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If asked, the supervillain Deceit would monologue long and loud about how his ascent to the top of the criminal underworld had been driven by a need to make his mark on a world that sought to deny him what he wanted—and to serve a lesson to those who had committed the sin of failing to listen to him. Then again, anyone who was actually paying attention might catch on to the tiny detail that, if there was one thing that came easily to Deceit, it was lies.
In truth, Janus's entry into the world of supervillainy had been an accident. And it had started with a lie meant to save his own skin.
Everything else just kind of...spiraled after that.
The trouble with shape-shifting was that, as powers went, it became far less effective the more people knew that you could do it. As such, when Janus had developed the ability in his teenage years, he had gone to great lengths to preserve this edge from being eroded by having it discovered. He was careful in testing it out, always made sure to have an alibi ready in case someone suspected he might have been somewhere he wasn't meant to be, and made sure that any situation in which he was trying to be someone else had an escape route ready in case he was in danger of getting caught...
Years later, and he still hadn't been, at least not in any way that could have been traced back to the name he had been born with. And he had perfected his defenses over the years. By the time he was twenty-one, he had been able to create several false identities, and he had gone on over the years to establish a few of them even further, with residencies in cheap apartments complete with roommates who were covering the other half of the rent. They had fake jobs working for a few small, unrelated businesses that he actually owned under his birth name, and those businesses had other employees keeping things running every day. He even showed up to work those jobs from time to time, just enough to justify whatever excuses from on high (himself) kept the more productive employees there from removing the ghost from their payroll.
Which, alright, in hindsight, that was arguably in the neighborhood of supervillain behavior, but he had never claimed that he wasn't a bit damaged. When your family had more money than God and spared less time for you on average than the typical drive-through interaction, then one could presumably be forgiven for going to extremes, both to occupy oneself and to substitute the attention they had denied you...well, pretty much whatever you could get.
At any rate, it wasn't as if he had been doing anything more nefarious with this machine of capital and lies than keeping it running so that he could use it to disguise his pursuit of passions that his parents would most likely not approve of, given their stated preference that he focus on his role in the family business and not cause a fuss. They could be happy that he was using what they had given him to turn a profit for the company, and he could be content doing exactly what he liked without having his actions scrutinized by parents that had finally decided he was a person now that he could properly make them money.
And, look, as clandestine pursuits went, he certainly could have done far worse than a side career in investigative journalism, but he had discovered as early as high school that he had a knack for getting information out of people that they didn't want to share. He had also, around that same time, come to harbor a decided appreciation for causing problems for people who thought they could pick and choose which rules they had to follow...
(Did that make him a hypocrite? Perhaps. But in a world where having power meant you could make your own rules, using the powers he had to do the same was playing by the rules, wasn't it?)
But to get back to his original point, life had given him advantages and he had found his own way to use them, and that frequently involved either finding trouble or causing trouble. Occasionally both, when it amused him. He had his identities, and those identities each had their own contacts, and it was through those contacts that he typically worked his magic.
That said, the problem with relying on contacts and trickery for information was that one could only go into a situation with the information they had available, and contacts unaware who they were giving their information to tended to give incomplete or misleading information trusting that a person who should have it would know what they were getting into. Digging his way into circles where secrets were being hidden often resulted in catching only the narrowest little glimpse of that secret. And, sometimes, with only one small corner of a secret exposed, it was all too easy to misjudge how big a secret actually was before he had dug himself in too deep to get back out again...
Or to misinterpret what he was walking into entirely.
Which was how Janus had suffered the misfortune, one night, of finding himself tied and hanging upside down over the comically green-colored water of a noxious-smelling tank, under threat of being fed to whatever kind of unholy abominations lived therein.
He had gone down to the warehouse district that night to snoop around a building where rumors had been reporting the sounds of strange animals and even stranger smells. He had expected that he might find some of the missing pieces to the puzzle he was putting together about illegal trade in exotic pets that was on the rise in the city, or that it might instead potentially reveal an animal fighting ring or some similarly interesting thing. Suffice to say, neither of those turned out to be the case, and Janus had instead wound up cursing himself as creatively as he could still manage with all the blood rushing to his head while the self-coined Duke of Nightmares took his sweet time deciding what to do with the stranger he had discovered poking about right in the middle of his secret goddamned lair.
"You know...usually I try to be chill if I find someone where they shouldn't be," the Duke said. "I mean, I get it if someone comes through looking for a place to squat—hell, I'm actually between homes myself at the moment. Honestly, just look at this place! Big, ugly, boxy thing... Boring. Definitely not the digs I'd prefer. But my brother and his cheer squad kind of kicked my ass on Tuesday and I needed a place for me and my friends to crash in a hurry..."
