Agent Du got up from his chair, "This is the death-trap thing, isn't it..."

Senor Senior only smiled and nodded.

"------------------------------------------------------"

Ron and Shego were watching from the air-conditioner vent. Good old a/c ducts. No one ever thought of safe-guarding a/c ducts...

"They're splitting up," Shego whispered, "you go back to the OPT, I'll find my way to the lagoon."

"Uhm... how come I can't go to the lagoon?"

Shego rolled her eyes, "Alright, you go to the lagoon, and I'll go back to the OPT! That better, Boss?"

"Actually, I think you should go to the lagoon, while I head back to the OPT. You're sneakier than I am... I'd probably end up in the death-trap with them." He looked at her for confirmation, but she just stared. "Right. I'm going. Back to the OPT. So... uh... well, be careful, Shego."

He'd only crawled a few feet before Shego said, "Ron! Don't... don't do anything, okay? It's not time to tip our hand yet. If no one seems to be in any real danger, just wait and watch, right?"

"Yeah, okay. Wait and watch. Got it."

"Good. And... good luck, Ron."

"See ya" he said and continued crawling as quietly as he could. 'Good luck, Ron'... is she TRYING to jinx me? I HATE it when people say that...

Shego, alone now, considered her next move. Beep-beep-be-beep. Shego's Communicator went off just as she had decided to exit the ventilation system and proceed from now on through the lair itself. Dammit, what now? She thought, imagining that it was Ron trying to contact her, since she knew that no one else would be able to. Pulling it from her pocket, she frowned at the display:

Message Received 4:10:45 UTC. Message:

DR DRCTR BELARUS DNT BLW UP LAIR

Message time: 01:04:21

Shego translated in her mind: Doctor Director: Belarus, don't blow up lair. What the hell? I wasn't GOING to "blow up the lair"... Belarus? Why'd she say that? She puzzled about it awhile:

Dr. Director had shown her the chess defensive strategy known as "The Belarus Defense" once. Rather ingenious, really... it involved sacrificing pieces in order to fool you opponent into thinking that they would have you cornered within the next several moves, while you were really preparing for your single one-move check-mate from the other side of the board. You let your opponent trap herself, basically, all the while thinking she had obviously won the game and was just waiting to finish you off. Sneaky, it was. Shego liked that sort of thing...

But what did it have to do with blowing up the lair? Blowing up the lair would be ridiculously easy to do – Senor Senior couldn't have put the "Self-Destruct" switch in a more obvious place, or labeled it more clearly. It was like he almost expected someone to -

Ah ha. That was the message, wasn't it... Senor Senior did expect them to blow up the lair... and that's just what he wanted. Yeah... it made sense now. But why the weird code? Oh well, she'd got the message: don't blow up the lair – that's what he wants you to do. Good enough. Now let's get out of this damned a/c duct...

Shego pushed on the grate to see if it would open easily. It would not. In fact, the grating seemed unusually strong, compared to the usual flimsy aluminum usually found in a/c systems... and well bolted down, too. Well, no biggie – what would stop an ordinary thief was certainly no obstacle to Shego. Everyone seemed to be gone from the main room now, so she lit up her plasma and prepared to melt her way through the grating.

She put her glowing green hands against the metal, expecting it to melt almost instantly. It did not. Well, it was unusually think, maybe a little longer... Shortly it glowed red hot. Then white-hot. Shego began to sweat from the radiated heat – her hands were fire-proof, but the rest of her body was not – a lesson she had learned the hard way back when she had first discovered her powers. She'd set her hair on fire six times in the space of a month. Finally she had it cut short enough that she could practice controlling her plasma without setting herself on fire, and now she kept it long again as a point of pride in her practiced skill.

The grate wasn't melting. It wasn't even soft! And by now it was as hot as it was going to get - Shego couldn't continue to sit there in front of it without roasting herself. It wasn't going to work! It was like... like someone had prepared for -

Suddenly, six feet behind her, another grate dropped across the duct from above, and she could hear more such grates dropping throughout the ductwork system. The flow of air through the ductwork stopped, too. He knew I'd be coming... He knew I would be here! Dammit! And I did exactly what he expected me to do... He out-smarted me! That goddamned bastard outsmarted ME! Working for Dr. D all those years must have made me stupid! I can't BELIEVE I fell for this...

