To find happiness is to undertake the endless hunt for its trophy. That is what Cass believed. He is someone who has grown tired of the world's monotonous repetitiveness. The vitality and psyche-siphoning life of working for a corporation that would cut him off without recompense when the opportunity presented itself. But these thoughts were not just his own: this was reality for the average citizen living in the modern world, and most have accepted it: accepting to forever be just another cog, another tally mark in the system's statistics.

But here was Cass. A rat-kin Astral that hung upside down in a web of sturdy, nylon ropes that spilled from his backpack, binding him to the elderly oak tree he had landed in. The last five minutes were a blur— he remembered leaping from a shoddy airplane, deserving of its own service medals from the battle scars it had suffered; he also recalled there being five others that leapt with him. After that, however, his mind drew a blank.

Truth be told, he was not an expert at skydiving, nor was he given instructions before he took that life-defining, death-defying leap. He did recall being told to pull the cord on the backpack before he met his untimely demise, he just could not put a face to those words as his slurred mind slowly recovered from the hormone slushie that was adrenaline.

His golden eyes closely examined his predicament now that his mental facilities were returning to him. He analyzed the intricate webbing of spent ropes from his parachute that kept him from plummeting to the ground below, looking for a means of escape.

"Don't look down, don't look down," he incessantly repeated to himself, praying his instincts didn’t send him into another panic. Cass had a great fear for heights, but the potential risk of being stuck in the oak's verdant embrace was more than enough to briefly overshadow that fear. A rodent such as himself was excellent prey for whatever predator happened to find him in his ensnarement.

His small, deft hands rummaged in the pouches and bags tied to his belt before finally emerging with a sheathed knife, which he quickly drew. He then curled his compact frame upward, reaching for a nearby limb of the oak to steady himself before vigorously sawing away at the rope that kept one of his legs bound until it finally parted. With his leg freed from the synthetic python's grip, he cautiously moved his body onto the limb he held onto for support.

From there, he cut the remaining lines from the backpack before bundling it all as neatly as he could within the bag and carefully climbing down from the tree. He had reasoned that it was better to salvage the parachute and lining rather than to leave it behind, and thought it best not to leave a trail for whatever— or whoever— could be in these dark, crowded woods with him.

He breathed a sigh of relief as his bare feet felt the firm earth below. He patted away the loose twigs and leaves that clung onto his rugged, khaki pants and the aviator's jacket that was three sizes too big and dyed an obnoxiously bright orange, contrasting with the dark brown fur that covered his body. The whiskers on his short snout felt the rush of a sweeping breeze as the pair of large, circular ears that stood out proudly from his curly black hair twitched.

Again they twitched upon picking up the sound of something being snapped in half.

Slowly, gingerly, he reached for his knife once more, his gaze fixed in the direction he heard the sound that threw the switch in his brain into high alert. He squinted, focusing in on the brush in front of him as his vision was blurred, due in part to his astigmatism. His wavering eyes lingered on an eerie light that glowed cyan, an unnatural hue amongst the lush greens of the surrounding wood.

"Easy newbie," a gruff and arrogant voice rang out as a tall woman stepped out from the foliage. Well, she was tall relative to Cass, who stood at chest height compared to her. Her thick letterman's jacket and baggy pants were colored in a striking black-and-white color scheme that stuck out amidst the foliage. Coupled this with her street cap and high-top sneakers, it would make one wonder why she was here in the depths of the wilderness. A pale, crescent moon-shaped pin gleamed from her cap in the faint light that dwindled through the branches of the trees surrounding them.

A sly smirk and relaxed stance were the only visible indicators of her current temperament, as her eyes were covered by glossy black, blinding bangs. Her calmness clashed with Cass's tension, his body tightening up against itself, cautiously moving to take a step back.

Seeing this, the woman's smirk contorted into a scrutinizing frown. "What? Did you hit your head?" she asked, tapping the side of her head rather forcefully with her thumb. "Or did that jump scare away the remaining cells in that brain of yours? You're already pretty dense taking up the boss-lady's offer like that. You're way out of your league, you know that?"

"No, I did not hit my head," Cass answered sheepishly, his lips drawing a quivering frown around his prominent frontal teeth. His slender tail coiled around his leg in vain attempts for comfort, reaching almost to his ankles. "And I can assure you I had every wit with me when I made my choice, Razel. I just did not expect Ms. Wright to have me jump from her plane on the first day."

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"Then pull yourself together, finding you was hard enough as it was," Razel snapped with a sneer before tossing a pair of glasses at Cass's feet. His heart sank as he saw that one of the arms was broken off, bending down to retrieve his fragmented spectacles. This was the likely source of that snap, he realized, brushing a few specks of dirt from the lenses. Cass's gaze shifted from his broken pair of glasses to Razel who stood there. Unapologetic in her stance.

"What?"

A curt response. Her only response.