The 'friends' in question were a dozen or so hairy, tentacled things burbling hungrily from the tank below Janus's hanging form.
"So I'm going to give you the chance to explain why you were here," the Duke continued airily, "but—and this is a huge one, massive, I want you to know—it's pretty obvious by your threads that you're probably not here after the promise of free camping real estate unless you were disadvantaged pretty recently. And I mean, if you were, you probably could have pawned this nice, shiny camera, right? Looks expensive..."
The Duke was, of course, flipping through the numerous pictures that Janus had managed to take of the many tanks and the peculiar creatures in them that had apparently all been recently relocated from the supervillain's previous lair.
You know. When it had been obvious that he had made a mistake and yet, like an idiot, he hadn't had the good sense that God gave a rat and just gotten the hell out of there was his instincts had started to tell him he was in danger.
But. He wasn't dead yet. And as they said, where there was life there's hope.
After all, it wasn't as if Janus didn't know anything about the Duke. Or his superhero brother, the Sanguine Prince, for that matter. Because when you were going to be poking into secrets like he did, you had to know just enough about the affairs of the superpowered crowd so that you could avoid them. Mission failed there, unfortunately, but that was a landscape that was ever-changing. He had always been bound to slip up some time, and for the most part he had ideas for how to get himself out of super-powered trouble if he ever wound up with the misfortune of falling into it...
He just hadn't ever anticipating falling in so suddenly or so deep.
Well, there was one idea he had in mind to explain his presence—and the camera, for that matter—unfortunately, he had done so with the Prince, not the Duke in mind. Fortunately, the two were very similar: both bombastic in temperament and theatrical in their presentation, both shamelessly attention-driven—and, most pertinently to the series of events that would inevitably follow, both of them as unabashedly gay as a summer day was long. Unfortunately, the differences between the two were just as broad and those differences could mean the difference between life and death if Janus failed to navigate them properly.
(Most notably, the Sanguine Prince was far less known for unpredictable bouts of violence, nor was he notorious for meting out bizarre and creative punishments upon those who had wronged him.)
But the Prince was easily distracted by praise and hopelessly susceptible to flattery. And, quite possibly, just vain enough that Janus thought he might be able to compliment his way out of trouble in a pinch... There was a chance that the Duke was the same. And the alternative was pulling out a much weaker excuse that might wind up with him being fed to a swarm of peculiar monstrosities that looked like nothing so much as inexplicably sentient and apparently starving drain clogs.
(And, in all honestly, he simply hadn't had a better idea at that point...)
"It's- Well, it's kind of embarrassing, really..." Janus began, awkwardly.
(Only part of it was feigned. This escape plan was going to be intensely embarrassing to pursue.)
"Oh?" the Duke asked. He perked up, leaning in with a hand behind his ear, miming his exaggerated interest. "Even better! Do tell."
Did he take the direct approach here or not? If it were the Prince, he probably could have gone straight for it (well, straight was arguably the wrong word) but while the Duke had the reputation for being short-sighted and distractable in many of his plans, he had demonstrated himself to be a lot cannier in other ways.
No, if he said it outright too soon he had no doubt he would wind up tripping the villain's bullshit detector.
Playing coy it was.
"I mean, I-" He put his hands over his face. "Do I really have to say it?"
Normally, he would have to put in a bit of extra effort to get his face to flush in order to properly fake an emotion like mortification, but due to his current inverted position it wasn't needed. The blood was already exactly where it needed to be, and, well...
The whole situation was embarrassing, even if it wasn't for the reasons he was trying to claim.
"I mean, you'd probably better if you don't want to wind up somebody's dinner," the Duke said, pointing to the growling balls of hair bobbing and flailing for his flesh from within the murky water.
Janus let out a groan, as if having the "truth" dragged out of him was causing him pain.
"Look, I just... I'm...kind of an admirer of yours, alright?!" Janus said.
He may have imagined it, but he saw the Duke's—grin? grimace? It was difficult to tell from upside down—falter for just a moment.
"An admirer," he said, almost flatly. "Yeah right..."
It was faint, but there was an unmistakable bitterness lacing his words. A tone that, in his particular circumstances, sounded dangerous. Janus knew it needed to be addressed.
"Is that so hard to believe?" Janus asked.
And he certainly hoped that it wasn't, since he desperately needed the Duke to believe it.
"I'm not exactly famous for my good qualities," the Duke answered, gesturing to...well, Janus's decidedly unpleasant situation and the rabid balls of hair currently clambering for his blood.
Which was a very good point, he supposed.
"I doubt that many in your profession are," Janus said, "but it doesn't mean that you don't have them."
