Set after Ill Suited and before Car Alarm

Bad Plans and Rumors

Shego screamed as she blasted the wall of her solitary cell. She was back there, again! She knew her screams were loud enough to wake the dead and that half the floor was probably talking trash, but she didn't care. She was livid, violent, and falling apart. She breathed heavy as her voice finally grew hoarse and she slid down to sit against the opposite walls of her cell. The wall where Junior had broken into was repaired and reinforced now; the shielding made it impenetrable with her powers. When they'd gotten Drakken and her back after their first breakout, they'd placed her in this room. Just her. No roommate like all the others. Just her, like a caged animal. She'd barely had time to leave a scratch or talk her way out into socializing when Junior had swooped in.

She sighed and hit her head gently against the wall. Junior. Of course he had, all to get help from her to find a gift for Senior. She knew she couldn't rely on a second breakout and it frustrated her.

He's so under his father's thumb it's pathetic.

Senior had forbidden Junior from another attempt at getting her out, saying, "She needs to learn her lessons." Shego glared and shook her head. She knew Junior would never go against his Father... Not even for her.

If being isolated hadn't been bad enough mealtime had proven far worse, because it wasn't the fact that she was back there so fast, the bad planning, or that Possible had stopped her...no... It was the whispers. The words that were said and laughed over... They were driving her to break everything in her small room and scratch the wall until her nails started to bleed. She hung her head and tried to calm herself. Screaming was bad enough, destruction was fine...but she wasn't going to give them her tears.

They don't know shit.

She chanted it like a mantra in her head as clips of the last few weeks played in her head and she watched it like a horrible teen drama.

"Did you hear about Shego?"

"You know what they say?"

"Back in again?"

"Now who? I thought she was better than that?"

"Guess she's lost her edge."

Her eyes narrowed as more flooded her head... Worst of all was the very one she'd always wanted to avoid.

"She's just a villain hopper. Pathetic really, thought she had more brains than that."

She growled to herself like an animal and felt her emotions shifting to remember what she'd heard, piecing together a Picasso of a puzzle that had made her blindly kick a guard into another inmate that afternoon. No one saw her as a mercenary anymore. Since she'd been working with one villain for years, her side jobs had been passed over for her and Drakken's plans. It had been fine. No one thought anything of it, but then... She glared. Cleopatra. She knew how it looked at the Christmas party.

That stupid freaking party!

She shook her head... She knew Dementor had been telling everyone about the HenchCo mixer... Everything was unraveling. All her calculated hard work, her meticulous image, and her very name were being associated with rumors that were just that...gossip and rumors. But it never mattered what was true or not, it was what others saw. To everyone, she'd gone from working with many people to working with one nearly exclusively. Then it shifted. Dementor's lies, Cleopatra's whispers, to Junior busting her out...

She could care less about being the center of idle gossip and hate, she'd always experienced that; even when she was a hero, it all swam around. No, it was the fact that once a villainess got that label, it made it even harder unless she really was a villain hopper. Villains would act as if she was just an accessory versus the powerhouse she had built herself up to be. As if it wasn't already hard avoiding being treated like she was their inferior, it also would attract the type of villains she tried to avoid.

She felt physically ill thinking about it. When she'd first become a mercenary, that had been the gossip among all the females she'd met: who to sleep with, who can do what to further their goal. She'd made a vow right there that she'd never be like them, because she knew what she thought of them and what the villains she'd worked for thought of them.

She could argue with herself, tear herself down and argue that they were wrong...and she needed to get herself together and move on. She would...but her mind fell back onto the series of events that had transpired. Losing her title as 'Independent Mercenary' had started this. It was one of the two reasons she'd had one-month contracts: never getting attached and avoiding negatives. It was like a trickling effect all the way to last winter.

She glared. That was the clincher, wasn't it. Dementor. She'd forced herself to try to remember that night... Anything other than the horrible sickness she'd felt after. They'd both been at that party, both been sampling candies and mints, but so had many others. Bad timing. He'd asked her how Drakken was and if someone was going to replace his door. She'd made a snide crack...and then the fog. What he gossiped was one thing... What he actually remembered was another.

Damn Sweets.

She shook her head. Those vile treats of hers.

You can't blame a villainess from profiting off her work honestly.

Shego hated that she couldn't hate Dr. Sweets for those candies, or the fact she'd gone to the party just to avoid her in the lair. If she saw her again, she was going to shove some of those stupid concoctions down her sing-song voiced throat... But she couldn't hate her for creating something to push herself above the villains without having to sleep her way there.

No, she only had herself to blame—her eyes narrowed—and Drakken. It was the reason she was in there in the first place. She'd rarely if ever gotten caught before him. It was he who'd made her loose her mercenary title for 'side-kick' instead. He who'd got himself stuck in Dr. Sweets's web, that caused her to get that flower plant serum...the thing that aided in most of the woman's dark candies. It was Drakken's fault she'd let this happen.

She froze. She'd let her walls down... Let someone figure out a way through her barbed wires. She'd gotten more than attached—she'd started calling the lair home, spending time with his family, letting him see her as family... She'd started to trust again, to let her edge slowly dull without knowing. Not used her brains to see what others might see, lost her title, gained a new one...had been seen as an accomplice to failure time and time again. Everyone asked her, including herself, "Why are you still working with him?"

She took a deep staggering breath as she paced her cell. Familiarity. Simplicity. Consistency... That's why.

Home.

She cursed at the word. She'd forgotten who she was, that was it.

"I am no one's friend, I am no one's side-kick," she growled and blasted the wall again.

Next chance she got, she was out of there, gone. She needed distance... Needed to put those walls back up, rewire the barbs, remind herself that she didn't get comfortable. Getting comfortable meant being fine with failure and disasters, and she had been. If any other villain had failed as much, she would have gone ages ago. But Drakken had wormed his way in, and she was yanking him out. She repeated it in her head now, replacing the old mantras... She needed to remember who she was again... Who she needed to be... Who she had to be.

Look what happens when you get close to someone.

Her jaw clenched as she looked around her cell.

"This is your fault, Drakken," she muttered under her breath. "I'm not letting it happen again."

Shego's thoughts were interrupted by a loud boom as her wall was torn off. She stared wide-eyed, her chest pounding, half-expecting Drakken to be there and derail her thoughts like normal. It was with relief and horror that it was Motor Ed sitting behind a large monstrosity and giving her a devious smirk.

"Hey Green, need a ride?"

One Wild Ride →