((ooc: Continued from “Letting Off Some Steam”.))

“I didn’t know you had siblings, Detective.” Cassandra Elliot stated. It was a simple enough statement. It was accented rather strongly by the picture of Oceanwolf, aka Emerald Lupin, aka his niece Em, that she casually dropped on top of his desk. It hung in the air for a moment, swaying gently down to rest like a dead leaf in front of Rupert’s hands.

Rupert didn’t bother to look at it. Instead, he asked: “What did you make of her?”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed, the slightest bit. “She’s a wanted criminal.”

“Criminal,” Rupert repeated. “I love how you say that. ‘Criminal’. She’s a wanted mutant.”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed, considerably more. “I’m not getting into that with you, Detective.” Her emphasis on ‘you’ was so delicate, he would have missed it if he wasn’t looking for it. “What was that, back there? You didn’t try to arrest her. You didn’t call for backup. You didn’t try to tail her—or get anyone else to tail her—to a less crowded location. You covered for her, Rupert. For a wanted criminal.”

“A wanted mutant criminal,” Rupert corrected again. He didn’t know why it made such a difference to him, all of the sudden. But that’s how everyone at the station talked: there were criminals, and there were mutant criminals. It was a damn important distinction to make. He just couldn’t remember why, at the moment. “I covered for a wanted mutant criminal,” he said slowly, lingering over the words, as if trying to taste their meaning. “A wanted mutant criminal.”

Cassandra’s eyes returned to normal, but her eyebrows came down the slightest bit. “Yes, you did. Why?”

“...How old do you suppose she was, when she committed all those murders?” If a human kid had been kidnapped, tortured... if they killed... how would we be handling this? “Never mind.” Rupert said, standing abruptly. “I’m going to go get some coffee from downstairs. Want a cup? No? Too bad.” He was out the door fast—at that speed, it wouldn’t be long until the scar through his lung had him wheezing against a wall somewhere.

Cassandra watched him go, her eyebrows lowering considerably more. Her fingers drummed the picture of Emerald on the desk. She looked down at it, an unreadable gaze on her face. “She’s seventeen now, so... pretty young.” She finally answered.

She’d report this to Captain Myers, of course. It was the only way a cop with sympathies towards mutants could survive on the force: by being perfect. But Rupert... she looked out the door that he’d left open in his wake. It could be something. Then again, it wasn’t unheard of for a zealot to get better before he got worse.

However as soon as Rupert opened the door to his office he would find a very interesting surprise that would only add to his bad mood. A bucket of water would dump on his head. Curtosy of a certain dingo woman who left a bottle of rum on his desk

Rupert didn’t return to his office until hours later—a few hours after everyone but the beat officers on the night shift had left, actually. After he’d gotten his coffee, he’d lost himself in the archives, searching for any mention of red headed twins in past criminal records. Those two... were quickly rising to the top of Mercy’s most wanted list. Even with the late hour, he was somehow expecting Captain Cynthia Myers to be sitting inside the office. Her legs crossed on his desk, and arms crossed over her steel gray suit jacket. Steel gray. It suited her.

He paused outside of the office, one hand lightly resting on the door knob. Took a breath. Let it out. And bravely—

--walked under a falling bucket of water. The water hit him first. Then the bucket.

Rupert simply stood there until the rivulets had stopped flowing down his skull. He slowly pushed the bucket up, until he could see. His eyes knew what they were looking for before his brain did: a bottle of rum. Ah.

He couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned.

...He took the bucket off of his head, and set it on the corner of his desk. He picked up the bottle of rum, and set his butt down in its place. He was dripping on Oceanwolf’s case file. He unscrewed the cap of the rum bottle, and raised it in a toast. Cheers, to a world where everyone hates everyone equally. It burned all the way down his throat, courtesy of a dingo. Beautiful feeling, really.

That’s about when Cynthia Myers walked in. “Well,” the woman said simply, “aren’t you looking wet and wasted.”

((ooc: Too be continued. Nice prank, Sapphire. ))