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Amateur Heroics

- - -

Part 3:

Bits & Pieces

by Dissident Love

Copyright 2014

Training Day

Lawman was a smash hit from day one.

While public opinion was still largely on the side of law-enforcing but technically vigilante metafurs, they were also still seen as rag-tag, unprofessional, and poor role models. Most of them were not empowered to make arrests, and therefore were compelled to wait around until the actual police arrived, at which point they were STRONGLY urged by the government agencies to leave immediately and not speak to the press. Special instructions were in place specifically to prevent Critical Bill and Transit from ever making it onto television, up to and including confiscating all camera equipment that may have been active in their presence.

Lawman, on the other hand, was a legally empowered officer of the law and was always made available for well-attended and properly-refereed press conferences. The major networks were often tipped off several minutes in advance and could arrive before all the bullets had stopped flying.

In his first two weeks of operation, Lawman had made a noticeable and quantifiable dent in the crime rate of the City's South and East boroughs, and had seized more than forty million dollars in guns, drugs and other illegal goods. District lockups were full, and unemployed legal aides across the entire region had been called in to organize the legions of impending court cases.

And now, standing in a military live fire training compound thirty miles north of the City, wearing only a pair of poorly-fitting Kevlar mesh shorts, Rowan O'Reilly was wishing that his secret had never been discovered. He rubbed the old angry scar on his thigh and shielded his eyes from the glaring sun, wondering when the day's activities were going to continue. The two-way was tucked into his ear, but the bureaucratic cubicle-drones that controlled his life were notoriously terrible at actually using it to any effective degree.

He scuffed his feet in the dry, grassy scrub and grumbled again. This was supposed to have been his day off, and according to the precinct logs, Detective Lieutenant Rowan O'Reilly was indeed off, probably spending the afternoon with his lovely and underappreciated wife. In order to make the cover even more believable to whomever might be keeping track of these things, one of the other duty officers was currently stationed in their apartment, watching football with her and making sure she didn't leave.

Not that she was going to, at least. She knew the score, and actually seemed a little too eager to help with Rowan's new double-life. His apologies for being forced to flake on their day off together had been smothered by her newly-rekindled kinky side, and the discovery that her big, strong, tough husband was actually physically invulnerable had led to some... interesting developments in the bedroom.

He smiled slightly, remembering the look in her eyes when she plucked handcuffs out of his duffelbag and beckoned to him with one sharp-clawed finger...

"LIVE FIRE CONTACT IN THREE!" screeched the tiny speaker in his ear. "TWO! ONE!"

"Fucking_pricks,"_ Rowan winced, catching sight of smoke and motion out of the corner of his eye. He spun and dropped one fist to the ground, digging in his toes and trying to relive his old offensive tackle days from high school. The approaching rocket-propelled grenade spiraled wildly once or twice, but he knew all too well that the laser-guided device was accurate to a painfully small degree.

"CONTACT!"

The detonation rocked the former quarry, sending dozens of tiny streams of loose gravel and sand tumbling down the sloped sides. All around the rim, agents in matching black suits popped up from their cover, training binoculars on the expanding cloud of greasy smoke, red fire and stony shrapnel.

"EYES ON TARGET?!"

Rowan dug into his ear and removed the damaged and somehow louder microphone. "Yef," he grunted, flexing his jaw and spitting out shards of metal. "Ftarget if fine."

"TARGET HAS SUSTAINED DAMAGE TO VOCAL CORDS!"

"Oh, for fuck'ff fake..."

When the smoke cleared, Rowan stood in a small, blackened crater, eerily similar to the five other such craters in the quarry. He twisted and flexed, feeling his joints popping back into place, and patted himself down. As always, there was no damage. Not so much as a single burnt hair. He was blinking debris out of his eyes and trying to dislodge a sizzling-hot machine screw from his nose, every nerve ending screaming in pain, but he was visibly unharmed.

"If ftat it for todayf!?" he roared up to the government cronies as they conferred.

There had been a great deal of interest in testing the exact nature and limits of his durability. He had heard the words 'lasers' and 'diamond drills' being used in hushed conversations, much to his chagrin, but he had to admit to also being curious. He had jammed his fingers into an idling diesel engine once, and succeeded only in causing twenty thousand dollars in unexplained damage to the police motor pool.

The microphone squawked in his paw, and he glanced down at it distastefully. "I'm going to affume that's a no," he sighed, hearing two popping eruptions of short-range solid-fuel rockets igniting behind him. He turned, facing down the approaching artillery rounds, and decided to try punching one of them. "It better be pizza night tonight."

---

The apartment door opened a few inches, revealing a small, wide-eyed and rotund tabby, wearing a baggy Whitefish sweater and black track pants. "Yes?" she asked, peeking up and down the corridor.

The visitor lowered his hand and smiled his most winning smile, revealing twin rows of gleaming white teeth. "Mrs. Emilia Zura?" the ermine asked pleasantly, glancing down at the small, neat black notebook held in one paw. He was dressed in a broad-brimmed black hat and long black coat, starkly contrasting against his ivory white fur.

"Yes?" the feline asked again, smiling back. "Can I help you?"

"I'm hoping we can help eachother. May I come in for a minute?"

Emilia's eyes narrowed a fraction. "What is this about?"

Zin leaned down closer, his own grin wide and knowing. "I think you know," he purred. "Have you had any... odd experiences in your life? Perhaps something you don't want other people knowing?"

She took a short step back and moved to close the door. "I think you've got the wrong address," she said flatly.

The ermine's paw shot out and stopped the door from closing, even as the tabby put all of her weight behind it. "No," he said softly, raising his other hand, a crackle of electricity dancing between his clawtips. "I think I've definitely got the right one. Are you sure I can't come in? I think we really need to... talk."

---

Bill and Jasmine walked side by side along the wharf, two of the City's least ostentatious superheroes nearly blending in to the sparse afternoon crowd. After the incident with the Loaded Dice, Tim, aka Transit, was currently not allowed to be hir trainer or even share the same borough as hir, so Bill had been brought in as the replacement.

"I thought they didn't let you instruct anymore," Jasmine said, goggles pushed back onto hir forehead, taking another swig from hir flask. Seagulls cawed and squawked above them, drifting on the early evening breezes washing in from the ocean.

"Most newbies are considered unsuitable to be trained by me," the honey badger said, voice so deep it was sometimes mistaken for a special effect. "Either due to inexperience, or lack of control, or insufficient durability."

"Hmmm. Where do I fall on that scale?"

Bill glared at hir, patting his leg meaningfully. "I don't think anyone was concerned with you on the first or the last one, and the lack of control is probably why they stuck me with you. They just want to fuck with me."

"Look, I SAID sorry about breaking your leg, I REALLY thought you were trying to kill me, and besides, you healed up fine!" A passing couple glanced at Junk in confusion, then noted hir getup and quickened their pace. "But ok. Fine. We'll teach eachother, wise old master."

"Old?"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," shi winked, gingerly rubbing the top of the much shorter badger's head with hir elbow. "I only say you're old, because you're so much older than me."

"That helps, thank you," he grunted. He might only come up to hir shoulders, but the wooden planks beneath them creaked and visibly bent beneath his weight, while the lean, spindly jackalope hardly made a sound. Shi knew he was armed to the teeth, as well as armored, but the burly badger beneath all of that was still built like a little tank. "You know the Feds need a lot more information on you."

"Such as?" shi asked, tossing a small plastic pouch of peanuts into hir mouth and chewing it down, shells and wrapper included.

"What all of your different contraband does, for one." He gestured to hir pockets and bandoliers, each one carrying a felony possession's worth of illegal substances. "They're really not keen on letting you wander around, particularly near schools and playgrounds, and with what they consider evidence that should be confiscated and destroyed."

"And what do you think about it, Billy? It doesn't seem like you to be agreeing with the Feds."

