"Either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

~ Harvey Dent

My luck ran short when Daniel told me that it was my turn to do the midnight shift.

"But, C'mon! I have a test in the morning in pre-calculus and the last time I went on the midnight shift I almost got killed by Two-Face."

"Two-Face is captured, you'll be fine." Daniel assured me, spinning around in his spiny chair down in the Man Cave.

"Two-Face isn't the only villain out there at night." I argued. "I'm only a teenager – I don't want to die young!"

Daniel scoffed. "You'll be fine. You've survived on your own out there before."

"Yeah," Eric agreed with Daniel, "Why are you being such a pussy, Oliver?"

I sighed and stared Eric down. Eric lifted his hands up in mock surrender, stifled a laugh, and got back to his World of Warcraft on the big monitor.

Now, before you go on and start thinking that I'm some fearful bunny, let me explain. I was fine on my own, but I just didn't want to run into Delinquent. I knew that if I saw her that I'd have to apprehend her. But I didn't think what she was doing was wrong, so I didn't really want to.

Also, I hadn't gotten a good night's sleep for weeks. This was the first night in a while where I had finished my homework early. I wanted to curl up in bed after eating dinner. I wanted to actually survive on more than five hours of sleep for once.

"But-"

"No buts. I've taken the last couple night shifts, now it's your turn." Daniel cut me off in a tone that suggested that there was no questioning it.

I stormed out of the room, not caring that I was acting exactly like a little kid. As I walked back up the stairs and through a hidden door to the storage room, I pouted like a baby. I hadn't even realized that the pout was still on my face by the time I got to my apartment door.

"Oh, Honey!" My mother screamed and nearly crushed my bones with a hug that I was sure should've sucked the life out of me.

You see, Sharon Storm is a bit over affectionate. Her own parents left her when she was little, so I guess she didn't want me to feel like she would do the same to me. She was also a bit obsessive and freaked out when I went somewhere without telling her, but all mothers were like that. She especially didn't want to lose me, seeing as I was literally the only thing she had to hold onto in this world.

(Was I a bad son for going out every day and risking my life?)

(Probably.)

"Why do you look so sad? Did someone make fun of you at school?" She asked in that tone of voice you only use on small children, like the ones that are below the age of seven.

"I'm fine mom, no one made fun of me."

She grinned and widened the door so I could enter. The fresh smell of Boston Market reached my nose before anything else. Mom usually didn't have the time or money to make dinner herself, but she would never admit that, so she normally picked it up from some place and called it her own. I didn't want to upset her, so I always played along.

"What's for dinner today?" I asked, peering over her shoulder and into the kitchen, which was technically a part of the living room if you removed the curtain mom had long ago placed to separate the two.

Our apartment wasn't very big, but mom did everything she could to make it seem as normal as humanely possible. She slept in the small room off to the side while the couch was mine. It made it a little hard to hide my super suit from her, but I managed by hiding in the secret slip in my backpack at all times.

We had a small, rickety dining room table that was being held together by duct tape and pure will, a TV that was so old that the sound only worked if you turned it in a certain direction, and a lamp by the bedside that short-circuited anytime you turned on the microwave, but we got by.

"We've got some fresh homemade roast – your favorite!" My mom squealed, running back into the kitchen.

I had to stifle a laugh at my mother. She was five feet and four inches tall, meaning that I already towered over her. Her dirty blonde hair (which had been a striking light blonde in High School) was pulled back in a messy bun and usually made people think that she was cute in size and looks, but she was a force of nature to be reckoned with if you ever got her angry.

I set down my backpack and went to help her take the food out to the tabletop. As we ate, we watched reruns of old sitcoms that my mother loved. I laughed along at the appropriate times, but my heart wasn't too far into it.

When we put the dishes away, mom asked if I wanted to watch a movie, but I declined. I knew that she had a long morning at work tomorrow and I wanted to be able to set out for the midnight shift of protecting the city before it got too dark outside.

After she retired to her room I waited for the sounds of her humorously loud snores before heading out. It only took ten minutes for her to fall into a deep sleep, something I was grateful for.

The midnight shift normally consisted of one of us (me or Daniel) surveying the rough parts of town and watching for any crime. On most nights we captured a petty thief or two and the occasional sexual predator or drunken disorderly. There was never any large crime going on at night.

My White Lightning suit stood out impeccably against the stark darkness that the night brought. My boots were silver, as well as the belt around my waist. The gloves around my hands had silver running up till about halfway up my arm, where it arrowed up on the outer side of my sleeves. A silver "L" was crooked and lying about halfway on a silver "W" but a bit below it on my chest. My mask was white, but with a silver shine to it and silver tracing the edges where it came to stop just at the edge of my nose.

The fact that I stood out so much was both a blessing and a curse. Everyone knew it was a super coming to save the day.

