Jacky’s Pub, Lipot City
“To Sam, the woman that always made us feel like better people relative to her. May we never have to work with someone like that ever again!” Vito yell over the bar’s ambient noise to the assembled police officers who worked with Samantha. Pretty much every officer that regularly worked with Sam is present, all officially there to mourn the passing of a beloved officer and coworker and actually there to celebrate the bitch’s sudden absence from their lives. They all drink to Vito’s toast, a few supplying “Amen”s as they do, and go about their various conversations.
“Beautiful Vito; just beautiful!” Sam yells to her friend.
“Thank you! Glad I could deliver a good toast for one of these few good days. Hey, I ever tell you about the time Sam and I had to respond to an emergency from Jenny Boyle!?”
“Jenny Boyle!? Who’s- wait that old racist lady that lives next to the burger joint!?”
“Yeah!”
“No, but now I demand that you do!”
It should be noted that this conversation and the next one contain a many “What did you say?”s and other misunderstandings, but that would be annoying and boring to both read and write. Therefore, we’ll be taking narrative license and pretend that the conversation flows perfectly for the sake of everyone’s sanity and attention span.
“So we’re responding to a possible home invasion, but when we walk in everything is fine! Boyle explains that the ‘home invader’ was in fact a plumber that she hired and became convinced that he was trying to rob her because quote ‘he looked like someone who would rob you’! Poor bastard apparently didn’t get through the door. But anyways, she didn’t explain this to me! No when I ran up to the door, she very slowly told me ‘I neeeed to SEE your PART-NER.’! I tell her that I speak Cambellian fluently, what with it being my native fucking language after all! Then the bitch breathes a sigh of relief and tells me ‘Oh, thank God you’re smart enough to talk like normal people!’”
“Oh God!”
“At this point my thoughts are ‘Fuck this shit, I’m out!’ and I call Sam to get her ass up here and deal with it! She talks to the lady while I just wait in the car and I wait for twenty minutes! I finally go back in to see what the hold up is, and I see Boyle inviting Sam to a meeting of the Citizens for Family Values and Public Decency!”
“Oh God, no!” Sanders say, cringing with a huge grin on her face.
“Yep! So I gently remind her that she’s a fucking cop on duty and to get her ass back in the car! That’s how I met Boyle and I’ve never gone back there since!”
“So you’re the reason Sam was in the CFPD!? I hope you realize that you’re awful person!” Sanders teasingly tells her friend.
“I’m one of the very few good people that I know! Most people are just- they’re fucking people, I guess!”
“And what are most ‘fucking people’ like!?”
“You mean aside from the psychopaths with axes and cis-heteronormative fundies!? Stupid, vain, selfish, cowardly. I could go on!”
“You are twenty goddamn four, way too young to be that cynical! I don’t disagree, mind you, but still! ”
“That probably says more about the world than me!” Vito says, noticing the familiar faces of two strangers as they walk through the door. “Uh, I’ll get out of your hair and stop bumming you out!”
“It’s not that bad!”
“No, I just saw some people I wanted to talk to more than you!”
“Ah, well knock yourself out!”
“Well look who it is!” Alexia and August here as soon as they enter the bar. They turn to see the cop that they had helped not even 48 hours ago greeting them.
“Hey, you’re that cop from the other night at the… charity ball thing!” August responds, trying to seem like he knows how to act in the “talking to the stranger you fought with in life or death battle the other night and haven’t seen since” social situation. Those can be so terribly awkward.
“Oh right, sorry! I’m Vito!” he finally introduces himself, offering his hand for a shake.
“August!” he responds and shakes the hand with “Alexia!” following suit.
“So,” Alexia asks, looking past Vito “what’re all y’all doing here!? Mourning the fallen!?”
“Yes. Yes, that is exactly what we’re doing! Mourning! It’s all very solemn, you under-”
“I am dancing on that bitch’s grave!” a drunk “mourner” yells to Vito before moving on to other patrons of the bar.
…
“OK, so we’re really celebrating! If you had to interact with Officer Samantha on a daily basis, you’d be celebrating to!”
“We’ll take your word for it!” August says, smiling through the horror.
“So how's the investigation going!?” Alexia asks, both because she wants to know and to change the subject. She takes a seat at a nearby table and is quickly joined by the guys.
“I wish I could tell you, but I was involved in an event that ended with a dead officer so I'm under investigation now and nobody can share details with me! How are you two holding up!?”
“Fine, I guess.” Alexia tells him. “The whole thing is just… what’s the word!?”
“Surreal! Watching some guy with a sledgehammer just attack people like that!? Just doesn’t quite seem real!” August answers both Alexia and Vito, whom both respond with confused looks.
“That guy didn’t have a sledgehammer!” Vito tells him.
