[Hiro]

What a bother.

Hiro looked back at his pursuers as he leapt off the side of the building, using one extra ‘step’ on the air to ensure he cleared the gap between the two high rises with room to spare. The bright colours popping off the buildings creating a visual spectacle of his silhouette.

What had started as a normal day had turned into a mighty annoying one, he saw some punks trying to harass a food stall owner and decided to do something about it, only for a duo of heroes to get the wrong idea and decide they had to chase him instead.

What was it honestly about those heroes not realizing he was doing good, not just taking a break and understanding that he wasn’t a crook or a menace.

"Listen, I am not the bad guy you think I am!" he’d turn to run backwards for a few seconds as he looked at his pursuers with bemusement.

Neither stopped running at him, one of them shooting what looked like specialized water pistols at him, but with water that snaked in mid air aimed to trip him up.

The other one split off, using a skateboard looking board as both a vehicle, shield, and ranged weapon in acrobatic displays.

He’d be a lot faster if he stopped doing tricks along the way Hiro thought to himself.

"Then stop running, and give yourself up, because you’re still breaking the law!” the water gunslinger called out, not stopping with slinging water his way.

Hiro shook his head to himself, letting one of the shots trip him up before making an exaggerated stumble to the edge of the building to plummet down seemingly to his demise.

Of course, he’d use his sword to acrobatically hook onto a fire exit before slinging himself out of sight.

”If I knew the heroes in Tokyo were so stubborn, I would’ve stayed away...” he talked to himself as he hoped the heroes would move on.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t, realizing he had not fallen he heard the two of them talk and choose to split up knowing that he couldn’t have gotten far yet. He couldn’t help but stifle a mild curse when one of them called in support, too.

And seemingly within seconds he could hear the buzzing of drones, as one emblazoned with a massively overdesigned hero agency logo started patrolling the alleyway he was hiding in.

All the running was taking it out of him, and with the thing flying around, he couldn’t exactly slip away without being detected and being chased some more…

He really should’ve stayed away from Tokyo, with all these heroes, they don’t even need a guy like him...

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| facade | @freelance_facade
Location: Tokyo, Japan. | Current Status: laughing at dumbass heroes
Now Playing: CG5 - I See a Dreamer

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'What a bother.'

Aiden looked down at his phone, watching the camera feed from one of his workshops/safehouses as a small squad of police and heroes broke their way in. The carnage was beautiful as he triggered the traps he'd just rigged, at least incapacitating the whole lot of them. He learned that trick from Bakuretsu. What had started as a normal day (i.e. Aiden working through the night and only knowing it was 'tomorrow' when the sun rose) had turned into a pretty annoying one, receiving intel that one of his clients planned to Judas him when they met up that morning in just that safehouse. Looking closer, they were indeed among the group that had entered. Aiden made sure that one died. What was it honestly with those heroes not minding their fucking business, with cowardly fucking ambush tactics?
"Eat shit." Was all they heard, through a speaker hidden somewhere. The ambulances would come for them soon.

Commotion from above drew the hacker's attention upward, just in time to see two heroes chasing after someone who seemed to be denying any wrongdoing. Y'know, any other day, Aiden would've just minded his business. Today, he was feeling spiteful. The two heroes... yep. He'd dealt with them before, or at least their agency. The Water Guns Hero: Uzi Mizu, and the Sky Surfer Hero: Nimble Nimbus. Self-righteous dickheads, and not even the good kind of righteous, the lawful kind. Boring. Looks like they'd upgraded their gear since their last meeting... those rats! Violating an exclusive contract. Now, he had a stake in this. Whoever they were chasing, he didn't really care, they just weren't allowed to catch him. Speaking of, the guy had deftly dodged the dumbasses dogging him by dropping down into the distance between domiciles. Devious~

Somehow, that was enough for the heroes to lose the guy. At this moment, Aiden sat down up against one of the buildings. It was time to join the fun. He was about to simply connect to the local CCTV network, but looked up with childlike glee as a new toy presented itself. Aiden Markusson loved drones. It was almost too easy to hijack the device, taking advantage of the agency's shockingly awful cybersecurity to cut off their connection/camera feed from the drone and briefly mute their comms with the two heroes while he was at it. With it now under his control, he picked a random path through the alleyways and side-streets hoping the heroes would follow for a bit at least. Then, an advertising sign on a bus stop next to Hiro would suddenly switch to a black screen. 'Not much time, the heroes are chasing a wild goose. Come with me, if you wanna live.' read the sign, accompanied by a blinking arrow leading to what he was almost certain was a veritable maze of pathways. If he could lead the guy to one of his (non-ENKI) safehouses, then it'd be pretty easy to lose the heroes entirely. The distraction wasn't sustainable for long, but if this guy missed his shot, that was on him.

[Hiro]

For a second he expected the heroes to have found him again, the drone was pretty much right on him before it suddenly decided to have a different life of its own and back away. Making sure to attract the attention of the heroes searching, and fly off into a wildly different direction with the heroes in tow.

Whatever happened, he wasn’t expecting it to last. But in the corner of his eyes he noticed the billboard flickering, trying to get his attention...

Either the viral marketing craze is reaching new heights, or someone is trying to message me. he spoke internally as he followed the trail of digital ad hoardings down the rabbit hole.

Besides, the path he was taking was hardly one he would’ve used for himself, and hardly one a person would go for if they were fleeing from overzealous heroes trying to stop a hard working honest freelancer such as himself.

Eventually after a while he made his way into a safehouse, it wasn’t particularly ritzy, one would be mistaken people even lived there. But Hiro let out a breath as he looked around, and wondered who his saviour was.

”So is this the part where a hologram will show up, and tell me I have been selected for a super secret spy programme to save a space princess and steal some plans?” he mused out loud, amalgamating a litany of pop culture references that drifted aimlessly through his mind.

Weird how such things somehow had survived his entire memory disappearing, and not… well… his actual memories.

But it didn’t matter as the first thing he did was beeline for the fridge to see if whoever was inhabiting this dump had left him some snackage.

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