The Duke scoffed, blowing his lips rather dramatically and wetly.
"Fine, I'll bite," he said. "Tell me about these alleged good qualities. Exactly what parts of me do you admire?"
"Your approach to causing chaos in the city is entirely unique," Janus said. "So many villains in this city seem to find their gimmick and then stick to it almost slavishly, but you've never re-used the same trick twice. It's smart, never letting yourself be bound to any one goal or approach to your schemes. Not only is it refreshing, but it's also made it so much harder for the so-called heroes to deal with you."
The "so-called heroes" bit was as chancy as it was cliche, but you really never got very far in a conversation with supervillain stans without hearing them call the heroes' motives or methods into question...which was more or less the only thing he found respectable about most supervillain stans.
Still, it wasn't as if he were trying to chat up—or apologize for—one of the city's more destructive villains.
The Duke's ability to twist reality was honestly somewhat terrifying in its potential, and yet he rarely seemed to bother using it to what must have been its full, frightening capabilities. His public stunts were always flashy, often resulting in mass confusion and vandalism on a truly alarming scale, but while the consequences of his actions were often stressful and inconvenient to encounter, they did not—for the most part—tend to have much of a lasting impact on the lives of the city's denizens once his games were over. And—again, for the most part—once it was over, people could usually expect to go about their day, often with only minor changes to their daily routine...
Indeed, the Duke's worst actions were typically perpetrated against individuals or small groups, each of whom he had publicly decreed the reason for his ire long before making his move. Even then, he seemed to take great delight in plotting attacks that were bizarre and dramatic, sometimes karmic, rather than life-threatening. The only instances of significant lasting harm that Janus could recall were from targets who had gotten careless in their attempts to evade his punishment...
(There was one man, he recalled, apparently a notorious loan shark, who had tried to flee by jumping over a short wall that had turned out to have a much longer drop on the other side. Granted, being pursued by a swarm of screaming pigeons with heads resembling Nicholas Cage was no doubt traumatic, but was it worth breaking both legs over? Janus highly doubted it.)
"Uh-huh, sure," the Duke said, sounding unconvinced. "Go on."
Well, he supposed if he were listing the "good qualities" of a supervillain anyway...
"It may escape the attention of a lot of people in this city," Janus said, "but it's clear that you're not quite like the other villains in your motivations, either. Oh, you'll hatch a clever scheme to go along with the spectacle every now and then, but you seem to have a good time even when your plans are thwarted. It really should be obvious by now. You're not in it for money, or revenge, or any kind of agenda, whatever you claim on any given week. No...you're an artist. The spectacle is the point."
"And my brand of art is what cranks your tank, huh?" the Duke asked skeptically.
Even as a matter of life and death, the idea of answering that question in the affirmative felt like biting into chalk.
"I suppose you could say I'm appreciative of how you operate within the medium," Janus hedged. "People tend to weigh powers and their usefulness in terms of sheer brute force rather than what you can actually do with them. Yours are terrifying, and it's obvious you could be doing much bigger things with them if you wanted. Instead you entertain yourself. You put on a show for the world to see. I think that in itself is an artistic statement, don't you?"
The Duke looked at him for a long span of silence, eyes narrowed slightly as he stared, and Janus could all but feel himself being examined like a peculiar bug. He just had to hope that he was right in his guess that the Duke would appreciate peculiarity...
"Besides, I can't claim I know for sure what's behind that domino mask," Janus said at last, growing impatient, "but no one wears a suit that tight unaware of exactly what they're putting on display..."
This managed to startle a cackle out of the villain, head thrown back and everything.
"No, but for real though," the Duke said, wiping a tear, "you have me seriously doubting your taste and common sense."
"Oh, believe me," Janus said, "I second guess myself on both of those all the time..."
It wasn't even a lie, at this point.
And then, because the issue truly was getting rather urgent:
"Could...I please get down? I'm...afraid I might black out."
The Duke seemed to consider it for only a moment before finally tossing a shrug.
"Eh, sure. Why not."
By the time the Duke had relocated his hungry, hirsute little nightmares and lowered him down from the ceiling, Janus decided that he had been taking the beauty of the world as it existed right-side-up for granted. He had also decided that he was never talking to the contact that had led him to this building ever again.
"So, to sum up, you're saying you're basically my stalker."
Janus was also weighing whether or not death might be preferable to finishing this conversation with the supervillain, though. He was unfortunately still on the fence.
"N-n-yeeees?" Janus answered, deciding to commit roughly halfway through his answer. "I mean, I could try to argue semantics, but I feel like I'd be wasting my breath. Though you won't have to worry about seeing me again if you decide to be so kind as to let me go, I'm already having regrets..."
