"They lay scattered across the pavement like crayons..." A grave voice trailed, hint of an Irish accent on his tongue.

"Crayons?" One of the three off-duty police men asked skeptically, arching a thick black eyebrow. The brown-haired cop on his left glanced over his shoulder at the barkeep, and waved a waitress over to refill the table's beer pitcher.

"Crayons," The voice replied seriously. "This one was red, that one, flame-orange, and that one, black and blue. The handiwork of mutants," the voice's owner shook his brown-haired head. Hazel eyes locked on the audience. "My brethren? My peers? I didn't know. At that moment, I didn't know a lot of things. Who I was, what I could do... all I knew was that I wasn't human, and these guys? Yeah. The way they went to flingin' my fellow officers around, they weren't human either. They were on my 'bad list'. They'd made something click in my head, showed me what I was, and... they were going down." He tilted his thumb to point at tabletop, and shook his head.

Ice clinked against the side of the pitcher as the waitress refilled the pitcher. The speaker's eyes shifted her way, and he smiled a quiet "Thank ya, sugar."

One of the men at the table shook his head as the waitresses shuffled away. "Lost your train of thought, Ashton?"

"Oh, I've got it. So, as I was saying." Ashton took a sip of beer. Mmm, that foam was great. "Three mutants. Officers injured everywhere. Protest gone sour. Emotional conflict amidst startling clarity. What came next?"

Blond cop turned his shot glass in his hand casually. "You tell us."

>>“…Emotional conflict amidst startling clarity. What came next?”

The words had floated across to the bar where another man was sitting, his fingers wrapped gently around his bottle of Corona. He made no indication that he had been listening and instead just seemed like another, random man at the bar, who took the edge off of his long day with a nerve quieting beer. The man was dressed in a dark trench coat that hung loose around his shoulders and looked as if it had seen better days. Underneath this he wore a cheap suit, one that was obvious created more for comfort and mobility rather than stylishness. Quietly his fingers had tapped the bar as he pulled the bottle up for another sip and glanced out of the corner of his eye.

Detective Cervantes had pegged the group as cops. After all, many times at the end of the day, a man just needed to unwind the only way he could, in a bar with people who have willing ears. The whole time, the grizzly officer had listened to the one speaker, the man who had revealed about the being a mutant and how he had seen the atrocities mutant criminals could commit on human beings. It was a song too often sung.

The officer took another sip as he drifted into his own memories. Stories of crime scenes and criminals he himself had experience with started to bounce around his head like the buzzing of an occupied honeycomb. Not that something like this was intended to be a contest about who had experienced the worst human misery, but there were times when these stories had to see the light of day. If not to simply brag about your capture or lament your worst, then simply to get it out of your system and into the ether. After all, these stories you cannot take home, best to leave them under the sticky counter of a bar.

Now his attention fully turned towards them, Jorge locked eyes with the speaker of his tale briefly. With that, Jorge gave him a brother-in-arms nod and raised his bottle to him as both a “hello” and “I get ya” gesture. The detective then stood up from the stool at the bar and walked past the officers as was his intention to leave.

“Evening gentlemen,” he said gruffly. He stopped when he noticed the speaker upon closer inspection. “I know you. You’re new to the MRC, aren’t you?” He held out his bear paw-like hand, “My name’s Cervantes. Nice to meet you.”

"The three mutants, I'll remember for all of my days," Ashton noted. "One was big, furry, and furious, like a werewolf from the silver screen. He was no Lon Chaney Jr., but he was fierce. At either side were his wingmen. A guy with a blank blue face that shifted, blending black blobs to show your darkest fears. Forrest Gump with a head of flame. No, seriously. The guy looked like Forrest Gump." Ashton insisted, taking a drink. He'd caught one of his buddies shaking his head in disbelief. "Swear to God."

"Sure, sure."

Ashton took another drink, glancing casually towards the bar. He caught the nod and paused, then raised his drink.

"You know him?" The blond cop at the table asked.

His question was answered as the other man approached the group.

