"What's this?" Was her initial reaction, followed shortly by the quiet rustle of a single sheet of paper being lifted up to eyelevel, and followed by a "Huh" that really said it all.
Captain Cynthia Myers looked up at the man across the desk from her. Rupert Kelley. A beat officer for most of his career with the NYPD. Six years of it, in fact. She'd barely had a few months with him, between his infamous stabbing and his stint with the Camps. He had potential. Potential he seemed dead set on wasting. Witness his self-dug pity hole.
Captain Cynthia Myers stood up, and took that single sheet of paper across the room.
"Cynthia, you know I didn't do this light--Cynthia?"
Her paper shredder made a truly awful noise as it ground up that single sheet of paper between its dull, rusty blades, and spit it back out into the clear bucket below as so much hamster cage liner. She really needed to get a new one; she'd had this one since her own beat officer days.
Cynthia Myers calmly seated herself again. "No," was her answer.
Detective Rupert Kelley got that look on his face--the one where his eyebrows did some sort of dance to summon lightning and thunder and hailstones down upon the head of the person he was glaring at. To the Captain's infinite surprise, he got himself back under control. Only his white-handed grip on the chair arms showed how much it cost him.
Nice, she silently applauded. It looked like the Anger Management class they both attended was finally starting to sink into his skull.
"Captain Myers," he began simply--and believe-you-me, his sudden switch to formalities did not go unnoticed, "it's a Letter of Resignation. You can't just--"
"I just did." She picked up her coffee cup, and took a nice long sip while she watched her subordinate's face turn several shades of red and white. If he'd managed blue, he'd have been damn patriotic.
"...Just because you shred it, doesn't mean it just goes awa--"
Cynthia set down her coffee cup, and tossed a file folder across the desk so that it slid to a stop right at the desk's edge. Half of the time she tried that, it had ended in her detectives being littered in paperwork. When it worked, though, it looked damn cool. She wasn't sure which she'd been going for with Kelley: looking cool, or burying him. Either or.
She could tell by the despairing look on his face, the total and complete promise of defiance despite the death of hope, that the boy was starting to get it. "That's your new case," she said. "You'll be working it with Jones. I figured you could use a break from MMRC cases; you're on loan to Homicide until further notice."
Rupert took ten long seconds to respond. She counted them with him. It was the first thing they'd learned in their class: if you think you're about to lose it, give yourself ten seconds.
On the eleventh second, he deliberately pushed the folder back across the desk. Captain Cynthia Myers took ten seconds, then pushed it back.
Rupert took a deep breath. "Listen," he began reasonably, "this isn't something I just came up with over night, Cynthia. I wrote that letter in
December. This is my decision; you can't just... just..."
"Veto it." Cynthia provided.
"...Yes. Thanks."
She stared across the table. Kelley stared back. Cynthia stared harder.
Twenty minutes later, Detective Rupert Kelley stepped out of the office of Captain Cynthia Myers with a file folder in his stunned hands. He'd been briefed on the case. He'd agreed to take it on, with Jones, from Homicide. He still wasn't sure how.
Back in her office, Captain Cynthia Myers leaned back in her chair, and sipped her coffee. Nearly eight years now, since Detective Rupert Kelley had joined the force. He had potential. The same potential she'd had when she joined, eigh
teen years ago. Detective Rupert Kelley was ten years too early to take her on. It sure was cute when he tried, though.
He was a cop at heart; he had too strong of a mix of morals and action to sit back and let someone else save the world. This case would set him right. Maybe the Mutant and Mutant-Related Crimes Task Force wasn't the right place for him--he'd been acting strangely on the subject of the freaks lately, and she wasn't about to pretend that she hadn't noticed--but the NYPD sure as hell was. He'd see.
