The next day, Rusty was walking down the empty morning streets of West-Rixon, he wasn’t sure what time it was, but at some point when he had gotten home the day before he had fallen asleep on the floor, after which he woke up a few hours later to find it to be dark outside, so, being unable to fall back asleep and wait for work in the morning he instead made himself a meal, prepared his armor and grabbed himself a new bottle of blood from his bedroom closet. After leaving his house, he started walking towards garrison A, figuring he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go that he would be able to do anything at so early in the morning. About halfway on his to garrison A Rusty saw the sunrise on the horizon, shedding light on the sleeping city, and as Rusty continued with his walk he saw the stray’s in the ally’s stretching for their daily wandering, and shop owners setting up for a new day of business, for Rusty it was quite the peaceful stroll.

Eventually Rusty reached garrison A, taking longer than he normally would due to him admiring the peaceful beauty of the morning rise. As Rusty approached the building he was surprised to find the gates already open with the captain walking through them. Realizing that if the captain walked into their meeting room before him then he would probably be considered late and be punished, Rusty sprinted across the road, past the guards who were stationed at the door into the building, and as the captain opened the door to walk into the room Rusty slammed into it and ricocheted into the room. At first from the ground, Rusty heard the captain gasp in surprise, but then when he'd expected to be scolded, although he didn’t care because now he wouldn't be late, there was instead silence. As Rusty started getting up from the ground something pushed down on his back, forcing him back to the ground, a moment later another force pushed down on him near his shoulders, and that’s when he realized that the captain had decided to walk on him as a punishment, it was odd but Rusty was okay with it, it was better than being scolded at the least, although a bit humiliating. After Rusty took a seat near the back where he found Webs taking a nap, the captain gave a briefing of what was to happen.

“Our squad hasn’t been given any new missions as of yesterday, so for today just go over normal patrol routes around the city, Cloud will patrol with Boomer, Taste will patrol with Donor, Lawrence will patrol with Forge and Webs will patrol with Pause,” remembering that Webs was asleep, or in reality being reminded that he was asleep thanks to his subtle but still audible snoring, Rusty nudged him awake. After a tired yawn Webs asked what he had missed that was important enough to disturb his nap, to which Rusty explained what they would be doing.

Webs winced when Rusty mentioned that he was with Lawrence, “Ouch, sucks to be you, Lawrence is the most stuck up person I've ever met, that’s gonna be unbearable.”

After going on his first mission, Rusty had lost some confidence in Web’s words, as on the mission Lawrence had actually seemed like a rather okay person who simply liked to be shrewd and a bit bitter, but he was never really stuck up as Webs had said more than once, “He’s not that bad, the only reason he’s bad to you is because you slack off so much.”

In an offended tone, Webs replied, “Me? Slack off? Never!” As he finished saying this Pause walked behind Webs and grabbed his ear and started pulling him out the door.

As Webs repeatedly made small cries of pain while being dragged away, Pause said only, “C’mon slacker, we have a job to do.”

After Webs was dragged out of the room Rusty felt someone watching his back and turned to see Lawrence waiting by a table near the front of the room, staring at Rusty, remembering that he was in the same boat as Webs he headed over to where Lawrence was.

When Rusty got to the table he could see a rather large map of the city laid out on it with multiple lines leading from garrison A all around the city that all eventually led back to garrison A, “These are our patrol routes for when we don’t have any specific job or mission to complete. On the patrols, we look for crimes being committed and put a stop to them, we're essentially just normal city guards when we don’t have a mission.” Lawrence paused then pointed to a line that went into and around the western side of the lower district before coming back to garrison A, “You see this line here? This is the route that we will be taking, got it?”

After Rusty nodded his head in understanding, the two of them set off for the day.

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As the two began their walk along their route, Lawrence thought to start a conversation, “Did you see Donor in the meeting room? Figured I’d ask since I know that you haven’t had the chance to see her before until today.”

“No, I didn’t even think to look for her in the room, I was too worried about almost being late,” Rusty replied.

Lawrence let out a quick laugh before saying, “I saw that this morning, oh man, but still though, better to be walked on than lose your dignity through coming in mid-speech like Webs often does.”

