Later that week someone shows up to catch Yuta on his way home...

Mew consumed Yuta's thoughts less and less for the next few days, but only because he tended to be spending more time thinking about Gum, Piranha, and now, Cube. The truth was that his experiences with him had been so much unlike the simple, inexperienced fooling around that he had done with his school teacher and a few of his fellow students (though that 'fooling around' had been plenty to result in some very permanent consequences for his teacher and a couple of those high school seniors, not that he knew about the latter yet). Late at night he was terribly tempted to relieve himself with his hand but he'd never been any good at it, and (based on some questionable advice from his coach) accepted it as a given that if he started jerking off to those thoughts then he'd just get more and more obsessed. He threw himself into his training twice as hard and picked up a part time job at the corner convenience store no matter how poorly it paid. It was dead boring and a total waste of his talents - but he felt like he had to do something. Every time the thought that a week or so would be enough to save up enough to... go to that part of town where he had 'met' Gum, Piranha and Cube, bearing in mind that there had always been money involved, he pushed it out as frantically as he could.

Tugging at his dumpy company sweatshirt, Yuta Asahina sighed and rested his elbow on the countertop at the cramped convenience store. When a squat, broad-shouldered man in a trenchcoat swept up in front of him he awkwardly straigthened up and **** a smile. "Y-yes sir? Are you ready to complete your purchase? A-and would you like it warmed up?"

"Maybe in a minute." the guy standing in front of him had a voice like he smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day, or perhaps gargled every morning with gravel. "You're the associate on duty here right? I need you to step outside for a minute."

"Oh but I ca... can.... caaaaaaaahhhh...." Yuta went pale and his voice trailed off into a croak. The large man in front of him, with a flinty-eyed squint and a rather outdated and unfashionable pompadour hairstyle, was holding out a police badge, reading 'Onishima H., Captain". Yuta felt like he was about to faint; oh heavens. Wasn't soliciting prostitutes technically against the law? It seemed like it was never enforced in this city and yet, if one of the girls were really upset with him...

Captain Onishima chuckled grimly. "Oh gimme a break... you can stop pissing your panties already, young lady." he said mockingly. "You're not in trouble, I just need ya to sign off on something as the employee on duty of this cheap little craphole. There's been an incident outside on company property."

Nodding numbly, Yuta followed along, hoping that the surveillance camera record would show he hadn't been left a choice. Walking out after the intimidating cop, Yuta saw a young platinum blonde guy about his age in baggy cargo pants, a long-sleeved sweater and a checkered scarf, sitting on the floor near the wall in the alley, part hidden in shadow... head inclined down in utter dejection and handcuffs on his wrists. There were a couple of spray cans sitting in a plastic bag on the hood of the Captain's police car. Near the youth in the alley was a half-finished stylized letter 'J'... much like a lot of the delinquents in this part of the town it was based around English letters.

"Caught this little shit tagging the wall right out in the open. The chase was pretty damn short, on account of me showing off my new partner Mr. Callahan here." he pulled open his coat and yanked out an enormous chrome revolver, looking like the kind of thing you'd use to hunt deer, or perhaps elephants, with. Yuta blanched and his eyes bugged out but he wisely kept silent. The police captain continued. "Third offense, too. Got the dirtiest, dankest jail cell all ready for a long weekend. I'm sure the rats are eager to meet their new roommate, so..."

Yuta stared blankly. "So..." he said unsteadily.

The Captain frowned, then shifted to a grin that was, if anything, less friendly. "Ah. Young kid like you probably just got hired, right? Well, the Baka-Mart company policy is to always press charges on vandalism. Otherwise they'd be even more of a wreck than they already are, operating in shit neighborhoods like this." He shoved a notepad in Yuta's face aggressively. "The line at the bottom. Sign it."

Although Yuta had no idea if the guy who'd been caught tagging was part of the GG's or not, perhaps the anti-authoritarian style he'd been exposed to was rubbing off on him, because he immediately decided he didn't want to help this rabid cop in the slightest. Threatening to shoot somebody for spray painting? That was just wrong. What was this, America? "Oh," Yuta smiled and gave a polite bow. "I'm sorry for your time being wasted, Captain," he said, layering on as many honorifics as he could, "but this is all a misunderstanding. The new, NEW company policy is to hire local artists to do street-style art on our corners, both for marketing and because nice, bare walls are too inviting a canvas to the real delinquents."

