((ooc: This thread references the riot plot of 2013. Short recap: police beat mutant, got video taped, were exonerated for the charges, repeated the crime, all hell broke lose. NYC had city-wide rioting for a week.))

2014

The sergeant tried and failed to adjust the height on his chair. He set his papers on the break room table, and tried again. Failed.

“Coffee?” The detective had already poured herself a cup, but her hand hovered over an extra mug.

“No thanks.” Tried again. Failed. Tried.

“That one’s broken. Most of them are. Not exactly where the budget is going, these days. We’ve got more bracelets than Tiffany’s, but the city isn’t paying for anything they can’t put in a PR video.” All that said, the detective took her own chair, and glibly adjusted her height until she was an inch taller than the sergeant.

Damn detective head games. Give a cop a psychology class, and this is what happened. Sergeant Haversmith gave up. “We’ll make this quick. How long have you known Caleb Swartz?”

“Since 2006. May, I think. But we didn’t meet until last year.” She blew over the top of her mug, then took a sip.

Haversmith clicked his pen, and scribbled on the corner of his pad to get the ink flowing. “Can you be a little more specific, Detective Elliot?”

Another sip. “May sixth, 2013. The day the 24th Precinct was attacked.”

He clicked his pen. “But you were stationed out of the MRC Precinct, correct?”

“Correct. I was leaving work when the riot struck the area. I had to hole up in the 24th for safety. Me and half the force, it felt like.” She took another sip. A long one.

“And before that? How did you know Caleb Swartz prior to his involvement at the siege?”

“You know this, Sergeant. Internal Affairs knows this. The entire NYPD knows this. If we want to go over old business, I’ve got paperwork I need to file.”

“Just for the record, Detective. It’ll help him.”

She sipped her coffee. He clicked his pen. Finally, she set the mug down.

“Before that? He was my cat.”

May 6th, 2013

Detective Cassandra Elliot reached over to the windowsill, and nudged the piece of powdered sugar donut with her finger. It bumped against the cat’s paw. He briefly looked down at it, then went back to staring out the open window, his ears intent on the world outside. A siren whirred from the parking lot. Tires squealed.

“You worried too, cat?”

She’d never named the cat. It wasn’t really her cat. Just a stray that had turned up one day when she’d left the window cracked for air, and stolen a donut off her desk. He’d been dropping by her office on and off for nearly seven years now. He’d disappear for months at a time, and she’d be sure that was the last of him, that he’d gotten hit by a truck or eaten by a dog, but he’d always turn back up. The little white cat with black spots here and there, and baby blue eyes.

“It’s all right.” She looked out the window, too. There was a trace of smoke in the air. “Just means you’ve got a brain in there.”

Officer Jameson peeked into her office. “If you’re going home, you’d better go now. It’s getting bad out there.”

“Mmm.”

Jameson came over, and idly scritched at the cat’s ears. The cat give him a look of crippling disdain, but also began purring. “This isn’t going to just blow over, is it?”

She reached for her coffee mug, and found it tragically empty. She still curled her hands around it, more for the familiar feel than for anything else. “You saw the news.”

Things were tense enough with the Schuyler beating, and the exoneration. This? This was just a bad joke.

“Damn reporters,” Jameson said, as the cat pressed against his hand.

“Damn us,” Cassandra said, and the officer was silent.

Scumbags came in all colors. Blue was no exception, much as they all wanted it to be.

She sighed, and grabbed her purse. “I’m out. Don’t let anything burn while I’m gone.” She had little doubt she’d be called back in soon. They all would be, if they couldn’t get things under control downtown. Until then? She’d try to get a little sleep, and a shower would be divine. She shooed Jameson out of her office door and the cat out the window, and locked up both of them. Not in that order.

Detective Cassandra Elliot stepped out the precinct doors in plainclothes, and gripped her purse as another squad car peeling by. She had a moment of feeling disoriented, anonymous. Of feeling what every other woman getting off work right now must feel. That the world was scary, and she was small. Difference was, she was still a cop at the core. This wasn’t the first time the muties had gone on a rampage, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Having her service weapon still tucked under her coat helped, too. A little. She shifted her purse, and went down the steps. The MRC Precinct was close to her apartment.

The little white cat with black spots here and there met her at the second corner, like it had been waiting. It twined around her legs, tripping her in its affections.

