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“I’ll teach you to mess with my family!”

Rupert knew he was in trouble before the tin can spoke. After that line, he knew just how much trouble. Vincent was in there. Perfect.

“Listen,” he started hesitantly, as it blocked his path to the woods. Apparently, it flew. Right.

That’s about when it shot at him.

“F-!” He leapt back, aware even as he did so that he was only alive right now because the Lupin sisters’ father had missed him on purpose. He was being toyed with. Great. “Listen! You don’t understand! I just—I’m not what you think I am, all right?”

It wasn’t the most convincing speech he’d ever given. He was a little too fixated on that gigantic machine gun to be thinking straight at the moment, thanks.

Rupert watched the man leave, thoroughly impressed by his self-control. Then he hefted up his box, said goodbye to the officer behind the desk, and left the station. It felt strange—he’d worked out of the Central Park Precinct for the past seven years, ever since day one. He glanced back at the building once. The grey stone front looked like an old friend; and here he was, leaving it behind. I’ll be back, he promised. Just as soon as this is all over, I’ll be back.

The words felt faded in his mind, like an after-image of sincerity. He meant them, but a part of him knew that it was beyond his control. It’d been beyond his control since he’d decided to set the muties free. Since he’d fallen in love with Raina. Since he’d gotten Emerald cleared of her past criminal record. Since God knew when.

Rupert had always been a praying man. It was the way he was raised, and it was what he believed for himself. It had been a long time since he’d done it, though. His mind riffled through Psalms. As he strolled to his car, he hummed the fourth:

Answer me when I call to you,
O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer...
...In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
Selah...
...Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?"
Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD.
You have filled my heart with greater joy
than when their grain and new wine abound.
I will lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD,
make me dwell in safety.

He set his things in the back seat, and put the car into gear. The ride to the camps was long—they were in the middle of Nowhere, New York, give or take a few barren stretches of forest. He didn’t think about much on the way, and didn’t really pay much attention to the trees. He felt good—better than he had in days. His fingers tapped at the steering wheel as the radio played. He was going to make things right. Amen.

“Excuse me, but I’m looking for some information on my daughters, Emerald and Ruby Lupin.”

Those were the words that Rupert heard as he walked down the stairs from the second floor, carrying a cardboard box with all the possessions from his office. A Twin Towers paperweight, from before 9-11; personal coffee maker (with mouse-chewed electrical cord); coffee mug; a picture of his mom and dad down in Florida; a pen and pencil set. A few other miscellaneous items, as well, but that box was the sum of his detecting career. He’d just stopped by to tidy up the ol’ office before heading to the camps. His first shift as a supervisor started in an hour. Goodie.

He paused as those words hit his ears, and took it upon himself to answer for the desk officer. Setting his box down on the front desk, he smiled warmly at the man, and offered his hand.

“Hello, Mister Lupin. My name is Rupert Kelley. I’ve heard a lot about you. I know your daughters—all three of them.” He kept his tone cordial and sincere as he went on to his punch line: “In fact, I happen to have had the pleasure of putting Emerald and Ruby into a concentration camp for mutants.”

He wondered, idly, if Emerald got her temper from her mother or her father. All he knew about the girl’s parents was that her mother was the mutant and her father was human. Was he about to get punched? That would be fantastic.

Rupert had come to a decision yesterday, after hearing about the premature death of his own child—a death he had caused. He was going to release the mutants from the camps. Until then, he was going to be the perfect model of an upstanding zealotous asshole. All the better to have no one suspect him, after all.

((ooc: Continued from “McNulty's Bar”.))

Rupert didn’t remember much of what happened after Stanley had left, when he woke up sprawled over his bed with his shoes still on. Honesty, he didn’t remember much of what happened before that, either. There had been the girl with the ribbon. Then drinks, a conversation, a lot of swearing. A napkin in his pocket.

“There is someplace safe.”

Stray sound bits in his ears. Vague recollections of shouting at the cabbie to pull over, and introducing his drinks to a New York gutter a block from his house. Flipsy yapping happily in greeting. He’d never noticed how loud that poodle-spaniel was, before. She’d woken up the puppy, who’d woken up the ferret, and they probably all watched him stumble over to the kitchen sink. The bathroom had seemed too far.

It was morning now. Nine AM sharp. Sharp like rays of sunlight into his corneas. Rupert adjusted his sunglasses as he stepped through the front doors of the Central Park Precinct. ...Had it always been so noisy in this place?

“Rup,” Officer Jimmy Barnes greeted him from behind the desk, sipping habitually at his orange coffee mug. “Mornin’. You look like Hell.”

“And you sound like a dentist’s drill.” Rupert returned, with a wince. That bought him a laugh. A laugh like a jackhammer.