The badger frowned, considering his reply, eyes inscrutable behind his omnipresent shades. "I think you gotta do what you gotta do," he said eventually. "I don't think you're going to be standing on street corners, hawking your wares. I think you're a damn good fighter, and you can't be bribed with drugs or money, because you've got shitloads of both and you still live in your shithole slum apartment with the ten cent tea kettle."

"You leave Mrs. Potts out of this!" shi snapped, but couldn't hide the faint smile curling hir stubby muzzle.

"It's not even a pot, it's a kettle," snarked the black badger. "But, to get back on track, yes, that makes you, in my books, in my experience, fairly incorruptible. I appreciate that."

"So what are you going to tell the Feds?" shi asked, taking another swig from hir flask.

"The same thing I always tell them."

"Which is?"

"Blow me."

Jasmine brayed laughter before covering hir muzzle with both paws. "Very official," shi snickered. "I like that. I hope to get to tell them that, one of these days."

"Don't. You ain't earned it."

Shi sighed, nodding. "Yeah, I know. Climb the ladder. Build cred. Cred is currency."

"Your cred will be fine," Bill said, in an uncharacteristic display of authentic unsimulated emotion, nearly starting to smile. "Your name got splashed alongside Lawman's on your first day. People root for underdogs. Just gotta do one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't ever give them a reason to root for you... to lose," he said meaningfully. "Because as much as people like us and like what we do and think we're all heroic and shit, the only thing they like better is watching us bust it up live on TV. Blood on both sides. This ain't the movies... when one of us goes down, it's usually because we're not getting back up again."

"Not planning on it," shi said somberly, downing another pack of peanuts, wiping the crumbs on hir army jacket. "It's not like there's a problem with powered criminals anymore, not with the changes to the death penalty."

"That doesn't stop a certain mindset."

"When has it ever?" Shi sighed and stared out at the ocean, watching the dumpy little tugs scooting about, escorting in everything from oil tankers to cruise ships. "So what sort of instructing am I going to be getting? I can whup you at hand to hand, so that's probably out..."

"Secrets."

"Ooooh! What kind of secrets?" Jasmine grinned, rubbing hir paws together.

Bill turned to stare up at hir, wharf traffic flowing around him. For a moment, shi thought shi saw his eyes sparkling behind his shades. "Everyone's."

---

The next person on his list made it considerably farther through the intake process, which pleased Zin. His bonuses were generally performance-based, and he hadn't had much good news to report in the last couple years. It was a slow period for people in his line of work.

"So... how did you find out about me?" the small, bespectacled bull said. He was shorter than Zin, which was peculiar for a bull, but seemed nearly spherical in his sensible tweed suit. "I've been very careful."

The ermine looked around the professor's office at the Northwestern Urban University campus, and in spite of himself was a little bit impressed. "I work for someone who makes it his business to know these sorts of things. And, naturally, he doesn't want to cause trouble. He's known for quite some time, but there's never really been... a reason, to break your secrecy."

"But there is now," the professor said bluntly, adjusting his glasses. "Who do you work for?"

"That's not important. I-"

"I disagree," the bull stated. "Your employer would be of vital importance, as you are merely his tool, undertaking his orders to his ends, his gains. Your employer would be at the very heart of this matter."

Quick, aren't you, Zin thought. Might be a little too quick for us. "Let's me put this in terms that someone of your elevated academic circles might understand, and just say you meet him if this pre-interview goes well. Unpaid internships can rapidly become tenured positions, with limitless potential for advancement."

That piqued the bull's interests; the ermine could feel the electrical impulses in the bull's body multiplying, the fight-or-flight response kicking in once again. _Good. Let some of those hormones loose, those fears and ambitions flow. _

"Would anything in those positions be considered immoral or illegal?" the professor asked. "Because if so, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave, and if you know anything about me, you know I have the power to do so."

Fuck, Zin sighed. Another dead end.

---

Transit kicked another pebble off of the roof of the Great Western Imperial building, third-highest in the city, but the tallest that didn't have those irritating anti-pigeon spikes. "I can't believe I got grounded," he bitched for the hundredth time. "I was just watching! It's not my fault they gave me the wrong address!"

It wasn't the wrong address, you doofus, Diamond thought silently. "They're just over-reacting," the plump, hourglass-figured racoon said, adjusting her little black mask. "You'll be back on standard detail in no time. For right now, I think it's good Junk's with Bill. They mesh well."

"You saying I don't mesh well with hir?" the burly hippo asked, hurt in his eyes.

You mesh about as well as Vaseline and lemonade. "I just think shi could use more practical experience. Shi'll need you when it's time to get called to the frontlines, and when shi needs an extra pair of eyes."

"I can fight, too, you know," he grumped, kicking another pebble. He practically danced on the edge of the building, ninety-six stories above the concrete below. His particular abilities made falling perhaps the least dangerous thing that could ever happen to him. "I just... need to be careful about it. I'm not super-tough like you all."

To the average viewer, he would be considered the tougher-looking of the pair. Transit, known to his parents and teachers as Tim, was a solid six foot, three-hundred-pound hippo, outfit covered in spikes, topped with an orange mohawk and with two solid aluminum baseball bats hanging from his belt. Even to those who knew his reputation as the official backup of the City's local metafurs, people tended to cross the street to avoid him.

Diamond, real name generally unknown, barely topped five feet, and more resembled a plus-size pornographic starlet with a fetish for rubber and bondage. Dressed head to toe in skintight black Sintex, highlighting every luscious curve, she didn't seem the sort of person who had been caught on film just the month before, ripping a street light out of the ground with her bare hands and use it as a battering ram.

"Don't get all pissy," she sighed, stretching her arms with a squeak of rubber-like material. Tim peeked out the corner of his eye, trying to remind himself that her curves were largely artifice, and besides, she was definitely not his type. Not yet, anyways. "Are we going to practice or what?"

"Should we be doing this downtown?" he asked, a little worried.

"Why? Do you plan on missing?"

"Well... no, but-"

"Then fetch!"

Diamond spun on her heel, picked up one of the sand-filled oil drums that the building maintenance workers used to dry-scrub the roof, hoisted it over her head and heaved it as though it weighed no more than a pillow. It arced out over the edge of the roof, whistling as the five-hundred-pound bomb tore through the air.

Transit groaned, vanished, and reappeared a moment with his arms wrapped around the barrel. His legs wobbled and he grunted, trying to set it down carefully and nearly crushing his foot. "You don't like to give warning, do you?" he wheezed, stepping away from the barrel and flexing his arms, twisting side to side to work the kinks out of his back. "Can you try throwing a half-full one?"

"No," she grinned, already balancing another on edge in the palm of one paw. She carefully folded back her fingers until the entire quarter-ton barrel wobbled unnervingly on the tip of one single finger. "You gotta snag ten, then we switch."

"Bro, do you even lift?" he grumbled, flexing his big shoulders. "I hit the gym six days a week, and all YOU do is lay in bed!"

"Trade you?" she said levelly, eyes darkening.

Tim immediately felt bad for going there, and hung his head. "Sorry, I just... I didn't mean... throw the damn barrel."

"I did."

His head snapped up and he looked around frantically. The barrel was already twenty storeys down and accelerating. "Dammit!" he snapped, vanishing again, leaving Diamond to laugh by herself.

---

Zin was working his way through the list faster than he'd expected, which wasn't always good. Some potentials instantly rebuffed him, much to their misfortune, while others were ambivalent and required a great deal of coaxing and negotiation. A couple nearly leapt at the offered opportunities, which brought a little joy to his cold heart.

This one, though, looked to be a tough sell.

"So you're not going to tell me who you work for," the tall, dark reindeer said softly. He seemed to do everything softly. It was getting on Zin's nerves.

