Oh shit he saw me! Nao realised, and immediately backed away into the crowd.

Reluctantly, he stopped watching the basketball. Instead, he started scanning the crowd and the streets again. Black-car-guy hadn’t come back. He hadn’t seen him at the house today either. But he’d shown up at the university in the afternoon, about an hour before Ryan had come out, just sitting in his car.

Nao hadn’t been able to get a hold of him, because he wouldn’t get out of the car, but Nao had attacked his car again, just to make sure the guy knew he was onto him. The guy had left, but Nao wasn’t happy. This just meant that Ryan wasn’t safe. But Nao didn’t know from what, exactly.

He’d contacted the higher-ups about it to gain more info, but they hadn’t been useful at all. They’d said the whole operation had been Masato’s pet project from the beginning, thinking per project was a really funny pun, apparently. They had only greenlighted it because Masato was old and resprectable, and he’d deserved a break. Sending a rookie along with the kid had been more of a gift to Masato, than something they’d done because they were actually worried.

Nao had gotten livid learning this. Understandibly so, since he was the rookie in question, spending 3,5 years on a job that was apparently not useful at all. He may have gone a little overboard in presenting his full vocabulary of swearwords, though. Because after only a few seconds, they had broken off the connection.

“MOTHERFUCKERS!” Nao yelled at nothing.

So, no help there.

Well fuck it. He didn’t give a shit about what the job meant to them. He was going to protect Ryan whether the higher-ups deemed it necessary or not. Ryan needed him, and that was all the incentive needed to do his job. But unfortunately, incentive wasn’t the thing he was lacking.

Nao tried to arrange the information he had, in a way that it would make sense in his head.

What he knew for sure, was that after Ryan’s mom had left his gangster dad, he had tried to have her killed. Masato had helped her and her son flee the country, and had stayed with them afterwards. There had been some trouble on the way, but Nao had never gotten a full rebrief on those.

Apparently they moved around the States a bit in the beginning, but soon settled in a small town. In the seventeen years that had followed, nothing had happened. No strange cars, no strange men, no attacks, nothing.

Then Ryan had left his home to go to college, and Nao was sent with him as his guardian. Masato had stayed with Angela until his death, but wasn’t replaced. It had been a while, but no-one had come for her in all that time, so that meant she was probably safe.

Looking at it from that angle, it was actually strange that headquarters hadn’t recalled him yet… There were probably more important missions going on. So why hadn’t they?

The tightening feeling in his chest confirmed that deep down he knew the answer to his own question.

“No time to feel sorry for yourself, you cunt!” Nao scolded himself. “Think! What is Black-Car-Guy doing here NOW, and how do I protect Ryan from him?”

So they had wanted to kill the mother years ago, but hadn’t found her. Black-Car-Guy asked Ryan about her, but he told them she was dead. So, if they just wanted to kill her, that’d be the end of the story.

Yet, it wasn’t the end of the story. Since the car had been waiting for Ryan at school today. Conclusion: they wanted Ryan himself. Would they want to kill him too?

Nao cringed at the idea.

Nah, if they’d wanted to kill Ryan, Black-Car-Guy would have waited until Ryan had left his work, and killed him on his way home.

Nao’s blood ran cold at the thought.

He also started realising how bad of a guardian he actually was... If the guy had wanted to kill Ryan, he would have. And Nao wouldn’t have been there to do anything about it. What kind of guardian leaves their target alone to sit around the house and play Just Dance?

The higher ups were probably right, he was a useless cunt of a being. And Ryan was stuck with him as his protector. From now on, he’d have to do better.

Back to the analysis. If they wanted to kill Ryan’s mother, but not Ryan... What the hell did they want with him? Why was Black-Car-Guy still here?

“Well I ain’t Sherlock fucking Holmes, now am I?!”

Nao shouted at the world in general, realising he was too stupid to get anywhere with the analysing thing. It frustrated him, how useless and dumb he was. Always had been. And everybody knew.

