat, well, he could sympathize, but only so much. At least its fur grew back.
After washing his hands (twice) he opened the hatch to his lair and climbed down the short ladder. Since the house was built into the side of the mountain, there was a large natural space created underneath it. Part of it had been walled off into a proper basement, but the rest had been left as unused space, just four walls, a dirt floor and a couple supports.
It was a long way from his old lair with its giant monitors, with the vile fluids flowing here and about, with automated trap doors that would open up beneath their victims, making them whoosh away, but at least no one (especially Shego) knew about it.
Sitting on a stand, by itself, was a dark red, leather bound tome, an ancient text. This was what had consumed Drakken for the last four years, sweeping away thoughts of conquest, the desire to rule. Here was the culmination of all his energy, here was what he now dreamed of becoming!
He had been able to translate bits and pieces of it himself. That had drawn him further and further into it, his knowledge growing with his desire for more.
"P'ash D'raga." He said softly. The light around him wavered as a minor spell dissipated. He hated fooling Shego, but it was not yet time to reveal that he no longer needed makeup to hide his blue complexion from the rest of the world. The smaller magicks had seen to that!
If only the nice ladies at the Pre-K knew who and what he truly was!
Putting on a show for no one but himself, he waved his hand. A garment nobody had seen him wear in years leaped from the back of a chair, into his hands. He draped it over his arm, smoothing out the wrinkles for just a moment before swinging it around his shoulders. From the pockets came the thick, black rubber gloves.
In the space of just two minutes Drew Lipsky had once again become the fearsome Doctor Drakken.
A fluffy black cat wearing an emerald collar chose that moment to bolt from under the table, almost pitching him to the floor.
"Blasted useless feline…grumblemuttercurselightningbolt!" he shook his fist in fury at the retreating cat "Furball! You think you're all that, but you're…not!"
He his attention back to the tome, grumbling about going to his mother's and picking up Commodore Puddles, then that freaking pussy would know who's boss!
"Now where was I? Oh yes!" He pulled a disk from the pocket of his dark blue lab coat and put it into the waiting tray of a computer. In moments the final translation of the ancient text was displayed on a large plasma monitor.
Science and Magic together! The ultimate definition of Mad Science!
With the old gleam back in his eyes, his teeth set into a wicked grin, he tore into it, hungry for the secrets they would reveal. He read and read, slowly scrolling through the massive file.
Two hours later he was still staring at the screen, not understanding what he saw.
"What is all this? Lists of ancestors? Old legends? Poetry? Where are the big spells? Where is the power that was promised? How am I supposed to make myself the world's greatest sorcerer with this…garbage!" he raged as he searched the translated text over and over.
Then he saw it.
It was just a short little passage. Most would not have understood it at all. It was just a notation that had been scribbled into the tome sometime after it had been transcribed from the original. It spoke of how the human mind perceived language in surprisingly modern terms.
The translation was worthless! The power of the book was not in the words, but in knowing what lay behind them! Reading it in English as translated by a computer lost all of that power!
Drakken grabbed the book and leafed to the hand-written passage, running his fingers over it again and again, speaking the words written there, first in English, then in the approximation he had arrived at for the original language. The look in his eyes grew wilder and wilder as he repeated the words. The translation was forgotten, as syllables not spoken in hundreds of years and never before on Earth spilled from his mouth.
His eyes went wide and the book dropped to the earthen floor of his pathetic hidden lair. An uncontrollable shiver went through him as his mind opened up. His mistakes became evident to him. He had been close, very close, closer than he would imagine, but the language of Azeth had been lost even to those who still dwelled on the distant planet of Arkonia.
With reverence he picked the Book of Arkon up from the floor, gently closing it, examining the leather scales that made its cover, running a hand over the rough surface. He set it back on its stand and pulled the gloves off, letting his bare hands touch it once more.
He swept the book up into an embrace and danced from foot to foot with considerable glee. "It's mine! I had the key all along! The power is mine!"
