"You're in the news a lot lately, huh," Cecil said with a sigh, leaning across his desk. Yuu was extremely busy on this day, telling me to go find Cecil when I turned up in his office to see him on a phone call with his headphones lopsidedly on his left ear.
"Unfortunately. Alyssum's activity has had the cops livid since he deals with targets in packs," I sighed, flipping through my paperwork.
"It's hindering?" He asked, hands freezing over his keyboard. Cecil's orange eyes seemed to be extremely worried for some reason.
"Not exactly. With Green's help, it's easy to get away. Having a land eye and bird's eye view."
"I see. He... doesn't hurt you still, right?"

I choked on my own breath, entirely forgetting in that moment that I had never quite cleared that up with my dear friend.
"No, no! Cecil, all of that- it was a misunderstanding. I'm not exactly used to sharing territory with someone," I ended up rambling, flipping over on his couch to my stomach.
"I don't get it."
"Hm... how do I put this? Green wasn't always known by me. Until recently- he was only known in San Francisco as his home turf. Mine was here. He suddenly popped up and began taking my money. My kills. Our organization kept giving us the same jobs for fun. Neither of us noticed, and fought over it," I explained.
"That's messed up. But shouldn't it be the same for Alyssum?"

"No. not even close. He takes the kills we refuse. The organization can't trick us, either. I have a program that searches up everything on the victim, and Green's a hacker. So Alyssum is kinda like a gnat. Annoying, but impossible to get rid of."

Cecil looked hurt by that last sentence. We changed the topic after that, complaining about work to one another (while doing work).

"I still say that a samurai would win against a mutant bear," Cecil said.
Reasoning behind this strange statement? Neither of us wanted to work and decided that starting preposterous arguments were great ways to pass the time.
"How? Mutant bear's got brute force," I angrily shot back.
"Ah, yes, but the Samurai's smarter. Faster."
"Why is this conversation familiar."
"You probably spend too much time procrastinating," he guessed, twirling his blond-brown hair boredly.
"Probably," I sighed, leaving my seat to wander by his desk. For all he knew I saw nothing of what he owned, when in actuality curiosity had bested me. Cecil had more paperwork than I typically would have for a week, a tiny pair of binoculars (purpose unknown) a lollipop, five empty lighters- wait. What? Cecil didn't smoke. Why the hell did he own so many lighters?

"My dad smokes," Cecil said without meeting my eye, already deciding to continue working. He typed with his left hand, using his right to kick the lighters into an open cabinet.
"He's going to die."
"Unlikely. Bastard's able to buy himself a new body if he wanted," he angrily muttered, eyes briefly meeting mine. I couldn't help but laugh at that.

And, in the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Cecil smile.

Genuinely.

Like he used to.

That night, I took Cecil and Yuu to Demeter's diner. Mostly because they had a new menu option and wouldn't stop calling me until I agreed to bring my 'hot friends' with me. Marìa just couldn't seem to get her fill of the pair. And it frustrated me at times.

"You promise me it's not poisoned?" Yuu asked as we neared the glass door. Cecil laughed on my left.
"I can vouch for Mikaela. Not poisoned at all."
"Yeah, you would know. Ate more fries than someone so fit as you could possibly manage," I muttered, stepping into the warm diner currently teeming with life. Marìa and Emiliana were overwhelmed, to say the least. The former was all but running across the diner, smoke in the kitchen a sign of the latter being hard at work. They acknowledged us with two smiles, nudging the three of us to one empty booth.

The new meal was apparently made by Marìa when she was awake for far too long, the outcome strange yet... oddly addictive. It was an Enchilada burger.

"How much thought do you think went into this?" Cecil asked once the plates were tossed to us, steaming and all.
"None," I said.
"Pure imagination, obviously. Have you seen what people do at night?" Yuu added from my side.

"It was actually improvisation," Marìa kindly informed us from a booth over, where she was currently serving drinks. "I wanted an Enchilada, but then I decided a burger would be just as good."
"How's Emiliana, anyway?" I asked as she wandered back to us.
"Same old same old. Constantly on her phone."
"Shouldn't the roles be reversed?" Yuu asked in confusion.
"Yes." Her sigh was genuine as she wished us a good meal, rushing off to answer her mother's shouts.

