Somewhere in the high heavens Mira was positive that there's a god/goddess/deity of some sort watching her with the evilest of smiles on their face as they laugh with all of their other god/goddess/deity friends, all the while inflicting bad luck on her, because apparently all the good luck she had been experiencing is fucking done and over with. Something that she would've loved a heads up on, by the way.

She stepped on the lace of her boot and sprawled across the sidewalk, earning many snickers from the local drunks who were loitering outside of the bar, smoke pouring from their lips. Yup, no more luck for Mira. She puffed air up to try and move her bangs out of her eyes, only causing them to be further in the way. Fucking cowlick. This was the third time she had tripped on her bootlace, and in all honesty she was fed up and contemplated more than once on just ditching the shoes and going barefoot. However Zero would give her a lecture of a lifetime like the 'responsible' adult he is, and she'd be forced to sit through it or suffer the consequences. So of course, Mira kept the boots on and peeled herself off the sidewalk, dusting the dirt off her knees before slipping beside one of the love hotels and scrambling up the fire escape to the rooftop.

Being mindful of the edge - because knowing her luck or rather lack of luck, whatever god/goddess/deity was watching her would make it so she tripped and fell to her untimely demise - Mira looked out over the landscape. Her neighbourhood was harshly lit with yellow streetlights, neon signs signaling bars being open, and pink hued floodlights for various love hotels. In the distance she could see the softer, more welcoming glow of Musutafu and knew that if she truly wanted to, she could hop on a train and be there in about twenty minutes. Not that she would though, she'd much rather her harsh neighbourhood where everything was familiar than to go elsewhere. That's just how she was. Never leaving the safety of her own bubble, and if she absolutely had to she would go with Zero and no one else.

With a sigh, Mira sat down on the rough surface of the roof, tiny rocks digging into her thighs as she did so and fiddled with her baton, clicking the button absentmindedly. It hadn't been working all night and she had a sneaking suspicion that that had something to do with her past altercation with Eraserhead. A stench of blueberries permeated her nasal cavity. It was so sickeningly sweet that it made her gag and pull her mask up over her nose tighter.

"What the fuck…" jumping to her feet, Mira stopped herself from lurching off the edge. Her black eyes scanned the roads trying to pinpoint just where that god awful smell was coming from. "Is that…?"

There was no way that this was happening, and yet Mira was standing there watching it with her own two eyes. Unless of course, this was a caffeine induced hallucination.

The man(?) glared up at her, and she flinched back, stumbling on her damn shoelace again and falling on her butt. Definitely not a hallucination, definitely very real.

She peered at him curiously because while he may have looked like some low-level criminal he wasn't doing anything that broke any laws, all he was doing was making a huge mess of things.

The man was secreting a viscous-y slime from his pores that practically glowed electric blue=, and Mira's best guess was that where the blueberry smell was coming from. Each step he took added to the trail he left behind him, almost like a snail Mira thought.

Eh, he's...odd but harmless.

Oh if she could go back and slap herself for jinxing the situation.

Mira watched in slow motion horror as the man who oozed with slime reached down and picked a large rock off the ground, regarded it momentarily before winding his arm back and then chucking it through the window of a pawn shop.

"You asshole." She grumbled while readying to launch herself off the building to tackle him. It was a stupid plan, she knew that it was, and she also knew that it would more than likely result in a sprained joint - or worse, a break. But in that moment Mira absolutely did not care, she needed a win after what happened earlier in the day. She needed to do something to get her aggression out.

Mira took in a shaky breath, steadying her nerves before sprinting forward and leaping off the roof, her onyx eyes narrowed in a fierce determination as she did so. Unfortunately for Mira that pesky god/goddess/deity and their obnoxious friends were scrutinizing her every move and instead of letting her have this one after a full night of nothing but mishap after painful mishap, they pulled a string and sent Mira careening off course, and instead of gracefully landing in front of the oozing man, Mira found herself screeching loudly as she tackled him to the ground, tangling their limbs together as the viscous secretion coated her.

