Broken Stride

Bait

 Cassian groaned as he was besieged by both a harsh light and the shrill beep beep beeping of his alarm at the same time. Covering his eyes with one arm, he flailed the other around blindly in search of the offending device. When he found it, he smashed his fist down on the snooze button before rolling over to curl back up under the sheets. He was very nearly back in the sweet, sweet clutches of sleep when a sudden knock at the door jolted him awake again.

"Gangu! If you don't get up soon you're going to be late!" Yuri's voice sounded muffled from the other side of the door.

Right. It had already been a week since his reincarnation, but Cassian was still trying to wrap his head around having to go to school again. Granted, Korean school was different from American school, but school was still school and he really didn't want to go.

"You aren't planning on calling in sick again, are you?" Moros's voice sounded from somewhere behind him.

Cassian sat up suddenly—wincing as his phone thumped against the wall, thrown across the room in his haste. Whatever, he'd deal with it later.

"You, my friend, have excellent ideas." Cassian grinned at the spirit, an idea spiraling in his head.

He got dressed quickly, throwing on a plain black shirt, loose jeans, and a blood-red knit cardigan. Taking only a brief moment to grab a granola bar from the kitchen before hastily tugging on his sneakers, he was halfway out the door before Yuri suddenly stopped him.

"Gangu, where's your cane?"

"Oh, right."

Cassian kicked off his shoes and ran back to Gangu's room to grab the walking cane before briefly returning to the living room to give Yuri a hug.

"Ok, gotta go!"

"Be careful out there!"

"I will!"

~

"Cassian, where are you going? This isn't the way to your school?" Moros sent a quizzical look toward Cassian as he started down the road in the opposite direction he would usually go.

"I'm going to check out one of those locations Driver sent me," Cassian replied, taking a bite of his granola bar as he fished around for his phone. "Those girls from last night were from that art school—it seems suspicious enough. And that one with pink hair? She's related to that red-haired psyker I ran into."

"Oh? So you're going to investigate then?"

"Yeah, gotta call school first though so Yuri doesn't find out—" Cassian scarfed down the rest of his granola bar as he dialed up the number—" Hello? Yes, this is Gangu Gwon I'm—cough, cough—really sick. Cough I won't be in today. Yes, thank you. Yes. Goodbye."

"Wow, you are an incredible actor," Moros rolled his eye, oozing with sarcasm.

"Do you want me to hit you?"

"You wouldn't."

"Try me, bitch."

"Oh look, we're here!"

Cassian ignored the spirit's blatant attempt at changing the subject, focusing his attention instead on the large sign he'd pointed out. Now that he was actually outside the school, he wasn't really sure what his plan was. His initial plan hadn't gone further than calling out of his school and finding the art school. There was a reason he was rarely picked for investigation missions as a Psyker—that had always been more of Jeff's thing, to be honest.