6/21/08 - Polaris, Twinker (NPC), Proust (NPC)
The shouting from the office is one-sided, and it is not Rossi's voice. The Lieutenant's voice carries, but it is the Captains' -- plural, competing with each other in a duel of anger and consequence -- that keep the squad room quiet, less in the hopes of overhearing (easy) than in the fear that the concentration of furious brass might find a new target to explode at. Celebration at Magneto's capture, well-deserved, is placed, however temporarily, on hold.
When the door slams open, it is to expel Rossi, his face set, denuded of badge and gun. "Twinker!" shouts a voice from within. The Lieutenant. "Proust! Get your asses in here! Now!"
The two detectives glance at each other, and hasten to obey. Nobody meets Rossi's eyes on his way out.
"Where the fuck are you going?" Mendez asks, passing him in the hallway. "We're heading over to Pat's to celebrate. You coming? --Jesus fucking Christ," he adds, catching sight of the other man's face. "Not again."
"I got poor judgment," Rossi says, and heads towards the exit, his hands shoved in his pockets.
Mendez watches him go. "You're a fucking moron," he tells the retreating back as a matter of course, and then follows the sounds of excited conversation to learn what Rossi has done. This time.
---
Polaris looks bad. Possibly not to cops used to this sort of thing, but the bruises across half her face and upper torso visible through the hospital gown are ugly purple-red. She moves like she's hurt, too, unable to find a position to lay, but finding pain as much pain in the movement to new position as laying in the old. For the moment, she's dozing, frowning every so often as a hand goes to pick at the IV in her arm, and then stopping herself just in time. Otherwise the room is silent, no TV to cut into her general ignorance of the outside world.
The knock on the door is perfunctory, and does not wait for an answer. The visitors do not require introduction; the badges gleaming gold on their cheap suit fronts announce themselves, as do the holsters hanging on their hips under the open jackets. The holsters are empty. /That/ much is unusual, even if the visit is not. Two men: an older one, balding and pinch-faced, with the sour tightness to his expression that suggests he has spent several weeks sucking lemons. The younger, lean and vulpine, with a receding hairline that lengthens his face line a sharpened pencil. "Ms. Dane?" asks the elder, curt. "Det. Twinker, NYPD. My partner, Det. Proust. How are you feeling? Do you mind a few questions?"
It is a purely rhetorical question.
Polaris sits up straighter automatically, and then winces, a delayed reaction to the the pain the movement. "Sure," she says, expression drawing in a little with confusion, but certainly not guilt or fear at this moment. Her eyes flick to the empty holsters, drawn there by senses that scream emptiness even more loudly. She smooths green hair out of her eyes.
The door closes; on the other side of it, a glimmer of blue is visible -- evidence of at least one guard outside, uniformed and alert, left behind like the crumbs of Hansel and Gretl on the scary forest road. Proust draws a chair from the wall and drags it towards the bed, turning it to sit at the foot of Polaris's bed, eyes watchful and canny on her face. Twinker remains standing. He is not tall, but he has a knack for looming, nonetheless. "We have witness statements from last night," he says without preamble, closing his hands on the railing at the foot of her bed. "We'd like to get your statement, if you don't mind." And even if she does mind, says his antagonistic body language, /tough/.
Without her realizing it, one hand goes out to brush fingertips against a metal railing of the bed where it crinkles up the sheets on one side. It's just a self-calming gesture. "Well. I assume you guys read the report from when I was tortured." She leans hard on the word, a reminder. "You know what I can do. I was just trying to break up the fight, like I usually do with bar fights, only they decided I was a mutant, and mobbed me. I was fighting back, not aiming to hurt anyone. I mean, a few punches probably landed, but--" She gestures to her own face.
"And?" asks Proust mildly. His voice proves to be a Boston-blurred bass, far deeper than his less impressive frame would suggest. Twinker's gaze flicks to the metal railing, his mouth pinched thin.
Polaris doesn't do anything with the railing, just keeps her fingers in contact with it. "And then they got me down and I was knocked out. Woke up here."
"And Magneto," prompts Twinker. His mouth curls up into a little smile that is the antithesis of sincerity. "Why don't you tell us about that?"
Polaris shifts, wincing at the pain, and incidentally stalling. "He was there. I felt him before I was out, but I don't know anything more than that."
"When did you call him in to rescue you?" Proust asks politely.
"Call him--?" Lori's a little too tired and hurt to disguise her reaction to that properly, but she confines it to looking a little flushed. "I called for help, sure, just anyone--"
"--You said you felt him," Proust prompts, while Twinker opens his mouth -- likely to say something rude, by the set of his face. The older detective's face grows more pinched. "Does that mean he could feel you?"
Polaris rolls her eyes at whatever was not said, just on principle. "Possibly. I don't know how similar his powers actually are to mine."
