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As they walked at a brisk pace to the room, Linely could smell the pig-man's odor from under the door. It was going to need some airing for sure. It had been a while since hosing down had been abolished. Surely they could make exceptions for that particular case? Surely? Probably not. He held his breath as he opened the door.

Ghost spoke something about soundproofing, and then promptly the room was aired out. It was like a massive window had been opened in the room, in the middle of a cyclone. He watched as one of the chairs was blown from its resting place by the force of the wind. The air elemental hadn't moved, but somehow Linely knew that she was doing it.

Ghost spoke again, this time the air gaining an echoed quality round the two of them, as though sound had been muffled from outside the bubble. She was asking what he needed her to do. Well at least that was an easy one.

"You need to sit down. I'm going to try and force you to relive the most pain you have ever experienced physically. Is there anything in particular you'd prefer me to avoid. I can't see the specifics, but I can guess what the context of the pain is based on what you tell me in terms of where it was and how long ago."

Elliot/Ellis' joking around about his aliases was amusing for sure, and he seemed mildly annoyed that Ratty had decided to dig around him. Plainly what did he expect? Ratty lived and died by the information he could gather, which was a lot, given the sheer number of Rats he had at his...disposal. NYC wasn't exactly short of vermin. It did make Linely wonder exactly how hygienic that Restaurant had been, given how Ratty seemed to lay claim to setting Ellis up with the job. Not something he needed to worry about now anyway.

Then the Alien mutant started to pull the classic "we can look elsewhere" trick. Well that was certainly possible, but Ratty had the most contacts in this field of business. That was why the police hadn't busted him yet, plus a number of what Linely expected to be bribes Ratty had tactically placed. So the "vermin Lord" was able to do as he pleased so long as he was willing to share information...for a price of course, if the police were seen to be getting information in the criminal underworld for free, in Ratty's words "it would look bad."

"Very well Ellis, I'll halve my extra costs, but next time you come to my...association, expect half." Ratty knew the police would keep their word. Ratty took something out of his jacket, a rather respectable looking piece of white rectangular cardboard. He passed the card to the Alien mutant "This should be the dealer you're looking for, I'm sure you're more than capable of handling yourself. Does this conclude our meeting?"

Linely was for signalling the affirmative, but he needed to make sure that they were on the same page. The Alien mutant had got himself involved now. "Unless you have anything else to say Ellis?"

"Stressed doesn't even cover the half of it. At least we have more than the X-Men to help deal with the more difficult cases like Esmeralda now." The MRCD certainly didn't take a dim view of Haven, though obviously they couldn't actively endorse a private enterprise. Still, simple quiet support wasn't what Devon was asking him about. It was a far deeper question than that.

Devon was asking him whether he was willing to break the law for the sake of mutantkind. Well that was a possibility. He had done it before when the 'Roach had asked him to help find out exactly what was going on with the META Bots. However that was partly due to not really having much of a choice. Roach could have quite easily eaten him if he'd wanted to. "Someone always needs to help when perhaps the law is wrong. As a cop, I am limited in exactly what I can do, but there are ways of not compromising my principles, but I will act in the interests of justice, for everyone involved." Vigilantism could go wrong at any moment, so there were of course limits, but he was sure Devon knew that anyway.

In other words in Joseph's mind, the answer was yes. He would help Devon in the ways that he could, even if he had to step outside of the law to do so. "I think Haven is in the best position to help those mutants. If you need my help, you have but to ask."

Linely waited for Jorge to act, and saw the mutant reach out suddenly every bit of water in a large radius was floating up in the air. Then a crash from outside... they had said Jorge was powerful on his profile, but even Linely was impressed with this mutation. Then came the crash in through the windows, glass flew onto the floor, some of the Rag clones even turned round to watch the torrent of water coming upon them. Linely had remembered that the Rag-Man didn't much like water, and he presumed the clones didn't either. A couple of them started to do their best impressions of the wicked witch of the West as it became more than they could take.

Around Linely's feet , the floor had become wet, bits of yellow glass were floating on the surface of Jorge's miracle. More crucially however, a break in the circle had occurred, and the Rag Man was now open to Linely's advance. At Jorge's growl to him, Linely dashed towards the Rag-Man. Who had barely expected his little trap to have gone awry it seemed. Linely was pleased. It was time to make this scum pay. There was plenty of pain here from Jorge's last encounter. Linely thought it high time to give a reminder.

The moonlight was reflecting on the surface of the sodden warehouse floor. Linely sensed the full body pain that the Rag-Man had felt, possibly at his last encounter with Jorge, possibly from the prison which they had kept him in, it didn't matter. Soon the Rag Man was shivering with excruciating pain, like a man suffering from an electric shock. Linely nigh didn't feel the echo in his hatred. The pain was there for sure, but Linely didn't care. Emily needed to be saved, and this bastard had to pay.

The Rag Man fell to his knees, the grin on his face still wide, though this was no longer due to any sort of happiness. The being had no control over its movements, stumbling over shards of glass. Linely could sense that pain as well. Such a pity he couldn't amplify it. Linely took a few steps back as the Rag Man took one last swipe of defiance at his leg. Before a void seemed to appear from within the kidnapping mutant's ragged form.

