"Hello brother." Shego's annoyance was very thinly veiled.
"Sheil-" Hego cut himself off. He did not recognize the man next to her. His sister may have been a villain, but it would just be wrong to reveal her secret identity. "Shego, what are you doing here? This is a no entry zone."
She rolled her eyes. "It's a pile of rubble in the middle of nowhere. Global Justice probably combed out anything worth taking from here anyway. I don't think this is a good use of such a great hero's time."
"We both know what you did here, Shego. Why would you come back to the site of such a villainous act?"
"What she did here?" Ron said with a quirked eyebrow.
"Yes. She committed a truly heinous act. Unbecoming of a hero. I always said the more she fought evil, the more she seemed to like it."
"You don't think a bunch of assholes okay with torturing a teenage girl had it coming?" She growled.
Hego clenched his fist and looked into the sky heroically. "We have a duty as heroes Shego. We have to be better. We were supposed to be the light that guided the people of Go city, you have only cast darkness upon us with your evil deeds!"
Shego facepalmed. "Will you drop the hero act for just one second and talk to me like a brother Harold?"
"Harold?" Hego said with a nervous sweat.
Shego realized what he was doing, her irritation only grew at his stupidity. "He knows who I am, and by association who you are. You think I would bring just anybody here? Not even Drakken knows about this place and I've been working for him for years."
"Who?" He said.
"This kind of stupidity is exactly why I left the team."
"You mean why you were thrown off the team."
"Whatever." Shego said with a huff. "He knows who I am. Who I really am. By association he knows who you are."
"How could you do this to your own brothers!" He said in the most over the top dramatic fashion one could fathom.
"What about what you guys did to her?"
Hego turned to Ron with a puzzled face. "We did nothing to her."
"I bet Sheila almost always said what was on her mind, was always sarcastic, and always bitchy." He smiled for a split second when Sheila punched his arm. "There is one thing she has now that I doubt was there in her teenage years though."
"Her evil ways!"
The duo groaned. God he was annoying. "I meant that rage that she constantly keeps boiling just barely under the surface."
"Do tell strange man. How did my brothers and I cause her rage? Look around, it seemed as if she already had that issue."
"Did you ever think some people have it coming, and a teenage girl shouldn't have to make the choice between committing mass murder of assholes or being tortured until her idiot brothers figure out where she is?"
"We are not the ones that took her away!" Hego shouted
'This fucking idiot.' Ron thought. "You were the ones that tossed her aside at her most vulnerable moment. She was innocent. Your sister wasn't just hurt physically, her scars were mental as well. You think those kinds of memories just go away? She wasn't the same after that. You just expected her to go back to being a goody two shoes cartoony hero after staring evil right in the face. Actually….did you even ask her how she was feeling?"
"Team Go arrived a few minutes after the explosion occurred. We had the pleasure of witnessing our innocent sister murder the last survivor."
"She was angry and hurt."
"SHE RIPPED HIS HEART OUT!"
She began shaking a little and turned her back to Hego, so Ron placed a hand on her back. "Sheila…."
A tear slid down her cheek as a light chuckle escaped her lips. "I wanted to see if he was actually heartless. I was wrong." She didn't feel like talking much more after that. Or listening for that matter. Hego spoke but she didn't fully register it. She was more focused on Ron starting to shake himself beside her. He probably thinks she's a monster. She was going to lose everyone she cared about again.
"The images we saw that day shook Team Go to it's core. We split up and only recently found it within ourselves to fight once again. Every time I think back to that event my sister disgusts me. We should have seen the evil in her from the start."
In that moment Ron completely lost control of his powers. Wave of his ki slammed into Hego and knocked him through at least six trees. He Immediately put his palm on his temple as he got a slight headache. "Asshole….ow"
"You alright Stoppable?"
"Yes. I just need to get away from here." He said, still rubbing his head. " And after everything we've done, and after the huge emotional secret you just told me, you still can't use my first name?"
She shrugged. "It's catchy."
Ron shook his head and wrapped his arm around her waist before flying off. If he stayed there just one millisecond longer he felt as if he would punch a hole through Hego's chest.
Hego groaned as his vision blurred, although he did catch one thing as they were leaving before he passed out. "Stoppable?"
"I don't get it." Kim cocked her head. "What's it supposed to mean exactly?"
"It's not supposed to mean anything Kim. Art is subjective. Looks like a positive message to me though." Josh said
Kim was lucky he loved her, because with anyone else this conversation would just be annoying. She had asked him to take her to a place he vaguely enjoyed without her presence, and the art museum was it. He wanted to explore weapon designs with her but the glare on her face at the time let him know that wouldn't fly.
"They're just sitting there on opposite sides of the room drinking tea, and reading. How is this a positive picture?"
Josh read the title for the piece. "Together in solitude, actually that really brings the entire thing together for me."
"How are they ignoring each other and together at the same time? You have a weird idea of a positive message Josh."
"You wouldn't get it since you're not an introvert. There are also other little things that let me know both of them are happy. Like I said art is subjective though so I can't really say for certain what the artist meant by it, or what it means to you."
She raised a questioning eyebrow. "You know what? It doesn't mean anything to me right now, so feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. "
Somehow Josh felt as if this was a trap, or if she was going to laugh at whatever he said anyway, but he decided to do as she asked. "Well, I know it's hard for you to get since you and your friends talk so much and just never stop…on and on." He caught himself when she began scowling. "I know it's hard to notice, but both of them have a slight light hue to them. That likely signifies that their strength comes from within."