Who did I piss off so much?!

The god/goddess/deity laughed along with their friends as they watched, grateful for the entertainment.

"Where the fuck did you come from?!" The man cried out as he untangled himself from the woman who seemingly appeared out of nowhere to tackle him.

"So gross…" moaned Mira as she laid on the ground, her body heavy with the nauseatingly sweet smelling slime. "You...you shouldn't have done that…"

The man rolled his eyes at her from where he stood, having successfully unstuck himself from Mira and scrambled to his feet. "Says who, pipsqueak? You a hero or something?"

"N-No...not a hero…" Mira laid on her back, feeling shards of broken glass digging into her back. God, she was so heavy. The thick slime covering her body cemented her to the ground, and the pungent smell of blueberries made her head swim as she struggled to focus her thoughts as well as her breathing. Get your shit together. Just get it together. Make one thing go right for you today...just one little thing shouldn't be hard, right Mira? Get up off the ground and take out this low-level thug before...before…

But she couldn't move. Mira laid there pitifully, trapped in her own mind of self-doubt while the criminal watched on with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, the wet spot on the pavement from his slime growing bigger and bigger the longer he stood there.

He didn't plan for this to happen tonight. All he wanted to do was break into the pawn shop and get back the wedding ring he had to sell the previous week to put food on the table for him and his family, he never expected to run into a hero - or rather not a hero - and have them end up stuck on the sidewalk while he watched on.

She doesn't seem to be physically hurt. He thought to himself, checking her over from where he stood. Not wanting to get too close in case that was when she would decide to spring into action. Just...why isn't she getting up though? Do I need to call someone to help?

"Hey...you okay?" His knelt beside Mira and glanced over her, watching her face contort and her eyes squint shut.

"Fine...I'm fine…" she muttered her chest rising and falling at an alarming pace. "Just need...just need to get up...can't stay here…"

Panic attack. He pushed his hair back from his face, flicking slime onto the ground as he did so. "Hey, not hero, I'm gonna need you to focus on me alright? We're gonna get you through this."

Worthless. You'll never be able to help anyone. Why even bother trying? You're just a burden on your mother, on your family, on the world. The voices taunted her loudly. "M'kay."

"Okay so I'm gonna need you to open up your eyes, can you do that for me?" The man's voice was soothing and gentle, just the thing that Mira needed to help pull her out. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, he flinched back at the darkness that clouded them. Poor kid. "Good, you're doing great. Now, can you tell me five things you see around you?"

Zero would be better off without you as a friend, as if you could even call yourself that. You're barely his friend, he just puts up with you because he feels sorry for you. "Streetlight, broken window, um...a man covered in slime, a bar, and um…"

"Just one more for me, okay?"

You should let Eraserhead take you to the police. You're nothing more than a villain disguising themselves as a hero. Hell, you're not even a hero at all. Mira shakily lifted her hand up and held it in front of her face. It was covered in the blue secretion still though red swirled within it. "Blood."

The man sighed while reaching out to her, taking her hand in his gently and lowering it away from her face. "Okay good. That's good. Tell me four things you can touch."

She swallowed and tried her best to push out the taunting voices that echoed in her mind. How badly, she wanted them to leave her alone, to give her peace for just one night. "Your hand, the rocks digging into my back, my wet socks, and…" she hesitated for a moment trying to think of something else to say before the voices returned. He squeezed her hand gently, letting her know that he was there for her. That she wasn't alone in this. "My baton digging into my hip."

"Excellent! You're doing so well, but now I need three things that you can hear."

Clenching her eyes shut, Mira attempted to focus on the world around her. Surprisingly, her neighbourhood was rather quiet despite it being early in the night. There were no fights or drunken arguments to be heard, no laughter and shouts from people running into friends. Hear. What can I hear? Suddenly her stomach growled, reminding her of the burnt food she chose not to eat before leaving. "My stomach?"

