Seriously, why was it always fights? Could he not go more than three days without walking into some wannabe thugs trying to start something. Worse still, why did he constantly feel the need to jump into them and try to stop them when all that usually happened was cuts, bruises for him and some lovely broken bones for the thugs.

At least this time, someone had call the damn police, rather than just standing there, with a gormless look and their phones out, while he struggled to keep the two baseball bat swinging hooligans at bay. If only they’d gone for smaller weapons this would be easier, but with the extra reach they got, Artair had to stick to a defensive fight, keeping a simple shield and mace combo out and make sure they couldn’t circle around him. Getting flanked and smacked about by bats wouldn’t be fun.

Well, at least the sirens were getting closer, his two friends were annoyingly good at keeping him on his toes and off balance. Good thing one of them lost focus, tried to back off from what Artair assumed were the cops who’d only now turned up. Right when his bat dropped just enough, Artair swung a quick hit with the mace, smashing the guys hand and sending his friend running.

Turning to the footsteps approaching from behind, he scattered the weapons. “Took ya sweet b----- time getting here didn’t you?”

Despite the fact that she was an official Detective, Quin still found herself working the beat every once and while. It honestly felt like it was beneath her dignity at this point...which is exactly why the department insisted that Detectives take patrols every so often. Still..it was frustrating to spend the evening responding to petty thefts and domestic disturbances when there was a huge crime ring that needed investigation, and several side projects that Quin could have been working on instead.

A call came in and the redhead grumbled, flipping on her lights and taking the nearest side street that would bring her closer to the call. There was another car responding too, something about armed combatants fighting in public. There had been nothing mentioned about shots being fired, so Detective Archer had to wonder exactly what she was walking into.

Pulling up to the scene and leaving the lights flashing on her car as she exited the vehicle, Quin pulled her glock and made her way towards the scene.

One man was down and in some sort of obvious pain. The other was...a bit salty that it had taken her so long to arrive. Quin could only assume he was the second "armed" combatant, though there didn't seem to be any weapons in sight besides the baseball bat on the ground near the injured man.

Quin could hear the other squad car that had responded to the call arrive behind her, so she proceeded.

"I'm going to need you to put any weapons you have on the ground and get down on your knees!" she said, calmly and clearly. It didn't appear that the man was armed, but the protocols were there to keep everyone in the situation safe.

The other officers arrived, and began shouting instructions at the injured man on the ground. Hopefully this would go as smoothly as it started.

He'd just been thinking that this might, might have not been a bad encounter with the police. Of course he was wrong. Of course the police in this country took one look at the situation and pulled a bloody gun on him rather than actually deescalate the situation. Christ at least the cops back home tried to find out what was going on, before they started cracking heads.

Crossing his arms slowly, he started straight at the officer. "Are you f------ kidding me? I get attacked, intervening in a mugging I might add, and I get the gun pulled on me." Why the hell were they so pig headed, the moment they got some power. "This eejit," indicating down slightly with his head  "and his friend, who's legged it that way," another nod behind him this time, "thought it was a good idea to try it on with some poor sod on his way home. I had an issue with that."

"Ask any of the fine witnesses dotted about. Ask how they filmed the entire thing! Without trying to help." It was always this way. Barring one incident with an officer, every single time they acted like jack booted thugs. Every single time his prejudices against them were proven right.

There were more of them moving in towards him, some of them looking pretty nervous at the very angry man standing infront of them, most of them probably assuming he was armed.

Well, maybe not the lass, she was well trained and if he was guessing right, a higher rank than the rest of them. She had steel in her, which he'd admire, in any other circumstance.

"I'm not moving until you've identified yourself, given your number and name. Until then I have no reason to believe you're you're nothing more than a thug with a gun." Sure, he might not have anything against her personally, but he wasn't happy about the situation and she was the exact example of why he didn't trust the police.

Quin almost rolled her eyes. That would have been undisciplined though, and a tense situation like this required the utmost attention and discipline. Still. Why did they always have to curse and argue? The guy had an accent, maybe he really was ignorant of how situations like these worked. For the safety of the officers involved and the people involved in the situation, the scene had to be secured before any questioning could happen.

There was a lot of information given in a short amount of time and all of it very well may have been true. The fact of the matter was that things were going to get a lot worse if things weren't de-escalated quickly.