Kim squinted, it was hard to notice but it was there.
"I thought it was also a nice touch that the hues mixed between them. His being blue, hers being green, and it ever so slightly makes a cyan color in the exact center of the painting. Basically they're not together but they are at the same time. I would almost call it beautiful."
His eye for detail for this stuff was actually amazing. Although that left her with one question. "How come you're so passionate about art? I thought the only thing on the planet you really cared about was me."
Josh smirked to himself. "That's cute, and mostly true, but I had a few moments of happiness before I met you. However tiny they were. Did you ever wonder why I was into art?"
"I thought that was just your cover to get to me."
"If that's all it was then my cover could have been anything. It didn't have to be art, and I didn't have to keep it up after I already decided to bail on the others. You wouldn't have found it that weird."
"...but why art?"
Josh bumped his thumb against his chin a few times, attempting to find the words. Emotions were hard sometimes. "We each got to choose certain subjects we could specialize in that would help us succeed in our missions. It would be odd to talk to anyone and the only thing they could ever talk about was weapons, right?"
Kim gave him a deadpan look that he seemed to completely ignore.
"I'm not sure how to say it, but sometimes when I was making art it felt like I was in another place instead of an under sea bunker filled with high explosives and guns."
Kim shook her head and laughed. His metaphors were absolutely terrible but he had the spirit. She took his hand and gave him a somewhat happy sideways glance. He felt like her stunningly handsome dork. She felt at peace in this moment and could tell Josh felt the same. These moments rarely last forever though.
At that moment four hearts beat in unison. All four people gripped their heads. The world around the two of them seemed to disappear. They entered a void with seemingly no beginning or end. Kim made sure to grip Hosh's hand to be sure she still had her hold on reality.
"Kim, are you seeing this?" Josh hoped he hadn't gone insane. That would likely be a funny if odd conclusion to his life.
"If by this you mean nothing then yeah."
"Turn." a deep voice said.
Josh and Kim turned, which they didn't completely understand since they were seemingly standing on nothing, and saw a pair of large, floating, fiery blue eyes. It felt like Ron but this energy simply dwarfed him. They couldn't sense ki and even they could tell that much.
"Are you going to kill us? If you are, can you just make it quick at least?" Josh said
Kim punched his arm and he rubbed it, a tiny bit surprised that he could still be hurt wherever this place was. She could swear she saw the giant fire eyes roll, she couldn't tell since they didn't exactly have an iris.
"You fear me?"
The voice sounded confused before a thundering boom sounded and caused Kim and Josh to close their eyes for a second as a light flashed. When they opened them a few seconds later a large man stood before them. His armor looked really old but quite grandiose. Odd.
"I keep forgetting how easily frightened humans are."
"How are we standing near a waterfall now? What is this place? Why did you call us humans like that? Aren't you a human?" Kim said. Her mind was racing with ideas, but none of them made much sense. Then she noticed something off. "Doesn't he kind of look like…."
"Ron." Josh looked him up and down. "His hands are dirtier though. A lot dirtier."
He smirked. "A fellow warrior, hm?" He seemingly leaned back on nothing and placed one leg over the other. "A few armies had to be put in their place."
Kim shivered as the strange man looked her up and down. This was wigging her out a little. It seemed like some Ron stuff but this guy seemed at best indifferent to their presence.
"She seems to be a warrior as well. I sense she's never killed before though. How boring."
"Uh, who are you? You said you didn't want to scare us but you haven't even explained what's going on yet."
He rolled his eyes. "Ah, no ki sense either. This is a construct made so that we can converse without you instantly dying. Some old human made something similar a little bit ago and Ron seemed to like it."
"You do know Ron!" Kim exclaimed.
"Of course I know my own son you idiot."
Ignoring the idiot comment, Josh and Kim spoke at once. "Son?"
"Well, in a cosmic sense. Reincarnation and what have you."
"Don't you have to die for reincarnation to take place?" Josh asked.
"Technically I no longer exist on this plane. Well, I exist and don't exist at the same time but that's irrelevant to this conversation."
"You exist and don't exist? How does that even work? What are you Schrodinger's monk-" Josh tried to continue speaking but no words would come. He gripped his throat but there was nothing physically restricting him from talking. When he looked, the guy in front of them was making a simple shusing motion.
Kim decided to use her brain and not insult the ridiculously powerful ominous man. "If you told us your name it would help us not be afraid of you. These days people greet each other by name the first time they meet."
He liked this one. She put in forethought before she spoke. "The great sage, equal to heaven. Sun Wukong."
"Aren't you like a mega god or something? Why would you even bother with us? We aren't even related to you." There was an air of silence for a few seconds after Kim spoke, it concerned the pair. "Are we?"
"Because, I need your help protecting my son."
Author's note: I apologize for this taking so long. The last few months have been extremely hard for me and I was either too tired to write or just couldn't focus enough to write anything. I was the primary caretaker for my father with dementia and handled most things on my own. Towards the end of last year he began to decline rather steeply and it took up more of my time to take care of him, making it so I was too tired to write. On Christmas eve I discovered his cold body when I woke up that morning. I didn't really feel like writing much after that. I am happy he is no longer in pain but I still think about him a lot.