He wasted no time in entering his office, and closing the sounds of a police force in full hive-mode off with a click of his door. Mercifully, Detective Cassandra Elliot was not present. She’d hardly spoken two words to him since he’d accepted the assignment as camp supervisor for the NYPD. Five words, actually: “I hope you like it.” She was working with another pair of detectives at the moment, until someone else transferred from another unit into the Mercy Task Force. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most popular job on the force. It would be awhile until she got a new partner.

Personally, he had enough concerns of his own. Like why the lights were so bright, even with his glasses. And why that damn cat was sitting on the window sill again. “Scat,” he yelled at it, and winced at his own voice. The cat kept delicately nibbling on a cinnamon donut Cassandra had left out for it. That was probably a sign that the woman herself hadn’t gone far. He’d make this quick, before she joined his list of concerns. Another one: why he’d heard, on his way up here, that Stanley Shepard had been found in a closet one building over from the Sanctuary, handcuffed and gagged with his own boxers. His uniform, and ID, had been taken. Blood tests confirmed that he was the real deal. Which meant that the Stanley Shepard who’d ridden with his partner over to staff the lines at Registration, and who had bought the first round last night, was someone else. Rupert glared at the cat again—it started washing behind its ears—and sat down at his desk. What had once been a looming pile of paperwork was now almost entirely whittled down. The last few months of his life, in report form, was sitting on Captain Cynthia Myer’s desk. Only a few stray cases remained. The Sanctuary Police Massacre. Various incidents starring the red-headed twins. Others. Already, the Registration Act was helping to close those. It was a good thing. The girl with the ribbon had been braceleted and shipped off to Hell. Also a good thing.

So had Raina.

He rubbed at his temples, and tried not to think about the scribbled-upon napkin in his pocket. His head hurt enough as it was, without the help of Stanley Shepard. Or whoever the hell that had really been.

“Ever heard of Doppelgangers, cat?” He asked over his shoulder. It was grooming its butt. Attractive. “Didn’t think so.”

A human-copier. That’s exactly what they needed in the world. Rupert scrawled a few finishing touches on the remaining reports, and thought that a human-copier was just the sort of thing the camps lacked. One more liar with a collar to complete the government’s collection.

“So if you're serious about what you just said, if you're not just blowing smoke, you may get your chance to do 'something that matters'.”

This was not the sort of thinking a man with a hangover should be doing. He started at the camps, officially, tomorrow. That gave him plenty of time to sleep this off. Not enough time to think things through, though. He wondered, cynically, if there would ever be enough time. Or was he just going to have to make a damn decision, and live with the consequences? Because that sort of thing had been going real well for him, lately.

He finished one report, and moved on.

Rupert’s head was spinning. He’d passed the point where he could tell whether this was physically or mentally. Even though he could feel his cheek pressed against the wood grain, that didn’t stop him from thinking that maybe, just maybe, the whole room was spinning. Now if it would just pick a center to spin around, he might be okay with it. It was this “spin around the glass fragments getting picked up” and then “spin around Stanley’s head” and then “spin around the tip of his little finger” business that was making him feel a little off-color.

It was spinning around key phrases, too, to make matters worse. Couldn’t stick to tangible center-points, could it?

"Just following your fucking orders like a good little goose-stepper?"

"My little girl... she floats. I mean, like, off-the-ground like a soap-bubble floats."

“I'd blow my own fucking head off before I'd do anything to hurt her. Anything.”

“And if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that shooting that girl was the right thing to do, that I should go do my fucking job like a fucking robot and turn my girl in to those second-string Nazis back at the station...”

Then it was back to spinning around something he could actually see, thankfully. His left hand. His gun hand. Rupert watched the world revolve around his trigger finger, entranced.

“You know what, Stanley? You know what?” He started, placing both of his hands on the table to lift himself back up to an upright position. “I never took you for a fucking bleeding-heart mutant lover, that’s what.” He tried to lift up one of his hands to point at the man, but that sent him reeling to the side. Both hands on the table. That was the way to stay upright.

“You know what else? It’s a lot easier to be a fucking goose-stepper than a fucking activist. What do you expect me to do? You telling me this crap because I’m a camp supervisor? You think I can do something about this? Let me tell you—” he caught himself falling to the side again. Two hands down. Right. “—that my position does not mean jackshit. You want me to look you in the eyes and tell you I fucking got off on shooting Raina? Shit. I can’t do that. Now I want you to fucking look me in the eyes and tell me that anything we can do matters. I mean, shit. This is the fucking U.S. government that’s doing this. If I hadn’t been in on that Mansion raid, someone else would have shot her. Maybe killed her. If I didn’t accept the supervisor position, someone else would’ve. Maybe someone who would’ve set up a fucking rape house. You heard talk about that? I have. My position, I can keep some of the guards in line. I can do something. It’d be fucking fields of daisies if I could just let them all go. I might even be able to pull that off. Where would they go, though? There isn’t anywhere that’s safe.”