After about an hour of roaming aimlessly around the worse parts of the city and some of downtown, I'd only captured one potential pickpocket and stopped a drug deal. I was thinking about packing up and going home to catch a couple of hours of sleep before I had to go to school tomorrow when I saw a shadow on the edge of the roof across from me.

Now, normally shadows weren't very suspicious, but this particular shadow was on the top of the building across from Paramount Pharmaceuticals. With all the bad press around them lately, I had to assume that any activity in and around the building was suspicious.

I quickly ran across the street and scaled the fire escape to the top of the building. I was at the top in under a minute, a new record.

I spotted the dark figure almost immediately. They seemed to be bent over working on something. I heard a grunt and a loud frustrated sigh. Obviously whatever project they were working on wasn't going very well.

"Hey, what are you doing?" I asked, the voice modulator at my throat making me sound more accusing than I meant to.

The figure turned in surprise and suddenly disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. I would remember what I'd seen when the figure turned around forever. It was the same girl form the grainy security camera footage who had sabotaged the Paramount Pharmaceuticals truck, the one who'd been causing a lot of chaos in DC for a while now. It was Delinquent.

Barely a minute passed before I felt a sharp object pressed against my throat and a mechanical voice float up to my ear. "Hello White Lightning."

I sighed. I really was not in the mood for someone to try and kill me today. The metal from what I assumed was a knife on my throat would be a good conductor. All I had to do was send a pulse of electricity through it to incapacitate Delinquent, but she didn't know that.

"Hello to you too Delinquent." I replied. "So, why the sharp object?"

She pressed it a bit deeper on my neck. "Why are you here?"

I sighed, "Dumb luck?"

"Try again."

"Look, I just saw a moving shadow up here, alright? I'm a super, I'm supposed to investigate suspicious activity. I didn't know it was you up here."

I could sense her hesitation. Even then I didn't know whether she'd let me go, so I tried again.

"Hey, you have the upper hand here. You're the one with the knife. I'd feel much better talking to you face to face – or, you know, mask to mask."

The pressure on my neck suddenly disappeared and a cloud of black smoke appeared in front of me. Delinquent appeared and the smoke seemed to seep back into her. If I had to guess, the smoke helped control her teleportation.

She stood in front of me with an expression that revealed no emotion. I could see the bottom half of her face that wasn't covered by her mask or the curly black hair. Her lips were curled up in a smirk and covered in a bright red lipstick. Somehow that made her look irresistible.

"What were you doing before I interrupted you?" I asked.

"In case you couldn't tell, my voice modulator is a bit broken." She said in that crackly mechanical voice. It wasn't hard to tell. Most modulators don't make you sound like a robot.

"How'd it break?"

She shrugged. "It just sort of stopped working. What can you expect from something you bought online?"

I could relate. If I didn't have Daniel to tell me how to work mine and when to fix it, I would've been in the same situation as her. It's not like people like me have the money to buy a real one that won't break at the slightest disruption. It made me wonder if this girl was coming from the same type of situation as I was.

"Maybe I could help you fix it?"

She stiffened up again. Of course she wouldn't trust me, I was a superhero and she was supposedly a bad guy. She'd technically broken the law on countless occasions. Hearing her real voice would be one of the first steps of finding out her identity to arrest her.

I sighed and loosened my stance so I looked less threatening. For some reason, I didn't think of this girl as a threat. She was only a petty criminal at the best, well, if you didn't count the take-over of the Paramount Pharmaceuticals truck. "Look, you can have your little knife out the entire time – you don't have to talk at all. I just want to help, okay?"

She glared at me, "How do I know that this isn't a trick?"

I glanced sideways at her. "If I wanted to arrest you, I would've done it by now, trust me. Not to be mean, but I've been in this business for a lot longer than you."

She seemed to consider it for a moment before disconnecting her voice modulator and throwing it my way. I caught it and I immediately knew what was wrong with it. All I had to do was twist the top and rearrange a wire. Whoever sold her the modulator was trying to rip her off, but they didn't count on someone knowing how to fix it.

I held it for a bit longer after I really fixed it. I couldn't let Delinquent know how easy fixing her modulator really was.

The entire time Delinquent didn't speak. She was smart enough to keep her trap shut. I might've told her that I didn't plan on arresting her, but she only had my word to depend on.

I tossed the modulator back and she fastened it back where it had been before.

"Testing . . . ahh, much better." She smiled. I couldn't help but to notice how much more human she sounded with the fixed modulator, how much more familiar.

But now that I had Delinquent in my sights, I should have done something. She was a criminal and I was a sidekick to a world famous superhero. But instead of turning her in, I did the stupid thing and let my guard down.

And we all know what happens when you let your guard down in front of a villain.