When he finally settled down, he placed the book once more on the stand, carefully arranging it. With an almost stately grace, he opened it and read the first page aloud.
"Ben corba den tenve noh yetnu, Tredo del Kiresmek ban Effurien de'l tengye ert Podondrin."
It now had meaning to him, and not the mere translation. Gryphion had spoken to him about the Trinity and what they represented. Here was their ultimate task!
At the Dawn of the Darkness, we will see the return of the Knights of the Ascended to purify the Master.
The Knights of the Ascended! The Trinity of the Effurien!
But what did that have to do with Shego?
Thoughts of the real world rushed back to him. He had no idea where she was or how long she would be gone. While all of this was done with the aim of protecting her, as he had promised the strange wizard and because of his love for her, he did not want her becoming a part of this.
He had let her sleep in after their night of intimacy, even to the point of taking Amethyst to her first day of Pre-K yet when he returned her motorcycle was gone. That in itself was not unusual. Sometimes she would ride off alone, spending hours winding down forgotten roads. It was her escape, from what she had been, from what she had become. He allowed her that time, hoping it would help her come to terms with the changes they had gone through.
It also gave him time to work with the Book.
Something tore at the edge of his mind. Despite the danger of discovery, he knew he must return to the book. The answers were there. Yet, what if Shego came home and discovered him down here? What if she learned her slightly dotty ex-mad scientist husband was on his way to becoming a Mad Sorcerer?
No matter. He tore into the book once more, turning pages faster and faster as he read those lists of heroes, the charts of ancestry, the poetry laid down by the first great mage of Arkonia. Slowly he began to understand. With understanding came fear. He knew the path that Gryphion had set him upon now!
He must deliver the Heart of the Effurien to the Hand and the Sword! He must be the one to guide them as the wizard Arcus Oray once tried to.
…and a Dark, False Master shall rise, born of two worlds but corrupted against both. He shall seek to dominate them both and failing that, will seek their destruction, for that is the way of his evil.
Two worlds in danger!
Drakken pulled off his old lab coat and started up the stairs as his cell phone rang on it's charger. He raced the rest of the way up, grabbing it.
"She…oh, Miss Druthers, I…what? She what? No, I'm on my way right now…don't panic…no, I didn't…I don't know where she is…no, I'm coming right now!"
He grabbed the keys to the SUV, wishing fervently he had his 'funky fresh flying car' with him!
Sherry could feel her cell phone vibrating in her leg pouch but she wasn't about to stop to answer it. The feeling she had in her heart was so powerful she already knew what the caller would have to say. Her haste was so great she had already blown through two known speed traps and would have been amazed that there was no pursuit if her mind had not been focused like a laser on one thing.
She risked a glance upward as a shadow shot past her. A small Global Justice hoverjet passed overhead, streaking toward the city. There was little doubt in her mind of its destination. She gunned the engine, increasing her already dangerous speed to foolish levels despite the fact there was no hope that even her high-performance motorcycle could outmatch a hypersonic aircraft. Still, as she pulled up the ramp was only just descending.
She let her bike drop and broke into a dead run for the Pre-K building, sprinting towards the doors as a man in an expensive suit stepped in front of her, barring her way, causing her to skid to a stop.
"Out of my way, pretty boy!" She screamed, somehow still realizing she sounded much like her old self.
Nonplussed, he reached into his jacket and produced his identification. "Mrs. Lipsky, I am agent Gryphen, Global Justice Meta-Powe…"
"I don't give a damn who you are, you reject from an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial! If you don't get out of my way I'm going to fry every bit of that shiny hair right off of your head!"
"You take one more step, Miss Shego and I will bring down the full force of all the outstanding warrants against you. You won't see the outside world until your daughter's grandchildren are old and gray. Or perhaps you haven't taken a good look at yourself lately."