"As I've said, that will depend on the quality and quantity of services rendered," he replied placidly, working hard to keep his cool. "I myself have met him a number of times, but I have also been in his employ for many long, profitable years."

The reindeer stared out the window at the city spread out below them. They were on the fiftieth floor, in the area Zin distastefully referred to as 'high rent', and the apartment was as finely appointed as any the little ermine had ever seen. The piano in one corner of the vast mahogany-panelled den probably cost more than all of Zin's possessions put together. "Exactly what sort of compensation is being offered?" the reindeer asked. "It may be obvious to you, it may not, but I would be exceedingly difficult to employ based purely on financial remuneration."

"Indeed. There are intangible rewards, obviously, depending on your... demeanor."

"You are talking about murder," the wealthy day-trader said.

"Not always."

"Hmmm. Have you much success, preying upon the desires of the power-hungry?"

Zin smiled. "More than you could imagine."

The reindeer sighed. "I think that, perhaps, you should leave. I am not going to endanger the lives of those around me by reporting you to the authorities, provided you leave now."

Dammit. "You're sure?" the ermine asked, poking his hat up with one claw. "You wouldn't like to, perchance, examine your options and get back to me later? Your options at the present time are quite limited, so it shouldn't take someone of your education very long."

The well-dressed reindeer glanced back over his shoulder, antlers swishing softly, and held up one hand which immediately burst into crimson, liquid flame. "I've thought about it."

---

"I really don't think I need to engage in training," Amalthea rumbled. "Technically, I taught all of you how to do this. And the generation before you."

"Technically, lots of things, Am," Soarceress grinned, rolling hir eyes. "But this is handed down from on high, and the Feds do love to see us being co-operative."

"But I'm not even bound by them!"

"That's only because you haven't signed on the dotted line."

"If they can ever just GIVE me the forms, I would do it, gladly!"

"You threatened to eat the last agent who tried to 'give' you the forms."

"I was hungry," the towering chimera muttered, but shi couldn't hide hir smirk. "He did look a little funny, running away like that."

"He called for backup," the doe-herm pointed out, the seemingly infinite variety of gems adorning hir antlers clinking musically. "Which showed up. Three blocks were cordoned off."

"Not my fault."

Amalthea preferred the higher altitudes, and generally only allowed hirself to soar down between the buildings at night when shi was unlikely to be noticed. Having Soarceress at hir side, though, offered some distinct advantages. The two were currently drifting in slow loops around the Great Western Imperial building, snickering at Transit's training while wrapped in one of the doe's powerful illusions, rendering them all but invisible. The wind whistled around them, Soarceress's robes flapping madly in the crossbreezes. "Fault might be the wrong term to use, honey, but you're definitely not making it easy for them."

"Not my job to make it easy on the Feds," Amalthea sighed loudly. "Didn't have none of that, back in the day. Didn't even have lawyers trying to poke their heads into our business until Mighty saved those kids..."

They both frowned for a moment, remembering perhaps the only metafur in history that could be considered as well-known as Amalthea, and likely the only one more powerful. He was before Soarceress's time, but was considered to be the turning point in how superheroes and supervillains were seen by the world, and more specifically how they were treated by the authorities.

"You can't possibly blame them for what happened," Soar said tiredly, for maybe the hundredth time.

"I'll blame whoever I want." Amalthea twirled once, angelic wings twisting and fluttering. "Is this what my training is supposed to be? Pushing my buttons until I snap and need to go on a hot dog bender? Because that's sounding pretty good right about now. Chelsea's Foot Longs set up on the corner of Cambie and Burrard, I can be there in sixty seconds!"

Soar snickered. "You can stuff your face later, sweetie. Right now we're just doing some warmups, and then we're going to practice control."

The chimera's leonine eyes narrowed. "What sort of control?"

"Don't worry, we're just going to use my illusions."

"What_sort_ of control?" shi asked again as the pair swooped off to the northwest, leaving behind the frantically teleporting Transit.

"The Feds just think you need some more practice with your... uhm... not breaking things," the doe-herm said carefully, knowing that Amalthea could be touchy about certain subjects. Anything relating to authority tended to fit that list.

"It's not my fault, being the biggest and the strongest!" the huge, ancient warrior whined petulantly. "I don't even exercise!"

Going Public

"O'Reilly!"

The blue ball-point pen snapped, a blobbed smear of azure marring his latest arrest report. The huge bear inhaled sharply, closed his eyes, counted to three, and lifted his head to reply. "Y-"

"O'REILLY!"

"Yes?" he tried again, loud and patient. He had to be loud to be heard over the din of the squad room, which more resembled a high-tech cubicle farm these days, and he had to be patient lest he give in to the desire to flip his desk out the plate glass window.

"Cap'n wants to see you, Room 3!"

Rowan wasn't sure who had been relaying the information. There were better than a hundred officers, agents and various other clerical workers in the squad room, and the calming, sound-absorbing panels that were scattered everywhere reduced most sounds to a cacophony of white noise. "Tell him I'll be over in five," he grunted, lowering his bulk back beneath the protective shield of his cubicle walls.

Whatever happened to the good old days, he wondered, knowing full well just how old that made him sound. He supposed he'd only been on the force for fourteen years; his 'good old days' had happened while plaid was still being worn unironically. Slowly, his transition from beat cop to detective to desk monkey had accompanied the intrusion of pointless technology and sensible synergistic office solutions into everyday life. More than once, he'd woken up in a cold sweat, fantasizing about dragging a networked all-in-one printer out into a field and ending it's life...

"O'REILLY!"

He sighed and stood. "Coming, Cap'n," he murmured, knowing that voice. It was the loud, but reassuringly warm voice of Captain Bennett. There was always the sensation that, even when Bennett was verbally ripping someone a new orifice, that he genuinely cared about his officers. He would be the last person to admit it, and anyone drawing it to his attention would probably find themselves hanging upside down by their belt loops from the shaggy bloodhound's huge paws.

Rowan trudged through the little maze of fuzzy grey office panels towards the cluster of glass-walled conference rooms. He thought they gave sombre meetings the atmosphere of a fish tank, but he was in an outvoted minority there. Sure enough, there was Captain Bennett, easing his old canine bones into a leather swivel chair, but just beyond was the rotund figure of Captain Bronwyn, Internal Affairs.

"Fuck," he whispered.

A passing officer in city blues smiled sympathetically. "You get a lot of IA traffic these days, sir." It was not a question, and no reply was expected. No-one, young or old, wanted to be drawn into an investigation by social osmosis.

The door closed behind him, and all outside noise instantly ceased. The boardrooms were soundproof, except for the distant hum of air conditioning, and every tiny susurration of his clothes moving against his fur, of his rump coming to rest against the seat, of his own breath in his ears seemed magnified a hundred fold.

For a few seconds, there was simply staring.

"How c-"

Captain Bronwyn slid a folder across the huge gleaming fake wood table towards Rowan, who slapped his paw down on it easily. "Read and listen. What do you know of the M-Class designation?"

"Habitable planets, breathable atmosphere, compatible vegetation, sir," the bear replied without missing a beat, mentally declaring the reprimand he would almost certainly receive to be worth it.

The tabby's eyes narrowed, and Bennett just focused his gaze into the far distance to avoid laughing. "I would advise you to take this a little more seriously, detective. Keep reading. I know you have come across that Federal designation before. In your own file, perhaps."

Rowan opened the folder, and found more than a dozen thin personnel files. What was immediately peculiar was that, with one exception, not a single person mentioned had been charged with any criminal activity. They were open, active suspect files, with absolutely zero reason to be suspect. He scanned the top of the page and, sure enough, in a tiny, easily-missed box in the section reserved for age, gender, species and the like, there was a small black 'M'. "Yes, sir. Been there as long as I can remember."

"Really?" Bronwyn said with a mirthless smile. "I expected better from you. That only appeared about... twelve years ago."