The two continued their walk along their route while Rusty pet strays on the way as both of them kept a lookout for crimes and wrongdoings, although Lawrence was mostly the one keeping lookout though. After a couple hours or patrolling, Lawrence declared that they would be taking a break at a local diner, but now being that their patrol had led them to the lower district, an actual cafe would be hard to find as in the lower district there was mostly food stands and general stores when it came to food, but Lawrence said he knew a good place that they could go to. The pair ended walking a few minutes away to a cafe called Hisu cafe. As the pair took their seats at table just outside the cafe Rusty couldn't help but ponder the origins of its name, which didn't sound like any word or family name he'd ever heard, at least not in his language, perhaps the owner of the cafe originated from outside the country? After sitting the waiter came and took their orders, or really just Lawrence's order twice because Rusty forgot to look at his menu. Their waiter was a boy around Rusty’s age that he actually knew from the academy, he didn’t know his name as Rusty made a point to forget the names of those who didn’t matter, but what Rusty did remember about the waiter is that his ability let him change the color of his skin...and that was it. Rusty thought it was rather funny as he held back a laugh as the waiter walked away.

“Oh that reminds me,” said Lawrence reaching into one of the pouches on his belt, “Here you go,” he said pulling out a white envelope and handing it to Rusty, “That’s your pay for the mission, you’ll get paid for patrols to, but because we risk our lives on the missions we’re paid much more,” inside the envelope was couple thousand cubes, which Rusty proceeded to put in one of his own pouches, “The moral of this story is that I’m not paying for your lunch.”

Rusty and Lawrence make a bit of small chat between the two until eventually, their meals came, it ended up being just a sandwich with some fruits and some sort of sauce on it that Rusty didn’t know the name of, all in all, it was the most boring sandwich he’d ever had. After a couple of minutes into their meal, Lawrence called Rusty in a whisper.

“Yeah?” Rusty said with a mouthful of sandwich.

“Do you know who that is?” he said pointing to a man through the cafe window who was draped in the large light brown cloak of a traveler, although the man didn’t seem to have any bags.

“No,” Rusty said confused, even if he did know the person, they had the hood of their cloak up anyways so Rusty couldn't tell regardless.

“That’s Kaiden Flint!” Lawrence whispered loudly to Rusty.

“The guy that wrote that one book you were reading?!” Rusty whispered in an excited tone leaning forward a bit.

“Yeah!” Lawrence exclaimed louder then he should have.

“Yeah, I don’t know who that is,” Rusty said, sitting back into his chair. As Rusty had leaned back into his chair the force created by his motions made the chair lean back, ultimately causing rusty to fall backward onto the ground. As he rubbed his head someone offered Rusty their hand to help him get back up, assuming it was Lawrence Rusty took the hand and thanked the person helping him as he got back to his feet. Looking over at their table to see if had spilled anything when he fell as he wiped off any dirt Rusty saw Lawrence still sitting in his chair wide-eyed and looking to anyone else like he was just happy but to Rusty, who had at least spent a few days with him, he seemed to be having some sort frozen fit of excitement, he actually looked rather high now that Rusty thought about it.

Rusty turned to see who had actually helped him up to see the man that Lawrence had been pointing at through the window, now that Rusty was facing him from the front of the man he could actually tell what he looked like, the man had short blonde hair and a goatee with an odd thin curved sword poking through his cloak.

“No problem, just doing a good deed for the day, I’ll be leaving now,” and with that, the man walked out the door.

Rusty thought that the man seemed nice and sat down in his chair to see Lawrence quite literally shaking with excitement.

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On the rest of their patrol, anytime Lawrence started a conversation it was either about the man they had seen in the cafe or one of his books that Lawrence wanted Rusty to read. Rusty had never seen Lawrence so so much emotion about anything, on their mission he had been seemingly calm at all times.

When they got back from their patrol Lawrence showed Rusty their patrol logbook where they were supposed to sign in and out from their patrols at the appropriate times to effectively keep track of everything.

Once Rusty was walking back to his house around six in the afternoon when he remembered that he had been paid for his first mission, and decided to do something that he had wanted to do for a while. On Rusty’s way home he stopped at a store along the way and ordered himself a cheese sandwich on the best bread they had and savored the taste on his way home.

“Nothing beats this taste,” Rusty said as he walked, because to him, the sandwich tasted like an adventure waiting on the horizon to occupy him in this boring world, but mostly cheese.