”If he’s smart he’ll try and run. I don’t take him as the smart kind.” Sam said, hoping Fenrear would try something. It would present an opportunity to arrest all three brothers at once. Fenrear’s power wasn’t flashy enough to make a good test subject for his spells… Maybe the key?

”I wouldn’t be so sure. When MRC calls in an officer involved, backup tends to move with purpose.” And almost as if on cue, the sound of distant sirens could be heard echoing off the buildings.

What brought Sam there? That was an easy question, ”Police response is laughably slow here. I often bebop around in plainclothes through the underserved areas. Sometimes I’m on scene immediately to help. Like today. How about yourself? Didn’t have a cookout today?” Sam brought up a classic cop on firefighter rib.

Rex wasn’t so sure he agreed with the detective’s assessment. There was a reason Fenrear led the Berserker Boys, and it wasn’t through sheer toughness. They’d been around for several years but usually managed to stay under the radar, finding that sweet spot where they were too difficult for regular police action to deal with, but not enough of a threat to warrant big guns or special resources to bring them down. Today’s rampage was an extreme irregularity, if the stories he’d heard about them were true. Usually they only attacked specific targets or establishments, and even then it was usually just threats and intimidation. This was something else.

Rex shrugged. It wasn’t worth getting into a debate about. There wasn’t anything Rex could do about it anyways, legally or otherwise. Besides, the detective was on the scene so Rex bowed to his experience. At the very least, the man had a gun and had proven he could hold his own against the Berserker Boys. “If you say so.”

The firefighter did lift an eyebrow. “That so? Hmm,” he said eloquently. He didn’t think having insight into how to get police presence in the neighborhood quicker would actually be of use, since it seemed to involve police presence already being there, but he filed the information away for later. The rapid approach of the sirens was positive though, and he could hear the mixed in calls of at least one fire engine as well.

Rex nodded. “Ah,” he said in acknowledgement of the man’s answer. That made sense. “No, I didn’t,” Rex said seriously, completely missing the nuances of the detective’s counter query. As he watched the flames seemingly fill the one house’s living room with fire, he responded simply, “I was distributing meals to some of the people in need around here.” Which reminded him, he needed to check on Mrs. Robinson after this.

It seemed Sam mentioning how you got police backup to a scene faster interested Rex. ”It’s like a more twisted version of how women always go after the guy who shows up with a woman to the club. He’s pre-approved. Only in this case, when an MRC detective calls in needing backup everyone in the city knows what’s going on is serious. If we say we need units, we really need units.”

Rex seemed to have missed the good natured ribbing. That was fine. People often had different reactions to serious situations. Introspection, humor, and anger were common to name a few.

”Lucky for these people you were.”

Rex frowned as he tried to follow along with Sam’s simile. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” Rex said with a slight shrug. If you blinked, you’d’ve missed it. “Never been to a club. Good to know about the cop thing, though.”

He turned to stare at the wreckage of the street. So much damage done in such a short amount of time. His teeth started grinding against each other as he watched the fire swiftly overtaking the house, its own smoke detector feebly trying to be heard over the flames. A couple of sparks flew from his teeth but vanished before he could notice them.

Something clicked in him though. He frowned again at Sam. “How’d you stop Razorback?”he said, actually scratching his head. “I thought he was the next best thing to a bulletproof vest when he shapeshifted.”

”Never been to a club? Well, you should fix that sometime.” Sam said. Everyone deserves to have some fun and blow off steam with loud music and alcohol. The exact thing clubs deliver. The trick is finding the right ones for you.

”Razorback… Kind of stopped himself. His power just stopped working right, like Kodiak, and he rolled over himself.” It was the darndest thing. ”Rather convenient for me and a godsend for the people here.”

Rex frowned at the cop. “I should think not,” he said stiffly. The last place he wanted to go to was a club. Even at his lowest point, he’d sought the quiet refuge of dive bars, where a man could drown in peace.

That wasn’t the only thing that triggered concern in Rex. “Their powers just…stopped working?” he said skeptically, looking over the detective again. He’d never heard of that happening before. Well, you heard stories of mutants occasionally having power outages, but never two at the same time, with very different powers. “Didn’t seem to happen to Fenrear.”

His eyes narrowed a bit. There was something there. “You wouldn’t happen to be a mutant, would you?” he said as inflectionlessly as possible.

The problem with nullifying a power to stop a criminal was when people paid too much attention. One mutation going on the fritz and it can be explained as an oddity. Two… Some external force is at play.

”Huh. Well, that is odd.” An external force that only affected two thirds of the mutant baddies. A force that would like it if Rex stopped asking questions. Like… wait. You can’t just ask someone that.

Sam smiled and with a small chuckled said, ”No, I’m not a mutant. Are you? You did pretty well in that burning building there.”

Rex stared at the other man for a moment longer, considering his words and stance. For a cop, he didn’t seem too interested in why the mutants’ powers failed at the most convenient times. Unless he was one of those cops who just wanted things to be neat and easy with the least amount of paperwork.

His face darkened a bit and he looked. “Definitely not a mutant. I’m a firefighter. Good at my job,” he said a bit gruffly. A pain struck his stomach as his eyes fell upon the burning building. “Or I was.”

“Guess we all just got lucky today then.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up a small degree. Rex’s demeanor changed. Either from questioning if the man was a mutant or from saying he was good at his job. Either way, it was an interesting reaction.

”Yeah. We all got lucky.” Sam looked at the building, ”Still though. Absolutely best possible outcome. Like some greater power was involved. Something greater than mutations.”

Again, Rex stared at the man. Was he being mocked? Mentioning a greater power nearly always meant God and with the brief interaction they’d had previously, in which Rex did nothing to hide his faith, it was possible Sam was making fun of him. The way he seemed to place extra emphasis on “something greater than mutations.”

“Indeed,” he said simply, before turning to look back at the first. There was nothing more to be said. Something felt off about the man, but it seemed Sam was quick to turn any line of investigation around on Rex and he didn’t want to dive anywhere near that either.

That left Rex with just his fallback modus operandi. He stayed silent and watched the flames.