Oh, how happy he had been to finally be sent out on a mission. How important he had felt. How delighted that he finally had some value, besides his pedigree. But no. It had been a lie. Instead, he had gotten sidetracked as a cat for years. Fuck, how they must be laughing at him at HQ...

But now there was real danger. Real danger to HIS Ryan. And he couldn't even fucking figure out why.

But instead of throwing in the towel, Nao decided to do everything he COULD do. Which was to be Ryan’s 24/7 bodyguard. Or better yet: Ryan’s 24/7 unseen bodyguard.

Nao thought about it for a bit. It was like a secret identity thing. He’d be like Batman. Or Catman, for that matter. O wow, and then he’d ride around in the Catmobile fighting crime. And Ryan would be his sidekick, and he’d be wearing a tight costume and…

Nao slapped himself in the face. “Stop it, you horny fuck!” he yelled out loud. Then concentrated again.

Huh, that Catmobile thing was not as stupid as it seemed. He’d need transport to be able to follow Ryan around and it was not as if he knew how to ride a bicycle. Nor how to drive a car, for that matter.

Nao walked around the campus trying to think of a suitable means of transportation. He found a skateboard. It was just standing there, looking inviting, as if sent from heaven to help the hero rescue the day. Nao could swear it was glowing.

Nao walked up to the skateboard, picked it up and threw it out in front of him. He then ran after it for a few steps, jumped on, felt it slide away under his feet, and landed face first on the pavement.

Harder than it looks, Nao thought. Inwardly scolding himself again for not landing on his feet, like he fucking damn well should have.

Well, get up and try again, he thought, as he was lifted up back to his feet by a guy at least 6 inches taller than him.

“The FUCK were you going with my skateboard?!”

Nao smiled apologetically and decided to disarm with cute charm. “Well it looked so easy when you rode it, so I thought I’d try. But turns out you’re just really good…” He purred, throwing in a big-eyed puss-in-boots look while he was at it.

It was no use. The guy punched him right on the nose and Nao fell backwards. Other guys came up and started kicking him in the sides, as Nao defensively covered his head.

“Aw, fuck that hurts! Stop it, you motherfuckers!” he yelled at them.

That only made it worse.

There were four of them in total. They kicked him, and called him a filthy thief. They were right obviously, but Nao hated being kicked. He thought of it as cruelty to animals.

“Please stop kicking me!” he tried again.

For an answer he received a hard kick in the stomach. That did it. He’d tried playing nice, now he was done. Nao closed his eyes, and concentrated. He imagined being the hero in a comic: awesome fight moves, snappy one-liners and POW! BAM!

He put the background music on in his head, and got kicked in the ear.

Nao jumped up whilst holding the last leg that kicked him, sending the guy flying and landing on his head.

“NEVER!”

He tugged on an incoming punch to make the guy lose balance.

“KICK!”

He kneed the guy in the groin.

“CUTE”

He elbowed another in the gut.

“KITTENS!!”

Nao looked menacingly at the last guy standing and hissed, baring his fangs.

The guy ran away.

Wow that was awesome. Nao thought. He felt extremely happy, thinking he was going to be a motherfucking superhero and save the day!

Nao decided he’d have to do a victory pose, like a real superhero. But as he tried finding a suitable one, his conscience sent him a memo that he’d just beat up three guys and stole a skateboard. Violent robbery wasn’t really that heroic… Excusable in this situation, but not the type of thing that’d qualify for a superhero pose. Maybe a supervillain pose?

Nao thought about it, then realised he was still standing at the scene of the crime, and quickly ran away with the skateboard under his arm. He zigzagged a bit around, and then returned to the basketball court. Ryan was still there.

Nao decided he was going to find a nice spot in the vicinity of the basketball court to practice skateboarding. Hopefully he could ride the thing without falling before Ryan was finished showing off his basketball skills.