His laugh was light and airy. "I suppose that is something you can hear. Do you think you can name off two more things?"

"Your laugh," she all but whispered, not used to such kindness being thrusted upon her. "And your voice."

He smiled at that and thought of his oldest son, how he would say the same thing to him as he helped them through their own panic attack. "And now two things you can smell?"

"Blueberries." Mire gave the man a pointed look, a smile teasing at her lips. "And…cigarettes."

"Last one, I promise. Tell me something you can taste."

"Oranges."

He squeezed her hand once more before letting go. "How're you feeling now?"

Mira inhaled deeply through her nose, feeling light headed but otherwise calm. The voices had retreated to their dark corner of her mind where she knew they would stay for the time being; at least long enough for her to get home. Her body felt heavy still, but she knew that if she wanted to, Mira would be able to get up off the pavement. "I feel...better."

"Good. That's good."

There was an awkward silence between the two of them.

"Um thank you. You didn't need to help me."

"You're right," the man's voice was soft, the weight of his actions creeping in on him. "I didn't have to help you. I could've continued on with what I was doing, and left you here in your panicked state. Actually, it would've been more than beneficial to me if I had done that. But I couldn't just leave you here, that's not who I am."

The vigilante sat there pondering his words, rolling them around in her head. "What were you trying to take from the pawn shop?"

"My wedding ring."

"Why does the pawn shop have your wedding ring?"

The man sighed and leaned back on his elbows, stretching his legs out in front of him. Was he really about to confide in some hero about what's been going on in his life? "I had to sell it last week. Money has been tight and...well we needed groceries somehow and payday wasn't until today. I thought I'd have enough money leftover to buy back my ring but the pawn shop tripled the price and now...I couldn't afford to buy it back and now here we are."

Anger blossomed in the pit of her stomach as his story sank in. It wasn't an unfamiliar story to her, in fact it was one she knew all too well. Before her mother remarried and after her father died they had to become creative with how they procured money because sometimes mom's two jobs just weren't enough to get by on. It sickened Mira to think about it, to think about anyone else living the way she and her mother had lived.

She wanted to keep her neighbourhood safe. Safe from the drugs, the robberies, the killings, all of it. Mira never of course imagined she'd have to keep them safe from poverty, yes she knew that times were tough, she wasn't blind to that. But hearing it come from someone firsthand, from a man who had to sell his wedding ring to put food on the table for his family...it enraged her.

"Take it." Her voice was stern.

"W-What?"

"If that's all you were going to take from the pawnshop then do take it. I'm not going to stop you."

"But-but you're a hero!"

Mira sat up and gave the man a wicked smile, her teeth glinting beneath the yellow fluorescence of the streetlight. "Didn't you hear me before? I'm not a hero."

She watched with a satisfactory smile stretched across her face, as the man looked at her bug-eyed and waited for the other shoe to drop. It was almost too good to be true, but Mira was dead serious. She wanted him to go and take his wedding ring back, an item he shouldn't have had to sell in the first place, and upon realizing that, the man's eyes welled up and tears spilled over, trailing down his cheeks along with the blue slime - though at that point it has stopped secreting from his pores. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

He stammered his thanks to her on a loop as he stumbled to the broken window of the pawn shop. He gingerly reached in through the glass to the jewelry that was on display in the window and plucked out a simple gold band. Slipping it onto his left ring finger he admired it for a moment as a new bath of tears trickled down his cheeks, before hugging his hand to his chest tightly. Suddenly, he couldn't wait to go home, to show his wife that he had gotten his ring back. To hold her in his arms and pepper the top of her head with kisses.

"Thank you." He said one last time, his voice hoarse and cracking, before turning on his heel and running away towards what Mira assumed was the direction of home.