“Hey, hey--! Easy, little guy. Rare of you to show your face out here.” She tried to scoop him up, but he evaded, like always. Like always, she pushed her disappointment down. Taking him home and making an honest house cat of him had always been her pipe dream, but it wasn’t one the cat shared.

Murrr, morble, murrrr

“Sure.” She companionably agreed, whapping at his tail before stepping over him. Her ears heard the breaking glass as she rounded the corner, but her brain didn’t process the sound in time. It was like falling down the stairs—there was that crystal clear moment when she lost her footing, knew she’d lost it, but couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “…S***.”

The vandals turned their heads towards her. Six heads, on four bodies. Screw the racism seminars: that just wasn’t right.

“Human or mutant?” The one with a flatscreen TV slung over one shoulder demanded.

“Mutant.” There was really only one answer to that, and she lied without hesitation. The cat brushed against her leg, but she ignored it.

One of the other muties narrowed his eyes. “Prove it.” He held up his own hand, and the little flash of flame that sprung up in his palm left no ambiguities.

“Can’t,” she said. “I’m a precog.”

“So what’s in our future, missy?”

Part of her wanted to laugh at the terrible line. Another part was oddly, irrationally flattered: she’d thought she was well out of the missy years. Most of her? Most of her was wondering how many of them she could shot, how much paperwork it would mean, and whether she’d be alive to do it. And that little part that was left over, the one that wanted to cry? That part was telling her that until they tried to slam her head in, or light her on fire, this wasn’t a clear cut case of self-defense. She wondered if this was what it had been like for the officers who’d ignited this whole debacle, if they’d been thinking what she was: take the freaks out first, or die.

“Can’t do it on cue,” she said, backing up a step, her hand slipping towards her shoulder. Nominally to push up her purse strap, but the weight of the gun under her jacket gave her grim hope.

“Convenient.” The guy with too many heads nodded left and right, and his buddies moved to flank her. Her hand slipped under her jacket.

“I can vouch for her,” said the cat at her feet. “Definitely a precog. Had the foresight to bring a friend, didn’t she?”

There was a moment of blinking confusion all around. Cassandra held her breath, hoping the shock she felt wasn’t as clear on her face as it was on the looters’.

“That’s… legit. I guess.” Hazarded the guy with the flames. “You should… probably get off the streets. Bad time to look human. Bad time to be a mutant, too,” he added, with a sardonic, almost friendly smile.

She warped her own lips into an approximation of a return smile. “Yeah. Thanks. Good luck.” It seemed like a friendly thing to say, mutant-to-mutant. “You know there’s a police station two blocks that way, right? The one that specializes in mutants? …Maybe loot somewhere else?”

The muties turned to each other, exchanging glances. At her feet, the cat had pinned its tail with a paw, and was grooming it sedately.

“What?” She knew she’d regret it. The second it was out of her mouth, she knew.

They exchanged a few more glances, and snippets of a conversation she would have been happier not understanding.

“No way they were stupid enough to hit the MRC.”

“They were pretty stupid.”

“Not that stupid. They weren’t going that way, though, were they?”

“Where were they going?” She dreaded the answer. The cat’s tail twitched under his paw as he licked it.

The one with too many heads pointed. Northwest. The 24th Precinct.

“Different station,” she reassured them. “Well. I’m… getting out of here. Take care.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Speed walking was an art. Ignoring the cat at her side was another.

“I have been feeding you donuts for seven years.”

“What?” It flicked its ears upward, turning those baby blues her way. It still looked like just a cat. As much as she stared, she didn’t see any depths of intelligence, any human soul starring back out at her. It really, really just looked like a cat.

“Nothing. It just felt relevant.”

“ ‘Kay.” It paused, licked at a shoulder, stared off down a side street. “Umm, shouldn’t you turn here? To go to your apartment?”

“You know where I live.”

The cat licked its other shoulder, even more studiously.

She ran a hand through her hair. “No, I’m not turning. We need to warn them.” She took out her work phone. Dispatch took far too long to pick up. She started tapping her foot against the ground. The cat jumped half a step, ears lying flat as he glared at the offending appendage.

…Still just a cat.

“Dispatch. Patch me through to the 24th Precinct, Detective Gables. What? Okay. Detective Mickelson. Armsworth? S***. Dispatch, inform the MRC of the situation. Advise that Detective Elliot is en route on foot.” She stared down at the cat, who was tentatively reaching out a paw towards her shoelaces. “Plus an informant.”