The bear froze. "Ah," he said slowly. "I'm starting to understand."

"Not yet, detective, but keep reading. What do you see in common with those files in front of you?"

Flip, flip, flip. "Other than the M on all their files, and the absence of any activity that would warrant the consolidation of this information? These could all be seen as breaches of privacy, if not downright abuse of authority." He paused, then added, "Sir."

"Designation M allows for some additional information gathering privileges, and Federal oversight," Bronwyn said easily, clearly a question he had fielded before. "Anything else?"

Rowan flipped through a little faster. Smiling faces looked out at him. Some looked to be yearbook photos, while others had clearly been poached from driver's licenses. A few seemed to be from grainy security camera footage. In the end, he was compelled to give his initial reaction. "No, sir. Ages are disparate, species, addresses, places of birth. I... I suppose income looks to be higher than average across the board, but it's dragged down by a few notables-"

"Noted, and both are correct. There are some statistical deviations, and they tend to be either significantly higher earners, or significantly lower. Also noteworthy, perhaps, is that out of seventeen people, there are zero criminal offences, outside of parking violations."

"A very law-abiding bunch," Rowan nodded. "What am I to assume from-"

"As of this morning, all seventeen of them are dead, or missing and presumed likewise."

The air conditioning hiccuped, providing a little variety to the lull that followed. Rowan blinked, then skimmed back through the files quickly. Mother of three. University professor. University student. Grandmother. Taxi driver. Two convenience store clerks. One... oh, ye gods, one fourteen-year-old honor student.

"They're metafurs, aren't they?"

"They were."

Rowan's fist thumped heavily into the table, mouth open, but he caught himself in time. Slowly, deliberately, he took a breath, counted to five, and said "How did you find them?"

"We have our methods," Bronwyn said evasively. Bennett was still staring off into the distance, clearly uncomfortable. By law, he had to be present for all IA debriefings, but this was clearly out of the experienced cop's wheelhouse. "We found you before you found yourself, as I'm sure you'll no doubt discover when you start going back through your own files. But the important thing to keep in mind was, we found them... and that was all. We left them alone. We simply feel the need to keep tabs on people who could, at a whim, cause a billion dollars in damage and untold loss of life."

"Which one-"

"Oh, none of them, as far as we know. But... we never know. We don't know what most of them are really capable of, and in a few instances we don't know what their powers are at all, but... there they are."

"There they were," Rowan grunted. "What is the timeframe?"

"Four days," Bronwyn said. "The files are being forwarded to you right now. Surely you heard about the arson uptown last night? That was one of them. A botched robbery in South Peace, apartment destroyed? That was another one. One was disguised as a car crash. Two were heart attacks, three hours apart. Some just haven't been seen in days."

Rowan stood up, paws shaking. "If they're hunting M's, they could be heading for my place-"

The tabby waved him back into his seat. "Your apartment, and your lovely wife, are currently under 24-hour surveillance, five-spot."

Five-spot, Rowan thought wonderingly. Two on the ground, two in the distance, one sniper. They pull five-spots for mafia bosses, and they've got one on my wife. "Thanks," he said weakly. It was a lot to process. "What about the local metas? Are they in on this?"

Bronwyn shook his head. "No chance. Someone killing off their own? They'd go ballistic, and we don't need unguided vigilantes wrecking up the city. As far as anyone knows, these... incidents are just part of living in the city." He leaned forwards, voice lowering. "These are seventeen people, men and women and children, who have been given powers that no-one should have, and they have elected not to use them. At least, not to use them publically. They want to be normal citizens, and we treat them as normal citizens."

"By opening protected Federal files on them," Rowan rumbled dangerously.

"If necessary, yes. There is no harm in observation, and an ounce of prevention..."

"What do you need me for?" the bear sighed, closing up the file, not wanting to see their smiling faces anymore. "Surely there's a couple hundred Feds in nice suits and dark shades who could be looking into this."

"They could, yes, but they've not quite got the breadth of experience that you do in this area."

Rowan nodded. "And whatever can kill seventeen metafurs without raising a fuss probably wouldn't have much trouble with a bunch of armchair superheroes with badges and guns."

"That, too." Bronwyn stood up, smoothing out his own suit fastidiously. "You are being given temporary server access to the M designation files, for this region, in order to continue this investigation. There are doubtless many metas that we haven't discovered, who may have been involved in this pattern, and there are many metas we have discovered that haven't been pulled in yet. We need you to get ahead of whoever is behind this. We need you on point."

The bear's paws flexed. On point. Nothing hurts me, so why not stick me out in front? What could possibly go wrong with me getting stuck in the middle of some super-powered assassination plot? How could a five-spot on my wife go awry? Sure, swoop in and get the arrests once I've gone all the dirty work. What do I care? I'm not Lawman. No-one knows who Lawman is. I'm just a detective with a bad leg and a small grey cube. "Me?" Rowan growled. "Or Lawman?"

"First one, then the other. Once you give us the hard data we need, we'll take it from-"

"Why you?" Rowan barked. His brain was running a few seconds behind, and it took until the echoes died down for him to realize he was standing, no, _looming_overtop of the little feline. He forced himself to breathe in and out, once, slowly, calmly, quietly. "Why are you telling me this? Why aren't the Feds dealing with me directly?"

Captain Bronwyn had paused at Rowan's explosive outburst, but had not taken a step back. Inanimate objects were generally sufficiently invested in self-preservation to get out of the bear's way. "Is that important, detective?"

"Today?" the bear rumbled, his paw resting on the file. "Yes, it is."

Bronwyn rolled his eyes. "Because you are a police officer, O'Reilly. You're not some Johnny Jump-Up who decided to protect his own little slice of the urban jungle, you're not a pocket dictator putting the squeeze on the locals, and you're certainly not out there at night, leaping from building to building and relying on your nigh-invulnerability to carry you to victory. You're a cop, you're a good cop, and no uppity Federal agency is going to order you around and twist you around and squeeze you dry and toss you out with the trash. You're one of us, first and foremost."

It was, by far, the longest speech the reticent Captain had ever given. He plucked a piece of lint from his suit and flicked it away. "Was there anything else?"

Rowan stared down, his heroic will pushed to the limit to keep the frank disbelief from his face. "No, sir," he said.

---

Bill, aka Critical Bill to the nickname-happy media, walked softly through the immense luxury condo, stepping easily over the char lines. The entire apartment had been torched thoroughly, not a stick of furniture remaining, naught but ash and soot and sopping puddles where the firemen had done their work. Light streamed in through the greasy floor-to-ceiling windows, but all was black.

The similarly monochromatic honey badger felt right at home.

He looked around, taking in the evidence of a pitched and bloody battle. The cops had been over everything with a fine-toothed comb, in some cases literally in order to sift out bone fragments from the debris, but according to his sources they had found no evidence of anything other than fire. No accelerants, no unexpected organics, certainly no explosions or defective appliances. A fire had started, and swept swiftly through the unit, despite the overhead sprinklers functioning perfectly.

To Bill's eyes, glowing faintly behind his shades, the story was far different.

His hand moved up in an arc, replicating the path that the nearly solid blast of radiant heat must have taken. He could see the internal structure of the reinforced concrete had been subtly changed by temperatures far in excess of what a simple apartment fire could produce, and those irregularities occurred in perfect straight lines. There were thick slashes back and forth, up and down, as though it were being hurled as a weapon, though unable to find its target.

He squinted and his vision changed further, the concrete itself fading away, but the endless bars of iron that lay embedded beneath the surface glowing plainly. He seemed to be standing amidst a tower composed of those strands, with bright spots here and there denoting larger masses of metal. There, the kitchen. In the distance, the elevator moving up and down. Beneath his feet, the metallic components of expensive luxury furniture, leather studs and wood screws mixed in with the sludgy, sooty mess.

