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Post by eoraptor on Jun 16, 2009 20:30:40 GMT -5
AN: “Teen Titans,” “The New Teen Titans,” and related material ©DC Comics, Warner Bros., and Cartoon Network. “Kim Possible,” Shego, Joss, and related characters ©Walt Disney Company. Original characters belong to Festum, Eoraptor, or both. Not-for-Profit fan work.
Set Post Season 4 of “Teen Titans” or five years after “Kim Possible” and is an AU to both
PLEASE REVIEW AND RECOMMEND!!!
Shego the Second
Volume 1, Issue 1
“Enter the Drago”
By: Trackula and Eoraptor
Agni grinned softly, sitting astride the glass case. She had a gem in her clawed fingers. An emerald the size of a baseball… how fitting. Honestly though, this was getting boring. She’d gotten past every security device in this jewelry warehouse in less than fifteen minutes. Even that laser grid had been defeated with just a few leaps and twists.
“Well, there is one way I can spice things up…” Grinning behind her mask, the slender thief dipped the faceted gem down into one of the iridescent red beams.
The gem briefly flashed with internal light before the alarms throughout the building began to sound. Reclining on the glass case, she smirked and blew across the tips of her gloved fingers, tossing the heavy jewel in her other hand, and putting on an air of bored indifference. “Now we wait…”
Her patience was rewarded a few moments later as she heard the police wagons rolling up outside. She made a point of reclining even further, taking on a positively feline posture and waiting for someone to come in. The Jump City PD would be good to stretch her muscles if nothing else.
Someone else, though, would be far better at testing her skills against. The thought brought a small grin to pale green lips. It was different from the maniacal one carved into her comedy-style mask, an eager grin rather than the insane one the rest of the world saw from the other side of her disguise.
“Little Robin Redbreast
Sat upon a rail.
Niddle, naddle went his head;
Wiggle, waggle went his tail.”
She recited softly to herself as she chuckled, flipping the emerald over and over in her gloved palm. She hummed the little pentameter softly a few more times while she waited…
Sure enough, within five minutes of the sirens outside, she saw the vault door’s mechanism beginning to spin and click in place as someone entered the combinations and turned the keys outside.
“Honestly… what’s the point of a door when I can just climb in through the ventilation ducts?” She snorted, and checked her theatrically relaxed pose one more time, straightening the harlequin patterned top that clung tightly to her upper body. Her midriff, bared below by a daring arrow-shaped vest, twitched faintly and she tried to swallow back the excited butterflies at the thought of exertion. She made sure her leggings, tight to her thighs but looser at the bottom where they entered her black and green boots, were straight and impeccable.
Smiling, she watched as the door to the vault opened. Behind the comedy mask, with its matching black and green paint scheme, her face fell as a deep blue cloak fluttered at the other side of the portal. Sighing exasperatedly, she palmed the emerald into a pouch on her belt and sat up. “So not the little birdy I was hoping for, Rae… But I suppose you’ll do.”
“Shego…” the shorter girl sighed and made a faintly sour face, “Why am I not surprised that you’re the one after the Stone of Calima?”
“Oh, this little thing?” the slender girl in the jaggedly colored two piece outfit chuckled, patting her pouch, “What can I say? I don’t always steal things for others… a girl’s got to have her baubles you know.”
“A bauble is a pair of earrings or a necklace, Shego…” A familiar voice echoed behind her. “Not a stone big enough to choke a horse.”
Grinning, her eyes taking on an eerie light behind her mask, the girl called Shego turned to face that arrogantly confident voice. “Ah… see… now here’s a boy that knows how to get in to a vault without being detected. Makes me wonder just who you got your training from, Robby.”
“Everyone knows where Robin learned his stuff” came a baritone voice from outside the vault.
Agni watched as Cyborg, the big tech-oriented Titan, appeared behind the smaller dark girl at the doorway.
