Gatsby.

For a commander of a small supervillain army that will follow her every whim if so ordered, Owl works hard and often alone. She leaves to change into her armor: a polished red super-suit that shines in the light. After meeting with a handful of her followers and making phone call after phone call, Owl makes photocopies. Lots of them. I watch her fingers move, mesmerized as she writes a name on each copy she prints. She scores each map and fills the page with essay-long notes. When I talk to her, she pretends I never spoke. When I inch toward the door, she tugs her lasso and flips the chair on its side. "I should've left you in your cage," she grumbles, never looking up from her writing.

"You should've left me at home," I shoot back, and I feel pretty slick even though the comeback makes no sense. Owl torments me further by rummaging through her drawers for a stapler, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

I decide very quickly that villainy is boring. After guards take her plans, Owl yawns and stretches, her armor creaking from time spent sitting. She finally looks at me. Straightening her patch, she gives me a polite nod and flashes a silver key between her thumb and index finger.

"Was that so hard?" she asks.

I blink. "What?" My tongue feels like sandpaper and I want to ask her for water, but I don't want to show another weakness. She could use my thirst against me like she did my hunger, and though I know it isn't going away, I'm pushing it to the side as best I can. 

"Staying quiet."

I shrug and try to smile. To charm her. But I know she can see through the cracks in my facade and I'm sick of the charade anyway. I rub my bleary eyes. "I don't know, lady. I thought villains were supposed to do cool stuff. I watched you use a copy machine for forty minutes. What was there to even talk about?" 

She shrugs back and hands me a root-beer flavored Dum Dum scavenged from who knows where to shut me up. "Follow me," she says with a wave of two fingers, so I stick the lollipop in my mouth and shadow her as she glides out of the room. 

The complex opens up into a guarded parking garage of broken car parts, the place where I was shot. She gave me a pair of boots, and they click as we walk on the dusty concrete. She leads me through one of the doors that takes up the outer walls of the garage, an atrium.  The walls are painted a midnight blue, folding chairs spread in countless rows. Each chair has a pillow in it, all matching white. The air itself is crisp, a smell between roses and fresh linen. I have no doubt Owl was in here earlier, a can of Glade in her hand, fluffing pillows and making everything just so. There's even a stage with a projector, a small oak thing that looks so small it's more of a podium than a stage. It only fits one person, and the message is clear: Owl is the leader, and she stands alone.

My skin prickles as people file in. The atmosphere crackles with anticipation, the whispers of supervillains eerie in a way I can't pinpoint. A smooth wooden banister curves from the doorway down the room. As I watch the costumed audience file in, Owl leads me to the banister and snaps something cold around my wrist. I yelp and drag my feet to pull away. She rolls her eyes and slaps the other metal band to my free wrist, the chain between the cuffs looped over the banister. "Hey!" I yank and yank, but the villain slips down toward her stage before I can even yell at her for attaching me the rail. I grunt to myself and chomp into the Dum-Dum. Today'll be long. I plop on the floor and cross my legs, hands drawn up over my head. At least I'll try to make myself comfortable.

A portrait of a young woman dangles on the wall. Her ponytail flopped over her shoulder, her chin tilted down just so. Her smile is small and proud, a twinkle captured in her handsome brown eyes. There's something very familiar about her, like I've seen a piece of her somewhere before. If I tilt my head a little, she looks like Jaylin. Pink flowers wreath the frame in a crown of fresh petals. Owl raises her eyes to the portrait and kneels before it. The followers hush. 

They're costumed, but not in the bright colors and swooping capes I expect from masked menaces. They actually look kind of cool. Their masks add shadow and severeness to their faces in a sophisticated sort of way that makes them look like they're at a midnight masquerade ball. Silken black shirts cling to their every muscle and baggy fatigues hang belted low at the hip. Never has crime looked so fashionable.

My wrists hang from the cuffs, my face strained and the cat ears twitching. I raise my head and touch the torn parts of the one she slashed. To my horror, the flesh has grown back in patches. Maybe I can't cut them off.

I try not to think about that.

Owl's followers are polite people. They pay my cursory glances, but they never stare. A man even engages me in conversation. My voice drips with mrows and meows, but he is patient and nods in all the right places. "You'll be fine," he tells me with a wink. He slaps me on the back and I watch him slip into the sea of uniforms.

I never even learn his name.