Indeed, Janus was half convinced that he might need to burn the specific identity they were having this conversation under. Just in case.
(Possibly literally...he was pretty sure that if he went so far as to enact a fictional death that there was a life insurance payout for one of his other identities if he did.)
"Nah, it's cool," the Duke said. "Never had a stalker before. Can I get your number?"
And there really wasn't a way that he could plausibly turn him down at this point, but...at least Janus had already resigned himself to cutting his losses with this identity anyway.
Truly, that should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, the unending, cruel perversity of life on Earth had decreed otherwise. And that decree was sprung on him nearly a full week later when he opened the door to one of his apartments and was greeted by the sight of a stranger dressed in black, bearing a large bouquet of...
No, honestly, Janus couldn't even have begun to describe the blossoms in that arrangement. The most innocent of them looked somewhat like yellow calla lilies if the shape of the spadix at the center was improbably more suggestive than could possibly have been natural. He was also certain that Venus fly traps didn't grow quite that large, nor did they actually tend to move so much on their own. Also the pansies had eyes, and they seemed to be whispering.
So of course he realized the identity of this stranger, even before he honed in on the broad, rictus-like grin that stretched itself far too wide beneath his mustache...
(Seriously, he had always assumed the Duke's mustache would have to be fake. It wasn't as if anyone could fail to recognize him from it. Then again, he was starting to see that the Duke might fail to care.)
"How-" the question was startled out of him by the sight and he only just managed to redirect his shock toward what was hopefully a more neutral expression of surprise. "H-how can I help you?"
Because there was no possible way-
"Aw, don't be like that," the Duke said. "Can't I even get a little excitement from my biggest fan?"
At which point common sense suspended itself and Janus's brain was left running off a cliff only to hang there like some unfortunate cartoon character before blurting out:
"I'm not even wearing the same face."
"Yeah, I noticed," the Duke said cheerily. "Which is really cool, by the way! And also maybe not a front porch conversation? I mean, unless-"
Swearing, Janus pulled him inside and shut the door. Fortunately, his roommate at this apartment was out on his day job doing...he honestly couldn't remember at the moment. He would, usually, but right now all of his brain function was currently narrowed in on the alarming detail of the supervillain standing in his entryway despite the fact that the name and number that Janus had given him—and his face—should have carried no overt connection to this one whatsoever.
"How?" Janus demanded again, this time in earnest.
"I asked the sidewalk to take me directly to wherever you were," the Duke answered simply.
As if that made any sense.
"Sure," Janus said, choosing—for now—to ignore it. "Why then?"
"What, can't this just be a booty call?"
Janus actually found himself considering the question seriously for a moment.
"No," Janus said slowly. "Because my life could never be that simple... Listen, Duke-"
"Remus."
Janus's heart jolted in his chest.
"What."
"Remus," the Duke repeated. "You know. My name."
"Why would you tell me your-"
"Well, the whole roommates thing is probably a lot easier if you know my name," Remus said.
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I need a roommate," Remus said, as if that were something that was not only obvious from their conversation but also remotely reasonable to ask for. "Remember? My brother, his crew, blah blah blah, warehouse... And I thought I was forgetful."
"I don't-"
"I do!"
"What?"
"I need a place to crash," Remus said, slowly. "And you are going to say yes, because you need me."
"I don't- Why would I need you?"
"Because you're bored out of your skull and starved of attention," Remus said grinning happily. "I could tell. I can smell it on you, really. You're having fun playing games right now, and you've convinced yourself that you're happy enough playing them, but you've got everyone in your life—lives—fooled already and you're starting to get bored of it."
Janus recalled the feeling of dangling from a rope and feeling like he was being examined like a bug. In retrospect, he realized he was being dissected the entire time...
"And I mean...it's a damned pickle of a problem," Remus said, "but don't worry. I know how to tickle it. What you need is a new game to play. And, believe it or not, I'm the best one to help you learn all the rules..."
"How?" Janus had asked, startled at himself when he did.
Alarmed at himself that any part of him was actually considering...
"Well, like I said, I need a roommate," Remus said. "And I also kind of want to hear what you think I could be doing with my powers. Don't think I forgot that little bit of our conversation. I'm curious as hell about your ideas! I've never actually gotten honest con-crit before..."
"Sure. Right," Janus eventually managed, dry mouthed. "I guess we could...talk."
After all, Janus knew all about handling roommates, and only a fool would consider in a roommate without learning a few things about them first...
(By now, Janus was sure that Remus had known exactly what he would be unleashing on the world when he showed up at his door, but, for better or worse, the rest was history.)