“Yeah, Duh! Everyone knows Batman trained Robin!” Beast Boy made himself known, momentarily morphing into a greenish bat to emphasize his statement. Apparently he had crawled down the vent in some small form, because he was floating over Robin’s left shoulder when he did his pantomime.
“Yes, it was the Batman who taught Robin his ‘mad skills,’ not some criminal!”
Agni gritted her teeth as the last Teen Titan spoke. For some reason, the bubbly Starfire worked her nerves. Ironic, considering how they both wielded a green glow from their hands and eyes.
Facing Robin once more, the chaotically colored teen thief grinned, “Well, if no one wants to admit that Birdie-boy would make a good thief, let’s just get this party started!”
Her left hand hurled a blob of roiling green plasma behind her back, towards the three titans at the vault door. As she sent that bolt flying, without sparing them a glance, she thrust another blast forward at the green changeling and the red breasted leader.
The fight was on, and the girl in clashing black and green dove not for the exit of the vault door, but for the back of the vault and the two boys who stood there. The changeling apparently was finally learning this tactic of hers, and instead of diving off to one side to get out of her way, he morphed, becoming some kind of squid and started snapping tentacles and suckers at her.
“Mmmm! Calamari! I haven’t had fried squid salad in a while!” The wicked grin on Shego’s mask matched the one she wore beneath as she danced among the grabbing arms, her hands flashing with green energy flecked in black. She cackled as she saw the large eyes of the magical squid quiver in fear at her declaration.
Robin, forced to one side of the vault by Beast Boy’s sudden increase in size and limbs, held a bird-a-rang at the ready, watching the two green figures writhe at each other. “Don’t let her spook you Beast Boy! She’s just trying to get into your head!”
A bolt of bubbling green and black energy erupted from the flicking mass of tentacles at the boy wonder, causing him to leap again, towards the door of the confining vault. “Just keep telling yourself that, Boy Wonderful! Me, I’m cravin’ some sashimi!”
A spark of green energy struck the bulbous end of a squid tentacle and the green creature squawked, suddenly contracting into his still-green, but human form. “Man that stings!”
“Beast Boy! Look out!”
Agni grinned at the cry, which came too late from Raven to alert the green shape shifter to her plans. Grabbing him by his purple and black collar and belt, the clown-cloaked girl gave him the bum’s rush right at Robin and Raven, who couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough to avoid being bowled over by the flying boy.
Her only miscalculation was that in knocking down three of the titans, the two with blasting abilities now had clean shots. A bolt of neon green and one of blue-white rocketed out at her and the only thing that kept Agni from being slammed into the back wall of the vault was her own gloved hands, swathed in that black and green comet energy. She threw them up in front of her body with nary a second to spare.
With a heavy grunt, her arms were forced back at the impact and her feet skidded an appreciable amount before the bolts dissipated. Shaking her hands out and grimacing behind the mask, “Shego” snickered, “Well boys and girls, it’s been a slice… but I’ve got dinner on the stove, and the pasta won’t boil itself!”
Even as the Titans were storming into the vault space to tackle her, she blasted two bolts of emerald energy at the floor. This had the twin effects of blasting all air, and heroes, out of the vault, and thrusting her upwards at the same vent she had entered by.
-)SHEGO(-
Escaping the Teen Titans was just as easy as she had imagined. Given that it was their third meeting; she was getting to know their patterns well enough. She'd known they wouldn’t rip the ventilation system out of the walls just to catch a jewel thief, so she had scooted quickly to the roof. From there things got slightly hairy. The Police had brought in a helicopter, and unfortunately, Agni Drago glowed like a searchlight on its infrared camera. A mean body temperature of 114 degrees meant she stood out like nobody’s business on any kind of thermal sensor.
Still, a few quick vaults, a climb down a rope into an alley behind an adjacent building, and ducking into a drainage culvert connected to the city’s storm sewers was all it had taken. By the time the cops and their dogs had gotten to the grate she had used, the weld on it had cooled and solidified, and she was well away to her hideout to change out of her costume.
