Edited 12/09/2008, added slightly more dialogue, fixed alot of the wording, and added a big internal dialogue scene at the end. Hopefully that'll piece it together better.

Now, On with the story!

Seeing that sad smile, Midnight could do little but regret her comment. She really hadn't been thinking when she said it. Tell that to her, not yourself, the villain chided herself.

She realised that it was the first time she'd ever felt quite so caring for someone's feelings, not even her family's, but it was sort of hard to make it up to her rival/partner when Drakken was watching her every move, though. As well as pestering her about all of his failed-in-development plans, hoping for a second opinion. Midnight accidentally snapped her nail file, crushing it beneath two fingers. This was going to take forever, and she was going to be angry long before forever was over.

"And with the combined might of thousands - no - millions of birds, the world would crumble before us!" Sunset regarded him with a raised eyebrow, but made no move to cheer him on or scold the evil genius. "Then Shego came up to me with this completely inane comment, and trashed my idea before I could make it work."

Sunset regarded him with a raised eyebrow, but made no move to cheer him on or scold the evil genius. Drakken took that as his cue to continue. "She said it was impossible to plant the mosquito bugs inside the bird's brains. Said mosquitoes wouldn't go that far, or attempt to chase down a tiny little seagull. Ha! It could have worked." Sunset regarded him with a raised eyebrow, and for a long while Midnight started to worry that she had some sort of mental episode.

"Why didn't you look it up online?" The redhead finally asked, glancing at Midnight temporarily.

"I spent all of the money on a laser, didn't have time to install high-speed. To busy taking over the world you know." He smirked, Sunset lowered her eyebrow. Seconds later she rose her other eyebrow. Maybe it was some sort of secret defense against all of Drakken's insane planning, she could tune it out without hurting the blue-skinned man's feelings.

"Use the computer in the dash." The redhead offered, resting back finally when Drakken finally spotted the computer screen. He moved closer to the screen, then tentatively leaned forward to press a button. A new window popped up, and Drakken's more common maniacal grin spread over his face.

Midnight was still watching Sunset closely, while Drakken started mumbling and surfing the net. The younger girl had leaned up against the window, elbow on the arm-rest, face pressed into the glass. The way her hair cascaded down her face, in soft strands, Midnight could wonder if she was ever the bossy rival she had once been. She looked so, protectable.

Midnight restrained the urge to see if her hair was as soft as it looked, and moved over next to her instead. "'M sorry." The raven-haired woman mumbled, pouting with one of her most innocent looks. She could tell that her 'friends' comment still soured Sunset's mood.

Sunset watched her with a raised eyebrow, a recurring expression, and slowly began to smile. She let off one short chuckle, and a mixed sigh, before looking back out of the SUV. "It's not your fault, I- I don't think it's theirs either. They were tricked."

"I-I wasn't thinking though." Midnight whispered, closing her eyes and resting into the SUV. It was so comfortable here.

"I know." She said. "Are you going to do that much, though?" She asked after a while.

"The pout?" She seriously had to think that over before she gave her answer. "Maybe." If it affected Sunset this way, made her smile, and laugh, and be happier with her, she could see herself doing it again. It would get her some major ally points, she told herself.

"I was talking about the apologizing. It's kind of, unlike you. And the pout." She replied, as quietly as the older woman was talking. "I'm starting to wonder if I ever really knew who you were."

"I am who I am, I'm not going to take any shit from anyone else. And I sure won't be apologizing any time soon. If you don't know who I am, learn." Each comment was made like it was the simplest thing in the world, and knowing Midnight, it probably was for her. Just one of the many reasons Sunset looked up to her, she knew what she was doing, and she wasn't going to be acting any different towards anyone else.

Why was she acting any different towards her? "If this," Sunset sounded unsure of herself. She swallowed the lump in her throat. "If this is your form or pity, you can go ahead and shove it."

She braced herself for whatever would happen next, whatever rejection or pain. She hated it, but mostly the rejection. Pain had it's odd way of making her stronger.