"Drake," Ashton replied. "Ashton."

“Nice to meet you, Ashton. Mind a party crasher?” the detective asked and pulled up a chair up to an empty spot at the table. “Sorry but your story grabbed my attention from the bar.”

It was difficult to tell at first whether or not he was being sarcastic because the gruff looking detective really had no expression on his face. Was he there just to shoot them dirty looks for talking too loud in the bar? Was he there just to irritate with his presence? But after a moment or two it became apparent that he was interested in what the officer was telling. That was one thing about Jorge, whenever he heard an interesting story, it was difficult for him to walk away from it. He had to stick around and listen. It was a side effect from being such an avid reader.

Also being new to New York, Jorge had made few friends but this was not totally for the sake of having a buddy to call to have a few drinks with. Truth was that rumors had started to circulate that Jorge had an attitude about meeting people and word especially spread about him being a mutant. He overheard while at the coffee pot that a couple of the veteran officers were gossiping that the only reason Jorge even got this job to New York was because he was a mutant. They did not trust him, it seemed. For so long, the NYPD has had to fight the battle to prove that they two were the good guys, not just those lunatics in spandex and capes. Jorge could understand that type of insecurity, but what he did not like was the idea of being passed judgment on. But a recent incident had made all these matters worse.

Not too long ago, the detective had had a run in with one of the most wanted criminal mutants in the city and her name was Meld. During their altercation, a veteran officer died when he tried to handcuff the cybernetic woman. Jorge had been too slow to do anything about the situation. He was dead before he hit the ground. And in that aftermath, Jorge himself had gotten dirty looks whenever he stepped into the precinct. That was why he was here, to get away from the looks and listen to some other stories at the same time.

Jorge gave a heavy sigh as he took a sip from his beer and nodded again to Ashton. “Please, continue. I want to hear what happens next.”

A party crasher? Is that what the gruff man was? Ashton gestured to an empty spot at the table, and casually nodded his head. There might have been a small smirk accompanying it. "Plenty of room." He said. He didn't mind an extra audience member, especially not if it was one of New York's finest (was he?). Well, whether the guy was serious, or a policeman, a detective, or joking, it didn't really matter. Not in the long run. He was just telling a story, after all. Ashton was a storyteller. Storytellers didn't care who their audience was. The story was the thing.

"You said you were a cop, right?" He arched an eyebrow, examining the seated man beyond the rim of his glass.

Okay. Maybe who he was telling the story to mattered just a little. He wanted to know if this guy was a cop, or simply nosy and knowledgeable about precinct policemen, before he continued. All he knew about him so far was that the guy liked a good story, a good drink, and knew his name. Cervantes wasn't much to go by. He hadn't seen the man around.

One of his buddies shook his head. "Drake, haven't you heard about Cervantes? He's new."

The blond cop laughed. "Honestly, do you even pay attention at work?"

Ashton arched an eyebrow. "Well, in that case." He cleared his throat. "It's a bit of a personal story, by the way. Don't mind me if I get caught up in it..."

He liked knowing the audience knew this wasn't some idiot bragging. Cop tales were cop tales, manly and true. They weren't the sort of thing you threw around to get attention from random guys at bars.

Jorge gave a small smirk as he glanced between the Storyteller and the other cops. “Yeah, I just got transferred in from Miami.”

But other than that, Jorge had not said much else. As he sat there in the midst of “shop talk”, he had to think about to how things have gone since he first transferred into New York. So much he has experienced, many different types of characters out in the world. He swore that if he believed in all that crazed hippie talk about merely being the pawns of some high being, that he were merely taking part in some fictional universe with a supreme creature writing out his every move…

Maybe I’ve had too much to drink… Jorge though jokingly to himself and shook off the thought.