Agni came home to the condo at Jump City Towers feeling somewhat refreshed by the activity. Eddie, the evening doorman, had noted the pink flush in her cheeks and commented on it as he gave her the mail. He also pointedly ignored the duffle she carried as always.
The green tinted teen’s rush evaporated slightly as she came up to the condo itself on the sixteenth floor. Inside, the plastic drop cloths and drywall crumblings reminded her that she was again coming home to an empty apartment. The contractors were doing a good job about getting things fixed, and the building’s tenant board had accepted the report from the fire examiner, bought and paid for by some of Tasha’s money, that it had been a gas explosion which had blown out the west wall of the flat.
“Bunch of over-insulated fat cats,” she grumbled as she looked at the fresh masonry and picture window. “Wouldn’t care if I was raped and murdered as long as they didn’t have to hear it over their stereos and Chihuahuas.”
At least she didn’t have to sleep on the cot at the warehouse any more. Six weeks it had taken to get the permits required to start repairs on the condominium… and that was a legitimate six weeks, not having anything to do with covering up the fact that the condo’s owner, Natasha Drago, her mother, was missing. It was shear red tape from Jump City Public Works.
She sighed and sat her mail, most of it for Tasha, on the table. She then tossed the duffel bag into the closet and closed the door. A lesson from mom about “plain sight” laws. Never leave a score sitting around where the cops can see it should they come knocking.
Sighing, Agni walked up the spiral staircase to her room. Tasha’s room was still just stud walls and open fixtures. Not that she would want to sleep in there anyway.
After sitting a few minutes on the bed, she sighed and pulled out the transcripts. She'd already decided on one change in her life. Mom wasn’t around to say anything about it, and by the time she returned, it would be too late to do much to overrule it. Agni had decided already that she was done with those stupid uniforms and those stuck up girls at Murakami High. She had used Tasha’s signature to request her transcripts, and was going to go tomorrow to enroll in the Jump City Public School system.
“Probably end up at PS #42,” she mused to herself. She had already scouted that place. An old two story red brick building. Over-crowded, typical public services fodder with a good mix of lower and middle class students, as well as a few upper-middle-class types whose parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t send them to private school at either Murakami or the Wayne Foundation.
She spent a little over ten minutes sorting through the paperwork, making sure that everything was in order with the legitimate documentation, and that there was no obvious snags in the forged information. She didn’t want any minor oversights tripping her up tomorrow. It was stress the sixteen year old could happily live without.
Agni stood back up and stretched, shuffling the papers back in order and putting them into their folder. She was steadily becoming aware of an uncomfortable rumbling in her midsection, and needed to get that out of the way. First, however, was the matter of her public persona to be dealt with.
The teen made her way to her bathroom, reaching up and pulling free the long blond wig with some mild effort. The application of theatrical glue she used to keep it still and authentic tore easily with only a minor application of force. She was so used to the sensation that it didn’t even sting like it had years ago.
Placing the restricting wig on its stand beside the sink, Agni then removing all six clips that held her neck length green-black locks tightly in place. She shook her head back and forth letting her scalp air out and enjoying the sensation of freedom that accompanied it.
“In a million years I don’t think I’ll ever figure out what I was thinking when I decided to settle on blonde,” she mused halfheartedly as she regarded the flaxen wig. This one was her fourth; and she had to admit, it was her most comfortable compared to the hellishly itchy one that had preceded it. Not that that made having to wear it all day every day much more bearable. But she’d developed quite the tolerance for keeping up appearances over the years, so it wasn’t a severe complaint. That and the days she spent wandering the seedier parts of the city, minus her wig on what her mother liked to refer to as Agni’s “mental health” days.