Midnight chuckled, a soft, rumbling, purr that Drakken would have never heard from the front of the SUV. "There's the Sunshine that I used to fight. I was starting to wonder if you were down there anywhere." Midnight said, opening her eyes and looking up at the roof. A sunroof, ironic.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sunset asked defensively. She pulled her knees up under her chin, and tucked herself in a little ball in the corner.

"It was supposed to mean, that whoever did this must have really done a number on you. I've never seen you so brooding, ever. And I've been there with you each week in high school." Midnight said, slowly.

Sunset was about to give the older woman one of her better retorts, one of her only retorts for that matter. But she heard her whisper, barely enough for her to catch. "I'll make them pay." Midnight shifted, her breathing evened out. Her eyes were closed as well. She looked like an angel, curled up near Sunset like that, her hair falling in disorderly patters across her face. The moonlight from the sunroof balanced out her still green-tinged skin, to a light cream.

Midnight looked innocent. Midnight looked, heavenly. Just her presence was enough for Sunset to quickly drift to sleep, but not before she caught a final whispered comment from Midnight. "I promise."

The SUV pulled to a rather abrupt stop, out of the three inside the most surprised was probably Drakken. Especially when his internet surfing was interrupted by his nose slamming rather hard into the screen, which he made sure was alright, after he fumed at it. He headed out of the SUV first, stretching his legs.

He didn't pay much attention to either of the women in the back, checked for familiar landmarks, and shouted for one of them to come out and find the lair. His yelling for the dark-haired sidekick was hardly noticeable from inside the bullet-proof vehicle.

Midnight swallowed. Sunset blushed, brightly. Very, very, brightly.

All of the turns and stops, though not enough to wake up either woman, was apparently enough to shift them around. Midnight had ended up closer to her younger counterpart, closer meaning over. One hand was holding herself up, between Sunset's legs, the other was wrapped possessively around her arm like a some sort of human cuddle-buddy.

Sunset had shifted as well, turning diagonally so one of her legs was under the raven-haired villain, with the rest of her body running parallel, even under, her. Her face was crammed uncomfortably against the window. But most of the blush resonated from her chest, which Midnight was using as a pillow.

Sunset swallowed, it seemed to echo in the otherwise empty vehicle. Her blush got even deeper when she noticed something, something horrible, something so rude she didn't dare think about it.

Midnight had the ego to smile, even while her head was buried in a small barrier of fabric that protected the one thing that almost every man in Middleton had at least once dreamed about. Many of the women too.

"Well," Midnight started out, sounding surprisingly comfortable with her current position, "That's certainly a different way to wake up. I could get used to this," She joked.

Sunset was wishing that that was a joke at least. "Get the hell off of me!" She shouted. When that didn't work, she bucked her leg against the older woman's stomach, effectively dumping her onto the carpeted floor.

"You could have just said your leg was asleep, Sunshine." Midnight commented, she still had that smile on her face. That self-centered, I-know-how-to-beat-you, arrogant, smile. It complemented her features quite nicely, even while she was laying on her back, on the floor. "Remind me not to wake you up anytime soon," Was grumbled after.

"Remind me to sleep on top next time." Sunset shot back.

Midnight looked up, surprised. The younger woman was holding up surprisingly well at not showing how much she regretted saying that, although her face was a odd hue of red. She put on her best self-centered smiles, which Sunset decided to dub 'Midnight smiles', and perked her eyes up towards the red-head.

"Alright then, Princess, consider it a deal. You make a nice pillow after all."

Sunset bolted, shooting up with blinding speed. She opened the door so quickly that her partner was surprised it didn't break, there was an odd cracking noise though.

The redhead stopped in the door. "I thought, that maybe you weren't the jerk I made you out to be." She fumed. "Don't disappoint me, Midnight." The final word was spoke in a soft manner, a reminder of the promise that the older woman had made.

She stormed off quickly, heading towards the lights that must have signified the presence of a villain's evil lair. All the while, she could feel one of those Midnight smiles on her back.