The cat jerked its paw back. “What? No. What no. No no. I’m just taking you home. You gave me donuts, I save you from disgruntled mutant rioters, we’re cool, you’ll never see me again.”

She gave it a look. The look. The look that had gotten her to detective.

“Whatever.” It found a fleck on a forepaw that warranted more attention than her. “But if you try to arrest me… don’t try to arrest me. ‘Cause I’ll do. Stuff.”

No matter how she looked at it, the fleabag was still just a cat.

2014

“Did you use the last creamer?” Officer Jimmy Lagarde called over to them. “Again? Because not cool.”

“Doing a background here, Lagarde.” Detective Elliot didn’t bother turning to look. “And no, I didn’t. There’s a whole box under the sink.”

The officer wandered over uninvited, coffee in hand and creamer forgotten. “For who? The cat?”

Elliot sipped her coffee. Haversmith pointedly flipped his notepad so it was face down on the break room table.

“It’s the cat, isn’t it?” The younger officer pressed. “You actually got him to fill out the academy paperwork?”

“Racist, Lagarde,” Elliot cautioned. “Did you even watch the sensitivity training?”

“What? He doesn’t care.” The officer leaned in towards the flipped notepad, like he could divine its contents through a hundred sheets of paper and a cardboard back. “Might as well hire him, he’s here all the time anyway. If you backdate the appointment, he’d have more seniority than me.”

“Officer James Lagarde?” Sergeant Haversmith asked.

“Friends call me Jimmy.”

“Lagarde,” the sergeant reiterated. “You’re on my list. Do you have time to talk?”

“Well, yeah. Coffee break.” Jimmy slipped into the chair next to Cassandra. After a moment of fiddling, he got the height adjusted comfortably upwards. Haversmith clicked his pen. “What do you want to know? I pretty much put everything in my recommendation letter. He’s a good cat. Kind of a snark ball, but good.”

Another pen click. The sergeant flipped his pad over, and turned to a fresh page. “For the record, do you know the cat’s actual name?”

“Yeah, sure. Calley. Sorry, Caleb Swartz. What else?”

“How long have you know Mr. Swartz?”

“ ‘Mr. Swartz’? Heh. We met during the Schuyler Riots. Or are they calling them the Ralls Riots? Schuyler-Ralls? Second day of those. May… something?”

“Seventh,” Elliot supplied. “If you won’t be needing me any longer…?”

The sergeant nodded his thanks, and the detective showed herself out.

“Seventh. Yeah. Second day of the riots. Well, more like the first-day-that-never-ended. I was off duty at ten if you went by the schedule, but… well, you know how it was. No one went off duty that week. We were on route to the 24th, backup for the siege, my partner and I. Our car got flipped half a block away. That’s when he turned me into a bird.”

“He… turned you into a bird.” The sergeant clicked his pen. Loudly.

“Yeah. No, it was really cool, actually. Saved my life. I was pretty much--I wasn't in good shape, as a human. A hospital couldn't have fixed it; he bought me time to get to a mutant healer. You haven’t read the reports?”

“I’m still wadding through them.”

“I hear you. There’s a whole novel series in the 24th’s alone. Film rights, and all that jazz.” Jimmy took a sip of coffee, then winced. “Forgot the creamer.”

The sergeant maintained his focus. One of them had to. “He turned you into a bird.”

“Yeah. A crow.”

May 7th, 2013

The car flipped a half block out. Lagarde didn’t see what had flipped it, not at first. There was just motion, disjoint, sound, disconnected, smoke shouting sirens falling, glass breaking, numbness spreading.

It wasn’t just the car flip. That’s what he realized, slowly, as he stared out at a world turned upside down and fragmented. The windshield was a spiderweb of white lines. His seatbelt held him in place, his head about three inch from the roof of the car.

Two inches.

One.

Something was crushing them. Slowly, methodically. The metal frame made short, pained noises at each contraction.

“Sammy.” His hand snaked to his seatbelt. He clicked it off, but didn’t fall that last inch. Strange. Not something to worry about now. “Sammy.” He found his partner’s shoulder, shook it. He thought he heard a groan from her, but it was hard to tell. Their siren hadn’t turned off. And the metal, all around them, inching closer—

His head finally touched the roof. He braced his hands against it, and tried to free himself from his seat. No luck. Something snaked over the windshield outside, long and thick and black. A tentacle of solid darkness. Sure, why not. It really didn’t matter. They were ****ed already; everything was ****ed.