The meal was shockingly decent. We ate every bite of it and paid before the three of us were forced to leave. For Cecil it was confusing: he always had time to eat dinner. Always.
We- Yuu and myself, had an early job, on the other hand. No room to create weird theories of what Cecil was doing that night.

"Ahh, yes, kidnapping," Yuu said jokingly, sighing dreamily as he stretched out his arms. He pulled down his green goggles in order to follow suit with my actions.
"What a great way to bond," I muttered, leaving from the shadows. He was close on my side, staring up at the building in front of us. A brick home inherited by a bunch of college students who were currently looking into the black market. More specifically- us. 'Inspiring investigators', they called themselves. I almost felt bad for the poor kids.

I often forget why the black market called Yuu a 'ghost'. For some reason it seemed to slip my mind that his speciality was to stalk and capture, while mine was to take and kill.

He had taken us through a back window, unlocked and opened without a sound. Both of us were light on our feet when we climbed into the antique kitchen, hushed voices above our heads.
"You take two, I take one?" I suggested. He paused, nodding after a moment. The entire house was illuminated a blue, making it easy to not trip over everything and anything as we went up the wooden stairs.

The trio was hunched over an old desktop when we entered without a sound, looking at our for hire pages at once. In the department of faces, it only showed mine from the side. Yuu's was from before we had paired up, voice modifier over his nose.
"I think I know who blue might be," the girl began. They turned to her patiently, all tense with fear. "It might not be true since the dude's famous, but who knows how twisted he could be."
"Enough to join Prometheus." The other spat, saying the words so lightly it made me sick. I didn't even dare to think the company's name, let alone say it. And, from the way Yuu grimaced, I assumed it to be the same for him. "So? Spit it out, Rachel."
Yuu squeezed my hand once as we snuck up behind the trio, keeping to either the shadows or their blind spots. I was the one stuck with Rachel, though.
"I think he might be Mi-"
My hand covered her mouth, gloved hand gripping her jaw tightly as she tumbled to the floor with the wooden chair. "Ah, nice theory. Unfortunately, I'm not sure you're fit to say anything on the matter," I said as Yuu bashed one of the teenager's heads on the desk. Rachel was screaming very loudly. Thanks for my gloves, they were muffled. I injected a needle into her arm, watching her eyelids close slowly.

"Brute force to cause head trauma. Lovely." I noted the injury to Anthony, the only boy of the group, as we dragged all three of them to the drop off zone. Tonight, it was an unmarked black van Sombra should be driving.
"I panicked," Yuu said with a wince. The black van was in the driveway of the small, crushed home, back doors wide open.

Rachel was the most difficult to toss in.

The van sped off without any words spoken to us, meaning Sombra (or, if we're using her market name, Persephone) was unable to pick up the victims. We did get a message before the mission, though. It was rushed and barely told us anything, unlike her usual nature. She had told us to be wary of Alyssum's location that night.

Too late, I thought that very same evening as we watched him from afar as he stared at us through that damn gas mask. Yuu's hand slipped from mine and back as if he were testing something.

At first, I didn't notice what theory he was exercising. Then I did.

Alyssum held two items in his hands. In the left was a grenade, unused and safe for now. In the right was a disposable lighter. The latter was flicking to life every time Yuu's hand returned to mine and vanished when it left. It was this criminal's way of anxiously pacing.

The arsonist was agitated by the sight of seeing us holding hands.

Yuu gripped my hand tightly, still staring down the man across the street from us. A staring contest between three criminals on rooftops. It sounded like a weird sitcom episode. Alyssum toggled the flame once more. Then he pulled the pin, tossing the grenade below him lazily. In three seconds a short silence was shared between us. Alyssum flowers left his crumpled hand one petal at a time. He nodded to me with a short bow. And then- the explosion went off.

Through a clearing in the smoke, my eye caught sight of a minor detail before the pyromaniac vanished.

I could have sworn tears fell beneath Alyssum's mask.