Midnight grudgingly pulled herself from the uncomfortable floor, hopping out of the large vehicle and into the dewy grass below. Before her lay the forest that hid away the home she'd known for the past few days, since her rival had torched and exploded the last one.

That unwittingly reminded her that she would have some problems getting into the lair without Drakken or Midnight there. Until she remember the guards had to be let go because of lay-offs, the security equipment was pieced together from a junkyard, and the dogs…

She set off on her way to get her rival the keys to the cheap padlock that protected the base, when she nearly stumbled over a polished rock. The rock twitched in return.

Midnight grabbed the car-door with two fingers, and easily pushed it shut, ignoring the blood-stain on the tinted window. As she thought, the polished rock, was a polished shoe.

"Just had to stand in the way when Sunshine went on her rampage?" The thief asked her boss' battered and unconscious form, which twitched in response. She scowled at the bald-looking man. "I better get overtime for this."

That said, she leaned over and heaved the heavy body over her shoulders. She considered herself strong, one of the strongest, but even she had difficulty lifting up Drakken, and made a note to herself to stick the evil genius on a diet after her rival was settled in. Her mood quickly became sour, carrying the blue-skinned villain through the forest over her back like some sort of deer.

She slowly picked her way through offending under-brush, picking twigs and thorns from her hair and clothes all the while. Another note was made to blaze down a path wide enough for at least two football fields while she was there.

Finally the lights of the villains' hidden base peeked through the deep foliage, and just moments later, the tired thief carried her injured boss to the wide double-doors, which had been opened recently. The lock looked picked, maybe it was just her imagination though.

She trudged through the hall-way, into another set of doors, before reaching the main room, which was just a lounge with a crappy TV Inside, sitting on the couch with her back turned, was Sunset, still fuming at the older woman.

"You know, Sunshine, that really hurt Doctor D." Midnight scolded, although slightly out of breath.

She could see Sunset blink, even though the rookie-villain was facing away from her. The red-head's eyes had become wide, blinking slowly, as if she hadn't quite heard her older partner correctly.

The thief unceremoniously dumped Drakken onto the floor, much the way a dump-truck would sound dumping a pile of rocks. The fall shook Drakken awake, and he responded by lashing out at whatever offending monster caused the soaring pain within his face, and now the sting of bruises all along his left side.

With a moan, he rolled over onto his back, and Sunset rose slowly to her feet. Once again she reminded Midnight of the girl she was before she became a woman, bashful, apologetic, and sickeningly goody-goody and innocent. Seeing the damage to Drakken's face, she raised and eyebrow and glanced at her partner.

"Don't look at me, I'm not the one who hit him with a car door." The ex-heroine paled considerably, considering her villain-work might have just been crushed with Drakken's nose, before it had even had the chance to get started.

"Oops. I'm so sorry." Sunset waved her hands before her, hoping to dispel any of Drakken's rage before it had a chance to manifest.

To late. "Thu witth!" The slobbering blue-man yelled. Sunset and Midnight doubted he had just called her a witch. "'ll kill thu!" He shouted once more, finally taking his hand off his bloodied and throbbing nose. "Shego, feed her to the dogs!" Without his nose working properly, Drakken's voice had a helium quality to it, amusing under different circumstances.

"Doc, don't tell me you didn't feed the dogs." Midnight replied, watching him intently.

There was a pause, while Drakken remembered the past day, then - "Shego, feed the dogs! Intolerable women." He muttered as he walked out, holding his nose once more.

"Woops. Thanks." Sunset cursed once more, cringing under the fading yelling of her new boss.

"Don't worry about it, he's used to having his nose broken a few times." Midnight said with a chuckle. "Just ask him about his next plan, and he'll forget what happened for a few hours."

"So," Nervously, Sunset switched from foot to foot. "You'll be showing me to my room?"

"Not yet, Sunset, first I have to go feed the dogs. Then get you a room." Midnight took a few more steps towards the door, before turning to her partner. "You coming? I'll give you the grand tour."

Sunset, who had seconds before looked innocent and apologizing, then shy and alone, now followed close at Midnight's heels, mimicking her posture and attitude for the 'grand tour'. She wasn't really impressed.