“Yeah”, Alexia continues “he had a samurai sword!”
“What!? No, he had an ax! The handle was bigger than the blade, remember!?” Vito tells her.
“I distinctly remember a katana! He was wearing a leather jacket, jeans, a motorcycle helmet, and he was using a sword!”
“No, he was wearing khakis, a trench coat, a mask, and he had an ax!”
“He was wielding a sledgehammer and was wearing a construction worker’s uniform! Guy had gloves, a hard hat, overalls, the whole getup!”
…
…
…
“Well that happens, right!?” August asks, more to break the stillness between than anything else. “Memory isn’t all that reliable, especially after traumatic situations! We all saw a dead cop, you probably saw her actually die, I thought that Alexia might die, isn’t this to be expected!?”
Vito considers this for a moment before saying “What do you remember!?”
“August tells them “I remember that there was- wait, can we go outside!? There’s a lot of noise in here and this seems like too important a conversation to have any misunderstandings over background noise!”
“Good call!” Alexia and Vito respond simultaneously, before enduring another round of “What did you say?”.
The three move to the parking lot, grouping around Vito’s car. “Here.” Vito tells them, handing August and Alexia pens and paper.
“Nobody say anything. Write down what you remember and we can compare notes without changing each other's recollection of the event.Write down every detail, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.”
The three do so and then read each other’s accounts. Even ignoring the attacker, there are of course discrepancies. They disagree on details of the room, on the details of the EMT, the man, and the scared girl, and even the cop, Alexia getting her hair color wrong. They largely agree on the sequence of events and the general actions of the battle, however. That was, of course, their primary focus at the time.
Vito relaxes with a deep breath and tells them “Psychogenic amnesia, amnesia caused by traumatic experiences, didn’t do this. If it did, we wouldn’t remember the scene at all. The attack was less than 48 hours ago, so there shouldn’t be that much decay of the memory and even if there was, the rest of our accounts are pretty comparable. ”
“Does that necessarily mean that they’re true?” August posits.
“No, but they are sources independent of each other. I haven’t discussed the fight with either of you before now so my accounts haven’t tainted yours nor yours mine and Sanders is really good about collecting witness statements without affecting them. So… I have no idea what the fuck is happening.”
“I may sound like a dick saying this,” Alexia claims “but why should we care? We’re not investigating the case, the detective that’s investigating already knows all this; what’s the point of the conversation?”
“Officer Vito?” a determined, feminine voice in the background asks. The three turn around to see Willow Sirocco. “I need to talk to you.”
Sirocco’s Private Safe House, Somewhere In Lipot City, Exact Location Classified
Roughly One Hour Ago
“I don’t waiting for results, Mary. Where is he?” Sirocco demands over the phone. Sirocco had come to his bedroom for privacy, leaving his daughter at the dinner table so he could make some “Important business calls.”
“Please understand, sir, that we attempting to track down and capture a natural born hunter and guerrilla fighter. It is no simple task.”
“You held and studied that superpowered maniac for months and in all that time you didn’t uncover anything useful? You and your scientists can not possibly be that incompetent.”
“Sir, if I may, the research on the project was a dangerous and difficult affair. Little of his behavior and abilities could be studied in a safe, practical manner, even ignoring that this is a nigh-unheard of mutation. Nearly all theories on the mutation’s origin and any means of replication had to be built from the ground up by your researchers. The mutation’s full effects on his body and mind are still quite unknown.”
“I didn’t call asking for excuses, Mary. I called demanding results. I called wanting to hear that you captured the asset that attacked me and locked him back in his cage. I called wanting to hear that my investment in this asset has not been wasted by your incompetence. I called for my super-soldier-”
The door behind him squeaks as it is opened, and a voice says “Daddy? What’s going on?”
Seeing the look of horror on his daughter’s face, Sirocco takes a moment to regain his own composure. He hangs up without another word to Mary.
“Hey, sweetheart. I’m just-”
“You’re talking about the man that attacked. God, you held him in a cage? That’s why he’s doing this, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that simple, honey. That man is a monster, okay? He was very dangerous and killed a lot of people. I had him captured and held to keep him away from people.”
‘Don’t lie to me! You said that had him… had captured and studied!? What is wrong with you!?”
Sirocco steps toward his daughter, hoping to comfort her. “You don’t understand-”
Willow takes some quick step back. “Do not touch me. I’m calling the police and I’m telling them everything.” She quickly w
“Sigh. Tell them what? That I him captured and studied for his abilities and biology? Willow, they won’t believe you.”
Jacky's Pub, Now
“So I went to the police station and asked for you, the only cop that might believe me, and I was directed here. You believe me, don't you?” Willow asks Vito.”
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