When Owl is on her knees, so is the rest of the congregation. A few sharp glares pierce my direction, urging whispers telling me to do the same. I want to spit. I want to tell them their leader is awful and they should read a few books or play Nintendo games instead of listening to her.  She's going to lead them to their deaths. Don't they know that? I force myself to sit still, my heart pounding in my chest.

A woman folded on her knees swipes my back and knocks me sprawling on my knees. I force back a yelp, my cuffed hands clanging as they jerk down on the banister. People, deep in thought, snap their heads up. I bite down hard on my lip and force back an angry retort. Owl rises to her feet, her long black ponytail slinking up her armor as she raises her head. She tied it back with a single velvet ribbon, and it matches the crimson sheen of her armored suit. It glows like blood, every piece gleaming when she moves. Her footsteps never sound, like she's a huntress. Her entire congregation leans forward, silent and as enthralled as I am.

"I need your help," she says, pacing the little stage. "All of you." Her eye meets mine for a second, and the urge to fight back grows that much sharper within me, cutting from the inside. Who am I? Will I sacrifice myself so that my friends will live? Will I say something and try to convince these poor, brainwashed people to leave Owl?

I don't know. I don't know and I'm scared and I'm not sure of who I am or what mask I'm wearing. My lip quivers and I stare ahead. I stay silent.

She crosses her hands behind her back and looks over the audience. Then, in the most uncharacteristic move I've ever seen, she hangs her head. "I have failed you, and I'm sorry."

My jaw drops. All the other masked people's do too. They open their mouths to negate her, but they know better than to defy her outright. So the room drips in shocked silence. People glance sidelong at each other, as if to check they heard the same words, too. When Owl raises her head, all eyes glide back to her. She glances over her shoulder at the portrait, a small smile creasing her lips. "I've heard some of you planned mutiny against me. That's my fault. Cleo promised you victory against those that have subjugated us, a victory I still have yet to win. But that will change. The time to act has finally come." She slides the pommel of her sword out of the glassy sheath hanging from her armor. It shines like lacquer and she leans on it. Her good eye brightens, and her fervor seems to ooze. I wriggle my fingers and shift on my side, my muscles aching from cramps that won't go away, no matter how I stretch.

"The world is ours to take. We've let the powerless have their turn. For hundreds of years we watched them squabble and tear themselves apart. All the while we've sat back and let them shake their fingers at us and blame us for their problems. They promise to take our powers away." She draws in a breath and shakes her head. "That is where we draw our line." Owl squeezes the dark sword and taps the projector with her free hand. She looks so out of place, armor gleaming, sword raised, and the projector only makes that more plain to see. My eyelids droop. A picture of the city-state's capital fizzles into sight on the painted cement slab of the wall. It's a giant marble building that gleams in the red evening sun. Its columns weave an outdoor foyer on the white steps, the ceiling a dome like the White House's. The top floor is a public observatory. I went inside once, on a field trip. It bored me half to death. At least at the super museum I had my first kiss.

Even while Owl lays out her plans for city-wide take over, I flush at the memory. Angel had gotten sick on Juniper's lasagna the night before and stayed home. Heaven broke away from our class to pay her respects to Nebula and Taurus, the husband and wife leaders of the golden-age heroes. Unfortunately for her, the room dedicated in their honor is also the notorious 'Room of Love.' When she knelt for a silent prayer, she winked up and caught Aaron Elms and I making out by Nebula's statue.

I crack a smile despite myself. "Guess who has a boyfriend!" she squealed as she dragged me into Angel's room. I had already tried to punch myself free, but her grip was iron-tight.

"Let me guess," said a salty Angel as he glared at the trash can. My memory lies in glimpses, images of his ruddy face and piles of wadded tissues on his nightstand the only threads left to cling to. He had told me how excited he was to learn about his father at the museum. Now, crushed, he stretched a single arm as if he could summon the trash can from across the room. "Not you?"

The face Heaven made makes me giggle even now, and luckily, no one hears. The followers are too busy stamping and whooping like they're listening to a motivational speaker. Owl's surprisingly good at that. She uses her sword as a laser-pointer to jab at the statue of Nebula in front of our city-state capitol. "The heroes are gone. The police are nothing to fear. Mayor Curtis will sell us out soon enough; Delacroix of Newport is putting pressure on her. The people are in panic. We're stronger, smarter, longer-lived. We know better. Better than that Nebula did, at the least." She jabs the projection of the superhero's bronze statue with a huff.

Nebula is pretty much Starlight's mascot. Heaven runs a close second, being alive and all, but Nebula and her team saved Starlight and the world from supervillain tyranny.