That got her attention. With the sun up she could see her reflection quite clearly in the glass doors of the building. It wasn't just the scene she was making that drew the stares of all the onlookers. They didn't see just an enraged mother trying to get to her stricken child, they saw the infamous criminal Shego in all her green and black glory confronting a Global Justice agent.
"Look, I know this looks bad, but I was just wearing this for old time sake. That doesn't matter, all that matters is that my daughter is in there and I am going to her!" She was almost nose to nose with the agent, who somehow managed to maintain his composure despite her tirade.
Two more agent, wearing standard GJ combat uniforms emerged from the Hoverjet. What they were carrying sent cold chills down Sherry's spine.
"I am not putting on damper gloves!" She said with a low hiss.
"I am sorry, but they are not for you." Gryphen replied.
She stood there, her jaw slack at what that implied. Finally she straightened up "NO! No way in HELL!"
"We may have no other choice. I've read your file, I know about the first days when you got your powers. You spent the better part of a year learning to control them and you were fourteen at the time. Right now we've got a scared little girl manifesting meta-human powers with no idea how to control them. If she can't or won't shut them off, we have to ourselves."
"Let me talk to her." Sherry almost pleaded.
"I have every intention of letting you do so, but you are going to be calm when you do. Rushing in there will do none of us any good, especially if she is capable of even a fraction of your power level."
"That's just it, Agent Really-needs-a-haircut! Amethyst isn't supposed to have any powers! I've had her tested every way from Sunday and there isn't even a trace of meta-power radiation in her body!"
"I find that rather hard to believe, Mrs. Lipsky. It's encoded directly on your DNA, you couldn't help but pass it on."
"Not if you knew what happened when she was conceived." She said, almost under her breath as the agent opened the door, leading her inside.
She didn't know what to expect. Since the day she was born, Kim's tech-friend Wade had done every imaginable test on the little girl, and every one of them had come back negative. Science told her that her child was a perfectly normal human being. She was hoping beyond hope that the curse that was the Go Team Glow would pass the child over. After all, her brother, Herman had children now and they were normal!
None of that mattered when she saw Amethyst sitting on a tiny chair alone in the back of the main play-room, trying to hide her hands. She caught sight of her mother and fresh tears welled from her eyes.
"Mommy, make it stop." She held her tiny hands up, revealing the purple colored flame that coursed around them.
Memories of panic and fear, of distrust, of losing everything she held dear came rushing back to her. Yes, she had been fourteen when the rainbow comet bestowed the powers on her and her brothers, but, like Gryphen said, it was a long time before she could even shut them off. She spent days in hiding, her touch destroying everything, shredding her clothing, burning those who tried to help her. Burning everyone except for a select few!
Heedless of the danger, Sherry reached for her child.
"Mrs. Lipsky, no!" Gryphen hissed.
Panic swept through Amethyst's eyes as her mother picked her up. The flames grew brighter and the tears flowed more swiftly. She knew what her hands were doing would hurt and she did not want to hurt her mother, but fear caused the power to grow even more within her.
The flame engulfed Sherry's hands, running up her arms before disappearing. She picked up her child with no ill effects. Just as with her own power, it could not hurt the ones she loved. Something within either made the weilder unconsciously control it, or made those they loved immune to it. It had been the same with her brothers. She didn't know at the time she was adopted and wasn't actually related to them by blood, she just assumed their DNA was encoded to make them immune to each other's powers.
Then, in a fit of insanity, Sherry had tried to kill Neil Argus, Amethyst's biological father. Her green fire, built to a greater intensity than it ever had before, washed over him like a gentle breeze. Not a hair on his head had been harmed.
As much as she had loved him before that day, Neil was not related to her by blood. Yet he was completely immune to her power.
She gambled the same would be true of Amethyst's power and she was right.
Then she realized something. Her power signature was purple. Wasn't the purple glow supposed to be for shrinking powers? Then there was the fact, besides her faintly glowing hands, Amethyst still looked perfectly normal. Mego's power had turned him purple all over, from his hair, right to his skin, much the same was Sherry's power had once made her light green.