"------------------------------------------------------"

"Here's how this is going to work" Mr. Grey told Kim and Will as they were about to enter a hallway, "You will follow our instructions. If we see any hesitation to follow our instructions – we will open fire. Understood?"

"Fine" Will said, "Whatever" Kim added.

"Good. Now, clasp your hands behind your back. Okay. Now listen up for the instructions – there are a lot of 'em. You will keep your hands clasped as they are now. If you don't – we will open fire. And by the way, we will always open fire on both of you at once. You will walk side-by-side. You will walk down the middle of the hallway. You may speak at will, but do not attempt to turn around or look at us. If you do -"

"You will open fire..." Kim suggested.

"Yeah. If you sneeze – we will open fire. If you trip over your own feet – we will open fire. If you make any sudden moves – we will open fire. If I feel like firing – we will open fire. Got all that?" Mr. Grey enjoyed his job. He was by far the oldest of the hired mercenaries, and there were several tricks he'd learned over the decades. The most important one was – be ridiculously cautious. The second-most important one was: never hesitate to open fire.

"Yeah." Will said, "You like to say 'open fire', don't you..." Kim added.

"Indeed. Now, we have about seventy meters to walk. Let's get moving. Straight ahead, for now."

They walked in silence for awhile, but Will could see out of the corner of his eye – he dared not turn his head – that Kim's face was screwed up with pain. "Something wrong, Kim?"

"I fractured both clavicles yesterday. Keeping my hands behind my back really hurts..."

"Sorry to hear that. So... the use of your arms is..."

"Limited. Yeah. Sorry... I probably shouldn't have come."

"Oh, I can use the company. So I hear that you and Shego are partners now? Can that be right?"

That caught Kim off guard - "Oh... well... yeah..." she stammered. Naturally, her face turned beet-red, and it didn't take Will long to figure out why.

"Uh... I meant as in 'a team'. 'Partners in a team'. Not... uhm... anything else."

Mr. Grey saved Kim further embarrassment, "Listen up: your death-trap tonight will consist of - one: scuba gear with half an hour of air, two: a shark-cage, and three: a shark. Don't look at us – we're just paid to follow orders. Frankly, I don't think you'll have too much trouble – or at least one of you won't. Whichever of you can swim the fastest should be fine" he chuckled. "You will be put in the shark-cage and lowered to the bottom of the lagoon. You will no doubt see Sweetie – that's the shark – waiting for you. You will not be restrained in any way, nor will the shark-cage be locked. All you have to do is swim out. Oh, without flippers, by the way, we don't want to make it too easy on you. And just for fun, we have a bucket of fish-blood to toss in there with ya. To get her hungry, y'know. We've already had one guy swim out with hardly a bite on 'im, so we gotta make sure Sweetie is in better spirits for you. Not much of a death-trap, if ya ask me... you've got more to worry about with me and Mr. White here, but hey, not our show, y'know? Okay, there's the cage. Get in."

Once in the cage, Mr. White threw in the scuba gear while Mr. Grey covered them with his rifle, then Mr. White picked up the crane control box and rather clumsily hung them out over the water as far as the crane would go, 'Sweetie' circling underneath, the stripes on her back plain to see.

"Tiger shark" Will said matter-of-factly, "Great. Just great."

"We've met before. I thought she was going to eat the scooter with me on it" Kim sighed, "Now I guess she gets another chance."

"Final instructions!" Mr. Grey was shouting to them now, "Mr. White and I – along with the rest of the staff, will be leaving shortly. On the off-chance that one or both of your heads pop up before we're gone – we'll-"

"Open fire", Kim, Will, Mr. White, and Mr. Grey all said simultaneously.

Kim turned to Agent Du as the water came up over their shoes, "Will... you should know: I can't swim with my shoulders like this. I can't even put my arms over my head... so... maybe I should distract the shark while you swim for it?"