Twinker says unpleasantly, "Pretty damn similar, I'd bet. Considering your relationship." Take /that/, Miss Mutant.
Polaris tries to bland the man out, though it doesn't work quite like it's supposed to. "What relationship is that?"
"We know about your relationship," says Proust, stating the obvious with a little more sharpness in his voice than before. He straightens somewhat in his seat, settling both feet on the floor to tuck them a bit under the chair. "Did you orchestrate his appearance? Or was he just your backup after you started the riot?"
/Now/ Polaris reacts. "/What/?" There's real fear in her face. "I didn't start anything. And we don't /talk/. I've said barely three sentences to the man in my life. I had no idea he was there until I felt the fields warp."
"If you can feel him there, it makes sense that he can feel you," Proust points out in his even, measured voice. "So you knew he was there. Is that why you started the riot, since you knew he would come save you? Or was it something else? Some sort of initiation? Like gangs with their first blooding. You couldn't pull it off on your own, so you had him there to pull it off for you in case you couldn't?" Twinker shifts, an impatience in his face that translates to the creak of linoleum underfoot.
"I didn't start /anything/. Ask anyone there, it was the President's speech." Polaris's fingers are clenched tight around the railing, half under the sheets, now. "Do I need a lawyer, here?" She's trying to sound confident, but it comes out wavering.
Twinker says, punctilious, "We're not charging you with anything." The /yet/ hangs unspoken in the air, as tangible as the thin hospital sheets. "If you think we should, though, feel free to say so. After all, we got two dead, killed by -- do you call him Daddy? Or just Pops?"
"From all reports, it was the demonstration of mutant powers that started the violence," says Proust, not to be outdone in the Let's Shit On Polaris parade. His eyebrows rise pointedly at the girl. Hi.
"He what--?" Polaris's eyes go wide. "He killed two people? Why?" Her shock seems to have chased away any of the teeth-gritting that tried to begin at the 'daddy' business.
Twinker and Proust both smile. It is a remarkably similar expression, neither of them amused. "To save you, apparently," says the former. "What'd you think?"
Polaris just stares at them for several moments, frozen. "Oh, hell," she says, at length, with the drifting intonation of proper shock.
Proust examines his fingernails, Twinker's gaze fixed on Polaris with the beady fixation of a ferret targeting his next rodent kill. "Two people dead. Decapitated, one of them," Proust says with macabre cheer. "The other one got rebar through the chest and then ripped in half, I think it was. So I gotta wonder. Magneto's little girl happens to be in the middle of a group that happens to get violent after a demonstration of mutant powers, which happens to result in two dead people. It doesn't take rocket science to add one plus one and end up with two."
"What demonstration?" Lori asks, still struggling to catch up after the earlier shock. "I have no control over whatever the /fuck/ he does. If you'd asked me yesterday I'd have said he'd /watch/ the crowd kill me rather than risk himself. We know the other exists, but--" She grits her teeth.
It is the younger man who reaches into his pocket, producing a notepad that he flicks open and thumbs through with deliberate, finger-licking care. Ah. Here it is. "A lamppost, apparently," he says with precision. "And you allegedly attacked people with pieces of flying metal."
Polaris holds up an empty wrist. "A bracelet. Just sharp enough to feint to keep people back. And it was in my /hand/. I don't know what the fuck Magneto was doing otherwise."
"Allegedly," says Twinker, emphasizing the word with a nasty edge to his voice. His pinched mouth curls at the corners, dipping towards a sneer. It is not a good expression for him, but his face is uniquely suited to it. "We only have your word for it at the moment."
"Why don't you ask him?" Lori sneers right back.
"We will," Twinker says, now smugly satisfied. "We've got a lot of questions for him. Whether he'll be up to answering them once the Feds are done with him is another question altogether."
"You work for -- Purgatory, isn't it?" Proust asks, flipping another page on his notebook.
"Yes," Lori says absently, back to numb in her expression and her voice. "He--you guys got him?"
Proust makes a note. "Mutant club, isn't that?" he says.
"Thanks to you," Twinker says, smugness deepening. "From a certain point of view."
"We make sure anyone's safe, who comes in," Lori says, with the staunchness of a party line often repeated. As to the other, she swallows, then speaks with a expression that matches the words and the tone exactly. "Good. Now maybe he'll stay the fuck out of my life."
"Everyone," repeats Proust, solemnly, and his pen pauses over the pad. "Including Magneto?"
"I was the bartender, not the bouncer. If they dealt with him, I'd never know it. I never saw him." Polaris smooths the sheets with her free hand, not looking at them.
Proust says skeptically, "You'd never know it if /Magneto/ showed up at the club?" Pull the other one, it has bells on it, says his tone of voice.
Twinker shifts again, impatience growing visibly. "We'll investigate," he says, harshly. "This is a waste of time. --Do you have any other statements to make, Miss Dane?"
