forum Not as we seem (closed; stalkers welcome) hero x villain, enemies to lovers

Started Feb 24 by @Lily_needs_some_coffee!

tune

Ren flips the key card over and over in his hand, on the subway. The wherring of the public transport clams him as he stares at the key to his life's work. With his hands on it, he and Olive could begin planning for the next steps. When he got what he wanted, maybe he could finally rest without Zellie's memory haunting him. His phone buzzes and he pulls it out, the text message from Olive pulling him out of his thoughts. He taps out a reply:

Kay, i'll call the restaurant on my way home. You'll probably be there before me so let urself in with your key.

He'd given Olive a key a month or so ago once they'd started planning and talking about the objective as she once had referred to it. She was honestly his best friend, but he'd never admit it. They acted more like annoyed siblings than friends, come to think of it. She was probably as close to a replacement sister as he could barely to have. He shakes off the thought, pushing Zille out of his mind.

He gets off the R train at his stop, Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station, and walks the two blocks to his apartment. Or at least he means to. But, lost in his thoughts, he bumps smack into a stranger, causing Ren to drop his bag and the key card. Shit. He scrambles to grab it, his long limbs reaching across the concrete, shoving it back in his pocket before glancing up at the stranger… the rather attractive annoyance of a stranger who was still standing in his way. Ren picks his bag back up, standing and scowling. "Move."

(Perfect opening, thank you! sorry this took a bit)
Jas had been given simple enough instructions by his agency. Be at the apartment at 7:00, be discrete, don't get caught, get the info, and leave. Out of all his colleagues, you would think he would be the most competent, given his abilities and experience. And on any other day, Jas would love to accept the worthy praise, but today had particularly sucked. How he had managed to not only get lost twice around the city, which consequentially made him half an hour late but then to slam into exactly who he wasn't supposed to meet was beyond even his comprehension. Well, Jas wouldn't be one of the best heroes at the agency if he hadn't learned to improvise a bit.
Jas gave his best apologetic smile as he knelt to help his target gather his belongings. "Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. I'm just the clumsiest of people when I'm in a rush," he explained in his hurry, taking a glance at the keycard before it was snatched from view. At least he knew he had the right person. Jas let the other take his belongings, straightening as he made a show dusting off his jacket, all the while slowly taking in his newest assignment.
Wyatt Ren Copeland, better known to the agency, Stygian, a villain they hadn't been able to quite get a hold on, that is, until now. Jas wasn't delusional, or so he convinced himself most days. He knew catching the guy was going to take far more than just happening to run into him, but Jas considered his bad good luck a step in the right direction. He caught Wyatt's glare and raised his hands in defense, moving off to the side with a sheepish grin. "of course, sorry." He squeaked out, a slow smile crossing his features. He was never one for being on time, discrete, or not getting caught but he would like to argue he got the agency's worst criminals for a reason, and it wasn't by playing by the rules. "It's almost cute, how you live a normal life right stealing some poor college student's lab key card, and probably the poor thing's heart." He chuckled softly as slowly turned on his heel. "The game is on Ren, I have a feeling we'll be seeing each other soon, dear." he gave a tiny salute before slipping into a crack in the world, one moment slipping behind a street sign post, the next moment gone, the only evidence of his appearance was what Ren could recall.

Jas stumbled onto the rooftop with a laugh, shaking his head as he hunkered down at his makeshift lookout just a few blocks from Olive's apartment but just close enough for him to spot any going on in the surrounding area. He sent a quick text to contact in his phone with just the emojis of cherries and a heart, as well as a location change to his current spot.
"U should have seen him, he looks so mad, omg!
He's gonna be a fun one. Here in 5?"

Ren was fuming. He'd been so careless. He'd been over confident, arrogant, stupid. The man had known him, had used his full name. Ren was short-handed, left without information, without the upper hand which he hated. He played the words back in his head.
It's almost cute, how you live a normal life right stealing some poor college student's lab key card, and probably the poor thing's heart.
Ren moved quickly, backtracking and sliding into a crowded coffee shop to think. He needed to act quickly. He turned the ring around his finger, concentrating, and his jaw ticks once. A mangy looking brown tabby cat appears outside the coffee shop window, causing a smirk to appear on Ren's face. Through his glasses, he could tell it was his best illusion yet. Fully solid, acting of its own accord on Ren's orders, able to go up to five miles from him. Best of all it was recording all in saw, audio too. His heartbeat calmed. This was his upper hand. Whoever that was, he must have been from the agency to know so much. And the agency didn't know about this.
With a wave of his hand, the stray cat slinks off, following the trail of the pretty boy stranger. Ren cautiously finishes the two block walk to his apartment building, doubling back and switching paths until he is certain no one is following. He rides the elevator to his floor and checks in on the cat using his glasses– who seemed to be slinking up the stairs of an apartment building a few blocks away, towards the rooftop. He quickly uses the lenses to edit the illusion, changing it from a shabby stray to a sleek housecat with tags marking him as owned by someone in the building. Satisfied with himself, he heads down his hall, finding Olive outside his door. His brow furrows. "Why didn't you use your key?"

Olive heard Ren coming from a bit away. Finally. Took him long enough.

"I figured it might piss you off more if I was waiting outside for you with a cup of your coffee." Oliver replies, indicating the mug of coffee in her hand with a deadpan expression.

"Although it already looks like you're kind of upset, so…" she opens the door to the apartment and walks in, kicking off her shoes right in front of the couch and sitting, propping her feet on the coffee table and staring at Ren, daring him to say something.

It wasn't as though she liked being like this to him, but it was fun. A way to actually try and let her true self show a bitm

"Anyways, you going to order food or what?"