Will looked at her seriously for a moment through his mask. "No. We have half an hour to think of something else – and I've been told that I have no imagination. So you'd better think of something else."

The cage was lowered to the bottom.

"------------------------------------------------------"

Ron was watching from the door of the a/c room as Cin and Bonnie were led to the OPT when her heard the clunk! of the extra grates fall in the ductwork. A quick glance back into the duct he had climbed out confirmed – the a/c ducts were a trap. Good thing he was out of there. I hope Shego's not... well, she can always burn her way out. I wish I had a superpower like that... it'd come in SO handy.

In a moment, Senor Senior arrived, and he – with his two goons – went into the tunneling machine and closed the door. Shortly after that, the lights went on, the cutting head spun up, and the OPT was on the move.

Here we go again... Ron thought, jumping onto the back of the machine before it began cutting into rock again. Might as well get comfortable. Geez. I wish Shego was here... I mean, KP. Well, either one. I wish SOMEone was here besides just me.

"------------------------------------------------------"

First, she tried to melt the rock away from the bolts holding the grate, but the sulfurous fumes from the molten rock had choked her almost immediately. Senor Senior had known it would. That's why the a/c had died. Clever bastard...

Eight feet Shego thought, I have eight feet of room. I can blast that grate out of the rock, but I can only get eight feet away... you thought of everything, didn't you, Senor Senior. I gotta hand it to ya. I hope I get the chance, sometime...

Shego huddled against grate opposite the one that led into the main room of the lair, trying to make herself as small as possible, trying to decide which parts of her body she needed the least, and how to use those parts as shielding.

Eventually she decided on a sideways position. Putting her back to the blast would have been preferable – but she had to be able to get her hands in the right position to create the plasma-ball, so that was out. Once she expelled the ball, she'd have less than two seconds to protect herself as best she could. She'd never thought of trying to vary the speed of her plasma-blasts, except perhaps to make them faster. But it didn't work, they seemed to have one speed and one speed only. And this time, it was too fast. Shit. This is gonna hurt me WAY more than it's gonna hurt you, Senor... She fired.

The grate blew out of the wall as if a grenade had gone off behind it, spraying Shego with pebbles and sand moving almost as fast as bullets. The thick cotton jumpsuit she'd complained about being so hot now came to her rescue, shielding her from the worst of the sand-blasting, but the larger chunks knocked her about fiercely, one of them destroying her Communicator in the process. Some of the debris was red-hot as well, burning holes in her jumpsuit and hair. And finally, there was one last problem she hadn't considered before: the air she was breathing was full of hot, vaporized rock.

She had to get the hell out of there - and fast! Shego opened her eyes but immediately squinted them shut again from the pain of hot dust and smoke. No time to check herself out for damage - she began to scramble out blindly, gagging on the smoke, trying to hold her breath but unable to stop choking and gasping. Each gasp brought fresh, new acidic pain in her throat, and the gravel cut into her knees. She began to panic.

To hell with her knees. To hell with the pain in her throat and lungs. To hell with trying to keep her weight on her heat-proof hands. GET OUT!

Tumbling out of the still-smoking hole seven feet up in the wall, Shego hit the floor in a tangled mess of flailing arms and legs. She hurt in too many places to count, and in more ways than she ever had before – excepting maybe when the parti-coloured comet had smashed into her parent's house. But the air... the wonderful, wonderful air, so blessedly cool in her throat, it tasted silvery, if felt liquid, it passed down her throat and filled her lungs with soothing, cool relief, even though she was still gasping and coughing and choking... the air was Life itself. She'd never known how good it could be to simply feel air inside her.

As her coughing subsided, she cautiously opened her eyes again, but couldn't see much through the watery haze. Tears ran down her cheeks to her neck. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. It helped. A little.

Could she move? Lying on her side on the floor, she tried each limb one by one – it was getting to be a habit - but nothing seemed to be broken. She sat up. Her cover-alls were sprinkled with burn holes – some cigarette-sized, some as big as a half-dollar. She didn't bother to check underneath the cloth – if there were any problems there, she would find out soon enough. She didn't have time for this. Kim was waiting on her – she just didn't know it yet. Shego slowly and painfully rose to her feet, her back against the wall.