Bingo, he thought to himself, walking through the living room to the guest bedroom. Once he was closer, he shifted his vision closer to the standard visible spectrum, allowing him to once again make out regular material objects.

Before him was a blank, charred wall. Some pictures had hung there, and some had fallen during the blaze, revealing rectangles of slightly less catastrophic damage. He reached up and wiped his hand across the surface, knocking other heat-scorched frames aside and sending them crashing to the floor. Other than some badly bubbled paint, the wall was featureless.

"Figures," he grunted, drawing one of his larger machetes from beneath his coat and hacking industriously at the wall. There wasn't much need for tact, or accuracy; the charred and inundated drywall fell away like so much clay. Beneath was sturdier but still damaged plywood, and he wasn't surprised to find hinges near one corner. He supposed he could have simply tried the hidden mechanism first, but that seemed so... dull.

With one final sweep of his weapon, he tore aside the no doubt expensive security panels and revealed the small and incredibly solid cube of the reindeer's safe. Bill recognized the brand, specifically designed to be tamper-proof, and fire-proof. A fire could have brought the entire building down, and the contents would still have been safe.

He sheathed his machete, gripped the safe's handle, and yanked the entire contraption out of the wall with an explosion of wood splinters. He was far stronger than the average thug, but on the continuum of masked avengers he hardly even registered. His arm wrenched, his knees bent, his back protested, but he managed to hoist it onto one shoulder and slowly, carefully make his way out of the ruins.

With his free paw, he was already texting Diamond.

---

"So, will I EVER get to meet hir?"

Soar sighed and rolled hir eyes. "Yes. Eventually. Everyone always does, really. You just need to be patient. It's not like shi's going anywhere, and if you're worth meeting hir, you're not going anywhere, either."

Junk nodded, trying not to pout. "Yeah. I didn't mean to sound quite so... so..."

"Fangrrl-y?" the doe blinked innocently.

"Well... yes."

The magical hero laughed, patting Jasmine on the back. "Don't worry about it. Everyone gets that way, sooner or later. I don't care who you are, Amalthea puts a bit of a spring in your step and some terror up your spine. Did you see that time shi met with the President of Ilsa Calamata?"

The jackalope snorted. "I saw that on the news! He walks across the stage, presents hir with a plaque, shakes hir paw..."

"... and just keeps shaking," Soarceress finished, giggling like a schoolgirl. "Shi took, like, three steps back and started asking for help, because his hand just kept going up and down, up and down, up and down..."

"... and you could TELL where he was staring," Jasmine continued, leering. "Hir outfit doesn't leave a lot to the imagination."

"Shi can't really buy off the rack."

"Shame."

"Yeah, you sound real sympathetic," Soar snickered, elbowing the young heroine in the ribs. "Are you saying you're not going to stare when you meet hir?"

"Maybe I should keep my goggles on," the jackalope mused.

"Good plan."

Jasmine's training seemed to be focusing on hir weaknesses, which shi supposed was good. Bill, renowned for being a violent force of nature that could cause insurance rates to triple simply by getting off the bus at the wrong stop, had spent two solid days spilling all of the collected metafur secrets to hir, or at least everything that might ever be important in a deadly situation. In the end, shi'd wished that shi could actually get drunk, just to give hir brain a break from the unexpected drama and horrors of being a crimefighter. Bill had gotten drunk enough for the both of them, though, which had been a further education that shi could have lived without.

After that, shi had been given special assignments that seemed needlessly complicated and unnecessary, at least at first. Texts would arrive at all hours of the day, and night, instructing hir to make all haste to a very specific location. Very specific. One of them directed hir to the upper left hand shelf of the linen closet near the master bedroom of the guest house of a mansion in Kits Creek, a ritzy seaside neighborhood with its own dedicated police force. On that shelf had been a little cardboard box, with the words "I am a bomb that would have gone off at 3:13 am" written on it in felt marker, and a digital clock that clearly indicated the time as 3:19 am.

On the fourth day of those assignments, shi met the referee for this stage of hir training: Soarceress. "There's a hell of a lot more to this line of work than being able to rip a steel door out of a wall," the doe patiently explained. "Don't get me wrong: that's a valuable skill. But a Swiss Army knife that's just sixteen blades doesn't do much good when you need to get a cork out of a bottle of wine."

The experience had been humbling. Always so confident of hir abilities, of hir speed and strength and resiliency and hir street smarts, when just a few simple lessons in observation, stealth and mobility had exposed some glaring deficiencies.

At the moment, hir fears were currently being put to the test. Standing high atop the Great Western Imperial building, ninety-six stories above the pavement, Jasmine was balancing on one footpaw, arms outstretched. It wasn't that shi was afraid of heights, exactly... shi just wasn't exactly thrilled about a fall that would give hir more than enough time to pull out hir new smartphone, call Bill and curse him out for recruiting hir before shi landed.

Shi wobbled, steadied hirself, and sighed. "Look, this would be a lot easier if I could just take a swig of-"

"No booze," Soar snapped, jewels tinkling. "No smack. No help. You rely on them."

"You rely on magic," Jasmine fired back, glaring pointedly at the space between the floating doe's hooves and the tar-gravel roof. "Or... whatever it is that you're calling magic. Bill wouldn't tell me THAT part."

"I'm allowed," the hovering heroine huffed. "Earned it. I know when to use it, when not to use it, and when I can piss off newbies to the maximum amount with the minimum effort."

"There's no side effects with me, though!" Junk protested. "At least, none of the kind regular people get."

"Maybe not, but it's still a reliance. You can't even start your day without a pack of smokes, and you don't even smoke them."

"The menthols are tasty," the jackalope pouted, wobbling once more in a stiff crosswind. "How much longer do I have to be up here? I'm can't believe no-one's called the cops on me as a jumper."

"Oh, we're invisible," Soarceress said offhandedly, sweeping gracefully out over the edge effortlessly, floating as easily as a cloud. "That's my specialty."

Jasmine's paws immediately twisted to raise hir middle fingers skywards. "In that case, I've always wanted to do this. To, like, the entire world. Midtown and Main will have to do for now, I guess," shi smirked, swinging one leg out and twirling on the edge of a thousand foot fall.

OK, so there's not a lot of fears there, Soarceress mused, swooping in closer. This might not be a productive avenue of training. "OK, tell you what. We can skip this part, for now, but we're going to move you up a little bit to more practical forensic work. How's that sound?"

Jasmine stopped dancing on the edge of certain death and clapped hir paws together. "Works for me!" shi said briskly, rubbing hir palms. "What's that involve? If you want to see if I'll toss it while watching an autopsy, you're in for some disappointment. I love horror movies."

"Not that type of forensic. We've just gotta finish up the stress test."

"How? Your illusions aren't going to do much to me. I don't even think I can feel fear anymore." The camo-clad vigilante didn't seem particularly pleased, or proud, of that trait.

"I have more than just illusions, hon," Soar winked, waving hir hands in front of hir. "I'll buy you a pack of whatever you want when it's over. Deal?"

"Deal." Jasmine blinked. "Wait, what did I just agree to-"

The flying doeherm flicked hir wrist, and a gust of wind seemed to rise out of nowhere, taking Junk completely off of hir feet and sending hir tumbling over the edge of the building.

Street Legal

"He was a day trader? What even is that?"

"Stock market bullshit," Bill grunted. "Technology. Bonds. Securities. You know. Bullshit."

Diamond whistled, turning the half-ton safe over in her paws like a Rubiks cube. "Damn. Nice. And, unfortunately, it seems he knows a couple things about picking a safe. I can't rip the door off this one easily. See the handle? Hardened chrome steel, but it's only held in place with four tiny screws, so as soon as I yank on it, the handle comes free without damaging the door."

"Figured."

"Can't you just see what's inside, anyways?" the voluptuous racoon said, waving vaguely at her ally's eyes. "It's not lead lined, is it?"