“Sammy, talk to me.” He got a shoulder propped against the roof, so he could look. Her side of the car wasn’t as badly damaged; whatever had rolled them had struck the driver’s side. Hers almost normal, by comparison. Her window had shattered in the roll, but the side airbag had caught most of the glass. It was already deflating. She hung from her seat, arms draped against the roof. He didn’t see any blood on her, but she wasn’t awake, either. “Com’on, Sammy girl, you’ve got to get up. Please.”

He finally got the nerve to look down at himself. Up at himself, whatever. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please.”

The goddamn siren was still wailing, right above his head. In that moment, if he could have killed one thing, just by thinking? The siren. No question.

Around them, the car contracted again. Another tendril of black slipped across the windshield. He felt the movement in his shoulders, his neck, where he got ground a little more snuggly into the roof. He didn’t feel anything in his legs. There was a mercy in that.

Movement caught his eye, on Sammy’s side of the car. Not one of the tentacles crushing the car: something smaller. Flightier. It flitted in, landed on the roof, hopped. A sparrow?

A sparrow, at 10 o’clock, in the middle of a riot zone?

“You get away from her,” he tried to hit it away with his arm, but it just hopped back, a hair out of reach. “You get goddamn away from her!”

It took another half-hop back, paused a moment to watch how ineffectual his efforts to swat it were, then went back to eying Sammy. Jimmy braced himself again, tried to pry another inch out of his legs. Just another inch, just so he could keep it away from her face. Sparrow-shifting had to be one of the most useless powers he’d ever heard of, but the freak was in a combat zone for a reason. If he could just keep it away from her eyes, her neck, anywhere vulnerable—

It tilted its head, watching him. Its black eyes flicked to his pinned legs, and back up to his face. It tilted its head again, the other way.

“Yeah.” Jimmy panted. “Happy?”

It hopped an inch closer. Another inch. The little bastard was toying with him, it knew he still couldn’t reach it. But it was getting cocky: another inch, another. He could probably reach it now, but only with the tips of his fingers. If he just waited, if he played possum—

Another hop.

Jimmy hit it as hard as he could. It didn’t dodge; he’d half expected that, but it didn’t. He saw it slam against the windshield. Then act had jogged something lose, and he fell hard against the roof, his legs in the air.

His legs. In the air.

He could… feel his legs?

He looked upwards, not daring to breath. And flexed his legs. His stick thin, sort of scaly, black crow legs.

Whark, he said, when he’d been meaning to say “What.”

The sparrow was tottering back to its feet. He spun on the thing, getting feet and wings under him before he could think too hard about what he was doing, and how he was doing it. He was bigger than the sparrow, much bigger. But not as big as he should have been.

Whaaaaark.

It tittered something equally unintelligible, and took three hops back towards the open window. Around them, the car contracted another inexorable inch. It flittered outside, then back in. Looked at him pointedly. Then flew back out, and waited with nervous twitches of its head on the pavement.

Jimmy tilted his own head. Was it one of the MRC cops? Did they have some kind of bird-shifter? He hadn’t heard of it, but he worked out of the 18th. They weren’t exactly neighbors. He jerked his beak towards his partner.

Shhh-mak. He was surprised the sounds came out as intelligible as it did. Sammy. Outside, the sparrow very deliberately shook its head. It took off, towards the station.

Jimmy followed. He didn’t know how, didn’t think too hard about how his arms were suddenly wings and his wings seemed to know what to do, but they did. One of the station windows had been shattered by an earlier attack. They flew through, and slid to an ungraceful stop on the floor behind the front desk. Tile floor: not meant for claws.

The entire lobby had been turned into a barricade of office furniture. Desks, tables, chairs, shelves, anything that could fill a gap. The officers of the 24th had established a perimeter inside. No one batted an eye as the birds landed. Then again, they already had a tiger making up part of the line.

“Officer Lagarde,” a sergeant barked, and the crow straightened his feathers reflexively. “Get in back. Debrief.”

Mraak Ssssrrr. Apparently Y’s were hard. Yes Sir. He hopped after the sparrow, back into an office area cleared of all but one table of the folding sorts you’d use for a garage poker game. The space was half triage, half central command, the table manned by the precinct heads. A skinny Italian officer was dry heaving into a bucket, curled up in the corner nearest them.