Almost able to breathe, almost able to see, she took a step.

And screamed silently in pain, falling down to all fours again. Her ankle. If not broken, then at least severely sprained. It was hard to tell with ankles... and she didn't have time to find out. Using the wall for support again, Shego got back to her feet. This time she tested herself: right foot okay, it could bend and twist normally - left foot... could also bend and twist, with only a little tell-tale pain. She could put weight on it, too. So it must not be broken. Just sprained, then. Just incredibly painful to walk on when her stride hit just the wrong combination of angle and weight. But usable. The pain is all in my mind she tried to make herself believe, I'm not damaged. The pain is just nerve impulses. They don't MEAN anything. I can ignore the pain...

She hobbled toward the hallway, trying her best to believe what she'd just told herself. Fresh tears flowed down her face, and not from smoke, this time.

"------------------------------------------------------"

Shortly after the cage hit the bottom of the lagoon, Kim and Will could see a red haze spread along the surface of the water, turning everything a sickly pink color. 'Sweetie' noticed, too - her patrol of the lagoon took on a new urgency.

Will and Kim looked at each other, then at Sweetie, then at their surroundings. The shark was veering from it's usual circular course around he lagoon, sweeping by the cage, getting a good look at them. She was obviously interested. Other than her, though, there wasn't much to see – the bottom was strewn with rocks and gravel, the wall of the lagoon was a good thirty feet away.

No imagination, he said. All business, he said Will thought, Well, maybe I'll work on 'imagination' later. Business first. Will took inventory of what they had – two tanks of air – only partially filled. Two regulators, two masks. And the clothes on their backs – that was all. A white suite and jacket for him, a black and blue wet suit for Kim. Not much to work with...

Think outside the box, Will... isn't that what the 'Teamwork' posters at ReallyBigCorp said? Stupid corporate posters... "Safety First", "There's no 'I' in 'Team'"... "Think outside the box"...

The box. Yeah, okay, so he'd left that off his list: the shark cage. They did have the shark cage. He studied the cage itself: door in the front – unlocked. Bars on four sides, bottom, and top. Some kind of metal – aluminum, probably, judging by the thick, uniform welds. Keep it light-weight. It's portable, after all. He idly wondered how much the cage weighed... of course, it would weigh significantly less submerged.

It would weigh less submerged! It wasn't much, but it was something. I wonder if I can pick it up... Putting his feet through the bars and onto the lagoon floor, he grabbed a bar on each side and lifted with his knees. Yes, he could lift it. Underwater, it probably weighed a little over a hundred and fifty pounds. So... what good was that bit of information?

Kim was tapping him on the shoulder. What? She tried to point upward, and he saw her wince under her mask when she tried to lift her arm, so instead, she pointed up with her hand at chest-level – as high as she could raise it. He looked up. What? The top of the cage, the surface of the water, the cable that had lowered them, the shackles that affixed the cable-

The cable that had lowered them...

That was important, somehow... he just knew it. Was he supposed to climb up the cable? That would mean leaving the cage. Sweetie would probably just love for him to leave that cage...

Pull the whole cage up the cable! he thought with sudden insight, Kim! You're fucking brilliant! He grabbed her shoulders to show her his enthusiasm for the plan, and immediately felt stupid again when he saw her pained expression. Forgot. Sorry... he thought at her. He pushed off the floor of the cage and floated at the top, grabbing the cable outside and pulling the slack down a foot inside. Now what?

He couldn't just pull down on the cable – the cable wasn't going to move. It was the cage that was going to move. He could put his back against the top of the cage and... sort of push the cable down away from him? Well, the forces were right, but the position... was stupid and impractical. It would be like hanging on a rope upside-down and trying to push your way up. People were built to pull, not to push. You reached up and pull down. Or, he realized, you reach down and pull up.

Underwater, of course, "up" and "down" were more relative than on land. Yes. They were. They were, weren't they...

Still holding onto the cable, Will brought his feet up to the bars of the ceiling of the cage. Now he was set to pull "up", relative to himself, and "down" relative to the cable. The force would push his feet against the top of the cage. Lifting it. How's THAT for "no imagination", you old coot! he thought.