"It is, actually, but I can see through lead," he muttered, staring out the window of the safe house. There were several empty storage lockers and hotel rooms the local hero population used for daylight meetings, and right now on the third floor of the Tripletree Arms, there wasn't a great deal for him to focus on. "Problem is, at those wavelengths, I CAN'T see what's written on the papers, and I can't see what's in the compartments."

Diamond nodded. She knew that Bill's abillity had its limits, but it was still one of the more impressive powers she had come across. Only a handful of people knew the incredibly dangerous honey badger had any special abilities whatsoever, beyond murderous rage. She glanced sidelong at him, but he was looking elsewhere, as always. "But you think it's important."

"Two-way fight," Bill repeated. "One was throwing flame, the other... I'm not sure, but from the char patterns, the flamer was aiming everywhere and not hitting anything."

The racoon inspected the underside of the safe. "Guaranteed completely fireproof, insulated and radiated. The fire-thrower owned the safe?"

"That's the idea. Can you help or not?"

Never one to mince words, the little racoon thought to herself. Can't blame him. "Yeah, yeah, one sec." The safe was about the size of a small microwave, and except for a small handle and a tiny keypad, was virtually featureless. The corners were rounded, and the door seam was so fine she doubted she could have fit a slice of tin foil into it. "This one's not gonna be easy. You know, you CAN look at me."

Bill's head twitched over to face her, then immediately went back to examining his knuckles. "I know."

"But you won't," she snarked. "Sure know how to make a girl feel special."

He jerked, shoving his hands into his coat and turning to face completely away. "This gonna take long?"

Sighing softly, Diamond perched on the edge of the small bed, equipped with a fifty cent Magic Fingers machine, and placed the safe effortlessly on her knees. "Not long. I've got something I've wanted to try. Now... I gotta ask... you know, after last time... are you SURE there's-"

"This one's not wired," he said quickly. "No explosives."

"Good. OK, let's see... I gotta go slow."

She part her knees and placed the safe between them, with the door facing up. She took a long, slow breath, resting her palms on the door, and gently squeezed her legs together. Almost immediately there was a tortured groan of steel, the sides of grey cube flexing as though it were made of soft clay. Pops and snaps rang like tiny gunshots as the hidden hinges surrendered, and slowly a gap appeared between the top and bottom of the safe's door and the frame. She worked her delicate fingers into the gaps, relaxed slightly with her thighs, and yanked the door free in a shower of sizzling hot metal shards.

"Bingo!"

Bill, staring out the window, suppressed the urge to shudder. Diamond might be, by all measures and metrics, just a little girl, but her 'ability' still gave him pause. Thank gods she turned out to be one of us, he thought, not for the first time. Thank gods she turned out to be a hero.

The entire room thumped as the badly deformed safe landed on the cheap carpeting, amidst a clatter of smaller boxes. "Hmmm, some of these look like bank statements. Damn, this guy's got some ca-a-a-ash. Well, I mean, he did. Uhm... you wanna come help me out with this? I have no idea what I'm looking at."

Keeping his penetrating gaze low and safe, he knelt by Diamond's side, investigating the contents of the former safe. He could see it radiating incredible energy in the infrared, the metal heated by the incalculable forces it was subjected to, but fortunately this time it wasn't hot enough to light the paper on fire. "Investment statements. Employment contract. Jewellery. Hmmm, real diamonds, too. We'll pawn this for the retirement fund."

Working carefully, they spread out the contents of the wealthy reindeer's safe. Most of it seemed fairly mundane, indicative of a lifestyle of wealth that neither vigilante could readily comprehend, until they produced a small leather-bound scrapbook from the bottom of the pile. Bill flipped through it while Diamond meticulously ripped the smaller lock boxes open.

"Damn, this guy's got some nice stuff," she said, slipping a platinum and ruby ring over one squeaky rubber-clad finger. "What do you think? Is it me?"

Bill's paws moved slowly, reading the aged newspaper clippings that were fastidiously cut and pasted into the scrap book. "I don't think the owner's going to want it back anytime soon," he said with unexpected softness. "But I think we got a couple more clues about this son of a bitch."

The sudden change in tone brought Diamond back to seriousness. "What you got?" she asked, leaning against the bulky badger to better see the scrap book. "1987? 1989? Jeez, before my time. What... oh, jeez."

They read in silence, reading page after page after brittle yellowing page. Some were obituaries, some were missing persons articles, but most of them were sensational reports of unexplained fires. Sometimes there were car fires, sometimes they were homes or apartments, sometimes there were entire buildings. A notable few were dumpster fires. Mentioned somewhere in each clipping, though, was the name of the young female victim of each fire.

"Were these all him?" Diamond asked, her voice sounding very small.

"Gotta assume," he grunted, pulling out his phone. "Someone took this guy out, though."

"Another hero? Someone underground?"

The badger shook his head. "Can't tell. Could be friend, could be foe. Whoever it was, they figured him out before we did. Clippings are months apart, sometimes years apart. All over the city. No pattern." Typing easily with one hand, he continued to read through the clippings. "Whatever it is, we got a new player in town, and they're targeting sleepers."

---

Rowan checked the address in his notebook for the tenth time, sighed and knocked. He was tired, he was hungry, and the only communication with his wife had been via an angry telephone call and several passive-aggressive texts. Nearly forty-eight straight hours of deskwork and footwork, tracking down the M-class individuals, trying to make contact, trying to get ahead of the killer, trying to put two and two together and come up with something that wasn't an ancient heiroglyph.

Seven points of contact, and so far none had reported anything unusual. He'd been forced to make up a story about a robbery in the area, stock detective bullshit, in order to make the unexpected interview sound plausible, but all seven had been notably suspicious.

On a hunch, he'd started mentioning the names of the missing or murdered M-class citizens, two or three per visit, mixing in a few random names that he'd just made up on the spot. Of the five such interviews, three of them had reacted to the names, which was more than just statistically significant... it was suspicious.

They know eachother, he thought, listing everything in his notebook. Somehow, they're finding eachother. They're making contact. How many of them are there? Could I have find them, if I'd looked? The old gunshot wound in his thigh throbbed whenever he pondered it.

His initial contacts had all been the low-rent options, those with below-average incomes. They generally lived in the seedier areas of town, and all except one lived alone. They were quiet, they were clean, and above all they were helpful. To a one, they were the very picture of a helpful, hardworking citizen, down on their luck and living paycheck to paycheck. That alone would have been suspicious for any lineup. He was no closer to finding the killer, but he was scratching the surface of something important.

Needing a change of scenery, he'd moved uptown. The building was all chrome and tawny marble, spacious, and this hallway alone sported three chandeliers. Who needed three chandeliers in a hallway? He'd done his share of duty work where the other half lived, and it was always difficult to suppress the urge to order financial investigations on everyone, just on principle.

The door opened, revealing a statuesque and, to his dull married senses, absolutely gorgeous vixen. Raven black hair fell in waves to her waist, contrasting with the red curve-hugging cocktail dress that seemed wildly inappropriate for 11am. "Yes?" she asked sharply, frowning slightly. "I didn't buzz you in."

"Good morning, ma'am," he said gruffly, tugging open his coat to reveal the badge pinned to his pocket. "I'm Detective O'Reilly. Do you have a moment to discuss a robbery that took place in your building last night?"

The door inched shut, but stopped halfway. "Where?"

"Unit 1013," he said readily. "I just have a few questions for you, if you don't mind, miss... ?" Of course, he had her name. He had her entire file in the lockbox in his car, parked several blocks away. He knew that she had graduated at the top of her law class, and yet had never passed or even attempted the bar exam. He knew that she worked as a legal assistant, yet seemed to have an above-board income several times larger than that position paid. He knew that she spent enormous amounts on clothing and exercise equipment, yet held no gym memberships or loyalty cards.

