It all started many years earlier, back in high school, with her best friend trying to get revenge for sexual harassment at the hands of a football player. Veronica thought Betty couldn't handle "all dark, no stars" with her blonde ponytail and pink cardigan, but she was wrong. It sparked a darkness of its own.

Elizabeth Cooper wore all black, a black face mask, and a black cape with a hood that she secured over her head with bobby pins. You couldn't even tell she was blonde. Veronica raised her eyebrows as the two of them left. Veronica stayed nearby in an incognito black town car. It was the least conspicuous car they owned and was far less obvious compared to the cars the Coopers had. The Coopers were ruthless investigative journalists so their vehicles were marked in the collective consciousness as bad omens and yet everyone still paid for their daily edition of the paper. Betty Cooper had suspected that her mother must have been blackmailing them. There was no way Alice Cooper didn't have dirt on literally everyone.

She ducked behind a storage box on the side of the house and watched as Chuck Clayton vigorously scratched some plays into his notebook. He was captain, previously co-captain, of the Riverdale Bulldogs football team and would have to come up with strategies. She was preparing a strategy of her own.

Her black stiletto boots weren't very functional for walking but they looked good and they worked great as a weapon. There would be no fumbling and dropping, just a swift sharp kick.

She pushes him out of his seat and into the wall.

"I heard you've been a bad boy, Chuck. Been messing with people's hearts and reputations. Would be a shame if someone were to break something of yours."

She maintained a vicious atmosphere, sounding confident and perhaps even dangerous, but she was shaking like a leaf on the inside. Her heel dug into his foot and she heard a squeal as he seemed to fall apart.

"Really, now, Charles? You're that easy? Delete the pictures and burn the book. You have been warned." She grabbed her cape and flung it around as she took off in the darkness, with Veronica anxiously waiting in the get away car. They were already half way to Chateau Lodge before Betty finally gave any details to her ever impatient and curious best friend.

"I think that'll be the end of that. He's either not nearly as tough as he looks or..." she turned a beet red.

"Yeah Betty, orrrrr?"

"I think he might have came. I didn't even do anything." Veronica giggled and that was supposed to be the end of that.

And it was, for Chuck. In a fit of embarrassment, he did what was asked of him, afraid of what would happen if the truth of that night came to light. His reputation would be soiled.

But what BV dubbed "Dark Betty" did not go away. In fact, with Veronica as her benefactor, Betty took on the role of vigilante hero as a part of her routine. School, cheerleading practice, write for the school newspaper, do homework, fight crime, go to bed, rince and repeat. The styling of her costume remained the same but the material was more sturdy and a breathable material was used as a hair cover in case the hood ever came off. There weren't a lot of blondes like Betty in the town of Riverdale- a town with such a small population and yet such a high crime rate.

There was actually a game to it, at one point, as Veronica morally opposed her father's business dealings and would often donate more money to the Dark Betty cause to take down some of his unscrupulous under the table affairs. Daddy would try to hide something sinister from her and she would find out anyways. He had no idea that the person ruining his plans was actually his daughter, with the help of her best friend.

Upon graduating high school, the duo sat down and talked about the longevity of project Dark Betty. Betty wanted to pursue criminal justice but her even controlling mother pushed her into investigative journalism in hopes that one day she would inherit and extend the current Cooper newspaper enterprise- Big hopes for a form of media that is supposedly on the way out.

Veronica wanted to go into fashion design so the two of them made a pact to get their degrees in the same city. That city turned out to be New York, the fashion capital of North America. Veronica got one of their old homes from her childhood living in the city transferred to her name. As her dad had a secret study, she had a room hidden behind Betty's library for their project. There were outfit sketches and different weapons ideas and even a ratty black wig that was originally going to cover Betty's tresses but looked so awful that they switched to the hair cover. This was also a safe place to plan for things that needed more thought than just sweeping the streets at night for crime.

Unfortunately as the two worked through their degrees, Betty's character started to make the news. Some of it was positive but mostly negative. In Riverdale this had not been a problem as Betty's second best friend, Kevin Keller was the son of the sheriff which gave her a bit of leeway. It also helped that her work never got out at the time so Sheriff Keller actually got all the credit for her hard work.

Riverdale actually had a public hero before though, and he happened to be Betty's neighbor growing up. When "The Red Circle" got caught playing hero, the town used it as a chance to involve youth in police work with the hope that they would see it as a potential career in the future. For him, it was, and now he was on the "right" side of the law with due process and all that. He now believed that the law kept people safe and preventing innocent people from going to jail.

Betty believed that just meant more criminals went unprosecuted for their crimes. She never went after people without proving to herself that they were guilty, but the courts would be a completely different matter. She knew this first hand for when Forythe Jones II went to jail for the murder of her sister's boyfriend. After it was all settled, the family sat down and Betty's face exploded with abstract horror as it was made clear that Jason and Polly's babies would be the product of incest. She told her newly discovered cousin Cheryl the news the following day. "Ew, my life is literally a gothic horror fiction."

Polly ended up living with Cheryl and the Blossoms, a choice her own family highly disapproved of but couldn't prevent.

And that brings us to now, with Betty Cooper and Veronica lodge freezing in place as they notice a red head sitting on the fancy chaise downstairs in the apartment complex.

"Sweet cousin I need your help, it's about Jason."