The bottom of the cage lifted from the lagoon floor.

It was rather hard going though. He was basically pulling up the weight of the cage with his back. And he had thirty feet to go – maybe two feet at a time. And there was no resting – he had to hold that weight all the time. And he was breathing hard. With limited air.

It was going to be close...

Watching Agent Du, Kim felt more than a little useless. And a little dumb. She hadn't thought of pulling the cage up – as Will thought she had. She had pointed up at the surface thinking that somehow they could use the cable as some sort of shield against the shark. Or maybe use it to climb out of the water quickly, as opposed to swimming to the lagoon wall sans flippers, which would be difficult at best – and require an awful lot of body flailing in the presence of a hungry shark. But maybe Will could climb the cable to the crane's boom and then lift the cage out of the water.

Her air wouldn't last that long, of course... she knew that. And there was no way she could climb a cable in her condition, but at least one of them would survive. She could accept that. After all, she could "do anything"... including sacrifice herself. Except in this case, it wouldn't really be a "sacrifice"... she was just useless. There was nothing she could do to even help poor Will, struggling to lift their cage to the surface. Apparently it was heavy. But she couldn't help pull on the cable – her arms already felt like they were about to fall off. If only she could do SOMEthing! Push up on the bottom or something, make his load lighter...

Make his load lighter...

Lighter. Lighter than water... float. If I could only get some thing that floats, or throw out something heavy. The air-tanks were kind of heavy – out of the water. Under it, they were "weighed" only a pound or three. Of course, the air in them was light – she could see it bubbling up towards freedom every breath she took.

Kim began peeling off her full-body wet suit. It was a painful thing to do – awkward under the best of circumstances – damn near impossible with fractured collar-bones. She squeezed her eyes shut as she reached both arms back to pull the suit off her sleeves. It was pure, unending hell. Even after she had one arm free, and could pull the other arm off from the front, it still hurt incredibly. Tears ran from her eyes inside the face-mask. If only Will weren't busy, he could have done this for her... too late for that now. Finally she had it peeled down to her waist and began rolling the rubber-like material down her legs.

Will had paused to catch his breath, at the same time trying not to breathe more than he had to, a tricky compromise. Catching Kim's movement out of the corner of his eye, he looked over at her, and was rather startled to see her apparently undressing – although she still had a blue one-piece beneath the wet-suit. What an odd thing for her to do, he thought. Still, apparently she'd had an idea, and that was good - because he was becoming fairly certain that he'd be out of air before ever reached the surface. Too bad he couldn't ask her about her plan... Oh well, maybe hers will work better than mine he thought. He began hauling on the cable again.

Kim's wet-suit was off. With the zipper up, and knots tied in the sleeves and legs, it would hold a lot of air. She held it by the neck and took out her mouthpiece, pressing the purge valve to let the air fill it just a little, so she could position the now-floating suit properly against the cross-bars in the roof of the cage.

Will looked over and got the idea, nodding his head up and down excitedly.

Kim took a deep breath from her regulator, held it, and then began filling her wet-suit with air.

Will immediately felt the weight of the cage seem to decrease, and Kim still had a lot of filling to do. Then it occurred to him: that was her breathing air she was filling the suit with... the more she put into the suit, the less time she had left to breathe. Another close call. Damn, Senor Senior... you DO know how to make a death-trap, don't you... it must be like a hobby for you. Every idea we come up with has it's down-side...

Sweetie bumped the side of the cage as she swam by, and the cable almost slipped from Will's hands. She's seeing what the cage tastes like, Will and Kim both thought, but the higher we get, the bloodier the water is, and eventually she's not going to CARE if the cage tastes like aluminum... she'll attack it anyway. Fuck. Their thoughts didn't match exactly, but the "Fuck" part did.

Hauling the cage up was becoming easier and easier. By the time Kim finished filling up her suit, Will was only having to lift twenty pounds of weight. He could haul hand-over-hand now, and they rose to the surface at a steady rate. Which was good, because his pressure gage showed less than fifty pounds of air left. Kim's showed thirty. Her regulator began to stutter; not enough pressure differential to quite open the valve fully.

