A Real Mission

"Come on, just hurry up and kill it!" Xiao He said nervously, pointing at the cockroach.

"You can kill it yourself." Ye Wanqing complained as she limped toward the sink. Xiao He shook his head repeatedly. "It's on a plastic bag, so there's nothing to brace against! What if I miss?"

"Then it'll run away. It won't bite you." Ye Wanqing frowned.

"It's even scarier if it runs away!" Xiao He gritted his teeth. "What if it crawls onto me while I'm sleeping?! Your hand feels a little itchy, and you think it's just your hair or the blanket brushing against you—but when you turn on the light, you find a huge cockroach there! Do you know how horrifying that is?!"

"It's not that bad..." Ye Wanqing muttered, reaching out and grabbing the cockroach in one hand.

Xiao He's eyes widened in horror as he stared at her. "You grabbed it with your bare hand without even using tissue?! Oh my god!"

"It doesn't bite people. It's just a cockroach." Ye Wanqing shot him a disdainful glare, then tossed the cockroach out the window. Clapping her hands, she said, "Still, it's unbelievable that we live on the fifth floor and have cockroaches."

Xiao He looked at Ye Wanqing with awe, then asked, "Why didn't you stomp it to death?"

"Every kind of animal has the right to live. It doesn't really affect us, and these creatures have it hard too. Just staying alive takes everything they have," Ye Wanqing said as she washed her hands.

Xiao He muttered stubbornly, "But cockroaches are pests, you know? They spread all kinds of bacteria and viruses."

"That's only from a human perspective, isn't it?" Ye Wanqing looked at him in confusion. "For nature, even cockroaches are an important part of the food chain, right? Biodiversity is important."

"Fine." Xiao He said expressionlessly. "You're the one who can deal with them, so you make the call."

"And you..." Ye Wanqing looked down at Xiao He disdainfully. "A grown man scared of cockroaches, and you're even a Mutant."

"That thing is to me what Kryptonite is to Superman," Xiao He said seriously. Ye Wanqing snickered. "Give me a break. You think I don't know Superman fears Kryptonite because he's a Kryptonian, and Kryptonite turns him into an ordinary person? What kind of alien are you? A cockroach alien? Hey, maybe that's actually possible."

"What do you mean by that?!" Xiao He snapped. "Don't think you can get cocky just because you dealt with a cockroach! Everyone has weaknesses! I refuse to believe you're not scared of anything! What are you afraid of? I'll handle it from now on."

"I'm afraid of centipedes," Ye Wanqing replied. Xiao He raised a hand and waved it. "Nope, can't do that. I'm scared of those too."

"What a loser..." Ye Wanqing said, widening her beautiful eyes as she gave him a sidelong look. Xiao He replied with complete seriousness, "I can't deal with bugs that have lots of legs. That's my weakness. Don't tell anyone, or they'll use it against me later."

"Fine, I get it." Ye Wanqing said impatiently. "You can lift five hundred pounds, yet you can't handle a cockroach and have to make an injured person do it... Does that make you someone's boyfriend?"

"You're right, almighty Goddess Wanqing," Xiao He replied mechanically. "I'll have to trouble you with any future cockroaches too."

"Since you're being so sincere..." Ye Wanqing said with a smug smile.

"At the end of the day, this is your fault, isn't it?!" Xiao He said irritably. "I told you that pile of trash would attract cockroaches, but you insisted on letting it build up. If you'd just taken it downstairs and thrown it out, none of this crap would've happened!"

"I thought you liked being clean. Turns out you're just scared of cockroaches." Ye Wanqing gave a coquettish huff.

"Tch..." Xiao He spat under his breath in annoyance, but there was nothing he could do. After all, he would have to trouble Lady Ye Wanqing with any cockroaches in the future. Cockroaches were nothing but a childhood trauma for him—a psychological fear.

When he had been around six or seven, the alley where his family lived had been filthy and chaotic, and cockroaches often found their way into their home.

One summer morning, his leg had felt a little itchy. At first, he thought the electric fan was making the blanket flutter and brush against his leg. But when he opened his eyes, he found a giant cockroach, nearly as long as one of his fingers at the time, crawling all over his leg, up and down.

That sight had been permanently etched into his mind. From then on, cockroaches had become his "Kryptonite."

"Childhood trauma is the scariest..." Xiao He muttered softly. He quickly gathered up the trash, put it into a fresh garbage bag, and tied it shut. Only then did he feel a little more at ease. "I'm buying insecticide tomorrow."

The next morning, Cui Man arrived a little later than usual, and the breakfast she brought was not their usual light meal.

"What's going on?" Xiao He asked curiously as he looked at the beef noodles in Cui Man's hands, a flicker of hope rising in his heart.

"An emergency mission." Cui Man handed the beef noodles to the two of them. "Get in the car with me first. I'll explain everything once we're on the helicopter." Then she smiled mysteriously. "We finally found the third Mutant."

A villain has appeared! Xiao He was startled, and he instantly perked up.

Since joining the Special Response Department, they had either dealt with Typhoon or solved math problems. They had never had a proper job. But now that a Mutant had finally appeared as an enemy, it finally felt like the kind of atmosphere a superhero should have.

Xiao He ran through what he considered the normal mission procedure in his mind: the enemy appeared, they confirmed the enemy's true identity, Ye Wanqing changed the person's name to "Lin Tiannan," then he made his entrance and defeated the enemy with ease and style before returning triumphantly amid the cheers of the public. Everyone would be relaxed, and everyone would be happy.

"This mission is a little troublesome," Cui Man said, showing them the image on her tablet.

On the tablet screen, a massive monster was rampaging through a crowd, seemingly having gone berserk and lost its mind. The creature's lower body barely retained a human shape, but its upper body was a hideous spider: black bristles, six powerful jointed limbs, and a dense mass of compound eyes.

"Pfft..." Ye Wanqing immediately covered her mouth and forcibly held back her laughter. Then she turned to Xiao He and asked gently, "This enemy has a few too many legs. Can you handle it, darling?"

"I..." Xiao He cleared his throat. "As long as you can change his name to Lin Tiannan, there won't be a problem."

"That's the difficult part," Cui Man replied. "In his current state, it'll be hard for us to confirm his true identity. But he's already gone berserk in the crowd. We've sent in SWAT and armed police officers, but the target is probably a Mutant somewhere between LV2 and LV3. He won't be easy to handle, so we can only rely on you to buy us time."

"But I'm only LV1 in my normal state!" Xiao He frowned. "I'll die if I go in too!"

"You only need to buy time, not defeat him," Cui Man said seriously. "We'll have the SWAT team provide you with tactical support so you can keep him occupied and buy me enough time. We're currently pulling surveillance footage. In a few hours, we should be able to confirm his identity, then immediately change his name and let you defeat him."