“By all means, Storyteller, get caught up,” he replied with the smallest of smiles and took another sip of his Corona. There was no maliciousness in what he said, he really did want to know. He hoped his gruff appearance and voice would not be misconstrued

Despite the fact that this is the way that Jorge normally spends his nights, he was glad to have some company in the group of fellow officers. It seemed as if they had little to no problem with mutants since the Storyteller had already indicated that he was a mutant. Though he did not know what his abilities were, Jorge had to admit that he admired the way the officer owned up to his new found heritage. Maybe it was just a sign of the times he was born into when his abilities manifested, but Cervantes still has some animosity about revealing what he was to the general public. Then again, after the incident with Meld and his being put in the MRC, there was little doubt he was one.

Jorge returned just in time as Drake continued his story and remained silent. Though he himself did have stories to tell as well.

Miami. Got it. Now that that was cleared up, they could continue. He wouldn't even have to hold back. Ashton took a small sip of his drink, then set it down. "Where was I?" He looked to David, the blonde cop.

"You'd just told us about the three guys," David replied.

The brown-haired officer took a heavy drink, and let his glass set down on the table with a light clack. "A heck of a job, too. Forrest Gump mutant..." Leroy muttered. He still couldn't believe that.

Thick black eyebrows arched. Donald laughed. "Geez, guys. Let him tell it. So, fire, wolfman, and a guy with a weird face... do go on."

Ashton stopped drumming his fingers on the table top, and smiled in mock appreciation. "Thank you. So, as I was saying. Wolf Man, Forrest Gump with flaming hair, and a guy crazier than a Rorschach test. Those three. They were eying me like I was three-course meal. Around me, my friends, my colleagues, injured, bleeding. Me in full uniform, gun raised defensively. There I was. What'd I do?"

He paused, and looked around to see if they had any ideas; they let him talk. "What any good self-respecting officer of the law does when confronted with a violent offender. I gave them a warning. A blunt, polite warning. 'Cease and desist, or I'll shoot'." Ashton shook his head with a derisive laugh. "It was all I could do at the moment. I hadn't come to terms with being a mutant then, hadn't figured out who I was, or what I could do. I trained my gun on the leader of the pack, Wolfman, and told them I'd shoot."

His eyes shifted to Cervantes, curiously. "You think I got the chance?"

“Judging buy your tone, I’m guessing that they didn’t,” Jorge said with a small smirk as took another long sip from his beer bottle.

So far the night had seemed fairly interesting. The detective was quite the storyteller and one who he believed he had many a type of story like this to tell. Though he had to admit that it must have been hard for the man to realize he was mutant in such a tough situation, in the middle of what seemed like a stand-off against impossible odds. Himself, though the situation was not as dire as all that, it was still something that had its own traumas attached it, including religious zealots, prayers, and threats.

“Let me guess, Lon Chaney was faster than you could shoot?” Jorge chuckled lightly as he listened to the Storyteller.

In the atmosphere of the bar, Jorge finally had felt like he was just like everyone else. Even though he was a mutant, it seemed as if he had finally found a group from his own department who did not seemed to care about that. Here they were, sitting around and sharing some of their more interesting war stories. Jorge had his own to tell, but the Storyteller had the stage now so the detective was respectful to let him talk. So far his tale was interesting and Jorge was curious as to how he was able to walk out of the predicament. Obviously whatever his ability was, it was something powerful enough to help him get out of a situation which involved three mutants.

I wonder what it could be, he thought to himself as he sat back in his chair.

Part of him had to left off a chuckle inside of his head as he wondered what these guys would think about his own abilities. The mutant detective could manipulate one of the most abundant resources on the planet, of course only to certain degree. Then again, it was not like he was the most powerful mutant on the planet. There were plenty stronger with much greater control of their abilities.

After he shook the thought from his head, Jorge turned back to the Storyteller and continued to listen intently.

>> “Let me guess, Lon Chaney was faster than you could shoot?”

"Pretty much," Ashton replied with a light smirk. Jorge got him. "Jr. was in front of me before I could pull the trigger; One open-palmed strike to the chest sent me reeling. I lost my footing. In the follow-up, I lost my gun. He disarmed me, sent the gun sailing across the concrete sea to clatter harmlessly out of reach. I clutched my chest. After the hit, I was hurt pretty bad. Most of it was pride." He polished off the contents of his glass. "The worst injury of all."