He risked raising an accusing finger again. “I am wading in fucking shades of gray over here and you are not fucking helping.” He managed to slap the hand back down before he fell over.

"Man, Rupert, that redheaded mutie really got to you, huh? What's she -- What was her name, again?"

Rupert gaped at his fellow officer for a moment. Then he began sputtering. “How the hell did you know about—?” The answer to his own question reared its ugly head. He didn’t even have to ask. With the utter certainty that a man gets when he’s thoroughly sloshed, Rupert knew, just knew, the answer. He didn’t even give Stanley a chance to provide one of his own. He just groaned, and ran a hand through his hair. “McKenzie and Black. You heard about this from McKenzie and Black, didn't you? I am going to kill them.” Somehow, another drink had manifested in front of him. What was this, round seventeen? Six? Ten and a half? Rupert had lost track. He had a saying for situations like this, though: don’t look good bar service in the mouth. He downed it.

McKenzie and Black: the officers who had, what seemed like an eternity ago, been starting something with a yellow-eyed mutant in a coffee shop when he and Raina and a girl named Ali had walked in on things. It might have come up, in casual conversation around the precinct coffee machine, that the pretty little dyed-red head was his girlfriend. And he happened to know that the partners had been in on the Mansion raid. It didn’t take all the liquor in the state to piece things together. Rupert slumped down in his seat. “Raina. Her name is Raina. ...How many people know?” He was praying fervently incoherent prayers that McKenzie and Black hadn’t been running their mouths off to everyone. It was bad enough being in love with a freak without having every beat officer and their partner knowing about it.

He had a mission for the night: drink enough to have forgotten about all of this in the morning.

((ooc: I shall pick “arranged to meet later”.

Rupert changed into his off-duty clothes: gray sweatpants, and a black Pink Floyd T-shirt.))

As uncomfortable silence evolved into bone-jarringly awkward silence, and Shepherd offered to buy drinks just to have something to say, Rupert realized something: he was here because he didn’t want to get wasted alone. No, more than that: because he was looking for someone to offload on. ...Great. This is exactly what he’d done with that freak Emerald, and with Iris—poor Iris; he’d thoroughly scared off that young woman. He’d picked Stanley Shepard as his drinking partner because he didn’t really know the guy, and that made him an easy target for ranting.

Sloshed drunken ranting was not a pretty sight. But here was Stanley, there was the bartender bringing their first round of alcohol, and here was him feeling like he was ready to punch something into the wall or shout himself hoarse. I will not rant, Rupert promised himself. I will have three or less drinks, then go back to the privacy of my own apartment to swim to the bottom of a bottle of the cheapest, foulest crap I can find. I will not, he repeated to himself, firmly, rant on Shepard.

"You know, I don't mind tellin' you, Rupe... this whole thing don't sit right with me. I didn't become a cop so I could beat up teenage girls, I don't care what kind of freaky powers they've got! It just ain't right, y'know?"

...

......

.........Well, crap. There went that resolve.

“Stanley,” he said, raising his glass in a toast to who-knows-what, “here’s what you have to remember: half of those teenage girls are murders, and the other half are in-training to be. Mutants, they’re all...” he paused for a moment, swilling his glass. Images came into his mind. Emerald picking out a new pair of tennis shoes, Raina—drenched in broccoli soup—laughing, Michael’s open face, Ruby’s cries for her sister. He squashed them all down, and took a swig to wash out the bitter taste they’d left in him. “Mutants aren’t human. They can think, they can feel, but they aren’t human. They’re... beyond us. If we don’t control them, they’re going to take us all down. It’s just their nature. They can’t coexist with us: they... break things. That girl that stabbed at the officers today—the one with the bone weapons?—she’s one of the three that slaughtered our people at the Sanctuary. Unprovoked; they picked a fight, then they waited for us to come in to break it up, and just started mowing us down. That redhead the guards were beating up on? Her and her sister—you know this—they’ve been escalating things, all over the city. That last time they faced the police... it’s only a matter of time until they start killing people. It’s not an issue of ethics here, Shepard. It’s an issue of survival. Are we going to take this crap sitting down, or are we going to try and get in a few punches back?” He upended the rest of his glass, and set it on the table with a clack. “Leave the morals to the rest of the population. Us, it’s our job to keep everyone safe from these freaks. I’ve figured something out—it doesn’t matter what the hell we think. We’ve got to do our jobs. Protect and serve.” He stared down at his empty cup, as if surprised it was gone.

....If this was during round one, his mouth and Stan’s ears were in trouble.