Apparently this specific lair was nothing more then an abandoned Upperton military bunker, a half-way point between their main lairs which held the actual weapons from the plans. This building, more like a dugout, included several training rooms, refurbished by Midnight. Several barracks, refurbished into individual suites. And there was also a war/lab, and the dogs' room.

She was less impressed by the dogs she was about to be fed to. They were of course guard-dogs, dobermans and a far less active mastiff. About five in all. Apparently they were being fed growth hormones as a defense against the late Team Possible, but personally, Sunset didn't see it.

Especially when one of them ran up and jumped at her, wagging it's tail. "They're so cute!" Sunset shouted. The doberman nearly reached her knee at full height. Sunset stood near the door, petting the puppy while Midnight fed them with 'special' bags of dog-food.

"Hey, nothing but respect, Sun. Those things are gonna be saving your life sometime." She replied, scowling. Then it was off to find Drakken.

Their blue-skinned boss was in the lab, of course. When they arrived at the cluttered room, he was hunched over the plans for the mission that should have happened several hours ago. Odd, even when Sunset was joining them, she somehow managed to find a way to halt their plans.

"So Doctor D." Sunset started, knocking him out of his daze-like concentration. "Where do I sleep?"

"Hmm? Oh yes, I have to draw up your contract." If not for the slight dangerous glint in his eyes, Sunset would have thought he had forgotten about the entire door incident completely. Something told her he already had a plan for his revenge.

"No way Doc," Midnight said, barely stifling a yawn. "That waits until we've had our beauty sleep."

Drakken looked slightly peeved, but he waved away the comment with a poorly disguised retort of his own, stating how little he would ever understand women. Especially women like Midnight. "Well," The slightly unsettling glint had returned, "Our guest rooms are housing various projects, so until Shego can clean one out." Sunset paled. "You'll be rooming with her."

"Doc, you better wish I didn't just hear you say that."

The threat swayed him little, probably a side effect of the constant anger issues his sidekick took out on him. "But Shego, Miss Pos-Sunset is your sidekick after all. And she obviously doesn't trust me." He shrunk down a bit lower under Sunset's gaze, which had turned deadly at her name. It was true, Drakken never would understand women. Especially women like Sunset.

"I don't have a spare bed!" Midnight shouted.

"Have her sleep on the floor." Drakken retorted, turning back to his work. Let that teach them to crush his nose, which he needed fixed soon. He had both grown a much larger backbone, and ended a conversation with who were most likely the two most dangerous women, no people, in his life.

His first plan against his old arch nemesis was complete! Both of his subordinates turned and stalked out of the room, fuming for their own reasons. It wasn't long before he pulled his mind away from his world-crushing plans long enough to remember he had something else to do. He had to outline a contract for his newest associate, he'd probably just let 'Midnight' type it up later, he couldn't help but wonder why she'd decided to change her codename in the first place.

Before the contract though, it was time to head to the shower and get rid of the blasted bald-mask. It was making his head itch.

Two women stared at a marked door, marked with a slash of dark black, and an opposing slash of light green. They stared at it for several minutes, then glanced at each other, and stared back at the door, like just by opening it they could be taking the biggest plunge of their lives.

Of course, for a professional thief, villain, and hired hand, like Midnight, and an ex-heroine who casually bungee-jumped out of airplanes like Sunset, sleeping in the same room wasn't quite the biggest plunge. That didn't make it much easier, for some reason. Neither could ignore the odd fluttering over there hearts at the thought of being so close to each other.

It seemed to make it slightly harder, actually. Sunset knew for a fact how well they worked together, and how once past that bitchy shell Midnight had built around herself, she was actually rather caring, maybe even tired of the defenses she had built. Sunset knew, because past her own shell, she was tired as well. Out of the three different faces of Sunset, broken teen, heroine, and villain, she was starting to lose sight of who she was, and who her shell was.