"Can I get a Heineken?" He raised his class to the waitress girl as she passed. He turned back to the group, once he'd gotten his fresh drink. "I growled." He said seriously. "The growl conveyed far more than could be said in polite conversation. The blue mutant in the trench coat laughed. It was a hollow laugh. Biting. He didn't have a visible mouth for it to come from. Where it originated was anyone's guess."

"Give it up. You humans have no chance," He said. I coughed something. His eyes narrowed. "What was that?" I muttered it again, louder this time, so he could hear it. "'m not human."

"What was that?" The firemancing Gump lookalike had drawled.

"I'm not human," I repeated, one last time, confidently, seriously, and I knew it was true. Dealing with them, I knew... remembering the time with Eve, I knew... Now came the point in the story where it all clicked in place; I would learn who I truly was. It was now, or never. They laughed at me as I got uncertainly to my feet.

"Oooooh, not human, are we?" The wolf-man had laughed.

"Yup," I'd said, grinning like an idiot. A big, defiant idiot. "I'm not sure what I am, honestly. I know this, though. I'm not the kind of guy who lets someone get cut down in their prime. And," Ashton's eyes narrowed on Jorge. "I'm not the kind of guy to let idiot mutants make us all look bad..."

"In that case," Flame-Gump chuckled, juggling five fire balls in his hands. "You know what you're gonna get."

A derisive laugh escaped me. "Cute," I laughed. "Come on."One hand was clamped on my chest. The other beckoned the fire mutant on. "COME ON!!"

A fireball flew at me. My eyebrows knitted, my eyes darted, subconsciously dropped, and locked on something at Gump's feet. A pro-mutant support sign. From the peaceful rally that had been so rudely interrupted by these three idiots and their violence. The sign spun in my head, like a 3D model ripped straight out of Tron. I felt a sudden cinching in my gut, like I was being ripped away by a black hole, intestines first, and then..."

He has certainly earned the title of Storyteller, Jorge mused to himself as he found himself getting drawn into the tale.

The detective could imagine everything that the officer had said. He saw the lone detective trapped against numerous odds, unsure of what to do except trust the whatever fate had in store for him. It was not an unknown story, one that had always been able to captivate audiences from the days of fire and cave paintings to the hour long dramas that play out on flat screen television sets across the world. It had the potential to pull in an audience and put them into the shoes of the subject, make them care and wonder what was going to happen next.

And now the Storyteller had that effect on Jorge.

He looked around the table, watched as each of the other off duty officers were just as enthralled with the story. One wore a smirk as he listened, the other simply held his beer, having not taken another drink since Ashton got to the exciting part of his tale. Jorge had to admit that he was hooked. What was the detective going to say next? What did his mutation do for him? Did he create a wall of fire to envelope them all? Did he summon a jungle beast to tear them to shreds? Did turn the ground into peanut butter to trap them all? What?

“Those are some messed up odds. So what happened next?” Jorge asked quietly and took another sip of his beer.

"Next?" came the impish reply. "To the target of the fireball? I wouldn't know. I wasn't there. The sign was, in my place." He took a sip of his Heineken, and let the story sit there for a moment, stewing in its own cool.

Okay, moment up. Back to the story.

"Doesn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. When I saw the charred concrete and bits of flaming cardboard where I'd been standing moments before, I knew. I'd traded places with the sign. It was gone. I wasn't. I'd transported myself out of harm's way." He chuckled to himself, and shook his head, setting his beer down, and leaning forwards in his seat.

"Well, lah dee dah.," Ashton smirked. "That's what I could do. Same as the first time it'd happened. My shoulder crashed into Gump's side before I could contemplate the comparisons between the first time my power had actually activated and the first time I'd used it and known what it was. Gump went down, bravado flickering. Cold metal on wrists was like the snuffer to his flame. He cooled down, and gave up the fight. Cuffed. I dusted off my palms, and turned to the other two.

"Dramatic line, epic turnabout," I said. They ran."