"That's all well and good sir, but until the scene is secured we can't sort anything out. If what you say is true, then everything will be cleared up quickly." Except that the guy was really edging his way towards a resisting arrest charge. There was also apparently another perp. They'd need to get a description, but unfortunately since this guy was refusing to cooperate, nobody could be sent to see if they could find the other bad guy.

Dear god. He wanted her badge number and name too.

The thug with a gun comment was going to far, and Quin found herself getting irritated. Still.

"Detective Quin Archer, NYPD." she announced clearly.

"Now get on your knees and put your hands behind your head." That was clear too.

This b----- country and it's obsession with b----- guns would be the death of him. Thanks to it, the police her were jumpy little sods, solving all their problems and calls with one thing, their side arms. The entire place was just a massive powder keg just waiting for the right moron crying about his 'god given rights' to set them all crying about their precious guns. He was tempted, just a little, to slam a shield down in front of him and let them just try to break it. Good sense won out though, thankfully.

Sighing and slowly kneeling, put his hands on the back of his head, he fixed the this Archer lass with a stare. It was loaded with a lot, but mostly it was just anger.

"Well? Might as well get your manhandling over with, after all, you treat people so well in your custody don't you." He really needed to learn to shut his mouth sometimes, but this woman's attitude had royal irked him and he'd get every little dig in he could.

"Or you could call in on of those fancy bots ya got, I'm sure it'll not go mental and just randomly attack people this time. You surely wouldn't keep using them if they, whats the terms, glitched out every now and then. After all, it's only a few mutants, nobody who matters," he finished spitefully.

Laying it on a little thick wasn't he? God he really had to wisen up sometimes and it's not like it was particularly this officers faul,t but with the fight getting his blood up and his, other anger issues, his mouth just kept running.

Quin clenched her teeth. Sometimes people made it so damn hard to just do her job that she wanted to scream. Quin couldn't do that though, she also couldn't do any other the other hundred things the id part of her brain was urging her to do. All any of those things would do would be to reinforce the negative opinion this guy already had of the NYPD.

Oh God. Now he was bringing up the bots. If there had been a wall nearby, Quin probably would have given up and started banging her head against it. Seriously.

At least he'd gotten on his knees.

Quin nodded to the other two cops and they all moved forward. The other two took care of the guy on the ground, and Archer took care of the loud mouth.

Grabbing one wrist, then the other, Quin did her best to ignore everything he was saying and simply get him cuffed. She didn't read him his rights. He wasn't under arrest...yet.

"Now that the scene is secure, if you'll kindly come over and sit on the curb, I'd like to ask you what happened tonight." she said, glancing over her shoulder at the others.

They were calling an ambulance for the guy on the ground. Why did things always have to get more complicated?

Clenching his teeth as the other red head cuffed him and her friends started tending to his would be attacker, he got a laugh over how much the guy was screaming about his hand. Some people should not be thugs, if they can't take pain.

"I'd rather stand but I have the feeling I'm not being given an option am I?" Cops didn't tend to follow the actual rules anyway, so why should he make it easy. Pretty much every one he'd met had been on a power trip.

Standing up slowly and taking a deep breath, he flex his hands experimental. Good movement, the cuffs weren't tight enough to do damage at least. At least she wasn't spiteful, unlike him.

Moving over to the curb he fixed her with a look. "Unless you can cite to law or code I'd be breaking by staying on my feet, I'm not sitting. Bad enough you put the victims in cuff, I'm not having you standing over me in some kind of power move."

He was acting like an a---, so sue him. He'd been attacked for helping a guy out and he was the one in cuffs with a gun leveled at him.

Swearing a few times in Gaelic, he considered, for a second at least, stonewalling the woman and getting a lawyer in when she dragged him down to the station, but that seemed like way more hassle than it was worth.

Holstering her weapon as they approached the curb, Quin sighed wearily. "Fine then, we'll stand." she said, as patiently as she could muster at the moment.

He just kept going, didn't he? Quin closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to the cosmos for inner peace and the ability to make it through this encounter with he sanity in tact.