"Wh-" The squinting captain's bloodshot eyes popped wide open. "Bullshit! I know this punk, this is FAR from the first time. Sign the damn paper or I'm gonna be on the phone with your regional manager first thing in the morning." he snarled, leaning forward intimidatingly.

Even though an angry girl - especially his sister - could easily push the young man of the Asahina household around, he had no fear whatsoever of a shouting guy like this. Compared to some of the bizarre and insane bullies he'd had to deal with this guy was nobody. "Okay! That sounds like a great idea, I'm sure the regional manager can explain the policy better than I could anyway. So since your time has already been wasted, could you go ahead and release our artist?"

Snorting angrily, Captain Onishima loomed over Yuta menacingly, assuming he'd crack any second. But he didn't even break eye contact. "Next time." he growled in a dark voice, yanking the handcuffs off before getting in his car, intentionally backing up over the spray paint cans in the evidence baggie and crushing them before peeling off.

Yuta let out a relieved sigh... followed by a dejected sigh. "Oh well, I didn't like this job very much anyway." he turned and started walking back in to finish his shift. Maybe he could plead ignorance.

"Hey, wait up!" He heard a high pitched, distinctly feminine voice. Stopping and turning around, Yuta saw that the delinquent had gotten up and stepped forward into the light.

As it turned out, 'he' was a 'she', who just happened to have baggy, shapeless clothes and an even more typically masculine haircut than Cube. That short-trimmed hair was so platinum blonde, nearly white, that it must be a dye job, contrasting with her deep tan skin that suggested she spent a lot of time in the sun. Even though it was about as far as possible from the revealing style that some of the other delinquent girls Yuta had run into favored, when she was in the light her sweater still showed off the swell of her bosom - not in the same league compared to Gum, but certainly more than the flat-chested Mew could boast of. She looked more curious than thankful. "If this town could talk, it would have some very unique poetry about all the things that go on on these streets... but a convenience store employee standing up to a cop when there's nothing in it for him? That's probably a new one. I don't happen to know you do I?" she squinted and licked her lips, which drew the eye thanks to the vivid teal lip gloss she wore. "What's your name."

"Uh... Asahina Yuta. And you are...?"

The tall, tanned graffiti artist gave a single sharp laugh. "Ha! A town with a sense of humor, too. A couple of my friends, Piranha and Cube, just happened to mention the other day that they had both 'run into' you and warned me and Mew about how you were a slippery, untrustworthy charmer that we should stay away from if we didn't want trouble."

"She... they said that about me?" Yuta couldn't help but slouch, a pout creeping onto his cute tanned face. "That... it was all a misunderstanding, really..."

"Nah, nah," the white haired girl said, suddenly coming forward and putting her hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't say that, I like trouble. And in fact, right now I could really use trouble. You can call me Jazz, by the way." she held out a closed fist, and Yuta, catching on after staring blankly a moment, bumped knuckles with her.

"And honestly, those two conceited girls needed someone to take them down a peg, anyway." she continued. "They're too used to dealing with petty beat cops who will let them flirt their way out of any trouble. That's real amateur style. See, if I hadn't have had a pebble stuck in my skates, Captain Pompadour there would have been eating my dust. But listen, if money is a problem I can get you a connection with someone who I, along with Piranha, run little errands for sometimes to keep the lights on. You can get, like, ten times whatever this place was paying you in a week on very short notice. You DO have to be quick on your feet though."

"Quick on my feet?" Something in Yuta lit up. He started to grin but bit down on it. "Wait, um, it isn't anything shady, isn't it? I promised my si- uh, my family, that I wouldn't get involved in anything risky this summer..."

"What? C'mon. It's nothing compared to standing up to that gun-waving caveman like you just did. Listen, I'll come back when your shift is done and take you to our friend. If you do, I'll owe you a big favor! Sound good?" she said hopefully, leaning forward with a smile.

Yuta gulped. He never could say no to a pretty girl. And when he was caught off guard by a 'boy' actually turning out to be a pretty girl, well, that made it even harder to say no. "Well... I have competed a LITTLE bit on my school's track team..." Yuta said, eliding his multiple medals and championships.

"Awesome! I promise, this'll be an unforgettable night," Jazz said with a wink, not yet knowing how right she was.