Shego yawned as she dragged her feet into Dr. Drakken's secret lair. She had delivered the coveted xenothium crate hours ago, only to have her beauty sleep interrupted by a call at three in the morning telling her to report for work. Here she was, not at all satisfied with the arrangement.
"Okay, Dr. D," she said aloud, certain that he was somewhere nearby, "this better be important. You know I hate waking up in the middle of the night like this." Not hearing a response, she kept walking, keeping an eye out for her blue-skinned boss. "I get that you're evil, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. A girl needs her beauty sleep." Still no response. She stood still. "Very funny, Dr. D. If you don't jump out of wherever you're hiding in ten seconds, I am going back to bed. Honestly, it's like I work with a two-year-old. One…two…three…" She tapped her foot impatiently. "…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…AH!"
Her foot had hit a trigger on the floor, sending her down a tube slide of a trap door. She landed in a heap on a chair set up right at the tube's end. She sat up and fixed her hair. "Finally. Can't you ever make a normal door for once? The trap door thing is really starting to get old."
"Is it really?" asked a voice much too deep and intimidating to belong to Drakken. "I haven't tired of it yet."
Shego looked around. She could see no one in the poorly lit room with her…then she saw it. One single eye popping out of a shadow-covered mask. Slade stepped forward, revealing himself. "Good morning, Shego," he said.
"Oh, it's you," she said, still not too happy. "What's the big idea of bringing me down here at three o'clock in the morning? I just stole a crate of xeno-whatever from seven crazy teenagers for you. Don't I deserve a little shut-eye after that?"
"It was an excellent performance," Slade replied, not answering a single one of her questions. "Magnificent to watch." He pulled out a remote and pushed a red button that turned on three monitors on the wall behind him. Each monitor replayed silent clips of last night's fight. He gestured to the repeating clip of Shego disarming Cyborg. "This one is definitely my favorite."
"It was nothing," she said. She quickly added, "Flattery isn't getting you anywhere, mister. You better not have woken me up in the middle of the night just to show off an instant replay reel."
Slade clicked another button and paused the videos. "The attitude is a bit much. You're going to have to work on that."
She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Uh, yeah. As if."
Slade was not used to getting this kind of reaction from anyone. He decided to let it go for now and began speaking as if the interruption had never happened. "You have good technique, Shego. Good, but not perfect. Given a little time, your training would easily make up for that."
"Training?" she repeated. "What training?"
"You are also very cunning," he continued, ignoring her. "Not every villain can find and exploit the Titans' weaknesses like you did last night, and certainly not at their first encounter with them. You had some lucky breaks, of course. The lasers going off at the end, for one thing, were very convenient. I do admire your strategy, though it could always take a few improvements."
Shego was just confused by now. She slouched in her chair and began examining her gloved fingernails. "Look, slick, would you tell me what this is about already? Why did you call me down here without Dr. D?"
Slade turned around, facing his one eye toward her. If there had been crickets in the room, they would have been heard quite loudly. Finally, Slade spoke. "Congratulations. You passed the test."
Shego rolled her eyes again. "Doy. I got you your stupid chemical, didn't I?"
"That was only part of the test," Slade said, his voice echoing through the almost-empty room. "Taking the xenothium, of course, was a challenge. However, I was testing you for more than a little robbery. You see, I knew that Kim Possible and company would not miss a break-in so close to her home and would be there to meet you. To test your skills, I contacted the Teen Titans and told them of our plan to steal the xenothium."
Shego stood up angrily. "YOU?! You told them to fight me? I thought we had an alliance!"
"Patience, Shego," he said calmly. "I sent in the Teen Titans because I wanted to see how you would fare against greater odds than you normally face. I watched it all from here. It was all a test, Shego. You passed. Congratulations." He paused. "You see, Shego, I have not been completely honest with you and Dr. Drakken about my intentions. I do indeed desire a partnership, but not of the nature I previously described…and not for all three of us."
Shego sat back down. "What exactly are you saying?" she asked slowly.