"It's standard operating procedure to secure a scene when we arrive. If I could get you to cooperate for a few minutes, I could start interviewing witnesses and see about getting you out of those cuffs." she said, the slightest bit of irritation starting to color her words. "I know you're angry, but it isn't worth my job or safety to ignore the rules."

She shouldn't have said that. It wasn't her job to justify the SOP of the NYPD to someone who'd been involved in an armed altercation a few minutes before.

"Now, would you like to give your statement so I can look into corroborating it, or would you rather stand here and continue berating me?"

Breathing deeply to slow down his heart and try to rein his temper back into something resembling order, he began with the simple stuff. "Can't say I wouldn't love to point out more flaws with your fine service but I don't really have all day." One last jibe, just for fun.

Sighing deeply, he continued "Fine then lass if that'll get this wonderful experience over with bring it on. what do you need to know and in how much detail?" Might as well just hand over the information he had on the event so he could get on with his day, what could still be salvaged after this monumental example of why he should just be a selfish b------.

"It's pretty simple, I was walking past that alley," a quick nod of his head to where their happy little incident had happened, "and some poor sod was getting roughed up by two thugs. Both had baseball bats and looked ready to use them. I stepped in, tried to get them to p--- off without any violence and they took offence to be stopping them mugging someone. They tried to kill me lass, of course I defended myself."

"Pulled out a mace and shield and kept them busy long enough for you lot to arrive, although now I'm thinking I should have just dealt with them and moved on." His conscience could go do one after this, all it brought him was trouble.

"Didn't have to play nice with them, could have hurt them a lot worse to protect myself, but I was at least hoping by stalling, you boys in blue would be able to cart them and and actually make them pay. Clearly that was too much to ask."

This had to have been one of the benefits of growing up with the worst kind of hippies as parents, Quin decided as the man she'd apprehended began to give his statement. Out came the little stereotypical cop notebook and the redheaded officer began to take note as he spoke.

Walking past the alley...

Witnessed a mugging...

Stepped in to help...

Pulled out a mace and shield...

Quin looked at what she wrote, frowning slightly at the page as if she'd somehow managed to manually typo. She missed everything else the guy was saying for a few moments as she tried to wrap her head around what she'd heard.

A mace and shield.

Not an M&P Shield...a mace and a shield.

Weirder things had happened on her watch, so Quin tried to take things in stride as much as possible, the redhead tuned back in just in time to catch the jibe about how apprehending the bad guys was just too much to ask.

"If I hadn't had to spend an extensive amount of time trying to secure the scene, I might have been able to send someone after the second perpetrator." she said, just a bit peevishly.

Glancing around and seeing that there were still several bystanders nearby, Quin sighed, "Could you please wait here for a few minutes while I go and talk to the other witnesses?" she said. "It shouldn't take me more than a few minutes."

She paused.

"Also. I don't suppose you can tell me where the mace and shield are, can you?" they'd need to be cataloged. Did one need a permit to carry medieval weapons in New York City? Quin was going to have to look at the code book for that one...

"And if you'd been quicker responding he'd also be standing right along side me having a chat with you as well." He wasn't letting her turn this around on him.

That wasn't something she'd be able to book as evidence. Snorting out a laugh before starting, "Have fun lass, I'm not going anywhere. As for the shield you can look for it but it's gonna be hard to find unless you got a handy brain scanner in your back pocket. I made it, once I was done with it I scattered it back where it came from."

He'd prefer that they didn't have his mutation on record, that was info the government didn't need, not with their fiasco with the registration act.

"So unless you can book for having a mutation, which unless that lovely register got passed as law again, I don't think it's illegal for me to have a power now is it." True he was cooperating but that didn't mean he had to make it easy, or be nice to the officer.

Rolling his neck to get the aches out and flexing his hands again to keep the blood pumping he had to admit, it was fun messing with them.

He should do it more often.

He really shouldn't do it more often.

Getting a long record wouldn't exactly look on his student visa, best to brawl in secret in the future, like a respectable member of society.

"Yes, because police cruisers can break the sound barrier, be in several places at once, and simply fly over traffic..." Quin muttered peevishly as her new friend pointed out that she'd need a brain scanner to find the shield and mace since he had made them with his brain.

Quin rolled her eyes as he continued to rant, "I'm a mutant too, moron..." she said, finally losing her tmper just a little bit and stalking off to try and figure out what had happened.

