[August 17th, year 2063, 9:19 AM]

Even if the job wasn’t always the best, one thing that never got old for Yata was zipping from building to building. He loved the "Thwip'' sound that his grapnel gun made when he pulled the trigger. The distant "clang" he heard when it stuck to a distant metallic surface was like music to his ears. His grin was ever-present on his face as the gun's pull carried him high into the air, only for him to go straight back into free fall. All this thrill as he free-fell off of a building almost caused him to forget the asshole following behind him.

"Test, test. One, Two, Three. One. Two. Is this working?" Wattz's voice rang through his earpiece, disrupting his enjoyment. If only he had remained silent for a few more minutes…

"I heard you loud and clear, Green," Yata spoke to Wattz through his comms as he neared a building's roof rail.

"Really now? Green? That's your best comeback for Cat?" Wattz fired back, amusement veiled his voice. Yata landed on the railing safely and fired his grapnel gun again. Wattz kept on swinging below him.

"With you wearing green all the time, I thought it best to call you that," Yata said as he fired his grapnel gun. Yet once he felt the pull of his gun, he grinned wickedly, a cheeky question just leaving his mouth, "Unless you want me to call you 'string'?"

"Oh, don't you fucking dare!" Wattz warned through the comms, while he neared a railing. Yata's grin deepened.

"Pft, well Green it is!" Yata snorted at his small victory. Hearing Wattz's frustrated groan made it all the sweeter.

"If there's nothing more of relevance, I'm going to leave the conversation here. Wattz out." After that, the comms went silent, just as both heroes neared Vermillion Avenue. Once they both crossed that street, the two heroes would be entering Sector 8, or better known as The Central District.

On the surface, crossing Vermillion Avenue shouldn’t mean much for Yata, but each sector had its little detail that separated them from the rest. If Yata were to name that detail for The Silent District, he would say it was the history of the place, as The Silent District was the preferred place for The Undaunting Villain and The Speaker to duel four years ago. On the other hand, Crime Joint was known as both the drinking capital of Vermillion Blue and the DSG’s sector of operation.

Yet, the little detail that made Sector 8 unique is what put Yata on edge. He wouldn’t say it was its namesake for being in the middle of the city, oh no. The Central District was known for being one of the busiest parts of Vermillion Blue in both hero activity and population density. Sector 8 alone had three times the population of Sector 7.

In Yata’s book, more population density meant more safety risks. If a truly dangerous supervillain decided to cause anarchy in this sector, they had triple the amount of possible hostages than on sector 7 or 9. Due to this, there’s always a need for heroes in this sector. When more heroes are active in a sector, there's bound to be more security and civil control throughout Sector 8. Or at least that was the theory until The Night of Fear proved it wrong.

A sigh escaped Yata, as he tried to refocus on the mission at hand. He quickly glanced back, checking up on how Wattz was doing. The newbie was following behind him, keeping good pacing and not looking that winded. Almost as if he was enjoying the moment. Yata could empathize a bit with that attitude, as grappling from building to building was one of the pleasures that never got old with the job.

“Hey, Watch out!” A voice rang. Yata didn’t have time to react as another hero clad in a red and yellow costume almost crashed into Yata at a fast speed. He had to maneuver around the person, yet he did it so fast that he lost a bit of grip on his grapnel gun, causing both of them to collide. Thankfully, they didn't plummet to the ground, as each regained some semblance of balance, but instead, they both had to make a sudden stop on a nearby rooftop.

"Are you insane? Watch where you're going!" The man in the red and yellow costume barked while glaring at Yata. The cat hero ignored the man in favor seeing where Wattz went. He only managed to catch Wattz's distant green figure disappearing along the rooftops. Of course, he would go on ahead.

"Hey, are you deaf? Huh?" The other hero said while puffing his chest. An annoyed groan escaped Yata, as he gave his full attention to the other man

"Please give me a second to think," Yata answered as calmly as he could. The other hero kindly shut his mouth, giving Yata some time to look around for his grapnel gun. He found it attached to one of the railings, tangled up with the other hero’s gun. He pried it free from the railing and went on to untangle them while trying to minimize the damage to the equipment as much as possible. In a few minutes, he got them both free.

“Here,” Yata said, tossing the other hero his grapnel gun, “Your hook.”

The other hero huffed as he caught it, checking it for any damages or whatever went through his angered brain, before going back to the railing.

“Keep your eyes on the front next time, dickwad.” The other hero said.

"Hope you go and eat shit," Yata muttered back as neared the other side of the building and jumped off the railing, but only after flipping off the annoying asshole behind him.

"Hey Cat, come in, where are you?" Wattz growled through the comms, dispersing the silence. Yata groaned. The timing Wattz had!

"Got into a bit of a crash with another hero," Yata answered neutrally, pushing down his annoyance in favor of checking his surroundings, “Gimme a sec so that I can check where I am.”

He stopped his momentum and gracefully landed near a perch point on one of the many buildings. He scanned his surroundings for a familiar location until he spotted the Small Europe near Matthew's Market.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm facing Little Europe, on Herron Street with Genova Avenue." He answered, stretching his arm.

"The place that has that marine-themed bar right in front of it?" Wattz asked.

"Yeah, that's the place," Yata affirmed.

"Well then, I'm a few streets over by Food Course Plaza, a few blocks down from the target building," Wattz detailed his location.

"I'll be there in a few; Sit still, since we still need to come up with a game plan for our mission. Yata out." Without waiting for an answer, Yata closed off his comms and fired his grapnel gun once again.

Yata took the long way to Food Course Plaza, enjoying the little time he had before his recurring headache came back. The cold morning breeze ran through his face and into his hoodie, causing it to fall to his shoulders.