Sighing to herself, Mira laid back on the sidewalk again. Was it the smartest or safest decision she made? Absolutely not. But gods she was tired. Her head throbbed - specifically behind her left eye, signalling the start of a migraine, and her body ached as if she had just gone toe to toe with Eraserhead.

Speaking of, where is that grumpy bastard? Haven't seen him for a bit. She looked up at the sky for once able to make out a star or two through the never ending light pollution, and let her mind wander to thoughts of the erasure hero. Heh. I wonder what he would have done in my position? I wonder if he would think I made the right call by letting the guy get his ring. I suppose it doesn't matter much. It's not like he even lives here or knows what it's like to live here, why should I care if he would approve or not? All that matters is...is that things need to change. This neighbourhood needs to change. It needs to be-

"I finally found you!" A breathless Zero dropped to his knees beside Mira, his hair coming loose from his ponytail and glasses askew on his sweaty face. He grabbed Miras arm - ignoring the smile that still clung to her body - and yanked her up off the pavement and into his arms for a tight hug. "You scared me so badly Mira! Gods I didn't know what happened to you, you idiot!"

"It's only been an hour though?" Mira questioned while tolerating the hug, more grateful for it than she let on.

"Dumbass!" He hissed in her ear and squeezed tighter. "It's almost two in the morning and you never messaged me back like you said you would and then I find you in the goddamn streets covered in who knows what, and you think it's only been an hour?! And you wonder why I worry so much about you!"

Oh. It's been...much longer. Where did the time even go?

"Sorry. I guess I-I didn't realize the time," she muttered burying her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling the smell of lavender and sweat that was so familiar to her. "I'm tired Zero."

His tone softened immediately as he stroked her hair. "Let's get you home okay? Your place is closer than mine. Can you walk?"

She shook her head meekly, feeling completely and utterly pathetic. She hated how much of a child she was acting like, she was supposed to be the older one not Zero. He was supposed to depend on her, not the other way around.

Zero pulled away and readjusted his backpack so that it was hanging on the front of his body before crouching down in front of his friend. Gods, how he hated seeing her this way. "Hop on."

Mira looked at him, a small smirk tugging at her lips, looking completely out of place as tears had begun to well up in her eyes and threatened to fall at any given moment. "Zero I'm not hopping on your back."

"Well are you able to walk?"

Damn. "N-no…"

"Then hop on pipsqueak."

Mira did as instructed, wrapping her arms around his neck tighter than necessary as Zero's hands slid to the backs of her thighs and gripped the softness of her thighs. She buried her face into the back of his neck, the bit of hair that was still pulled back into his ponytail tickling her nose, as she felt her face heating up. "I'll kick your ass for that."

He chuckled and began the trek to her apartment. "Uh-huh. Sure ya will."

His best friend was dead on her feet - more so than usual - and it was starting to become more of a concern for him than he wanted to admit. Kicking open her apartment door - which Mira scolded him lightly for in his ear - he let go of her thighs and let her slip down off his back, stepping away once her feet touched the ground.

"I'm gonna get your shoes off, okay?" He knelt before she could reply and started to loosen the laces of her boots. "Lift. After we get them off I'll run you a bath."

Mira lifted her foot and stared blankly at a spot on the wall above Zero's head as he pulled off one boot and then the other. Kinda looks like a flower...

"Mira?" Zero's voice was echoed and distant in her ears. Why was he so far away from her? Didn't he know that she needed him? "Hey! Snap out of it short stuff!"

She flinched away from him, her black eyes dulled but wide as she stared at the hand he waved in front of her face. "Hm?"

He was leaning down so they were at eye level - something she would normally get snappish about and flick his forehead over, but she didn't seem to take notice, and cupped her cheek gently, the slime residue still clinging for dear life. "Go get undressed in your room while I run you a hot bath, okay?"

Mira nodded wordlessly and shuffled after her friend, turning into her room as he continued into the bathroom.