The process didn't really take that long, most of the bystanders, including the intended victim of the mugging, had stayed nearby ready to defend their protector when the time came. Thanking the heavens again that none of them had tried to interfere to this point, Quin took down several different statements and confiscated a cell phone that had the whole incident on tape. It looked like everything checked out with the story she'd been told. She hadn't doubted it would, but sincerely hoped that the man she'd cuffed had taken the chance to calm down.

She approached him.

"I'm going to take the cuffs off now, like I said I would. I'd like you to stay for a few more minutes though. I'll need your ID and some other information so that if we need to contact you as a witness, we can do so."

Well, she may be a mutant but that didn't change anything. The NYPD itself had a pretty p--- poor record in dealing with mutants, not to mention the government itself. How the hell they thought they could still use the META's after all the problems was beyond him. 

Watching her working and idly stretching his muscles to keep his circulation going, he had to wonder got so under his skin. It wasn't her fault the police were a s--- organisation but she didn't help matters by pulling a weapon on him. Artair wasn't a big fan of people who did that. Did make him reevaluate the cops back home, if this was what America thought deescalation was. At least back home they only aim weapons at someone who is clearly a threat, not the victim of a crime.

The officer was pretty quick at taking statements and evidence and he was glad so many people people seemed to be defending him.

Watching her approach silently, taking in what she said, "Doesn't change the fact you used them in the first place, on the victim of the crime I might add. And nothing more gets said until they're off." There were principles to adhere to here after all.

Once they came off, he fully extended his arms and stretch out the little kinks that had formed, before bring his wrists up to check them, somewhat obvious about the whole process. "Now that the innocent party isn't cuffed, what contact details do you need? And am I legally required to give my ID, over just identifying myself? Unless I'm actually called up as a witness I don't need to prove who I am do I?"

He wasn't being as nasty as before, but he wouldn't make this process easy for the detective.

For the love of God...

"Look." Quin said, voice sharp, "I don't have all night to stand here and explain the police code to you." pulling her copy from her back pocket, she tossed it at the man. "Take a few hours and read up on all the things I could be booking you for."

Deep breaths Archer, it wasn't worth another suspension to take her frustrations out on someone who ultimately, had been trying to help a bad situation.

"I'm not going to do that though." she said.

As for the whole ID thing, Quin actually heaved a sigh.

"You can just tell me the information instead, and I can write it down in the report. It doesn't matter, I just need to be able to get ahold of you if we need any information from you."

She paused for a moment and shook her head. Propriety be damned.

"How would you have handled things differently?" she said, "All I got told over the radio was that there was an altercation in progress with three armed individuals. Whoever called the whole thing in failed to mention the mugging. Was I supposed to simply take you at your word? Do you think I haven't been told similar things by people who were guilty and/or dangerous a hundred times in the past? Maybe I pissed you off, but it made damn sure that I'm going home in a few hours."

Why couldn't she just keep her mouth shut?

Rather than catch the book he just let it bounce off him with an amused look. Good, the officer was a damn human and was treating him like one, rather than a suspect or number. She was treating him like the a--- he was acting. "Nice to see some backbone lass, at least you stick to your guns, can't hate you for that." The badge though, that he despised.

Also nice that she wasn't going to try and get him on a petty charge when he'd stopped a mugging. The media would have a field day over that.

"Good, names Artair Hawke." Always nice to have a name instead the armed suspect note pinned to him. Giving his phone number and email address, "That sufficient for contact purposes or is there anything else you need? Maybe my mothers maiden name?"

"Lets see, maybe not aimed a gun at a non moving man who made no threatening motions or statements at all. You're entire policing force goes in half cocked and ready to shoot, that's f----- up. That's not deescalation it only ever aggravates peoples tempers and emotions. Christ why the hell do you think for a 1st world country America has a serious problem when it comes to the police killing citizens, larger than the averages for any European country. And don't try to just blame your gun culture, there's plenty of countries in Europe where people have ready access to firearms."

"You want to know the worst of it all, you get pissed at me for being angry, but you didn't having a f------ gun pointed at your chest by a person who was more than willing to shoot you dead because you didn't do exactly what they said. That's not policing or protecting, that's intimidation at it's finest."

OK lad where the hell did that come from?