With the hairpiece out of the way, Agni pulled her pale gray blouse over her head and dropped it unceremoniously beside her sink, leaving her torso poorly concealed by a white cotton undershirt. With a body as… slender as hers, bras were redundant. She dealt with enough confining garb in the form of the Murakami uniform she had to wear on weekdays to be bothered with that as well.
Now with the majority of her upper torso uncovered, Agni could get full access to where her body makeup was applied. Her shoulders down to her fingers, and her collarbone to her hairline were all a pale off-shade of pinkish white; jarring in opposition with the pale gray-green that covered the rest of her lithe frame. Her legs were likewise coated from hip to sock line. This was a lesson she had learned the hard way when she was twelve, and only applying the pigment to her knees. Little boys were precocious and liked to peek up skirts and gym shorts, and how her mother had had a time playing off her green thighs as a rare and temporary fungus to the school nurse after Billy McGuire had started yelling and pointing!
Closing her eyes, the thief concentrated, flexing the imaginary muscle that raised her body temperature. The compound coating her skin was waterproof, sweat proof, and abrasion resistant; and bonded relentlessly to skin cells making it almost impossible to remove. But luckily it was designed to break down cleanly and completely at one hundred fifty degrees, and that was well within her body’s ability to exert.
After a minute of maintaining the super feverish temperature, she opened her eyes in time to see the last vestiges of her disguise evaporate away in thin white wisps, returning her body to its overall minty complexion.
Reaching for her brush, the teen mechanically went through the motions of working her hair out and pulling free any tangles from the neck-length black mop as her mind wandered to her plans for the next day.
It felt like such a relief returning to a public institution after so many years of overbearing private academies. She hadn’t gone to a public school since third grade and she was slightly dismayed to find that she was even a little excited at the prospect. It was a pretty stupid thing to look forward to, most teens would dread the perceived downgrade from a private institution to a publicly funded high school.
It wasn’t so much that she hated Murakami or anything so extreme, but it was far more of a bother than she’d like to impose on her already unfathomably complex lifestyle. Wearing a uniform was stifling, and suffocated her sense of style like a hangman’s noose. Also the cut of the skirt and top meant she needed double her application of body makeup, which was like wearing an extra layer of skin, definitely not comfortable. Additionally, the teachers being humorless Ben Stein clones didn’t lend the faculty any points in her smart-alecky view…
But worst of all, staying under the radar in that kind of environment was tricky business considering how one’s reputation tended to hold some clout, and a reputation was exactly the kind of thing she was trying to avoid. Reputations meant attention and attention was a super-thief’s kryptonite. But Tasha had insisted on it. She always saw to it that Agni attended the same school she was employed in and not only did Murakami pay well; it had the second best curriculum in the city. As usual, the older thief stubbornly refused to be talked out of it.
‘But that’s a bridge I intend to burn, ASAP. Mom can ream me all she wants about it after I find her…’ The annoyed growl of her stomach cut her off from going to deeply into that depressing train of thought. Agni placed her comb back down beside the sink basin and made her way to the unfinished kitchen. Opening the pantry she began to rifle through her limited possibilities.
”Lessee here… cereal… Had that last night… Potato chips… Yuck, stale… Hmmm… Rigatoni…” She reached in and retrieved the box. Her parting remark to the Titan’s echoed in her mind. “Hehe, the pasta won’t boil itself.”
She filled a pot half way with salt and water and walked past the stove to the couch. Despite what she’d told the pimply-faced defenders, the stove had yet to be connected. She sat with her right hand ignited beneath the metal base. The contents were brought to a roiling boil only a minute or so later. “Glow powers; the answer to all of life’s little annoyances.”
After making enough naked pasta for dinner and breakfast the next morning, she quickly ate her fill and made her way back up to her room. The teen stripped down to the skin and pulled out her favorite PJs, a pair of slashed up black cotton shorts and a black tank top. She spent a moment rolling the kinks from her neck, shoulders and back. She then fell backwards onto her hands, hoisting her lower body into the air rigidly straight, and held her toes pointed. Slowly bending her elbows, she lowered her face a mere inch from the floor, then back up ten times in a row. Then she straitened and gradually spread her legs into an upside-down splits, holding the position until she worked all the stiffness from her system.
