"5 Minutes"

By Eoraptor

Rated T for Teen

Shego finished fixing the quicklock seal on her left boot. Rising from the foot of her bed, she made her way across to the small alcove machined in to the rocks of the lair. She had chosen this spot, the lowest level sunk in to the volcanic bedrock of the Caribbean isle, as least likely to be bombed into oblivion by either her boss or her nemesis. So here was where she kept her actual possessions, not in the myriad of condos and rent-a-lairs; but here, sunk into the stone of the Earth.

She knelt down in front of the alcove and pulled out items from one shelf one by one; a white marble bowl, a few short sticks of lavender incense, a red bandana, and a sachet of black volcanic sand from that beach.

Laying out the paisley patterned cloth with practiced ease; one charred edge was made to face her, only visible as the handkerchief was unfolded into its full size. Then she laid her white marble bowl atop it. She produced a microfiber cloth from inside her leg pouch and wiped the vessel, inside and out, until the alabaster and smoke stone shone with a flawless luster.

Next she loosened the ties on the leather sachet, upending its contents with careful precision into the low bowl. After eleven years of this, she did it without spilling a single grain of the holy Hawaiian sand. A practiced flick of the finger ensured that every last speck came free of the old pouch. The sachet itself was smooth inside and out from years of service, so much so it no longer attracted or clung to the sand it held, a testament to how routinely she made this gesture.

She lifted the marble vessel and rolled it a few times in her clawed talons, until the black sand sat flush in the small container. Once it was returned to the scorched handkerchief she pulled out the short sticks of incense. Opening the packet's carefully folded end gave her a shot in the face; as though someone smacked her with a bundle of tropical flowers. This was no head-shop stink stick, but honest herbal meditation material made from real flowers and real paper.

She selected two short sticks and then carefully arranged them in the black sand, placing them with such precision that despite the angles she chose that they did not welt her carefully laid sand base, each branch of incense hanging out into space past the edge of the bowl.

With that done, she sat back, inhaling deeply. The lavender incense was fresh, the sand clean, and the air still around her. She then schooled her face and leaned forward. A touch of a finger caused each sprig of aromatic to glow to life. A quick puff of breath extinguished all but the faintest ember from each stick and she sat back.

She watched the scene arrayed before her for some time, watching the white streamers drifting steadily, fluidly upwards from each branch in the small brazier. How long she sat she did not know, except that her body finally commanded her to breathe deeply.

When she did, she got a lung full of smoke. Not the elegant and delicate dried lavender petals she had gotten a moment before, but of a cloying oily scent; half flower and half flame.

In an instant she was back on Punalu'u Beach. It was supposed to be vacation. Her brothers were playing volleyball a few dozen yards away. As always it was three-on-one with Hego taking up half the play surface on one side, and her other three idiot siblings on the other. It wasn't a matter of athletic prowess on Hego's part, so much as the fact that none of the Go sibs had the power of super-speed to maneuver around him to make a play on the ball.

She was content to lay where she was in the shade. She was far enough away to not get sand kicked on her, but close enough to be called for dinner or more likely to break up a fight. All around her was a westerner's interpretation of a tropical paradise; slowly swaying palm trees, a few cabana-style buildings serving snacks and drinks, and people so polite and friendly that it almost made her teeth hurt, except that they were so genuine it was hard not to be taken by it all.

At first seventeen year old Shego had been a bit put off. Walking out onto the black sand and laying down, it became instantly apparent she was not natural. The legendary onyx grains contrasted her grey-green skin and her black inky hair blended into it perfectly; the beauteous teal and purple orchids and lilacs growing wild nearby only contrasted her ashen skin all the more. But then a young girl had run up to her in a blue and green striped swimsuit, holding up a clutched something and smiling at her with impossibly big almond shaped eyes.

It took the teen several minutes to realize that it was a crudely-drawn 'her.'

The kid couldn't be more than six or seven… if even that. Shego finally got that the lil one wanted an autograph or something, the way she kept holding the drawing up to her. So the teen knelt and admired the work as long as she felt was appropriate and made some encouraging sound, signing her name on it.