Starting with her knee pads, she unstrapped and tugged them off, groaning with relief as she did so. Must've had them too tight again. Her leggings were next to come off, though they proved to be more difficult than anticipated; the slime that had covered her body from earlier soaked into her leggings, and had made them annoyingly stick to her body like a second skin. With some effort and choice words, Mira managed to peel them off and drop them on the floor at her feet.

She continued on with stripping herself of her vigilante costume piece by piece, dropping each item on the floor until it was nothing more than a pile of slimy, blueberry smelling clothes at her feet, and she was in nothing but her underwear and a now ruined sports bra.

"Ow-" She tugged her hair out of it's messy bun, with an urge to take the kitchen scissors to it and chop it off. Fucking hell. She raked her fingers through the knotted mess that was her hair, wincing as they snagged on every single tangle, until it hung in a less matted mess of dark blue curls, drying slime, and other debris that had found its way there.

Zero stepped into her bedroom, his focus on the phone in his hand as he flipped through text messages. "I let mom know that I wasn't gonna be home tonight. Not that it really matters, Hima is at her friends for a sleepover, I'm pretty sure dad is stuck at the shop, and I know that mom is working over time yet again." He glanced up at his friend, the ability to think and speak coherently taken from him, as his cheeks turned a soft pink making his gold eyes appear brighter. "I um, yeah...are you uh, ready for your bath?"

Mira did nothing but blink slowly at him. It wasn't the first time he had seen her in this stage of undress, and generally she would tease him unapologetically, but Gods she was exhausted both mentally and physically, and wanted to just submerge herself in the hot water and disappear for a bit. "Mhm."

"Cool," he cleared his throat and stepped to the side, giving her more room to slip past him. "Um, let me know if you need anything else."

His friend walked by in a daze and said nothing to him - possibly because she didn't even hear him; her only focus was ignoring the way her body and mind urged her to collapse in bed and sleep instead of taking a bath. Nothing was going to stop her from getting into that tub.

He watched the bathroom door close before letting out a shuddering breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Get your shit together Zero."

While he was used to seeing her in various stages of undress, regularly having to help his friend strip of her clothes so that he could wash the blood from them as well as help her treat her wounds, Zero knew that he would never become fully comfortable with this action and would always turn an interesting shade of red.

Sighing, he picked the slime encrusted clothes off the floor and dropped them into the laundry hamper that sat beside the lone dresser in her room, making a mental note to try and salvage them tomorrow at some point. He knew that now more than ever, Mira would need him and his full attention rather than her destroyed clothing.

Zero pulled open the dresser drawer and smirked as he found a pair of his sweatpants and an old shirt of his tucked in beside her underwear. "Tch, of course she took my things. Damn gremlin."

Pulling them out along with a new pair of underwear,he left the room and crossed the small hallway to the bathroom door, knocking on it gently. "Mira? I have some clothes for you if you're done."

Her quiet voice was muffled from the other side. "You can come in."

The door-hinges let out a loud creak as he opened the door, being careful to shield his eyes and making a mental note to oil the hinges at a later date. "Everything okay?"

Mira stood in the middle of her bathroom, a fluffy towel wrapped tightly around her shivering body, her wet hair clinging to her shoulders and back. "Just a-a bit c-cold."

"Ah right!" He shoved the clothes forward to her. "Here! I'll go and make some tea for you to warm up with."

He doesn't wait to see if Mira grabbed onto the clean clothes or not before letting go of them and closing the bathroom door as he hurried to the kitchen to get started on the tea for them.

What are you even doing Zero? She's your friend. Your best friend. Stop being so weird about this.

A loud buzzing startled him from his task and without thinking he grabbed the cellphone off the table to check the messages.

Mom: So sorry we didn't get to finish our chat sweetie! Just call me again, alright? XO

He frowned a good minute at the screen before placing it back on the table and returning to making the tea. Zero didn't know much about Mira's life, despite being a rather big part of it for the last two years - in fact it didn't even occur to him that Mira had a mother until she mentioned it in passing one particular time. When he asked further, she changed the subject and they never spoke on it again.