"I am saying," Slade replied, "that I am in great need of an apprentice. Allies merely help each other out. Apprentices are trained to become as great as their masters, or greater. Altogether, it is a much better deal. I have had two apprentices in the past. Both turned on me. That was when I realized what the problem with both of them was: no matter how much they served me, no matter what I made them do, even the second one who nearly destroyed Jump City and the Titans in my name, deep down in the depths of their beings there was some goodness. I need someone who is not tempted by goodness, someone who feels no attraction to benevolence and honestly enjoys evil for evil's sake."
He bent down so that his masked face was right in front of Shego's, with his eye staring into both of hers. "I have been observing you and your employer for many years, Shego. I determined that of all the prospective apprentices out there, you have the required combination of skills, and villainy. This was the final test of your abilities in combat. After your success last night, there is no doubt in my mind: I choose you, Shego."
"Me?" she asked, honestly surprised. "Me? To be your apprentice? Are you serious?"
"Quite," Slade answered. "Should you accept, you will need to obey me as your master, but you will also learn to excel to your full potential. Believe me, Shego, you have quite a lot of potential."
"True," she admitted. She liked where this conversation was going. Obedience was never her strongest suit, but it wasn't every day that someone appreciated just how much potential as a villain she had. Dr. Drakken was always too busy with his whacked schemes to pay her many compliments. That reminded her of something. "You said this was a deal for just the two of us," she pointed out. "What happens to Dr. D?"
"I have not removed Dr. Drakken from the equation completely," the tall masked man explained. "He is really building me a robot army, which I need almost as desperately as I need an apprentice. He will be kept around to help with any machinery-related issues that come up."
"So in other words," Shego said, putting it all together, "you want me as your apprentice while Dr. Doofus sticks around as a sort of henchman-mechanic guy?"
"Precisely."
She thought for a few seconds, her mouth curving up into a mischievous smirk. Putting Drakken in his place for once was pretty tempting. She had often thought about what it would be like with herself on top and him at the bottom. After all, didn't she deserve more respect than he usually gave her? She was the real power in this team, after all. Dr. Drakken just sat around either scheming or playing with his gadgets.
Then again, he wasn't the worst person to work for. He paid for her resort vacation that time for Christmas, and he always let her get away with anything. She would feel kind of bad dumping him like this. She was his sidekick. Wasn't loyalty a big part of the whole sidekick thing?
Slade could practically see the gears turning in her mind as she mulled it over. "You are worried about Dr. Drakken's fate," he observed. "You feel an obligation to him as a sidekick."
"Well…yeah, maybe I do. He's a pretty bad supervillain and his plans always fail, but he's a decent guy. It feels weird to leave him in the dirt."
"Of course," Slade said understandingly. "But is 'weird' the only way you would feel? Imagine it, Shego. The two of us on top of the world together. Everyone looking up at you in fear of the power we both hold. Your former master, Dr. Drakken, sitting on the ground, taking orders from you. You could give him a real piece of your mind for a change, and there would be no rebuke. You, shining at your full potential that he could never truly see. Him, your humble assistant, wishing he could have when he had the chance."
She closed her eyes and imagined it exactly like Slade described it. It didn't just feel good. It felt great! This feeling of power was exactly what she had decided to chase when she first betrayed her brothers and turned from hero to villain. What did she care about Dr. Drakken? She liked telling him what to do, and she could do just that. It wasn't like she was dropping him off a cliff or anything.
"You know," Slade added convincingly, "he's only holding you back."
Shego opened her eyes, her smirk now much bigger, giving her an altogether more evil-looking countenance. "You draw me up a contract," she told her new boss, "and I'll sign it."
"Perfect," said Slade, taking out a pen and several sheets of paper. "I've already got one drawn up."
(A/N: Okay, so I'm thinking about changing the second category of this story from Humor to something else because the way things are going with Robin's Slade issues, it's getting a little bit darker than I had planned. Next chapter is going to be pretty light, though, so if I do change it, it won't be until after that. Comment or message me if you think I should change it and what I should change it to! Thanks!)