"No te preocupes," Cass spoke in Librish, a language that went into one of Razel's ears and cleanly out the other. "Nothing to worry about," he repeated before defeatedly pocketing his glasses. While he could see up close well enough, more distant objects were out of his ability to accurately perceive. Anything beyond a ten foot radius was just a blurry spectrum of muddled colors that vaguely morphed into figures of what could be there.

"Yeah, I wouldn't be here to drag you back if I didn't. Though it should've been Isles, she's a damned wolf-folk. She's built for this kind of shit," Razel fumed.

She turned her back to Cass, who took note of her large, dark, bushy tail, reminiscent of a squirrel's own. It seemed plausible for him to hide within the dense fur of her tail, he thought.

"Come on, we're already behind schedule as is," she advised, walking through the foliage she initially appeared from.

Seeing that she would just leave him behind if he didn't hurry elicited Cass to trudge along close behind her. "What did you mean that I was out of my league? Is this contract especially dangerous?" Cass knew that he was out of his depth regardless, but he prodded her for an answer all the same to sate his curiosity.

Razel shot him a glance. "You really weren't told anything? Man, that's low, even for her. Guess the both of you were real desperate," Razel said with a chuckle that teetered between cynical and disappointed. "This is a Yellow Star-ranked contract. Meaning that whatever we Proxies are dealing with, it's at least a city-wide threat, and the city we're going into has long been abandoned since the mid 1950's."

"Seventy years ago?" Cass reiterated, his golden eyes lighting up with intrigue. "Do you know what happened to it?"

"That's the million equ question: what happened to the city of Corriente? And that's exactly what we're being paid to find out. So it's best you lock in,” she said sternly, “because believe me: we'll sooner ditch your ass if you're not able to pull your own weight."

Cass briefly fell silent at her biting words as the reality of the situation he found himself in swamped his mind. "That's right," he muttered in his confident musing. He recalled the reason for him being here. Of him risking it all in this deadly gamble.

"What's right? I mean, I know I'm always right. But about what?" she said whilst pushing through the shrubs in her path. The thorny brambles dug into the sleeves of her jacket as she continued on, unfazed and unscathed from the vegetation's prickly defenses.

All the while, Cass fought and debated within himself, unsure as to whether or not he should be open about his motivations, selfish as they were. After a moment, he came to a decision, narrowing his gaze and sucking in sharply through his teeth. "I undertook this contract to earn enough equ to leave home and visit a..." he paused, his eyes blindly scanning all around him as if finding the words, "Friend...?"

"'Taku yo,” Razel snorted, "all this just to visit a so-called friend?" she repeated, her interrogation making Cass shrink into himself. "You should have just taken up some sort of office job and save up for a trip. You'd fit the white-collar look," she continued apathetically as the two approached a clearing, evident by the few beams of light that shone in from the direction they trudged towards.

"I could have, but it wouldn't have been enough. It never is," Cass answered quietly, but the bitterness in his voice spoke plenty loud enough. Enough for Razel to turn her head toward him, anyway. "I wanted to leave my home, my family. They take and take and take, but never give. And yet... they always want more. It's never enough. So, I had to find a way to leave and find a place to call my own."

"So, what? You're just going to risk your life over shitty parents?" she ridiculed, stopping in her tracks, whipping her body around to bear down on him. "Do you even know how many others would kill to be in your position? To have somewhere to call home? And yet you're throwing it all away just to see some... some friend that you don't even know how to address?!"

"Yes," Cass answered stoically. The change in demeanor seemed to surprise Razel, who grit her teeth in frustration. He stared defiantly up at her face, watching it twist with her growing anger. "I am aware that it isn't right to leave them. But I must do this, for the sake of my own sanity. I have grown tired of silently suffering with no one to lean on, with no one to listen.

"I promised him. I promised I'd visit him before he finished his schooling in Aries," Cass said, his hands balling into tight fists. "So I will do what I must to make my promise a reality, to see him before the end of the year. The proposition made to me by Ms. Wright was my ticket. My only real chance."

"I just hope you understand you're not the only one who's signed up for this contract," Razel said before turning away from him in an aggravated huff, venting out her anger through her flaring nostrils. "If anything happens to Strafe or Vox because of your own incompetence, then I will personally kill you. Do I make myself clear?" she said grimly, peering over her shoulder at him. The glint of a silver iris peeked through her bangs as she looked down upon him, glaring at him as if he were mere trash that had inconvenienced her.

Cass's lips were pulled slack into a melancholic frown. His fists uncurling themselves as his spirit to appear strong evaporated from his body. Or rather, it was the reality of his situation that wrung out that drive. "Crystal," he replied meekly. He knew that provoking her further would only end up in a fight he could not win. And while he could argue his case, he had an encroaching inkling that Razel would only tune him out. Her mind had concluded him to be worthless, and he could only challenge that notion with his actions going forward. His words meant little. Especially here, on the outskirts of Corriente.