Ron's Worst Nightmares
Reflection
By Pat Squared
Shego hated herself for what she became.
The former teen heroine looked down at her expanding belly. Now two lives depended on Shego's ability to maintain her grip on a plan that had long since slipped out of her control.
Twice more Shego had to turn one of her co-conspirators into an object lesson. If she did not, she and her unborn child would be dead. The cabal would not hesitate to kill her, child or no child. Unlike the villains she encountered in her career, these villains only code was the law of the jungle.
Dr. Drakken, Shego's former employer, was of no help. All he did was complain about being cut out from the glory of conquering a nation and about not having some kind of death ray to pay with.
The plan was working. Events were playing out as Shego predicted. However, there was one snafu.
Someone tipped Global Justice off to her role in the destabilization of France. Now Shego went from an irritation to being number one on Global Justice's Most Wanted List. Twice agents or bounty hunters tried to collect on the dead or alive fifty million dollar bounty on her head. Time Magazine already named Shego as person of the year, noting that she was the most dangerous person to be honored so since Adolf Hitler in 1939.
According to the latest Gallop Poll only Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin topped Shego in evilness. Her ranking crushed Pol Pot and Mao to a dismal yawn on the scale of evilness. Now even Hench Co started refusing to do business with her because of the heat. The other villains started to distance themselves from her.
The idiots in the media credit her with inventing jamming, or paralyzing the opposition by turning their own folks against them. Anarchists and nihilists hailed Shego as the most influential anarchist philosophers since Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. The Roman Catholic Church, having found out that Shego was a Catholic excommunicated her. Fundamentalist Christian preachers hailed her as the Antichrist from the pulpits. The media were hounding her brothers to tell them what she was like as a child. Shego shuddered to think what other crap the public would associate with her name and image.
The techniques she used to manipulate and coordinate a fickle mob were not her brain child, but rather an adaptation on other's ideas. Culture jamming was big when she was a lonely teenage covering her greenish skin with white stage make up and black eye liner before sneaking out of the Go Compound to participate in illegal underground cultural events.
It was there that Shego under her alter ego Madame Juliette de Sade, songwriter/bass guitarist for the Sade, Go City's shadowy underground industrial band. It was her former boyfriend, Ned Star, who taught her how to use flash mobs and other jamming techniques to pack warehouses in Go City's industrial parks at three in the morning to witness the Sade's legendary musical/pyrotechnic performances.
Shego missed those days. She missed having real friends and not being treated as a freak. She missed having some part of her life that she could be lose herself. She missed having something that made the pain and loneliness fade away.
However, once she left Go City, the band split up and the others joined the nine to five rat race. Ned Star Blackhart ended up managing a Bueno Nacho in Middleton. Matthew Simeon Simeon Sayz Die! ended up a music teacher at Go City High. Tom Wayne Duke the Tom Cat was a real estate broker in Los Angeles. Tracy Yukio Tank Girl was a photo-journalist for the Rolling Stones covering the underground industrial music scene turning their once private world into a commercialized venue and a weekly show on MTV.
Maybe if things go wrong, I would give Tracy an exclusive interview.
That was two lifetimes ago, but Shego used the techniques that she mastered as a fourteen year old musician to topple a nation. Looking out on the burning city, it was obvious that the mob had its own concept of pyrotechnics. All that she need was the soundtrack.
A voice awoke Shego out of her self loathing.
"Shego, where is my Coco-Moo?"
It was Drakken.
"Doctor, for the hundredth time, there is no Coco-Moo in France."
Normally she would punctuate her irritation with a plasma blast. However, Drew Lipsky was the only person that did not want her dead. Flawed he was, but he was the only person that she now felt safe around.
"But..."
Swallowing her normal sarcastic tone, she motioned her former boss closer.
"Okay, you win. I had one of the guys buy up the last two pallets from that Costco in Liverpool we stopped by before coming here."
The look on Drakken's face told Shego that he could not appreciate her more. It was disconcerting to see the puppy-like loyalty. Just a few good words and a little Coco-Moo and he would do anything for her.
Too bad that when things fall apart that you will have to be next to me when they have us pose for rifle fire.
Shego wanted to run away and disappear, but she had no place that she could go. She could not go to the father of her child. He was an honest man and she was...she was the most wanted person on the planet. He would probably turn her in to the authorities. She would die before she would let anyone take her child away from her.
Besides, Drakken needed someone to watch out for him.
Her only course was to ride the train until it crashed or derailed.
Shego looked up to see Drakken do his victory dance. He had his Coco-Moo and all was right with his world. Too bad that she could no longer enjoy such simple pleasures.