A few days have passed since harvest festival. Apart from doing a few system tasks, I've spent the days resting leisurely in the apartment, along with Kyte and our other roommates. We pyed a few console games and watched a few movies together.

  Hmm? I haven't mentioned having other roomates apart from Kyte?

  Kyte and I aren't the only people who live in this apartment. This is actually a six-person apartment. We have four other roomates who also attend SIT's heroics course. However, for the past few weeks, they were abroad on a bootcamp with the rest of the heroics trainees in csses #3 and #4. They returned along with their csses on Friday after celebrating harvest festival abroad.

  Now I think about it, that might expin why SIT appeared so understaffed over the past two weeks. I wonder- how many staff had to accompany the trainees on the bootcamp?

  "Any of the others up yet?" I ask Kyte.

  "Nope. Still sleeping." He replies.

  They appear to be experiencing a bit of jet g. It'll probably take a few more days for them to adjust back into Trigon's time zone. I'd introduce them to you, but I'll probably be gone before they wake up. Today is the first day of my volunteering with the police force.

  After a light breakfast of scrambled egg on toast, I leave the apartment and head towards west Trigon.

  Well, I'm actually walking to the nearest train station. Then I'll catch a train to west Trigon. This means although west Trigon is in the literal opposite direction to SIT, I end up walking the same route I usually do to reach SIT.

  I enter the familiar train station and board a train heading to west Trigon. After a short journey on the train I leave and walk to a nearby police station.

  The police station's a rge, L- shaped building, which looked about four storeys high. The walls had been painted a mixture of white, bck, and light blue. Most buildings in Trigon also had one or two yers of basements. Given that police stations need secure cells to temporarily detain suspects, this building might actually be bigger under the ground than it is above the ground.

  The grounds around the station are paved in granite, and along the side of the station are a set of rge garages. One of the garage doors had been opened, and I see several men in uniform talking just outside it. At the front of the building stands a rge revolving door. Above the door is a metallic blue sign, with the words "Trigon Police" written in white with block capital tters.

  I enter through the revolving doors, and enjoy the warm, comfortable air inside the station's lobby. Before I can make my way over to the receptionist, I'm greeted by the same three policemen I met on the day of harvest festival. They beckon me towards them.

  "Ah! If it isn't our little paper-bag-hero! We were telling some colleagues about you earlier."

  Paper-bag hero? I'd like to say I've had worse nicknames before, but I really haven't. That one takes the cake.

  "Good morning. I'm here for some volunteer work."

  "We know." Another one says, puffing his chest out. "You'll be doing it with us."

  "I see you're in uniform. Heh, you almost look like a police officer yourself." Says the third.

  "I was told to wear my SIT uniform because it's simir to the police uniform." I respond.

  The police uniform is bck trousers with a light blue shirt. It also includes a rge belt which contains weaponry and tools. SIT's heroics uniform is dark blue tracksuit. Apart from the fact that they're both blue, I'm not sure what the simirity is.

  Perhaps noticing my confusion, one of the men expins the simirity I failed to notice.

  "Simir in terms of material. Haven't you noticed?" He pulls on his shirt, gesturing at it. "These are made out of a material very simir to combat suits. But they're more readily avaible to be mass-produced. The same is true of the uniform you're wearing now."

  "Wow! They look so different, though." I say.

  "It's a miracle of modern fashion." He ughs.

  Well, you learn something new everyday, they say!

  The three men give a quick briefing of the job, tracing out the patrol route on the map on one of the walls.

  "Ready? Then I'll see you lot ter. Stay safe!"

  After the briefing, we prepare to leave. One of the three policemen stays behind and waves us off, and the other two policemen and I leave the station and start walking along the designated route. While walking, the two of them start talking to me about what it's like patrolling west Trigon.

  "It's just nice to have a third set of hands on these shifts. Just in case."

  "Definitely. You don't know what a great help it is to have a volunteer help with this. This is one of the most disliked jobs in the police department."

  "On most days, nothing happens. You just need to walk around and mind the bad smell. You don't mind bad smells, do you?"

  I shake my head.