In a few minutes, he found the small plaza filled with restaurants. He kept his eyes open for a landing spot, but he kept swinging around, letting the wind ruffle his hair for a bit longer. It was a good feeling that didn't last too long, as he spotted an open space on the rooftops of the Italian restaurant.

Sighing in disappointment, the cat hero readied himself for a dive, and in a few moments, he landed with a roll on the open space without any issues whatsoever. He brushed up some dust and then put his hand on his comm piece on his ear, opening up the channel.

"Green, where are you?" Yata inquired while he looked around.

"I'm by Ikura, the Sushi Bar." He answered while clicking his tongue. "You're here Cat? Where are you at?"

"On the roof of Buca's, but I can’t find you" Yata answered as he scanned through the crowd of people entering and leaving the plaza for the Green newbie.

"Hang on, I'm on my way," Wattz replied just before cutting the comm line.

Yata made himself comfortable by sitting on top of a nearby transformer. He then heard a "clang" sound to his left and saw a hook sticking on the edge of the roof. Right after, Wattz zipped upwards and gracefully landed near the cat hero.

"You're here," Yata said, narrowing his eyes towards the green-clad hero.

"Good to know I can count on you on being on time." Wattz fired back, his arms crossed. Both men stared at each other, sizing each other up. Ultimately, Yata gave in. He wasn't in the mood after crashing into another hero, and they still had to make their plan for the mission.

"Since I have your undivided attention now, let's discuss how to do this," Yata said, while bringing out a small metallic gray circle and placing it by his side. This was a portable version of the display pod known as the PDP, which was rarer to find than its stationary counterpart. Just remembering how big of a hit Yata's wallet took that day made the cat hero wince.

Yata pressed a button on the gadget's side causing the little circle to display an outline of the StreetSender's headquarters.

"As Lozen detailed earlier, Our mission is to verify if the discrepancies were a fluke or no mere coincidence," He said, crossing his legs. Wattz made himself comfortable by sitting cross-legged on the rooftop.

"This is a schematic of the building we are to infiltrate sent to us by courtesy of our vice-leader." Yata paused for a bit, noticing Wattz's wry smile when he turned on his PDP. This smile confused Yata, but he decided to ignore it and continue with the mission details. He pressed another button and the PDP separated the building into five individual chunks and then highlighted the fourth one from bottom to top.

"We need to infiltrate the building and gain access to the fourth floor. The servers of the place are located there. Thus, our most direct approach is to enter the building is to infiltrate the fourth floor directly," Yata stayed silent, testing Wattz's reaction.

"I see some issues, if we are to directly infiltrate that floor," Wattz said through yawns. He looked bored out of his mind, but at least he was paying attention, "I'm betting that the fourth floor has a lot of security personnel assigned to it. We should also assume the guards are of the competent kind too."

"I agree. That could be a roadblock, specially with all the heavy security companies have in Sector 8. But, that's not all," The PDP replaced the schematics of the building with a photo of their target, Mardav Hellent.

"Oh, what of Hellent, then? What should we do with him?” Wattz's tone carried a hint of amusement as he perked up with interest, but Yata felt a hint of malice too.

"We are to evade him at all cost. From the info Lozen left us, that man likes to survey both the fifth and the fourth floor personally", Yata explained in frustration. His eyes narrowed towards Wattz, admonishing his attitude, "Are you taking this seriously?"

"I may not look like it but I am truly serious about this. It's only my first day doing this type of stuff after all." Wattz shrugged, his smirk settling down to look serious.

"With that snarky attitude, I’m not buying it," Yata's voiced, annoyed.

"Oh?" Wattz challenged. If that string visor didn't cover his face, Yata would bet he had an eyebrow raised in amusement. Which only served to further annoy the cat hero.

"It's simple, I don't buy a single word that comes from your mouth," Yata stood, his eyes falling towards the green-clad newbie. "You hide behind your taunts and obscure gadgetry while only revealing what’s convenient or necessary for you. How can I trust your words, when I don’t even know if half the things you said earlier this morning are either incomplete or straight-up lies?"

As soon as he said those words, Wattz stood up. However, he wasn't grinning.

"Look Yata," He growled, but his voice was controlled and leveled. His left hand curled into a fist, while he hid his right hand into his jacket's pocket. Yata could've sworn that his hand was a bit blurrier than usual.

"I told you this during the exam and I'll repeat it now. I neither owe you the truth nor respect you enough to tell you about myself. If I ever come to respect you or think that you are trustworthy, maybe I’ll consider speaking about myself. But that’s way off into the future,” Wattz continued, closing the distance between the two, stopping only when he was almost right in front of Yata. “However, if you want some kind of guarantee on how serious I am, I'll say this just once: Lozen hired me and is paying me to be a hero and to work with you and any other member of her team. Thus I will cooperate with you and obey her orders. But after that, you get nothing from me."

With that, Wattz unholstered his grapnel gun and gave Yata his back, but not without glaring back at the cat hero. Killing intent oozed from the newbie. "If you’ll excuse me, I’ll start scouting for an alternate entrance. If you want to help me, you're more than welcome to. However, If you're going to keep trying to pry into my personal life, we'll both see a repeat of last Friday's exam."

He gave Yata one last angry look, right after he fired his grapnel gun, zipping into the morning sky. Yata remained silent, thinking on Wattz words. Anger simmered inside him, each of the words stinging more and more until he ultimately started opening and closing his hands.

For the first time since they met, Yata was finally understanding something about this man. He didn't become a hero out of neccesity or a sense of justice. He was here for a more selfish reason. As to what? Well, seems like Yata wouldn't know for now, and that was a risk for him and The Crisis Nemeses.

With those heavy thoughts in mind, he tried to recall the mission's purpose, all the while he aimed his Grapnel gun to the nearest perch point and fired. He truly needed to finish this job.