Besides, everyone loves Nebula's team. I do, and I'm not even from Starlight. They sprung up in the late fifties, seven ex-convicts (Because who else would the government experiment on? Willing test subjects?) who warbled Christmas carols and read to children between fighting their villains of the week. A radio network bribed them with a blank check for the charity of their choice if they told their most embarrassing stories on air. So they did. Taurus detailed the first time he met Nebula at a peaceful protest, and how the two lay side by side gasping on the pavement after their arrests, unable to speak through mouths clogged with blood. Luna went into a ninety-minute rant about the faults of bureaucracy and let slip she destroyed a DMV once in a spitting rage. After chugging hard liquor from a flask he smuggled into the studio, Jupiter announced he had a fling with a supervillain. And he may or may not still have the hots for her.

It's dizzying to think people who feel so alive to me are all dead now. I remember watching interviews of Taurus and copying his mannerisms. The way he smirked and bowed chivalrously at the reporters. The way he flirted with his wife and made all those terrible puns that brought a smile to everyone in the room. I'd just hoped to steal a little of his suave. How can my best friend's mother be his killer?

"We will fight to take back our world for our children." Owl holds her head high as a black-clad official from her office calls names, handing out slides as Owl talks. "But first, I must take back my child. You have your orders. I believe in every one of you, and this is an attack I cannot personally lead until I have my son back. I will see you after your victory." Owl smiles personably, tucking a long strand of black hair behind her ear. She steps down to cheers.

I lean my head against the wall to sleep when she uncuffs me. I rub my wrists, just so she san see how sore they made me. "Well?"

The villain snatches me by the wrist, squeezing so hard she triples the soreness factor. "Ow, ow, ow!" I cry. "What's that for?" She drags me out of the room and I spit out my lollipop stick. It cracks when it hits the ground and rolls.

"The sooner we get this over with, the better," she says with a soft snort. The complex is drab and white. Boring as her office. Boring as Owl. At least as boring as Owl is on the surface. My heels drag on the ground and I struggle to keep up with her superhuman pace. She isn't running, but her strides are so choppy and brisk I'm left gasping. "Oh, you're too delicate for this, aren't you?"

"Huh? What do you—" The villain doesn't let me finish my sentence. She spins on her heel and snaps me flailing into her arms. "Hey, hey, I didn't sign up for this!" I gasp and kick and cry, a sudden sort of panic seizing me. This killer supervillian is acting weird. That's a bad, bad sign. 

And it's scary, the way she tears past her subjects and races through her own complex. One of my kicks catches her thigh and she slings me over her shoulder. My fingers ball and I throw punches as the walls blur by and by. As I cuss and fight and beg, my voice breaks back down into a series of croaks and mrows. My heart slams in my throat. As I look back at the thinning hallway, I hear a door smack open. Owl sighs and bounds up a set of stairs. I hear her boots clink and watch the metal steps whoosh by. 

My head falls against her armor, the plates cool against my skin. Flights go by, and so finally, I stop screaming bloody murder and kicking her. I'm exhausted and I'm slipping into another sleep. Don't judge me. I'm a freaking cat. It's what we do, I guess. That and get kidnapped, though I think that pertains more to me than other cats.

The villain bursts through another door when she finally stops. She levels her breath and I feel the chill of night air against my skin. I cringe, my face still shoved into her armor. "The stars are quite pretty here," Owl muses, the tips of her hair brushing my neck when she leans back. It tickles, but I'm not in a laughing mood.

The firsts words I can get out are, "We're on a rooftop? W-Why are we on a rooftop?" I lift my head and catch a glimpse of the star dusting everyone in this city is so fanatical about. I look for a moon, remembering that Heaven and Angelos and maybe even my parents all look at the same one, but tonight, there is no moon.

"Well, where else do you expect me to lift off?"

"You fly?" I squeak.

"Beats driving." She shrugs carefully so I don't tumble over her shoulder. I bury a yelp and grip the edges of her armor, the plates drawing blood from the pads of my fingertips.

At least I get to see Angelos and Heaven again, though I doubt they'd want to see me if they know everything I told and everything I agreed to do. They aren't going down without a fight. Them or the mayor or the police or even the army, maybe. But I am. Without a fight, without a sound. "Traitor," Imaginary Angelos hisses in my ear. 

I shake my head, squeeze my eyes shut, and as Owl rockets into the air, I brace myself for the battle ahead.

To be edited in morning.