Agent X

Assets and maps

Hacker exhaled shakily and shook her head in revulsion. By mutual agreement, they spent two minutes in silence. Finally, X stirred out of the haze with a shake of his arms. Sheaf cleared his throat and exhaled shakily. 'Well, there's nothing we can do about him, except avenge him by taking down the people who killed him. Speaking of which, do you guys have any new leads on the case?'

Hacker's eyes gleamed and she bounced lightly on her heels as she spoke. 'Yeah, X here managed to get his bee into ACE's HQ with his genius thinking and even more awesome partner!'

Sheaf gasped and laughed. 'What?! That is truly phenomenal. I was quite worried that with our only inside source to ACE dead, it would push things back quite a bit, and maybe we would even miss our targets and fail in the mission. But that is seriously awesome news. Now, if we're careful enough, we can get almost any information we require without any of our physical presence.'

'Yeah, it's pretty rad. But we have bad news, or rather, urgent news as well.' Hacker broke in excitedly.

Sheaf's face first fell, then it became guarded as he carefully asked. 'Urgent news?'

Hacker motioned for X to sit down comfortably. All of them rolled over to face each other as Hacker launched into a detailed explanation of their past few days' adventures. Sheaf put on his incredibly concentrating face, with his slim eyebrows furrowed, petite nose twitching in attention in that unique way of his, and his lean fingers interlaced. Sheaf usually leaned forward while listening and placed his hands on his knees, giving the impression that he was a very reliable and present listener.

Sometimes X even suspected that Sheaf had purposefully developed this posture to make people talk to him more because after all the spy system is about intelligence and its gathering.

Sheaf remained quiet for the most part while Hacker launched into her enthusiastic summary. He only asked questions in between, which too were far and few. When they got to the deadline part, he got so anxious his knee started bouncing up and down. Finally, when Hacker's narration had concluded, Sheaf took a deep breath and asked;

'So we don't know the location of the VX right?'

X almost laughed. That question was so typical of Sheaf. Out of all the things he could have said, he chose to analyze the tasks remaining and tie up the loose ends. The ability to stay focused on the goal and not get distracted by unnecessary points was what made Sheaf so capable.

X pulled out his phone and opened the bee's remote-control app that he'd developed. He plugged it into a screen and stood before it. From the corner of his vision, he saw Hacker and Sheaf stand beside him.

'You know, I've always wondered about this. How exactly do you control the bee?' Sheaf asked curiously. X shot him a wary glance.

'Is this really the right time?' 

Sheaf smirked and raised his hands. 'Don't explain if you don't want to, Mister.'

X sighed and shook his head. 'No, no. Now that you've asked, if I don't explain it to you, you'll probably keep bringing it up at inappropriate times for the rest of my life.'

Hacker snorted. 'Yeah, he would totally do that.'

X held his phone out so both of them could see it and pointed at the controls. To make it easier, he referenced it in hologram mode, so the various parts would be visible and evenly spaced out.

'So, the very basic controls are those of movement and flight. If you move this circle here, you can move the bee back and front. The button in the middle propels it on touch, and makes it fly if you continue to press it.' X instructed, demonstrating side by side.