Ten feet to go.

She sucked out a deep breath, and held it. It took muscle-power to inhale it past the regulator. She would be lucky to get even one more lung-full out of her tank. She slipped the tank off, took out her regulator, disconnected it from the tank entirely. If she did get another breath out of that tank, it would be directly from its outlet valve – it no longer had enough pressure to work the regulator. She looked up at Will and waited.

Five feet to go.

She noticed that bubbles had stopped coming out of Will's regulator – he was holding his breath too. Was he entirely out of air? She had no way of knowing. Looking at the pinched expression on his face, she guessed it had. Men's lungs were less efficient than women's, and he was doing physical labor besides. But Will was too concentrating too intently on his job to panic.

Kim, on the other hand, had time... but 'panic' just wasn't her thing.

Will had to have air! If she couldn't find him air, they would both be doomed! Where was she going to find air? Her discarded tank? Maybe. Other than that, there was only what was inside her suit, pushing against the top of the cage.

Lots of air in there... if you could get your head into the sleeves or legs. And even trying was likely to let more out of the suit, making the cage heavier, and Will would have to work harder...

She lifted her tank to his mouth, tapping on his mask to get him to open his eyes and see what she was offering. He saw. He understood. He spit out his regulator and sealed his mouth over the tank's valve. Kim opened it. Bubbles erupted from his mouth and nose as he breathed two breaths – and that was all. Will removed his mouth from the tank before Kim shut the valve – that tank was empty. He began hauling again.

Kim tossed away the empty tank, and unhooked his. A quick test showed it was empty too.

Two feet.

Kim's chest began to hitch, but she tried to ignore it. It didn't work.

Dolphins have to make a conscious effort to breathe. Thus, they have to be awake all the time, so they sleep a half-brain at a time. People can't do that, and breathing is regulated by the autonomous nervous system. A man or woman eventually will breathe - or try to - even if underwater. Kim might pass out first, but as soon as she did – she would breathe.

She put her snorkel into her mouth, and brought her head up to the top of the cage. The top of that snorkel would be the first thing to break the surface of the water. But how would she know when that happened?

Six inches.

Her chest spasming uncontrollably, Kim purged her snorkel by exhaling forcefully through it. Whichever way it went, air or water, it was going to happen now. She inhaled deeply.

Air.

Three fast but sweet breaths of life later, she opened her eyes. Will was looking at her. The top of the cage was at the surface of the water... but he couldn't let go of the cable. Thinking with her trade-mark speed, she took one more deep breath and swam down to the bottom of the cage, tying the slack cable hanging there to the cross-bars of the floor with a double-half-hitch.

Will let go and put his snorkel into his mouth. Kim could see his chest heaving. He banged his head against the ceiling of the cage without caring and purged his snorkel. And breathed.

They had made it. Kim joined him at the top, sticking her snorkel above the surface again. They simply stared for a long time, silently congratulating each other at their success.

Sweetie had other ideas. To be more precise, Sweetie had one idea: bite anything that got close enough to bite. Her primary sense organ was overloaded with the blood in the water – she could taste it with her entire body. Sight meant little. Sound even less. As far as she could tell, Sweetie was swimming through food, and she snapped her jaws repetitively at nothing and everything. But there was one sense left to give her some direction: the electric-field receptors under her snout. They told her that there was something about that cage she could eat.

She rammed into the cage, bending the soft aluminum bars aside, and pushing the whole cage three feet out of the water sideways. Her mouth, now mostly inside the cage, snapped open and shut, seeming to gulp forty gallons of water at a time.

Was she stuck there? Was she at least preoccupied? Was this the time to make a swim for it? Was this the time to be asking such questions? Kim opened the door of the cage – now sideways to the surface, and swam out as fast as she could frog-kick. Which wasn't very fast. She tried to use her arms, but they just wouldn't reach over her head anymore – even if she could have ignored the pain from trying, they simply would not obey. The wall of the lagoon was impossibly far away...