  "But on some days, all hell breaks loose here. You don't want to meet an entire gang while you're out patrolling, and you certainly don't want to be caught in between a gang war. It's that 'what if' scenario we hate so much."

  We spend a few hours walking the streets of west Trigon. We were stopped a few times by locals asking for help, but it was only for small favors like helping carrying shopping, or fixing an old dy's TV antennae. While walking around, I asked if that sort of work was actually part of the job description.

  The officers just ughed and said, "You just do whatever you see needs doing. If that's all you find yourself doing, be thankful for the peace."

  As we walk further westward, the buildings nearby start showing signs of age. Water damage and mold run down the walls, causing the paint to bubble in some pces and peel in others. Garden shrubs become overgrown and houseowners apparently can't tell the difference between pnts and litter.

  Funnily, the houses here are probably newer than a lot of the houses in east Trigon. The reason they look so much worse is simply due to the human environment over in west Trigon.

  "... And west Trigon's slums are over there, beyond that fence."

  separating the streets of dipidated houses we're currently walking through with the actual slums of west Trigon is a rge, metal fence- heightened further with rings of barbed wire.

  "It looks like a prison wall." I say, admiring the height of the wall. It isn't quite as big as SIT's walls, but it looks far more intimidating.

  "It is a prison wall. The only difference between this one and a standard prison wall is that this one's designed so that people can see through it."

  "But it's not really that bad in there, right?"

  "I wouldn't know. I really wouldn't know. We rarely venture deep into the slums."

  Every hundred or so metres along the wall is a locked iron door. The three of us walk over to the nearest door. One of the policemen takes out a set of keys, unlocks the door and swings it open. The three of us walk through.

  I take a closer look at the wreckage.

  The roads, fractured with potholes, are covered with a thin yer of grime and sediment. Bin bags had slowly accumited on the sides of the streets over the past twenty years. Swarms of flies hover around some of the bags that had split from age or damage.

  Of the buildings that hadn't been completely reduced to rubble, most of them seem to have either a damaged roof or are missing a portion of wall. Iron bars stick out of broken pieces of concrete near the remains of rger buildings.

  Unsurprisingly, apart from the three of us, the entire area was deserted.

  "Okay. So here's the job." The policeman with the keys re-locks the door and puts his keys away. "We don't have to go deep into the slums; we just need to keep walking parallel to the fence, here. If we see any damage to the fence, we report it. If we see anything suspicious, we report it. If we see one or two people, we report it and find out what they're doing here. If we see more than that, we report it and keep our distance."

  We spend several more hours walking through the streets of west Trigon.

  At the end of the shift, we return to the police station to sign out.

  Thankfully, nothing happened in west Trigon's slums. Halfway through our shift, we stopped for a lunchbreak. Then we continued walking around the streets.

  Curious, I check the time I've spent in west Trigon on the subsystem's task.

  -THE SUPER VILLAINY SYSTEM-

  [Task: Spend 672 hours in west Trigon]

  [Progress: 8/672]

  [Rewards: Immunity (1)]

  Eight hours? That sounds reasonable. That's quite a lot of time, to be honest. Is this what an actual job feels like?

  ... Wait.

  I need to spend another six-hundred and sixty four hours here.

  It dawns on me how little eight hours actually is compared to the span of a month. How many days of volunteering would this take me? Too many. Thats how many days. Besides, I only have a one week break before I have to return to lectures in SIT. And once lectures are back on, I'm not going to be able to spend my time volunteering anymore. That would be putting the cart before the horse.

  Even if I spend the entire week in west Trigon, I'd only get about a hundred and fifty hours. So I'm definitely not going to be able to finish the task this week. I'd still like to get as much of it done as possible, though.

  Hmm. Spending the entire week here- I could do that. If I did, I'd be one quarter of the way through the task.

  After some more thought on the matter, I decide that it would be worth renting a room in west trigon. Lodging is cheap is west Trigon due to it's proximity to the slums, after all.

  I walk around west Trigon for a bit and find a run-down inn. After booking a room there for a week, I return home to pack some essentials and tell Kyte and the others the news.