As if on cue, squirt's mother showed up. Shego had already seen any number of beautiful people in the two days they'd been here, but this woman was a stunner… Curves in all the right places and a smile as honest and white as the sand under her feet was harsh and black. The teen felt momentarily envious… maybe if she'd grown up in a tropical paradise her whole life instead of an ice cold lake town, she could have a stunning disposition and alluring body as well…

The woman explained that her little girl was convinced that Shego was an incarnation of Pele. Shego didn't mind that in the least… she had been compared to far worse things in her young life than an exotic island goddess of fire. She accepted the apologies and patted the little girl on the head, returning her drawing, and complimented the young mother on her hair tie, the blaze red of the paisley bandana contrasting her inky hair, held in place with a simple wood bead.

Soon enough the mother and daughter made their way away, and Shego noted a father and a newborn in their company. That dashed any hopes of meeting up for ice cream later, but oh well… she could still tell people that she compared favorably with a Goddess.

Relaxing back onto the inky sands, she occasionally shot a glance at her idiot brothers to make sure they hadn't manage to sink the island, but eventually drifted off to sleep in the breezy shade.

The next thing the green teen remembered was awakening to a bizarre sensation. It felt like the beach was swallowing her whole. In fact that was exactly what was happening. Most seventeen year old girls would not know what was going on, but Shego was not most teens. Three years of fighting supervillains had taught her to recognize an artificial earthquake when she felt one.

And this one was liquefying the beach around her. Shego managed to extract herself from the onyx sand before it completely swallowed her, and surfed along on her beach towel as if the remainder of the sand was ball bearings, using the fabric to keep afloat on the ocean of vibrating beach sand.

Her brothers were nowhere to be seen. The other people along the beach were, with difficulty, making their way towards the more solid ground and roadway up the beach. The teen heroine knew that so long as they kept moving they should be okay, so she set about figuring out what the heck was going on as she surfed along.

She used the soles of her feet and the motion of the ripples along the quavering sand to hone in on the epicenter of the tremblor. Just about the time that she did, she heard a piercing scream.

Her eyes flashed around, and then she saw a smear of red color flash through her vision. Sure enough it was the little girl's mother… her whole family in fact.

They'd set their beach chairs next to a grove of palms that jutted out from the main stand. On a normal day that would not have been a problem. On a day with an artificial earthquake reducing the beach sand to black pudding, it was dire straits.

Shego could already see where the scene was headed. The trees were shivering and swaying far more than their neighbors further up the shoreline. By the time she towel-surfed to the grove, one of the trees had already up-ended, sending coconuts plunging like cannon balls into sand and surf. Shego was of the impression that this was all the threat of a Gilligan's Island rerun; right up until a coconut flew thirty feet and left an eighteen inch crater in the roof of a parked car.

The fire-girl leapt from her towel and scooped up both of the little girls in her arms, planting her foot on an exposed palm-root and using it to set her course for more solid ground. She knew, academically, that if this artificial quake went on much longer that solid ground would be as much a myth as safe coconuts had been ten seconds ago; but for the moment it was all she had.

Setting the pipsqueak and the newborn down under the awning of one of the beach cabanas, the green teen turned back to find the parents. They were trying to get off the beach as well, but with the quake rolling on, even the span of thirty seconds from her waking up to getting here had turned it from soup to outright liquid. Now water was frothing up amidst the sands in equal parts and even the fit adults were ill-footed in the mire.

Shego moved to run back across the palm roots toward them when there came another, louder rumble. In an instant, the ground at her feet sat down and solidified, the water amidst it standing a moment before draining to the ocean. The heroine looked further down the shore and saw the source: one of Hego's mighty feet, slammed down into the turf, sending out a countering shockwave which for a moment at least canceled out the earthquake.

Before the seventeen year old girl could complete her evacuation of the pair, the big blue doofus had leapt across the sands and grabbed the young mother and father. He then turned and threw them.

Shego blanched for one of the few times in her life. These two were just civilians… they were not acrobats to be thrown around at inhuman speeds. She didn't even have time to shoot her idiot brother the glare he deserved.

She ran straight up the dropping trunk of one of the island palms, trying to chase the flailing woman and man. It could only have been two seconds, but it felt like an eternity to the adolescent, even running with superhuman legs beneath her. She reached out, pushing herself off with one flaming hand, blasting forward with inhuman effort while grasping with the other hand for anything to stop what was coming. She could smell the tree and exotic flowers burning behind her as her flames immolated everything to the rear with her desperate thrust.

She felt something catch her fingers and she gripped it manically. Then she heard a crunch even as her own trained feet hit asphalt and she rolled to a stop.