Sunset was perspiring, Midnight was attempting to act indifferent. It didn't seem to work on her new partner and roommate like it did with most other people. After so much time spent fighting, she had a way of seeing past her defenses, even when she couldn't see past anyone else's skin.

Finally Sunset steeled herself, reached out, and grasped the door handle in slick hands, holding it like it would jump out of her grasp if she wasn't careful. She slid open the door, and Midnight stepped back to let her inside.

"Welcome to my humble abode, Princess." The older woman said, stepping in after her. Several rooms in the barracks, gutted, melted slick, and finally furbished with all the makings of a normal house. Their was a kitchen, not too sparse either, a very large room, most likely bathroom, in the back, and an even larger bedroom to the side.

All of it was painted a lush forest green, besides the carpets which bore the traditional bright green and black. To Sunset's disappointment, there wasn't a couch, since the TV was in the bedroom, and the lounge/kitchen was only occupied by a table and a few stools.

"Wow, this stuff looks like it cost more than the rest of this hideout." The redhead commented as she walked along the wall, running her fingers along a desk covered in odd souvenirs, mainly guns, and jewelry boxes. Those interested her more than the other things.

"It did, I keep most of my salary away from Drakken's things." She replied with a lengthy yawn. It seemed to be contagious.

"Don't you worry about it being trashed?"

Midnight shrugged. "We've had this place the longest, there was never really any danger you guys needed to come here for."

Sunset nodded knowingly. Without the death rays, weather machines, and nefarious plots, she never really heard much of her and Drakken.

"Bedroom's over there, you can take the bed. I'm taking a shower. There should be some clothes that fit you in the closet." With that, the dark-haired woman headed towards the bathroom, closing the door.

Sunset dimmed the lights, then headed for the bedroom, considering it odd that her legendary rival had allowed her to take the bed, allowed. She seemed to take on a much different persona when they were off the clock, but she chalked it down to herself reminding Midnight of her at that age. The bed was a wide queen-sized, with the same plush forest-green. The floor was carpeted in it as well, and the only things that really stood out was the bed-frame, walls, and various night tables positioned around the room.

She found the closet in the back. Heading over to it, she pushed open the wide double-doors to find a fully stocked wardrobe, half-filled with copies of Midnight's uniform. The other half was filled with odd clothes, some more biker clothes, skirts, t-shirts, a dark-green dress, some night shirts, even some pajamas.

Most of it was rather slutty, but even Sunset had to admit that Midnight's tight t-shirt had caught her eye.

Just two rooms away, the older woman was resting her head against the shower wall, letting the hot water and steam sooth her tense muscles. Six hours of uncomfortable car seats and jail cells had done horrors on her back and shoulders.

We should be killing each other right now, she thought grimly. It was true, since the start of highschool, they'd been bitter rivals and, in the public opinion, destined to kill each other. But after the debacle with the synthodrone, when she'd ended up electrified and battered, their hearts had left the battle, and it was just a fight to fill the facade. Hate had left the equation, and their respect and admiration had filled back in when her rival had apologized.

"I didn't mean it, I'm sorry. I don't hate you, I was just a little..."

"Annoyed?"

"Annoyed is a good word."

"I admit, it was low, even for Doctor D."

They'd shared a laugh in between the punches. As the villain had escaped, she looked back to find the heroine not pursuing, just standing there with a wave and a smile. Midnight couldn't help but look at the wall that seperated her from her only true bane.

Around a dozen minutes later a click resounded through the quiet mini-house, which much resembled an apartment. The sound symbolized the bathroom light going off, with Midnight exiting seconds later and walking lazily, much in the way a B-movie zombie would, across the darkened lounge to her bedroom.

But her bedroom now held a sleeping redhead on her bed. She paused for several minutes as she entered, watching the redhead sleep. Sunset had chosen a light-green night shirt, and some loose-fitting dark-green drawstring pants. She was snuggled quite intimately with one of Midnight's pillows, a thought that no more than seven hours ago, would have shocked her.

Midnight slipped an unused pillow off the bed, expertly stole one of her 'sidekick's' blankets, and fell to the floor exhausted.