“That’s him?” A woman in a suit asked. The suit was rumpled and unbuttoned, her gun holster showing, but she had a weary authority to her. He pegged her as a plainclothes detective without any further introduction.

“That’s him,” the skinny officer said. “Couldn’t get the partner. Unconscious. Shifting doesn’t fix that. Should have a few minutes, they’re mostly ignoring the car now, ‘cept for the whole crushing darkness thing. Hate that guy. Any saltines left? Ginger ale?”

“Officer Lagarde,” she said, turning to address his feathery bum like the world hadn’t gone insane. “Detective Elliot, MRC Precinct. These are Watch and Johnson, 24th. Watch is in charge. I’m coordinating the shifters.”

Qwaaark? Yeah, he didn’t know quite what he’d been trying to say, either. He tried again: Sssssssaamrrr?

“Your partner?” She guessed, with a glance back at the sick kid.

He waved a hand, not looking up from his bucket. “Crows can talk. Mostly. Give him a few minutes, he’ll figure it out. Hi, by the way. Thanks for hitting me. Really helpful. Makes me very glad I’m sticking around.”

“Swartz,” she warned. The kid went back to dry heaving, by way of reply.

She sighed, and patted the table. He took the hint, and flew up next to her, joining the circle of cops. The sparrow was already there, its eyes squeezed shut, looking a little woozy. Jimmy tilted his head.

“Meet Swartz,” the detective said, gesturing to the kid, “and Swartz.” The sparrow. “You may have seen tiger Swartz on your way in. Same Swartz. He’s on our side.”

Our side? So… not an officer. Now that the crow looked closer, the uniform he was wearing was too lose for him. Way too lose.

“Best life choice ever,” Swartz quipped from his bucket. He was summarily ignored by all parties present.

“We’re going to get your partner out, but we need to make an opening,” Sergeant Watch took over. “You’re on aerial reconnaissance.”

Jimmy got his feathers in line.

Yissssss Ssssrrrr.

2014

Sergeant Haversmith made a few more notes, thought a moment, made a few more. He leaned back in his chair. “Thank you, Office Lagarde. Is Officer Regent on duty today?”

“Sammy? Sure. She was just doing paperwork, last I saw. I went to get us some—” The officer twitched where he sat. “—coffee. Oops. Umm. Should I send her up?”

“Please.”

Once the room was empty, Haversmith got up, and switched chairs. He was sliding his paperwork over when a woman knocked on the door frame.

“So this is where everyone’s been disappearing to,” Officer Sammy Regent said, with a friendly smile. “You mind if I get some coffee before we start?”

“Be my guest.” He shuffled his papers, getting them in order again, and turned to a new page in the notepad. She sat across from him, in his old chair. A few moments of adjustment later, she had the chair raised to a decent height.

He clicked his pen. Sighed. Shook his head a little, when she raised a questioning eyebrow his way.

“Andrew Haversmith,” he leaned across the table, and offered his hand.

She accepted. “Sammy Regent. The kid’s really applying? Do you think he has a chance? He’s kind of… unorthodox.”

“Why do you say that?” He began to write.

She waved a hand. “No no, not to say he wouldn’t be a good officer. But he’s a mutant, you know? Oh god, that came out wrong. Being a mutant isn’t a bad thing, sensitivity training yadda yadda. But there’s a lot of baggage that comes with that, no matter what HR wants us saying to the press. The Registration Act happened when he was, what, seventeen? Middle of high school, and suddenly his existence is illegal. And I don’t get the impression he was a normal kid before that, either. You see it a lot with the mutants his age—they get thrown out of home, maybe find some other mutants to support them, get a place in the Mansion if they’re lucky, then bam—Registration Act.

“Everything gets thrown out the window, everything gets broken, Mansion shut down, everyone the government could get their hands on tossed in a Nazi internment camp. Don’t try to tell me they weren’t like that, that was my first year out of the Academy. I remember. They came around to all the new graduates, asking for volunteers to work the camps. You know how ****ed up that was, how many cadets quit over that? You know what kind of officers were left after the ones with morals up and left the rest of us?

"What I’m saying is, his generation? Lots of trust issues. Especially with the NYPD. But there we were, middle of the riot, mutants torching the city, cops getting killed, and I wake up in the middle of the 24th Precinct with goddamn tiger jaws around me, getting dragged across the floor. But right from the start, I knew who’s side he was on. You know how rare that is, dealing with a feral mutie? Sorry, not supposed to use that term anymore. But you know what I mean: not a cop, no one really knew this kid from before, even the person vouching for him is barely explaining how she knew him. But he had our backs. Never even a question.”