It was like a dark,starless sky, with no moon. Very little to focus on. Linely shone his light into the void. There was a women, barely conscious, probably the Rag Man's final victim. Which begged the question, why was the mutant still active? Had he really just wanted to take his revenge on Jorge? Or was it something else?

Devon was being awfully generous. This seemed like a place that Emily would enjoy being around as well. Company didn't always have to be overly professional. She would certainly appreciate having a little time away from mutant or human worlds, alone with her thoughts or with him in utter silence with the sound of the waves lapping the island shore...That idea was for another time though.

Linely appreciated Devon's polite "Amen". Some people were honestly hostile to any sort of prayer at the dinner table, it was good to see that Devon wasn't one of them. Linely's own faith was from a combination of an Anabaptist upbringing and a dramatic conversion to Presbyterianism, much to the umbridge of his parents. His dad often joked that they thought they'd raised a good non-denominational boy until they'd found the Westminster Confession of Faith under his bed. They learned to accept it in time, even though the teasing rarely, if ever stopped.

"Concerned... you certainly are learning the art of British understatement." Linely quipped. "When symbols like the Burning Helix are coming back into use, and in far greater numbers than when it originated...it's pretty bad." It was all the same with these hate groups. Klu Klux, Neo-Nazis, Church of Humanity, Bird Hunters, it didn't matter so long as a symbol of good, religious or scientific, was on fire, both literally and metaphorically.

"I'm glad she's found stability at least. If she had been caught up in a riot or anti-Mutant march, I dread to think what the death-toll would have been." Massive dragons taking out the city was a definite no-no in Linely's book.

"Well, obviously we have an upsurge in anti-Mutant hate crime. Which has only got worse. My own Church had a wooden burning helix set upon its doorstep. All for having a large number of mutant congregants. They were too cowardly to come in obviously." Linely took a fork and speared a piece of steak. Hard. "But something needs to be done. The MRC can only do so much, unless there are casualties, we're told to put it down in the note book and make it low priority. We're swamped at the moment."Linely ate the small piece he had speared, again with a degree of bitterness, even though the taste was good.

"I think joining Haven will be a good start to helping building bridges between this community. There is so much hate at the moment. On both sides...." Linely trailed off. He hadn't cared much for Ambrose Jaager or any politician he'd seen. He had voted, but that was only due to civic duty, and not for either of the main candidates. "If we can build a better world, we need to."

"I do have abilities related to that. Recalling of pain in particular." So she hadn't been totally misdirected, though if she thought Linely was someone else it was likely that said someone else was more appropriate for the task. Hopefully he would be able to help with whatever the problem was.

So this was the famous Ghost? Linely had heard of her. Everyone in the MRC had heard of her. 6 years of service from the X-Men was hardly ignored, and she'd been around for a very long time. She'd saved a lot of lives, though her activity had been reduced recently. At least in the sense that MRC and X-Men cooperation had been more limited recently.  It was possible this problem was part of that reason, though her obvious embarrassment at the problem implied it was mostly a personal issue.

Linely listened to the air elemental and nodded along with what she was saying. She was clearly embarrassed. Linely had no idea why she was so embarrassed in saying this, but he guessed that "physical sensation" meant a lot more than just being able to shake hands.

"It's fine, I'm always happy to use my power to help. I can make your body forcibly recall past pain. I can't amplify it, the pain has to have been felt before, but I'm guessing with your long service to the MRC, we won't have that problem."

Linely threw another dirty look at the officers mocking Ghost for her actions. A "do this again and I'll remind you of your most recent gunshot wound" look. The officers stopped laughing and promptly got on with their work. "Sorry about them. Even police officers can act somewhat unprofessionally at times."

The building was in sight now, and gravel crunched underfoot. The scum would be in there for sure. It was a simple task really in his mind, save Emily, save the other women and then unleash all hell on the Rag Man. As powerful as the mutant was, a bullet to the head normally stopped people, and the few that didn't stop were possible to deal with by other means.

Linely at least had the common sense to listen to Jorge, meeting his gaze with steel in his eyes. "You're right" he stated to the veteran cop, quietly, nigh humbly. The Rag Man would best hope that it was Jorge that saw him first. Because then he'd get mercy. Linely watched Jorge count on his fingers. That would do, better coordinated after all.

On the count of three, Linely opened the door. Much like the first , a loud metallic thud announced their presence. The Rag Man now knew, most likely, that he had company. That wasn't an issue for Linely as he carefully began to search for that figure with his flashlight.

It was quite a mess, even more so than the first house, dirty rags littered the floor, combined with the yellow glass, that glistened in reflecting the flashlight back at Linely. Disused machinery covered the warehouse, most of it rusty, and unusable. Hopefully the controls wouldn't be put into action. Unless the Rag Man's skull was involved. Linely couldn't help but smirk at the thought of that.

The smell was the most obvious though, damp rags, oil and unwashed bodies filled the air. Linely had been on many a crime-scene before, including ones with messy and brutal murders, but this stench was up there as one of the worst. His vision didn't swim, but he certainly regretted not taking a nose-clip.

A movement that wasn't Jorge sparked his attention. "Jorge-there!" What looked like a mass of rags had just moved out of range of the flash light. It was like a shadow even upon the darkness of the warehouse. Linely dashed towards it. He was going to make that bastard pay.