Shego couldn't look. Not at anything. She knew she had been too slow in the instant. She knew her brother was an idiot. She knew the sound of a pair of hundred and ten pound bodies hitting a speeding car. Worst of all, she knew that she COULD have saved them all without her brother's spur-of-the-moment interference.

For Hego, who never thought ahead of anything, had thought he was hurling two people to higher ground and to safety. Shego, who was always aware of her surroundings and her backstops and her outs, knew that he was throwing them right at an unforgiving highway ninety yards away, which would be choked with people fleeing in a panic; in their buses and cars and motorcycles.

Finally, she forced herself to look at her hand. Clasped there was a paisley red bandana, which was utterly unremarkable, save for one half of a wooden bead clinging impotently to one singed edge where her flames had not quite died away as she grabbed helplessly for the nearer of the two airborne people.

Clutching at it, Shego turned bitterly away from the highway. She didn't need to look to know that there was nothing to be done here. Even if they could have survived the impact with the cars, the two young parents could not have survived the combined impacts of flying over a football field and THEN into a speeding car.

Even as the trembling beneath her feet eased, she headed back towards the cabana. She knew, too well, what would happen if she went in the other direction, towards the source of the quakes. She found the two children right where she had left them and her heart sank as she looked from the pair to her hand.

She reached for the older little girl; but, as children sometimes do, the girl read her face and knew that the news was not good.

"Why Pele? Why?!" She screamed at Shego, her fists clenched.

Shego couldn't process. Even with a brain soaked in adrenaline and superpowers, she couldn't make the leap in logic that this girl did. Could not grasp what the tiny child with the now dark and tear-soaked eyes was thinking as she looked on her with pain and recrimination.

"I-.. I'm not Pele…" she stammered. She tried to hold out the cloth head cover to the girl, but by now both children had broken down to tears and screaming.

She stood there, unable to cope. She could have saved them. Could have gotten all four to safety. If she had been the one in charge… if Shego had been the one in control… no one would have died.

Shego stood there in shock as the little girls were scooped up by police responders rushing into the area, leaving her to contemplate the devestation.

Her brothers wouldn't speak to her for a week after. Presumably they knew better than to tell her who had been the cause of the artificial earthquake, lest she hunt that party down. Hego had no idea what he had done. What she had failed to stop him doing.

And she never told Hego. She had known for a while that she should be in charge of things… but he was big, and charming, and braggadocios… and the press loved him, so he made himself in charge and everyone else accepted it.

She on the other hand was cutting, and cunning, and pale, and knew big words like braggadocios. Which meant she was not supposed to be in charge because good girls weren't supposed to be like that, not even in Go City in 1991.

The newspapers reported that two people had been killed in a car accident during the earthquake. They were survived by their daughters; Nani, age six, and Lilo, age three months. Whether it was the sort of cover-up that went out to calm the public, or whether the papers simply did not know the true nature of the earthquake Shego did not know. All she knew was that she could not take the burdens any more.

So she Left. Shego would make sure that wherever she went from now on, that she was the one in control. Even if no one knew it but herself, she would be in charge of things. As long as she was in control, no one would die. People only died when blue idiots were left in charge.

Shego finally returned to herself as the emotions cooled. The incense had burned itself out completely. At least five minutes ago, based on the length of the sticks and the scent in the air.

She plucked out the dead stems and disposed of them. Next she carefully picked up the marble urn. She grasped the base and jerked it into the air. The black sand briefly became airborne; and as it did, Shego blew through it, separating burned incense ashes from volcanic debris. The cleaned sand settled back into the marble bowl and she then slowly poured it back into the black sachet.

She then wiped out the bowel, and carefully folded the mother's handkerchief back up and into it. Finally, with all of those things tucked away back into their place in her alcove, she pulled out the gem that always graced her throat.

To the outside world, it was an inscrutable teal, one which completely failed to match her uniform. But as she lifted it, its true meaning was revealed. Molded into the back of the otherwise meaningless plastic, hidden from the rest of the world, was one half of a broken wooden bead sculpted inside of a teal orchid.

A promise she made every day, one kept right next to her body at all times… good or evil, it was her one rule.

She was not a Goddess, she now knew, but she did have one commandment…

"No one dies today."

AN: Another one of these highly layered experimental pieces. A response to a KP Slash Haven challenge for a "5 minute observance by a character"