The stunning fox frowned a little further, but nodded. "Of course. Jelena. Jelena Tomas. Please, come in," she purred, opening the door wide.

Her apartment was very spacious, but also quite sparsely decorated. He had expected art, electronics, fine furniture, crystal and... and whatever it was wealthy young women liked these days. Instead there were just several sturdy, solid couches, a collection of desks that held three very impressive-looking computers, and a few family photos. He had seen college apartments with similar setups; all she needed was a beer can pyramid in the corner.

"Would you like anything to drink?" she asked, moving into the kitchen and tidying up.

Rowan watched out of the corner of his eye, noting the contents of her countertops and open cupboards. "No, thank you, I'm fine. Ah. Did you hear anything unusual last night shortly after 1am?"

"Nope," she said swiftly, tossing several empty tins into the sink.

"So you were awake shortly after 1am?" he added blandly.

Jelena froze for just an instant, but Rowan saw. "I'm a bit of a night owl," she said airily, returning several items to the fridge. "You sure you don't want anything? I have some iced lattes that are quite delicious."

"No, thank you." He sat on the couch, his tremendous bulk hardly causing it to strain at all. "Have you noticed any unusual characters hanging around the lobby lately? Maybe people who don't live here, people who seem to be just outside the safety doors?"

She walked... no, she sashayed into the living room, hips swivelling expertly. His eyes flickered down to them before locking once more onto her eyes. A fine attempt, but you're not my type, he thought. You don't hold a candle to Molly.

She shook her head. "Nope. Should I be, from now on?"

"No, they'd be long gone by now." He made a show of licking his finger and flipping the page over while Jelena settled herself prettily into the chair opposite him. A bare-bones, but well-stocked apartment. Sturdy furniture. Money coming in from somewhere the Feds can't find without a warrant. A legal assistant with access to confidential files...

"Miss Tomas, does the name Fischer Fitsimmons mean anything to you?"

She could not have recoiled so hard if she had been slapped. "Wh... what?" she gasped, eyes growing wide. Rowan had expected denial, or anger, but this was something else. This was fear. "Why would he be involved with a robbery?!"

Well, that will save some time. "He is involved with a... separate robbery investigation at the moment. Certain details were similar, and we're just following up-"

"You know he's dead," she snapped accusingly, eyes narrowing. "He died three days ago. The cops said it wasn't suspicious, and there was no investigation!"

Aahhh, there's the anger. Rowan was no stranger to dealing with hostile interviews, but after the events of the last few days, he didn't know what to expect. "Were you close with Mister Fitzsimmons? I see you were in one of his classes at NWU, in your second year. The year your grades turned around."

Rowan watched the culpability domino reaction, layer after layer of pretense bristling before falling away. Jelena burned with rage, before sulking in shame, raising her chin defiantly, and finally sagging back against her too-firm couch, fiddling with a loose strand on her dress. "You know," she pouted.

"Know what, Miss Tomas?"

"You_know_," she repeated. "You know about us. You just didn't wanna say it in the hallway. You know about the sleepers."

Sleepers. That's... new. "More than you'd think, but not everything. Not everything. Knowing was enough... until you started dying."

The fox's eyes were wide with fear. "Fischer found me right before I was about to... you know, go public. I had a costume picked out and everything." She smiled sadly. "It even had a cape. Isn't that stupid?"

She is a meta. And one powerful enough to fight crime, or at least think that she could fight crime. "And he stopped you?"

"He... convinced me that, maybe, it wasn't necessary. He helped a lot of us. He helped us find others. We knew what to look for, you know? When the internet blew up, it almost became easy to find eachother. We knew the questions we'd ask, the boards we'd go to. We meet here, sometimes, actually," she added, gesturing to the apartment in general. "Safe territory. Kind of like a mutant support group."

Rowan's eyes widened. What I would have given for that... "Do you know what happened to Mr. Fitzsimmons?"

"Heart attack," she grunted, throwing herself back into the upholstery. "As if. All of us who read that knew it was bullshit. He... I never really knew what his power was. We only told eachother if we wanted to, and most of us never wanted to."

"We believe he was murdered," the huge bear said carefully. "As were more than a dozen other... sleepers. In the last week." He looked up from his notebook, a new thought occurring to him. "Who has access to information regarding your members?"

Her jaw hung open, one ear twitching. "A dozen... more than a dozen..." she breathed, almost a whimper. "What... how? Why? Are you... are you trying to protect us? We need protection! We're not fighters! We just want to live in peace!" she wailed plaintively.

Rowan raised his palms. "We're doing our best to resolve the situation," he said diplomatically, hating his mandatory script. "The investigation is not exactly made any easier by the fact that this is a world where everyone keeps secrets. Abilities notwithstanding, you are citizens under our protection, and we will keep you safe."

Jelena sniffled. "How? Anyone who could kill a dozen of us without slowing down... what's a couple cops going to do?"

"It's not just a couple cops," Rowan said, moving to stand up. "You will have the protection of the FMA, which is much more suited to this sort of situation."

"What about Lawman?" she asked, rubbing her muzzle. "I saw him in the news. He's one of yours, right?"

Damn. "Yes, he is working with us, but-"

The knock at the door saved him from having to evade a line of questioning that would almost certainly lead to his identity being revealed. She was a smart vixen, and there weren't very many eight foot tall bears investigating metafur crimes in the city. Already she was looking at him suspiciously, speculatively.

Knock at this door, of all doors...

"Quickly," he whispered. "Are you expecting anyone else today?"

"What? Me?" she said, covering her mouth and dropping down to a frightened squeak. "No! Am I in danger? Who is it?! Oh, gods!"

"Shhh, shhh, shhh," Rowan rumbled, clasping her tiny shoulder with one paw and reaching into his coat for one of Lawman's little gadgets. The widget was attached to the back of his badge; one squeeze, and Lawman's FMA handlers would hit red alert. "It's all right. Backup is on it's way. You go to your bedroom, and don't come out until I say."

"You... he... Fitzy..." she simpered, paws flailing. "I can't... I... ok... bedroom. I can do that. Sorry. Bedroom. Don't come out. OK..."

He watched her go, shaking his head wonderingly. And you were going to fight crime?

Moving gingerly, years of practice stepping silently so as to not wake up his sharp-eared wife, Rowan moved through the spacious apartment to the front door. He recognized the solid steel, solid core security door, and felt a little bit safer... right up until he remembered the crime scene photos from some of the more obvious M-class hits. That door might as well not even be there.

Underneath his street clothes, he wore the essentials of his Lawman getup, with a more portable hood folded into one of his coat pockets. He didn't have time to get changed, and the hood would only make his sensible polo shirt and dun slacks looks ridiculous. Well, looks like I'm doing this au natural. Let's see what we can see.

He peered through the door's peephole, frowned, and opened the door a few inches.

"Yes?" he said, trying to sound friendly, hoping he remembered what that sounded like. "Can I help you?"

The figure standing in the hallway was short, slight, and wore a black trenchcoat and old-fashioned broad-brimmed black hat. If there was ever an outfit that cried out 'self-described villain', this was certainly the budget version of it. The ermine looked up, and up again, at Rowan, and smiled a charming little grin. "Good afternoon," he said silkily. "Is Jelena home?"

---

Soarceress and Junk ended up in an alley, after the latter's sudden improvisational skydiving lesson. The jackalope supposed that shi had passed whatever that test had been designed to examine. "Most people scream," Soarceress mused, after slowing and eventually halting the young vigilante's descent. "Some hold their breath, some cry, but most people just scream. I've never had anyone just... _swear_the whole way down before..."