He always knew that her past and family was a sore subject for Mira which is why he would never bring it up and generally avoid that topic of conversation, but perhaps it was time for him to rip that bandaid off and see what was going on with her.

"Tea is almost ready," he didn't bother looking over his shoulder as Mira shuffled in, towel slung over her shoulders as she put very minimal effort drying her hair.

"Thanks." The chair scraped along the tiled floor as she sat at the table, picking up her phone and going through the missed messages she had received. "You texted me a lot tonight."

A chipped pink mug was placed in front of her, fragrant steam smelling of apples and cinnamon wafting up into her face, and Zero leaned back against the counter eyeing her. "If you had your phone with you there wouldn't be so many."

Mira only grunted in reply, not looking from her phone.

Zero cautiously watched his friend, waiting for her face to crack. Waiting for her to break down, to show something other than boredom, to bring up whatever her and her mother spoke about earlier.

"Zero?" Mira's voice was so quiet that if he hadn't been looking directly at her, he doubted he would've noticed her talking. Zero sucked in a breath, waiting for the dam to break, for her inevitable breakdown to come. For Mira to open up. "What the hell am I even doing?"

Oh. He wasn't expecting that.

"Um, I'm not sure Mira," he frowned trying to figure out how this could connect to any problems she could be having with her mother. "What do you mean by that?"

She anxiously drummed her fingers on the tabletop and took a moment to collect her thoughts on the matter. "Two years Zero. I've been doing this vigilante bullshit for two years, and only tonight did I realize that yeah I'm keeping drugs and villains, and armed robberies, and shit like that out of the neighbourhood but I'm not changing anything. Everything is still fucked up, people are still struggling, and what am I doing about it? Nothing. I'm doing absolutely nothing about it!"

"Tonight I let a man steal back his wedding ring from the pawn shop you found me outside of," Mira looked at him, her black eyes sparkling as tears welled up in them. Dammit, stop crying! "He sold his wedding ring Zero, so that he could use the money to put food on the table for his family. I nearly sent him to the police station for absolutely no reason, and if I had he would've gotten arrested and then what would have happened to his family? Suddenly his wife and kids are on the street because their only income is gone!"

She was yelling at this point, not at Zero directly, but yelling out her anger and frustration. Yelling out the realization that she had come to that while she did her best for the neighbourhood, it would never be good enough. And like the good friend Zero is, he stood there keeping his face in check so as not to give away his emotions and let her yell at him. He would let her scream at him, let her hit him, if it would make her feel any better.

"How many people have I sent to jail Zero?! How many have I sent to jail for crimes they were committing when all they were doing was what desperate humans do best; try to survive? How many lives have I fucked up? How many kids don't have parents to care for them because of me?!"

Suddenly every person, bad guy, villain she's had the pleasure of dealing with runs through her head. How many of them were innocent? How many weren't actually villainous? How many were desperate to do something, anything to provide for themselves or their families? Mira's head started to pound at the thoughts, and hot tears streamed down her face, her black eyes rimmed with a bright red. Funny. When did I start to cry?

With an overwhelming calmness, Zero set his mug onto the counter he leaned before reaching down and grabbing his friend's wrist, pulling her from her seat and pressing her against his chest. He held her there tightly, easing her into the curve of his body and allowed her to bury her face into his chest, to dampen his shirt with her tears of anger, of frustration, of realization, and of guilt. Zero held her close, his arms wrapping around her securely, protectively, one hand rubbing her back in small, soothing circles, and the other running through her still damp hair, combing it out gently. He waited until her cries died down to nothing more than a hiccup or small sob every few minutes before speaking, "Did you know that when we met, I had already seen four of my classmates OD? That two of them actually died?"

She shook her head now and gripped on to the front of his shirt tightly.

