Act 0.7: Wings and Wind, Part 19
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuX5K_wMiQA
After making sure no one was looking, you shifted to your normal disguise and took a seat on a bench. Doing this did identify you to anyone who cared to put enough thought into it.
After a few minutes, two people arrived, both wearing costumes. Behind them followed police and behind them was the return of the populace that had been scared off earlier.
The two heroes noticed you soon enough and headed over.
"You."
The speaker wore what looked like some overly flashy suit and a hat with a feather in it. The effect was dramatic. At his hip was a sheathed thin sword. That was probably Badesinger then.
The other hero with him wore a red mask and costume. His eyes looked tired, eye-strain maybe. His costume had a black eye symbol on it so a random guess said that was Blindfire.
"Me." You agreed "Diablo has been driven off."
"How?" Bladesinger looked vaguely annoyed.
"You don't feel nearly strong enough to stand a chance."
Okay, before getting frustrated at his way of thinking, you took a moment to examine this scene as he must see it.
He was probably called here to help deal with Diablo, the strongest villain in the city, he even had an ally come with him to make sure they were safe.
Then when they get here, they find you. An unknown who refused to tell them anything in the past.
What's the worst way he could be taking this?
"I didn't make any kind of deal with him." You specified "And it wasn't a clean victory anyway. I heard him enough to spook him, I'm fairly sure there were options he could have used if he'd wanted."
Bladesinger still looked frustrated but Blindfire nodded "He does have a few tricks like that, very well."
He pulled his partner aside and spoke to him for a few moments, you did your best to listen in.
You weren't able to make out much of anything at all. As their meeting concluded, Bladesinger kept an eye on you as Blindfire went to talk to the local police. One of them followed him as he walked over to you.
The policeman looked worried, he had been grabbed at random as far as you were aware and he seemed to be thinking he was out of his depth or something like that.
"Umm…" He cleared his throat after he and Blindfire arrived next to you again "Are you aware of the laws against vigilante activity, miss… hero?"
Vigilante? Why would they want to accuse you of that? While strictly speaking what you did was vigilantism, the alternative-
"The alternative to the actions I took today likely would have involved the mass death of the onlookers. I prevented them from getting hurt."
The policeman licked his lips and glanced back to the force "E… even so. What you did was illegal. Could you please come with me?"
"Me" Not "Us." He wasn't asking you to surrender to the heroes but to the guard force. That was actually amusing, but you could see something similar happening in the empire below.
The heroes were standing nearby, but they weren't actually doing anything, because they wouldn't. They didn't really see what you had done as wrong, even if Bladesinger still seemed to think it was unlikely you actually did it. No, they were just following procedure, or rather letting the police follow procedure.
In other words, this was a bit of theatre, not for you but for some other audience. Maybe the civilians?
Well, best to not sour your relations with the heroes further.
"Sure, but only to give a statement."
"That's-" The policeman was about to say something but Blindfire shook his head and closed his eyes "-fine." he finished, which probably wasn't where that was going to go.
You headed to the local police station in the car, the same receptionist was even manning the desk from before. The heroes followed you in and you all went into the back of the station where there was a meeting room. Though it seemed more like a prison interrogation room.
No windows, just various pieces of furniture around a table.
Your body hadn't been restricted at any point during the process.
The still-awkward policeman led the interview, putting a small box on the table that seemed to have a spinning reel of some tape-like material in it.
"This is Officer Smith of the SFPD, this is a-" he glanced at the heroes who were sitting in the room's opposite corners. Blindfire behind you, Bladesinger behind officer smith.
"Debrief?" Blindfire suggested.
"This is a debrief, related to the recent incident-" he hesitated again before specifying "of vigilantism on the date of-" he reeled off a few introductory portions.
"With me are two heroes of San Francisco, Bladesinger and Blindfire, if you may?"
"This is Bladesinger of Heroics Bureau SF."
"This is Blindfire of Heroics Bureau SF."
"With us is an unnamed hero who engaged in vigilantism in order to protect a large group of civilians. As no one was hurt by her actions, it is deemed that this instance of vigilantism likely falls under good samaritan laws. Can you please identify yourself?"
"My papers say Jane Doe." you noted, if you were doing this in your main disguise you might as well give the correct name.
There was a moment of silence in the room.
"Seriously?" Bladesinger seemed frustrated. After a moment he sighed and the policeman followed up.
"Umm, since that's fairly obviously an alias, do you mind telling us your real name?"
…
"I've said before that I don't want to talk about my origins."
A small bit of tension was building in the room
It was the policeman that broke the tension "Just your first name then, just so there's something to write in the report. Nothing else about where you are from will be asked in this meeting."
Implying there could be meetings later where you would be asked to go into it but as long as all that was needed now was your name. They might mistake it for some sort of superhero name too, wouldn't that be funny?
"Kalina." You spelled it out for them.
With that the actual incident report began. You were asked to recount what had happened from your perspective. At one point you interrupted the story though.
"Ah, is the hero named Orbital okay? Did he get help?"
"He did." Blindfire answered.
You continued on with your story before getting to the fight itself.
…well, you were relatively fine with them knowing about your orbs. You stuck around after all.
"I have the power to create glowing orbs of light. They fly where I want them too and burn things on contact."
You told them of the rough details of how you fought, skipping out your digging and your transformation into your true form. The story ended with Diablo fleeing and you deciding to stuck around.
The heroes breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that your power wasn't anything as bad as they had expected but they didn't go on.
The discussion then moved on to the vigilantism itself and Blindfire pointed out something specific.
"It is really in your best interest to work with us." He repeated what his boss had said before "Because vigilantism can mess up carefully prepared missions such as, just a random example I'm coming up with now, an organised effort to ensure a kidnapper can't escape in the muddle of some public transport disembarking."
Oh.
They were the good guys, of course when you told them about the kidnapping going on, they'd want to help. But there was also the simple fact that if you both tried to work on it, miscommunication could give the kidnapper a chance to escape.
As the debrief ended, the policeman stopped the device on the table and Bladesinger picked it up.
"Heroics Bureau SF is taking possession of this recording for the safety of those involved in this incident. We will send back a scrubbed version within a week so that a proper report can be written." He took the tape thing out of the device and pocketed it, handing the device itself back.
You were allowed to leave with the heroes, but before you went your separate ways, Blindfire offered some advice "Feel free to come back to headquarters if there's something you want to say."
"Vigilantism is also still a crime." Bladesinger added "You got away with it today due to the fact that you likely saved lives by taking action, but be careful in what you chose to do without our approval."
And with that they let you go, heading off their own way.
It was a bit too late in the day now to do anything big but if you wanted you could still give Grace Cathedral a good look. You hadn't sensed anything from it though so you weren't sure it was worth it. You could also try returning to the hero's base if you had anything you wanted to do there. Or you could just go back to the hotel and go to one of the tourist spots you'd noticed earlier in the morning.
[ ] Grace Cathedral (Do you have anything specific in mind to check?)
[ ] Hero's base (What do you want to do there?)
[ ] Head back to the hotel (Where would you be going in the morning?)
Oops, sorry this took so long to be written. Either way it's done now. Anyway, using Blindfire as a mouthpiece, I managed to explain why I thought you would chose to work with them in the first place. That said, it's still not the only way to go about things.
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