Seven seconds of heart-stopping acceleration had given Junk enough time to draw out one of hir emergency stashes, a freeze-dried cube the size of a plum, wrapped in tin foil. One more second and shi would have popped it in hir mouth, and shi wasn't entirely sure what the results would have been. "You really should fucking warn me about shit like that," shi snarled, paws shaking, tucking the cube back into hir bandolier. "You're lucky I figured you'd catch me. Fuck."

Soarceress turned away to hide hir smile. Tough little bitch, ain't you? "Standard emergency state-of-mind testing. I'd have to say you graduated, though, if only because you're not on the regular bell curve at all."

The alley was spacious, and all things considered, clean and well lit. Jasmine kicked at a garbage bag and watched it bounce and roll over, the high-quality bag remaining intact. "I can't believe what it's like downtown. This alley is nicer than my apartment. Even the garbage is cleaner."

"I try to keep my part of the city in order," the tall, elegant doe-herm said, leaning against the concrete wall and examining hir fingernails. "Most of the crime around here isn't your forte. Fraud, embezzlement, grand theft... it tends to require a lighter touch, a keen eye, and a distinct LACK of violence."

"I'd be guaranteed to reduce the recidivism rate," Junk grinned angrily, clenching hir fists.

"Yes, yes. But, trust me, we need you where you are. Between you and Lawman, there has been a MARKED reduction in street drug crime and shootouts."

"And when there is a shootout, it's because we're in the middle of it," Junk nodded, poking a finger into one of the many new holes hir outfit sported. Some of them were fringed with blood that had dried and faded to a chocolatey brown, but shi was loathe to wash it off. Shi rather enjoyed the effect. "Literally."

"That, too. But if you want to make your skills a little more broad-based, then this is a good place to start."

The lean jackalope looked around. "What. This alley?"

Soar nodded. "This alley."

"Uhm." Shi glanced up, skyscrapers rising all around, a streaky grid of blue shining down on them. "Did someone throw money out of a window and I need to find it?"

"Nope."

"Uhm. OK." Junk tried to focus. It was clear shi was on the clock now, with Soar putting all of hir energy into casually inspecting hir manicure. "Big alley. That's.... Cambie over there. There's, uhm, six dumpsters in here. Couple back doors. A couple manholes. Some insultingly clean garbage bags. There's not even any needles. Seriously, how do you have a back alley without used needles?"

"Yup."

"Do I get any hints? Was a crime at least committed here?"

"It was."

Jasmine walked around, examining the faded tire tracks on the cracked asphalt, the sprays of water and scrapes of paint on the concrete and cinderblock walls. Clues. I'm supposed to be looking for clues. What sort of clues? I need a fucking hint, if I'm going to be looking for them! But I guess a real detective wouldn't need a hint, they would see EVERYTHING, and figure out which was a clue. GAH! "Can I please take something for this part of my test? I haven't had a drink in hours. I'm not exactly at my best right now."

"This part is up to you. If you need to be at your best, then by all means, be at your best." Soarceress raised a cautionary finger and added, "But remember, you're in the public eye right now. Snorting rocks on camera isn't going to earn you the right kind of attention."

"I have my methods," Junk grinned, removing a small, brightly-colored box from another pocket. Soarceress recognized the popular brand of fruit-flavored candy, and couldn't help but snicker when Junk started popping the distinctly non-candy contents into hir mouth. "Want one?"

The doe raised hir palms. "No-o-o-o, not me. No thanks. Do I even want to know what those are?"

"They're expensive, that's what they are," Junk said, feeling the dextrorotarymethamphetamines going to work almost immediately on hir peculiar body. Already the colors were brighter, sounds sharper, details clearer. "And probably for the best. I shudder to imagine what one of you would be like on these."

"Just... keep control," Soarceress frowned. "We're happy to have you on our side, hon, but this whole thing makes some people nervous."

"Your heartbeat tells me you're one of them," Junk called over hir shoulder, speaking quickly now. Shi knelt, running hir fingers across the asphalt, feeling the hundreds of individual loose grains of sand and stone rustle and crumble. "There's a lot of talcum powder mixed in with the general surface strata. Not seeing any blood. Plenty of other bodily fluids, though. Ew. And gasoline. Diesel. Used canola oil. Must be a burger joint around here somewhere. Talcum powder..."

Soarceress watched Junk work, and shi had to admit shi was a little impressed. Heightened senses, no doubt there. Those come with a price, though. Just ask Bill. Maybe he should be handling this part of hir testing...

"Find anything?"

Junk had returned the 'candy' to hir pockets and was now moving on all fours, sniffing at the ground and occasionally running hir hands up the wall. "There's... there's something. Lots of overlapping trails here. I think... I think there was a hit and run here. The tire treads here are smeared, deep, rubber streaks going both ways. Someone was going fast, slammed on the brakes, skid-stopped, then peeled out backwards. Left some chrome on the wall here, and there actually is blood, but it got washed off. No gunpowder, no drugs... fur, but treated fur. Outfit. Coat? Lady got hit by a car..."

Fuck, that's gotta be a record, the doe blinked. Thirty seconds? Thirty five? Shi's got the whole story. "You're-"

The explosion was close, too close, echoing up and down the alley several times. Sirens erupted all around them, a mixture of car alarms and building security systems. There were screams of panic and fear, tires squealing, and an endless, distant rain of shattered glass.

Junk knelt low again, scratching at a puddle. "The vehicle is leaking high-test oil, synthetic," shi continued to narrate, licking at the black grease, oblivious to the chaos around the corner. "I think we can narrow down the brand with a little work. It tastes expensive."

"JUNK!" Soarceress cried, marching up to the too-focused jackalope. "Didn't you hear that?"

"Hear what? Explosion?" Jasmine looked up, eyes wide, too wide. "Yeah, but I thought I was supposed to do this-"

"MOVE YOUR ASS!" Soarceress leapt into the air, staying true to hir media name and soaring off in a high, fast arc. In an instant shi was gone, leaving Junk alone in the alley.

"I'll just come back to this later then, OK?" shi yelled, straightening and wiping hir fingers on hir outfit. "Jeez, make up your mind. Inspect the alley, inspect the explosion, back and forth, back and forth. I'm not psychic, for fuck's sake..."

Shi emerged from the alley, dodging the milling crowds on the sidewalk. The vast majority of city folk were clearly fleeing, but there was a small number of the unhealthily-curious that were struggling to get closer, cameraphones raised. To hir heightened, humming senses, the mob moved with slow, dreamlike deliberateness and shi raced around them easily.

Around the next city block, the scene was madness. Glass continued to rain down, and a quick examination of the nearest building showed the source of the explosion: a crater the size of a cement truck pockmarked the otherwise pristine facade, ten storeys up. The packed one-way street was a mess of bumper-to-bumper traffic, many cab drivers simply abandoning their vehicles and fleeing on foot. Sirens clashed and jangled with car horns, and already rising in the distance were the wails of police and emergency services.

Soarceress was nowhere to be seen, but Junk expected that from someone who could become invisible at will.

Junk passed beyond the edge of the circle created by the gridlock, ears twitching, fists clenched, temporarily overwhelmed by hir senses. Shi struggled to narrow it down to the three shapes that dominated the centre of the street-level destruction: a tiny ermine wearing an immaculate and somehow undamaged duster and hat, a tall vixen wearing a ripped crimson cocktail dress and whose fur and flesh seemed to be made of gleaming metal, and a third, considerably larger form laying flat out face down on the ground, blazing like a bonfire.

The ermine glanced over at hir and waved. "Greetings! I wasn't expecting to get to you so quickly," he said cheerily. "This is quite the productive day for me! But please, wait your turn."

The vixen took a step back, hands raised inexpertly to shield her body. Junk saw tears rolling down her polished silver cheeks, her hair swaying back and forth like liquid chrome. "Please, I'll do anything, I can... I can tell you anything... just don't... just stop..."

The ermine clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "We don't want information, my dear. We already know everything. No... we want you."