“Never?” Haversmith arched an eyebrow.

Sammy smirked over her coffee. “Well. Mostly.”

May 7th, 2013

Samantha Regent punched a tiger.

It was a surreal moment, even as she did it. The sort of thing that her own mind provided narration for: Samantha Regent, punching a tiger, in one of her more well-thought-out moments in life. And now the tiger is reeling back, reading itself to attack—

“Would people stop doing that!” A young man with a proper Jersey accent yelled, from another room. “I’m just trying to help! I really hope you realize how much I hate you all!”

The tiger was cowering at her feet. Its eyes were enormous, gold, and wibbling. Its paws were all politely tucked under its body, and it appeared to be trying hard to look as small as possible. Considering its body was longer than she was tall, and it weighed at least four of her, there was only one phrase that adequately summarized the situation.

“What the ****.” Sammy clambered to her feet. Wobbly at first, a hand to her head to stop the spike of pain lodged in her temple, but she made it. And she pointed with her free hand, down at those wibbly gold eyes. “What. The. ****.”

A crow landed on her shoulder. “Sss’okay, Sssamr. Sss’gud tigrr.”

“Gah!” She never knew she’d had it in her to throw a crow to the ground, but there it was. It bounced off the tiger’s face, pointy feet first.

“That’s it, I give up, I am so done with this—” The same young man protested, from the other room.

The crow, if anything, was looking even more pitiable than the giant tiger.

Tiger. Tigrr.

It’s okay, Sammy. It’s a good tiger.

“Jimmy goddamnit if you’ve been hiding that you’re a mutant now is not the time.”

Krawww, the crow answered, noncommittally.

“Officer Regent.” The sergeant’s voice snapped her to immediate attention. The lobby of the 24th had been set up in a rough barricade, she noticed, like kids making forts with couch cushions. The sergeant pointed towards the next room. “Go debrief.” He rubbed his temples. “Just… go debrief. They’ll explain it.”

“Yes, Sir.” She saluted smartly, then nursed her headache all the way into the next room. The tiger stayed behind, sitting up slowly in her wake. The sergeant scratched it behind the ears. Jimmy hopped after her like a bad history joke; Jim Crow hops into a police station and... The next room had been divested of its contents to furnish the barricade. She went to the only table left in the joint, and presented herself to the officers there. “Officer Regent. You’re the people that are going to make this make sense?”

“We’ll try, Regent. Sergent Watch. These are Johnson and Elliot. Elliot’s with the MRC. She’s our acting… shifter liaison. You’re from the…?”

“18th. You guys have been out of touch for a while, Sergent. We’ve been trying to route cars your way, but things are thick around this area.”

“Land lines have been cut,” the sergeant explained, “and something’s jamming cell reception. Some kind of mutie. We’re in a lull right now—”

As terrifying as the thought that this was a lull was, she found part of her attention distracted by the plainclothes detective in the corner. Elliot was talking to a pile of clothes. “Swartz, this is not productive.”

The clothes squiggled slightly. “Told you. I give up. People keep hitting me when I drag them out of death-cars. You ever tried being in three places at once? Punching doesn’t make your head feel better.”

“Swartz.” That voice, right there, made it clear how she’d made detective.

The clothing wiggled. A little white cat head with black spots on its ears flopped out of the shirt collar. “…I can still be productive like this. S’more comfortable than being human. All this woulda been easier if you hadn’t made me keep out my human form.”

The detective ran a hand through her hair. “Go take a nap, Swartz.”

That perked the cat up. It sat up straight, shaking off the last of the clothes it had been tangled up in. “What? No. I can still help. I can do a rhino. Have you ever seen how quickly people run from a rhino? Way more quickly than a tiger. And you need me in the air. Surveillance is my thing, you can’t just—”

“Lagarde has it covered. You turned him into a crow, remember?”

The cat listed a little to one side. “Oh. Yeah. I guess? Yeah, he punched me too.”

"You haven't slept since this started, Swartz."

The cat stubbornly hunched down. "Neither have you."

"Yeah. But I outrank you."

Sergeant Watch was still talking. “—get yourself checked out. If you’re up for it, we could use you on the perimeter after that. We’re rotating officers until we get a break in this.”