Gryphen was standing nearby. He had not yet allowed the other two agents inside, hoping as well he would not be forced to use the damping gloves that had originally been designed to control Shego's power. He leaned in close, trying to get the child to look into his blue eyes.
"There, there, little sister. Your mommy is here now."
Sherry turned her glare at the agent, who remained engrossed in the little girl. What did he just say? Little sister? What a strange thing to say to a little girl!
Amethyst tried to hide her face from the agent, burying her nose in her mother's shoulder, though she couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the strange man. Sherry rubbed her back as the plasma flames around her hands faded and finally died out.
"I want to go home to daddy." Amethyst pouted, her bottom lip protruding as Aunt Kimmie had taught her.
"I don't think that's possible." Gryphen said, reaching for the child.
"Don't even think it." Sherry rasped, holding her child tightly.
"Mrs. Lip…"
"I said no!" there was menace in her voice that brooked no discussion. "She has been through enough and if Load says he can't find any traces of my powers in her, then there's not a damned think your pathetic lab rats can do that can say any better…" she growled before a commotion outside drew both their attention.
The two agents, who had been waiting patiently just outside the glass door, were suddenly swept aside by some unseen force. Moments later, that same force swept the doors open, almost ripping them off their hinges.
Stepping through the open portal, in all his blue, lab coated glory, was Doctor Drakken.
Gryphen's eyes went wide as the Mad Scientist caught sight of him. Drakken just grinned.
"Well well well. I wonder what Global Justice would say if they knew that Arkonian sorcerers were going around masquerading as agents.
Sherry shot a look at the man, fresh fury on her already enraged features.
"You mean this guy isn't a GJ agent?"
"No, Shego, my dear. He is the man who sprang me from prison. He is also the man who set me own my current path but now I've come to learn much more of what he's about. He is playing you. He's been playing both of us, but now I…"
Drakken was cut off as Gryphion cast off the spell of colors. The suit was gone, replaced with the tunic and cape he normally wore. "Well played, Arcus Drakken." He said, using his word for sorcerer almost as a epithet. "I would not have expected you to delve this deeply into the secrets of the book this quickly, but it appears my faith in you is well founded indeed!
"Too bad you are going to be too late. The time has come for me to act." He brought up a hand, sending a wave of force into the blue necromancer.
Caught off-guard, Drakken was slammed into the corner of one of the doors, knocking him out cold.
Amethyst screamed, twisting free of her mother's grasp. "Don't you touch my Daddy!" she bellowed in childish rage, her hands flaring to life once more.
"He's not your…" he started to say, but was cut off as a fist crashed full force into his jaw, sending spittle and blood flying.
"Who the hell are you, you freak?" Sherry spit at him.
"I don't have…time…for this." He said, wiping his jaw. He reached into his tunic and withdrew a small stone statue. In moments a swirling red doorway appeared. "Heed my words, Sherry Lipsky, Shego or whoever you truly are, the Heart must be with the Hand and the Sword, or both your world and mine are doomed!
He stepped into the maelstrom and both disappeared.
She waited a heartbeat, then scooped up her daughter once more. "Mommy, I want to go home!" She cried, fresh tears staining her mother's shoulder.
"Shhhhh. We will, honey. Let me check on Daddy first."
Putting Amethyst down, Sherry knelt beside her unconscious husband. He was groaning, just coming to. He blinked twice, his hand going to the back of his head.
"Drew, just what in the hell is going on."
He looked up at her, a look of confusion on his face. Then he brightened.
"There's no time for explanations. We must find Kimberly Anne and her husband, er, who's name escapes me. We have no time to waste! The fate of two worlds is at stake!"
Somehow she was able to bite back a sarcastic remark that almost rolled off her tongue.
A/N - Hope everyone caught the salute to Captainkodak in this one!