Cherry casually walked down the street, sipping her coffee with a small bakery box in hand. She had sat near Olivier's house for hours, waiting for someone to finally come out, and when they did, she had watched, getting familiar with their face and mannerisms.

Now, Cherry hadn't been ordered to do anything in that regard, but she found herself doing it out of her own volition. She didn't have a death wish per se, but it seemed that her slightly reckless tendencies showed even when it came time to work on more serious matters. It was something she had been trying to curve for a while now but to no avail.

A faint buzzing next to her leg snapped her out of her thoughts as she struggled to reach it with the things in her hands.
Her eyes briefly glanced over the name then the coffee cup emoji followed by a canceled emoji, and then finally, the text. A small amused huff left her lips and she texted back.

"Haha leave the poor guy alone assholeeee
Already picking on him" A smile crossed Cherry's lips as she sent it and continued to text, glancing up for seconds at a time as she watched her step.
"And yes sir🫡
Be there in five!!"

It took nearly no time for Cherry to meet up with Jas, who, upon greeting offered the other the pastry box. There was nothing like having something sweet before work- er, in her case, it was caffeine in the form of coffee. She may not have had a typical job, but damn did it suck the energy right out of her.
"Chocolate cake" She announced, placing the box in his hands. "Woulda gotten ya a coffee too but someone clearly has wrong opinions- and taste in drinks it seems" She scrunched her nose playfully at him.

Ren, to his credit, found Olive's attempts to frustrate him funny. They'd know each other years, been best friends for long enough he couldn't remember who the bad influence had been. Her narrowed his eyes. "You're right, that does irk me, Olive Oil."
He follows her into the apartment and pours himself a cup of coffee from the full coffee pot Olive had brewed, grumbling to himself. "Used the African beans too, can't have anything nice around here…" He leans back against the counter and stares at Oliver. "Damn right I'm upset. We have a major problem. I ran into an agency member." His jaw ticked and he ran a hand through his hair, mumbling. "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, an' lea us sairly greet; For our intent we mayna see, But a' the world's in a muddle and a mess." He pulls his wallet out of his pocket in short, jerky movements, and tosses onto the couch beside Olive. "Call Fortune House and order the works. Let's get extra egg rolls too. Use my card." He taps at the side of his glasses and slides a stack of books off an armchair and onto the floor before slumping into the armchair. "Got an illusion tagging them and I want to check on it."
The glasses blur and he watches the cat as it slinks across the side of an apartment rooftop, past the man he'd seen earlier and settles in a sun soaked spot.
"Chocolate cake," a young Hispanic woman says handing a box to the man. "Woulda gotten ya a coffee too but someone clearly has wrong opinions- and taste in drinks it seems." The cat yawns and stretches out, earning Ren a better view of where the two are looking– and he holds back a groan. He taps the side of his glasses again.
"Olive, they're watching the building. We've got to plan faster."

Oliver, being the petty bitch that she is towards Ren, glares at him as he calls her Olive Oil, and charges his coffee with antimatter, causing it to boil right out of the mug.

"Agency member? Oh right, the assholes trying to stop us from doing… I forget, what the hell are we doing all this for again?" Olive sighs. "It's been months since you decided to try and steal that damn key. Why are we eve here?"

"And speaking of agency members, one of them's been stalking for a bit; would have killed them right then but figured you'd want them alive," she grumbles, finishing off her cup of coffee.

Oliver grabs the card out of the wallet and proceeds to be completely unreasonable with the amount of food she orders, hanging up the phone after she's done and giving Ren a smug look.

TW: Ren explains his plan to take down world wide pedophiles.

A curse flies out of Ren's mouth as he loses himself in thought and returns to the present only to find his coffee boiling over, stinging his hand. "Shit, Olive!" He throws a towel on the spill as Olive orders the food, running his hand under cold water, nursing the burn. He leans back against the counter, putting weight on his good leg. "The key was just step one. We've got to get that AI Neurochip out of the lab.." He sighs, searching for words, and uttering what amounts to a "f#ck it" in Hebrew. He grabs his laptop from the top of a stack of books on the kitchen windowsill. He opens it, pulls up a surveillance video and spins it around to show Olive. "You see these men?"
The video shows a group of men in hoods passing around some sort of bottle. "Pedophiles. Celebrating after selling a child into trafficking." He clicks around, pulling up another video, this time from within the damn oval office. The president sits behind his desk, signing a trade policy. "PODUS. Signing a policy that's a poor excuse for a cover up of trading trafficking victims to foreign shores." He pulls up another piece of footage. Suited men flip though booklets with pictures of children's faces. "Congressmen preparing to bid at an auction on children. Children, Olive." He shifts his weight, reaching behind him to grab a small whiskey bottle and pours a bit into his refilled coffee cup before offering it to Oliver. "Our government is full of perverted men, Olive. Pedos who are barely covering a child abduction ring. And there's other world powers too. It's an evil evil world. I'm just fighting evil with evil. We get that AI from the lab, we release the biological warfare virus also contained in that lab. And we put the neurochip in every vaccine. And then we'll have it. Complete control to make the world good. No more free will; free will has done enough. Just peace and control. Imagine it, dear. A peaceful word where no child suffers again. What is the sacrifice of decision against that?"

Olive just stares at Ren for a good few minutes.

"Why not just walk into the government building and have me nuke the place? Given that you have the means to make tech that I'm not even sure how it works even with me being an expert in the field of qauntum technology and physics, I'm certain that you could make a device capable of at least wiping out a city block when charged with antimatter. Or could at least find someone who could make the device. Your way just seems very… dependant on us not getting caught," she sighs. "Which I guess is simple in theory until you realize they know our addresses, real names… really everything."

Oliver takes the whiskey and drinks straight from the bottle before mixing some in with her coffee.