Will took more time to consider his options – if only because he had more to choose from than Kim did. Sweetie knew they were in there. Sweetie was coming to get them. He had heard of only one way to defend ones self against sharks. Supposedly it stunned them somehow. Sometimes. Before Sweetie could back out and attack again, he swam down and grabbed an air-tank with both hands, and then, poised just in front of the snapping jaws, rammed the butt-end of the tank against her the tip of Sweetie's snout as hard as he could.

For Sweetie, the pain was blinding. She twisted free from the cage and swam away as fast as she could, trying distance herself from whatever had done that to her. Her e-field organs were now useless. Her brain – such as it was – no longer controlled her actions at all. She bit at rocks, she rammed the bottom of the lagoon, she thrashed at the surface. Sweetie was insane.

Will swam out the open door and climbed on top of the cage, expecting to find Kim waiting there. Of course, she wasn't. She was making for the rock wall. Acutely aware of her condition, he wondered if she had thought about how she was going to climb up that wall once she got there... It was only a couple of feet high above the water, but when you didn't have arms... it might as well be a mile. Frog-kicking only, Kim's progress was leisurely, at best. And Sweetie seemed to be calming down. I bet she's pissed now, too. Shit!

While he watched, and before he could do anything, he saw Sweetie's dorsal fin break the surface. She was making a bee-line for Kim. And there was absolutely nothing he could do. His heart sank. He wanted to look away, but couldn't. He was going to see this, whether he wanted to or not. If only he could look away... because he'd really, really rather not see...

Shego could see it too. She'd just hobbled her way into the sub-bay to see far enough over the edge of the bank, and there was Kim, and there was the fin, and there she was barely able to walk. FUCK it! She ran, bounding long strides, screaming soundlessly from her burned-raw throat. She leaped off the edge of the lagoon, lighting her plasma in mid-air.

And landed straddling Sweetie's back, just in front of her dorsal fin. The shock of feeling something on her back made Sweetie forget about Kim for the moment, and she dove, Shego still astride.

Yes, folks, Shego had just 'jumped the shark'.

Sweetie bucked and twisted, snapping her jaws threateningly, but Shego held on, her legs clamped around Sweetie's head. Shego raised her plasma-engulfed fists and plunged them both down onto the shark's skull.

Nothing happened. Great torrents of bubbles – vaporized seawater – trailed from her blazing hands. But the knock-out blast she'd intended – the most intense knock-out blast she'd ever prepared, did nothing. She changed the character of her plasma to burn temperature, and tried to blast a hole into Sweetie's skull. But again, nothing happened. Just more bubbles. Shit! Underwater! Damn plasma doesn't work underwater!

It wasn't so much surprising – it was just that she'd never thought about it before.

So now there was nothing for her to do but hold on, because letting go would be almost assured death. Shego only hoped the shark would surface again before she couldn't hold her breath any longer.

She should have been more careful what she wished for, because Sweetie did head for the surface – and at top speed. Blown back by the force of the water against her, Shego folded down backwards onto Sweetie's fin, and together, they broke the surface and flew through the air.

You're in MY element now, you bastard! Shego thought, lighting up her best knock-out charge again. Before splash, her fists made contact with Sweetie's head again, and she felt its entire body stiffen, then slack. Sweetie splashed into the water ingloriously unconscious.

And right on top of Kim, knocking the breath out of her, and pulling her back underwater.

Shego treaded the suddenly calm water trying to gather her wits. The shark was out of it now, party over. That had been an experience... say, where was Kim, anyway?

Seeing what had happened, Will had dived in after her. He had a mask on – he'd be able to see, and Shego had obviously been a little shell-shocked from her shark-ride, so that left him, even though he was farther away. He found her floating in a daze ten feet down, put his arm around her shoulders – no, around her waist – he finally remembered, and brought her back to the surface.

"Looking for someone, Shego?" he said in a rare - for him - flash of sarcasm.

Shego opened her mouth to speak, and only now realized that she had no voice. She pointed to her mouth to indicate the fact.

"Ah. Look, can we just get out of the water before something else happens?" It had been an exciting half-hour.

"------------------------------------------------------"