"You didn't say that..." One of the men groaned. "That's way too dramatic a one-liner to drop after all that."

"I may have said something akin to it..." Ashton arched an amused eyebrow. He couldn't pull the wool over these men's eyes for a second, now could he? Not even for an embellishment. "Fairly certain I said something, though. Might have been... 'yeah!'"

"Yeah. Sounds about right," Leroy shook his head.

The detective actually chuckled when Ashton had gotten to the end of his story. So the man did have an impressive ability after all. Jorge had to admit that it did seem to have a lot of potential, especially in the middle of danger, he could just switch places with possibly anything to get himself out of harm’s way. That would be a useful power for any police officer to possess. Especially in this city where super powered criminals run rampant.

Jorge raised his Corona to Ashton and gave him a respectful nod. “That is indeed impressive. And what criminal would not be struck with fear with an ending statement like that?”

He was kidding of course. It was all in good fun, but he did have a certain respect for a man who, still new to his abilities, would jump into the fray like that and trying to tackle such impossible odds.

One of the drinking officers nodded to him as he too, took a sip from his glass of beer. “How about you, Cervantes? Run across any wolfmen or uber powerful characters in your time?”

“You could say that,” Jorge said with a short nod and took another sip from his Corona. He looked to the Storyteller, in a way that almost asked his permission to allow him to tell his story now.

Once he received confirmation, Jorge cleared his throat and got more comfortable in his seat as he glanced around at all the men gathered around. This was just another way to unload a lot of the terrible things officers see in the line of their work. It really was an almost therapeutic thing because it allowed them to relieve themselves of troublesome feelings or thoughts without having to resort to speaking to shrinks or bring the problems home to family. When they shared among cops, it was a way of keeping things within a brotherhood or secret society. They each knew where the other came from and they were never mocked for it.

“Yeah, you could definitely say that,” he started as he set his beer bottle down onto the table. “Back in Miami, when I first got promoted to detective, I ran across this case that Vice was having trouble with. Seems that a bunch of prostitutes, drug dealers, gamblers, etc, were all being killed off in gruesome ways. Their throats were being pulled out, beaten to a pulp, and each of them was branded, right here,” he pointed to his chest where the general area of his heart I, “with a large cross shape. Obviously it was supposed to be a crucifix. Seems like some religious serial killer was loose in Miami and nobody had any clue as to what was going on.”

He sighed and took another sip of his beer.

“Well, for four months this went on. People were panicking, Vice couldn’t get any leads. It was as if this guy would kill his victims, then disappear without leaving a single trace that he had ever been around. All we could was wait around and wonder where the next victim would show up. Whether it would be a man, a woman…once it was a child. Then…we caught a break. A piece of hair had been found. Nobody figured it was from the perp because it was too coarse to be human hair, but they ran it for DNA anyway…low and behold they got a match. Belonged to man…by the name of Bruce Bale. Shell shocked soldier who disappeared from his military hospital MONTHS before the killings started. But the weird thing was the hair it was his alright, but.it…just didn’t look human. But they still tried to get a match and ran it through our databases. Can you guess the closest thing it identified to?” he chuckled as he leaned forward a bit and whispered. “…a bat.”

>> “That is indeed impressive. And what criminal would not be struck with fear with an ending statement like that?”

"Not a damned one," Ashton joked with the joker, raising his drink. He tipped it back and rewarded himself for a story well-told. While he was drinking, the guys turned the focus towards the guy from Miami. It seemed the spotlight had shifted. He didn't mind. He wasn't an attention-whore.

Okay. Not always.

Cervantes looked to him as if he needed permission. Ashton gestured with an open palm. "Go ahead and share," He obliged the others curiosities with a small smirk. He was a bit curious, himself.

Ashton listened.

The story the man had to share was interesting, so far. There was a serial killer with an obvious MO. It reminded him of something he'd seen in some movie. Pretty crazy twist at the end, too. Ashton arched the Eyebrow.

