(#1) Roommates by Day, Enemies by Night

Chapter 23

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?~ The Joker

Dedicated to Demeter_Demigod for all the wonderful comments she leaves on my oneshots! Thank you so much!

Siena

Life as a supervillain isn't easy. For once, no one ever appreciates you. I mean, think about it. Without you, the hero would have no one to fight. And ever though you could argue that the villain needs the hero to fight to, the bullshit. I could easily go about plundering the jewelry stores and stealing art if it weren't for Warrior, and I wouldn't stop just because he was gone.

But still. Because you made a few bad decisions, because you decided not to go the cookie-cutter way and follow the grain like the rest of the 7 million people in this city, you're ostracized.

So life as a supervillain is a thankless one. But it's a hell of a lot more fun. Unfortunately, if you don't watch yourself, you can end up becoming crazy. Like they did.

Villains have a code, just ask Captain Cold. We break other peoples' codes, never our own.

I will never break my code of hurting someone. Kidnapping, sure. Killing, no.

It doesn't look like Gemini has a code, which makes them all the more dangerous. Holding people hostage, something I've done before, not gonna lie. I'm not judging them for that. But holding people hostage with the fear of death, that's not nice. I mean, I never did that, just the fear of safety, which is actually very effective. But I don't kill.

I stumbled over something in the sewers and wrinkled my nose, but didn't say anything. A girl in New York City sewer, shouldn't she be squeamish and grossed out? No. I mean, it's not like this was my ideal vacation spot, but it was actually Warrior who was the most jumpy one. He tried to avoid stepping in as much of the sewer water as possible, and I had to practically drag him down until we came to an access grate.

I climbed up the ladder and pushed open the grate, lifting myself onto the floor and standing up. It looked like we were in the bottom level of the building, where all the electrical panels and plumbing happened.

"Hey." I whispered, reaching down and giving Warrior and hand. "Where do you think the clue could be?" I asked him.

"Observation deck." He answered simply. "They'd want and easily accessible place to us, but not anybody else."

"Just great." I said." We taking the elevator?" I asked.

He grimaced. "Nope, sorry. They've probably grounded it, so we have to take the stairs."

"The stairs." I said incredulously. "86 floors up? Fuck." I muttered.

"Sorry." He said, grabbing my hand and dragging my behind him. I was so surprised by the action I let myself get dragged along for a bit until I walked beside him.

We started up the stairs, and although I do have a higher physical endurance than most people, walking up 86 floors still isn't very easy. By the time we reached the observation, deck, I was exhausted, and keeled over, crawling to the observation railing and pulling myself up.

"Ok." I said, out of breath. "Where is it?" I asked.

"Here." He said, crouching over at one of the telescopes just of the right of me. Behind it was a tiny symbol, the tiniest that we had seen so far. It was miniscule.

I touched my finger to it, and it took a tiny amount of blood. The panels next to it slid open, also tiny, but not small enough that we couldn't read it. He generated a fireball in his hand and held it up so we could read the words.