“Take this with you,” the detective said, shoving the cat in her hands. “Make sure it sleeps.”

2014

“You know what he said when the MRC finally showed up to take the heat off us?” Sammy said. “ ‘About damn time.’ Summed up the whole situation. Five days trapped in that station. I know the rest of the city was getting hit hard, they were running around literally putting out fires, but… Whatever. ‘About damn time.’ You haven’t heard that said until a tiger says it.”

Sergeant Haversmith scribbled a note. “You requested a transfer to the MRC Precinct after the riots. That seems unusual for someone of your background.”

“For someone who volunteered as a camp guard during the Registration Act. You can say it. The Captain over here was thinking the same thing when she called me in to interview. But she approved it. As you can see.” A little show of jazz hands around the edges of her mug emphasized the point.

“What made you want to work here?”

“For one thing? Jimmy was putting in. You’ve seen the guy—send him for a cup of coffee, and he gets lost in the break room.” She shrugged. “And we work well together. Didn’t want to break that up. It’s tough enough, with all the turn over around here.”

All the disability leaves, she meant. All the funerals. Neither of them said it.

He waited.

She kept talking.

“And the other thing. When I said all those cadets quit back at the Academy? I stayed. The idea of the camps was disgusting, but you know what was worse? Letting them walk free. Do not quote me on this to HR, this is just so you understand, all right? Back then, the Registration Act made total sense to me. Every other day were were losing officers, we couldn’t protect anyone when one of those monsters showed up. It was like… the civilians were sitting there, watching their TVs, waiting for us to make it better, but what could we do?

“Then the Registration Act got passed, and boom—backup. Public support. Supplies. Government funding. Hell, those freaky stalker robots. We cops were the only ones who realized how close the city was to loosing any sense of law and order, and the Act saved us from that. I don’t regret them passing it. The Camps were ****ed up, but even when I had to go home and take a two hour shower to feel clean, it still felt like at least we were doing something.”

She sipped her coffee.

He clicked his pen. “An interesting stance, for someone recommending a mutant to the Academy. You’ve changed your mind?”

“Hell no.” She set down her cup, and leaned in closer. “You’ve got the same look as me. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I won’t go squealing to HR if you don’t. Mutants are… they’re freaks. Listening to the people in this Precinct talk is like… is like being the the middle of the Democratic caucus. Everyone’s trying to out PC each other. You mention the Sanctuary Police Massacre around here, they start talking socioeconomics. Disgusting.” Sammy leaned back, with a one-shouldered shrug. “But if we don't get mutants buying into the system, they're just going to keep killing us. And that kid? He’s all right.”

Haversmith put down his pen. He hadn’t written anything, not for the last few minutes. “Would you trust him at your back?”

“I did,” she raised her cup in a half-salute. “And I do. He still hangs around, anyone else mention that? Comes in to steal powdered sugar donuts in the morning. We’re trying to train him to use the front door, but it’s like… well, like training a cat. He helps, though. Goes on ride-alongs, unofficially. Mostly with the 24th--there's mutie cop here that has a beef with him. Apparently he punched the guy, awhile back. Didn't think muties were such crybabies. You know Elliot made him fill out the application, right? Said he couldn’t hang around if he didn’t at least try. She’ll probably try shoving him in the reserves, if you nix this.” She took a long, long sip. “Anyone else you’re talking to?”

“Just his teachers,” the sergeant said. His next word explained everything: “Mansion.”

Sammy smirked. “Is it even worth talking to them? Muties stick together.”

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree. “Thank you for your time, Officer Regent.”

“You want my advice? Let him in to the Academy. If he can’t cut it, he can’t cut it. It’ll look good on our Affirmative Action hiring numbers, either way.” She stood up, and stretched. “And either way? He’s going to keep coming around. Better if we get him house broken.”

The packet seemed too thick for a rejection letter. Calley examined it carefully before opening it. Official NYPD seal, check. No mysterious white powder or ticking noises, check.

Congratulations letter. Academy schedule. Directions on ordering his uniform. Date of the swearing in ceremony.

“How the hell did that happen?"

He’d even listed the mutie hater as a reference. What did a cat have to do to avoid getting real responsibilities, around here? This is what he got for being helpful.

Not to say that he was unhappy. Shock would be a better term. He reread the letter twice, making sure it really was his name listed.

Because seriously.

Caleb Swartz, NYPD.