"A Bat Man?" Now it was his turn to be slightly incredulous. It had looked so fun when the other guys had done it, he just had to get in on that incredulous action. "Like, with big wings that flap and sharp fangs?" He pantomimed the flapping, the teeth, then sat back in his chair casually. "Crazy. What happened from there?"

>> “"A Bat Man? Like, with big wings that flap and sharp fangs?"

Jorge chuckled and nodded his head as he turned to the Storyteller. “Exactly,” he said with the utmost seriousness.

He knew how that must have sounded. A real life Bat Man serial killer flying around Miami, taking out all the junkies and scum off the street. He was like a vigilante. As a matter of fact, there were many times while Jorge was in the precinct that he overheard a couple of members of Vice announce that they would like to personally shake this hero’s hand. They liked what he was doing, taking the law into his own hands, finally, and trying to clean up the streets. But even this thinking was extremely flawed. You praise the wrong person enough you fill their heads with the wrong thoughts.

“Yea, a real, flying around Bat Man. Most of guys loved the guy. They figured what was the point in saving a bunch of people who had thrown their life away to begin with?” he shrugged as he took another sip of Corona. “Of course nobody said anything like that to the public. Officer can get himself into some real trouble when he starts to go around and make statements like that. But then, all that changed. Another victim showed up. A woman was found in an alley, her throat ripped out and branded just like the others. Only this time…she was undercover vice. That department lost all of its praise for Bruce after that one. Seems she was undercover when the prep got her. Was too late to save her by the time they got there. She was long dead and the Bat Man had taken another victim.”

He shook the thoughts away as he grabbed a lime wedge he had been saving in a napkin and squeezed it into the bottle. After that he swirled the bottle slightly, just enough to mix the new additive, and took another sip. Once pleased with the flavor he set it down again and turned to the group.

“Well, what happened?” One of the officers asked.

“Well, Bruce made a move that cost him. He tried to kidnap his granddaughter,” Jorge said as he relaxed back in his seat once more. “Seems that before Bruce cracked, he was a devoted grandfather but once the transformation happened and he disappeared, there had been no contact with her. Then, one night, there was a nine-one-one call from Bruce’s daughter, seems that when she went to kiss her little girl goodnight, she found her gone. She called us and we immediately responded. Not long after that more calls flooded the station about hearing a girl scream and seeing what looked like a black figure flying in the night. We trailed the calls as best we could until finally, we caught a break. I was the first to respond to his next stop, some alley in the ghetto part of time. I crept in and low and behold…there he was, crouched over the small, whimpering daughter. A man that was more beast, covered in course hair, with a pushed in face, flat nose, large red eyes and huge ears. If he heard me coming, he did not care. So before I could let him get away, I unholstered my gun, stepped into the alley and…”

But before he could continue, his cellphone rang. He groaned as the cellphone completely destroyed the mood. He fished it out of his pocket as quickly as he could and turned it off, stopping the annoying song.

“I swear, whoever put that ringtone on my phone at the precinct, I’m going to kill them.” He sighed as he took another long sip of his beer and tried to forget that moment. “Where was I?”

>> “Yea, a real, flying around Bat Man. Most of guys loved the guy. They figured what was the point in saving a bunch of people who had thrown their life away to begin with?”

"Hrm," Ashton commented. He too saw the crack in the gem that was that plan. Praise a guy who takes matters into his own hand, you get a thousand imitators. They couldn't all be gems. He'd read Watch Men, he'd seen Dirty Harry. Ashton knew what kinds of problems those with hero complexes had. Heck, he'd worked with some cops who thought they were God's gift to the force and acted like that. They didn't last long. One mistake was all it took, and then they tumbled long and hard. When they landed... it wasn't pretty.

The Batman had fallen. The Batman had landed. He'd landed himself in the sights of one of Miami's finest.

Ashton took a drink.

Who'd of thunk?

Cervantes' cellphone rang, interrupting the key moment.

>> “Where was I?” Cervantes asked.

"Changing your ringtone?" Ashton suggested sardonically, then added. "You were at the crucial point. The part where you had the Bat Man in your sights."