"Yeah," he slowly breathed out, the memories painful for him. "And every day there was a new death printed in the paper. Well, more like five or six. Muggings gone wrong, drug deals, drug overdoses, police officer deaths, even someone just being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"I was afraid for my mom." Zero laid his chin on the top of her head, content with how well she fit pressed against his body and continued on with the words that needed to be spoken, ignoring the pain that they brought him. This was after all, the first time he had ever opened up about this. "My dad too, and of course for Hima. I...I didn't want anything to happen to them, ya know? Didn't want to lose my family because of some idiot waving a gun around."

His lips pressed against the top of her head gently, the soft scent of her shampoo intoxicating to him as he did so, and Mira tightened her grip on his shirt further, wanting to be engulfed by Zero and disappear from the world for a bit. "Two years you've been doing this 'vigilante bullshit' Mira. Two years and you've changed this community in more ways than you probably realize, all of them for the better. I know you, and I know how you are. You don't go after the people stealing a few groceries so they can have a meal for the first time in who knows how long, you go after the people who deserve it. The ones who rob others at gunpoint, the ones who try and bring drugs back here, the ones who want to destroy everything you work so hard to protect." Zero's hand left the back of her head, sliding down to cup her cheek and tilt her face towards his so she was finally looking at him. "Mira, you have done so much good, more than any hero could even dream of accomplishing. If you want to do more to change how this neighbourhood is, I will be there with you every step of the way."

Mira could feel her heart pounding in her chest and was sure that Zero could hear it as clearly as she could. Did he truly mean that? That he would be there with her, every step of the way? She had no reason to doubt, he had never given her a reason to ever doubt him, but it was new to her; hearing someone say that they would stay by your side. It wasn't something Mira had heard in quite a few years.

"Promise?" She didn't recognize the hoarseness of her voice, the way it cracked on the word as she spoke to her friend, her eyes never drifting from his intense golden stare.

Zero didn't hesitate, his lips curling into a smile. "I promise."

And that was all Mira needed.

Detective Tsukauchi sat at his desk fiddling with the unopened pack of cigarettes he had bought from the cute cashier - no, that he bought from Mira the day before, and stared at his coffee cup, watching the tendrils of steam twist and twirl upwards suddenly wishing he was able to go back again and 'buy' another horrible cup of coffee from her.

Perhaps he could slip away for a little bit. It was by far one of the least busy days they've recently had at the station, so do they really need him there?

His eyes softened as he thought of her sleepy smile, and the glint of playfulness in her tired eyes as she warned him about the coffee. The way her freckles were smattered across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks, like someone took a paint brush and flicked it at her, and wisps of blue hair fell from the messy bun she more than likely pulled her hair into immediately after rolling out of bed.

Cute. Extremely cute.

With a groan that garnered a few questioning looks from officers who sat at desks near his own, Tsukauchi forced thoughts of Mira out of his mind, scolding himself as he did so. One girl smiles at you and suddenly that's all you can think about? Get a grip Tsukauchi, Plenty of women have smiled at you before yesterday.

There was a weak attempt on his behalf as he tried his best to focus on paperwork that seemingly appeared from nowhere on the corner of his desk, but the small conversation he had overheard from yesterday began to play over and over in his head. You could have not done that to Eraser.

He shuffled through the papers and pulled out an updated sketch of the vigilante Whisper and stared at it, studying the face it showed, or rather the eyes it showed. I mean they would be around the same height...maybe the same eyes if I'm really looking for something. Tsukauchi dropped the paper onto his desk and ran his hands through his hair in aggravation, garnering even more looks than before. Argh! You're just tired and overworked, and trying to find a connection that isn't even there!

….unless.

His thoughts are quickly interrupted by the voice of a frantic officer."Detective! Please we need you to come quickly, there's been an attack!"

All thoughts of Whisper and Mira are abandoned as he grabs his jacket while following after the officer.