She moved through her stretch in reverse until she was back on her feet, facing the bed. The events of her night played back as she prepared for sleep.
‘Amazingly dull way to cap off a big heist, ain’t it. I ran off with one of the largest emeralds on Earth, fought five pubescent heroes all on my lonesome, and out ran the cops only to do it all over again as soon as I get the chance. I should be celebrating at some club or eating out at a fancy overpriced Sushi place, or something equally decadent. I’m a freaking supervillain! I shouldn’t be worrying about school tomorrow.’
She grumbled slightly as she switched off the desk lamp and slipped under her thin black blanket. Like rippin’ off a band-aid. Tomorrow will go smoothly and I can get back to focusing on what’s important; what really matters. The thief closed her eyes, trying to push the worries of her mother’s whereabouts from her mind in exchange for the oblivion of unconsciousness.
But sleep didn’t come for well over an hour. Agni finally got out of bed and went to her closet. She peeled out a selection of DVDs, something innocuous, and slid one into her TV set, setting it to play straight through. An anime started, one of her favorites. As the Japanese cartoon played and filled the silence of the room, drowning away her thoughts, she curled up in bed once more. Her favorite character, the one reminding her of Tasha, flashed across the screen with the opening music playing and she smiled, allowing her emerald eyes to drift closed as she sighed.
-)SHEGO(-
Three hours later, she woke with a start, and despite her abnormal metabolism, she was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. The last thing she remembered was running down the steps of an old Japanese shrine in the wilderness, being chased by a glowing blue man with unruly blonde hair. Even that sketchy image rapidly faded from the meta-teen’s conscious as she breathed deeply, looking around her bedroom and rubbing her eyes with the balls of her hands.
“Okay, that’s it… no more Tenchi before bed!” She muttered as she tried to clear her eyes and head of sleep.
Her clock radio chose that moment to erupt in noise, startling her, “…and the search continues today for Jocelyn Maria Possible… The cousin of famed hero Kim Possible has been missing for-,”
Agni manipulated the off button to kill the five a.m. news blurb and sighed heavily, blinking in the light from the TV’s still screen DVD menu.
Once it was switched on to the fitness channel, the teen began going through a set of stretches in time with the disgustingly well proportioned blonde woman who was cheerfully encouraging her on the screen. Several minutes of this loosened sleep stiffened muscles and got the blood flowing once more everywhere it was supposed to. To most of the people watching this program, it was a rigorous series of leg lifts, stretches, and twists, but to th green teen, it was just a morning ablutions, no more rigorous than brushing her teeth.
Standing straight and bouncing on her toes with renewed energy, Agni shook out her head and ran a hand through the matted hair, making a face. Still, she had a good few hours before she had to pull on her wig and slather on the body makeup. She elected, since that was the case, to indulge in a long shower, and to treat her oft abused hair to some TLC before she had to once more imprison it beneath flaxen locks, hairpins, and surgical adhesive.
Pausing before entering the bathroom, she looked down at the stack of paperwork she had assembled for the days sojourn. Transcripts, forged documentation, immunization history (like she ever freaking got sick) and all the other banalities a public school could ask for and then file pointlessly away. All she needed to do was to go down to PS 42 and turn it in, and she could start her new life as an inmate of Jump City’s public school system.
Simple, right?
Author’s Notes:
Eoraptor; Links are available on my front page to all of the concept work and sketches of this project, as drawn by Trackula and myself. This is very much an ever-evolving project, right now, the titling is a bit up in the air barring better suggestions. The Volume/Issue thing is loosely fashioned after comic books (at least that’s sort of the plan) and serving in the place of titles for chapters. Oh, we also have a few humorous Omake or side stories to be told later.
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