BLEED/HAVEN

[XIX] LEO

Leo woke up to the sound of his cell phone ringing. When he rose from the couch, he noticed Juno was curled up in a ball on the opposite end. He also noticed how when looking outside the sky was still darkened. The tired man reached for his phone and saw several missed calls from Jet and the other Lionessa members. The time was around six in the morning. Leo answered groggily,

"Yeah?"

Jet's voice came over,

"Hey bud, I hate to do this to you but welcome to the team. We've got another mission. Emergency type per the usual, however this time a lot more urgent. Charnita is going to pick you up in her car and head over to the station as soon as you guys can."

Leo grunted in concurrence before hanging up the phone. The man went to his bathroom to splash water on his face in order to wake up. He also opened the refrigerator which was for some reason completely filled with groceries. The man grabbed a bottle of water and drank it while he woke Juno up, nudging her shoulder and speaking,

"Hey, Juno. We've got a mission again."

Juno corrected audibly, waking up with ease and picking up her own projection spheres to hand to Leo,

"You have a mission. I just live here."

Leo shook his head, still tired but making the joke,

"Well this is your rent."

He watched as the woman dissipated from her physical form in a digital haze and pocketed the three spheres she left sitting on the couch. Leo stood from bending over and stretched his hands above his head before looking out to see the dark clouds of the morning. The artificial sun had not even reared its tendrils across the canvas yet. No rest for the weary indeed, Leo thought to himself as he went to quickly rinse off in the shower before leaving his home.

Leo left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby of the apartment complex and outside. From there he saw a dark blue van roll the window down after pulling into the front archway-taxi pickup area. Charnita waved him on, wearing her Roakon hoodie with a look of mild annoyance permanently glued to her face. From there Leo waved back and went to enter the car. Charnita began driving before she spoke,

"Get any sleep?"

Leo went to put his seatbelt on before stifling a yawn to answer,

"I slept a little. What time is it?"

The woman nodded her head to the digital clock on her dashboard which read six thirty-seven in the morning. Leo thought to himself that he truly did only sleep for a little. Charnita stopped at a light, the car suspended in the air overlooking the city that would be waking up to go about daily business. The skyway had very few cars cruising along, leaving them floating almost alone and adding a surreal sense of reality to the ride. As they waited on the light, Charnita rubbed her eyes and spoke through a yawn,

"I cuddled with Tyler a little before I shut my eyes for like two minutes and got the call to pick you up."

Leo was then prompted to ask,

"Do you know what happened?"

The woman rolled down her window to get some gentle airflow through her unbraided, wavy brown hair and ran a hand through it to detangle a few of the tresses before replying,

"There are cargo ships that regularly travel between Earth and Lestallum to bring supplies to help sustain the colony. Well, this cycle's ship sent out a mayday two days into their travel time back to Lestallum. No word has been received other than the mayday call. Apparently a couple of teams had been sent to find out what happened, and they haven't responded either. So naturally, the Lionessa are next in line to figure out what is happening on it."