"I would if he came in my range. Obviously, that means he /didn't/." Her teeth grit to the point of grinding this time. She hesitates, clearing wanting to add something, but unable to find the right words for it. "You can't punish me for being born."
"Creating a situation where Magneto will kill people?" Proust says, flipping his notebook shut and rising to tuck his pen into his pocket. Twinker smiles. Like many of his expressions, it is about as charming as a razor blade in lemonade.
"Think again."
"We'll be back, and the Feds'll be by a little later," Proust says, more mildly. "You'll have a police escort back home. Don't leave town."
"I didn't create, /they/ created--" Lori masters herself, and gives it up. "You're too kind. Give him the finger for me when you next see him, would you?" There's intense emotion behind the words of /some/ kind, impossible to be precise about just /who/ it's directed at. And then she pretends they're not there, rearranging her sheets to go back to dozing. Or perhaps staring /very/ very intensely at the wall.
Proust nods, at least, bidding farewell to the woman, even if it is only the sketch of a farewell. He follows his partner's stalk out of the room, pursuing that man's thin-voiced order to the officers standing guard outside the door. "You check the ID of everyone who goes in and out, you got that? There's that blue-skinned bitch, what's-her-name, Myst--"
The door swings shut.
[Log ends]
Cops follow up on Polaris and give her a bad time. Sekrit is out, yo.
When the door slams open, it is to expel Rossi, his face set, denuded of badge and gun. "Twinker!" shouts a voice from within. The Lieutenant. "Proust! Get your asses in here! Now!"
The two detectives glance at each other, and hasten to obey. Nobody meets Rossi's eyes on his way out.
"Where the fuck are you going?" Mendez asks, passing him in the hallway. "We're heading over to Pat's to celebrate. You coming? --Jesus fucking Christ," he adds, catching sight of the other man's face. "Not again."
"I got poor judgment," Rossi says, and heads towards the exit, his hands shoved in his pockets.
Mendez watches him go. "You're a fucking moron," he tells the retreating back as a matter of course, and then follows the sounds of excited conversation to learn what Rossi has done. This time.
---
Polaris looks bad. Possibly not to cops used to this sort of thing, but the bruises across half her face and upper torso visible through the hospital gown are ugly purple-red. She moves like she's hurt, too, unable to find a position to lay, but finding pain as much pain in the movement to new position as laying in the old. For the moment, she's dozing, frowning every so often as a hand goes to pick at the IV in her arm, and then stopping herself just in time. Otherwise the room is silent, no TV to cut into her general ignorance of the outside world.
The knock on the door is perfunctory, and does not wait for an answer. The visitors do not require introduction; the badges gleaming gold on their cheap suit fronts announce themselves, as do the holsters hanging on their hips under the open jackets. The holsters are empty. /That/ much is unusual, even if the visit is not. Two men: an older one, balding and pinch-faced, with the sour tightness to his expression that suggests he has spent several weeks sucking lemons. The younger, lean and vulpine, with a receding hairline that lengthens his face line a sharpened pencil. "Ms. Dane?" asks the elder, curt. "Det. Twinker, NYPD. My partner, Det. Proust. How are you feeling? Do you mind a few questions?"
It is a purely rhetorical question.
Polaris sits up straighter automatically, and then winces, a delayed reaction to the the pain the movement. "Sure," she says, expression drawing in a little with confusion, but certainly not guilt or fear at this moment. Her eyes flick to the empty holsters, drawn there by senses that scream emptiness even more loudly. She smooths green hair out of her eyes.
The door closes; on the other side of it, a glimmer of blue is visible -- evidence of at least one guard outside, uniformed and alert, left behind like the crumbs of Hansel and Gretl on the scary forest road. Proust draws a chair from the wall and drags it towards the bed, turning it to sit at the foot of Polaris's bed, eyes watchful and canny on her face. Twinker remains standing. He is not tall, but he has a knack for looming, nonetheless. "We have witness statements from last night," he says without preamble, closing his hands on the railing at the foot of her bed. "We'd like to get your statement, if you don't mind." And even if she does mind, says his antagonistic body language, /tough/.
Without her realizing it, one hand goes out to brush fingertips against a metal railing of the bed where it crinkles up the sheets on one side. It's just a self-calming gesture. "Well. I assume you guys read the report from when I was tortured." She leans hard on the word, a reminder. "You know what I can do. I was just trying to break up the fight, like I usually do with bar fights, only they decided I was a mutant, and mobbed me. I was fighting back, not aiming to hurt anyone. I mean, a few punches probably landed, but--" She gestures to her own face.
"And?" asks Proust mildly. His voice proves to be a Boston-blurred bass, far deeper than his less impressive frame would suggest. Twinker's gaze flicks to the metal railing, his mouth pinched thin.
Polaris doesn't do anything with the railing, just keeps her fingers in contact with it. "And then they got me down and I was knocked out. Woke up here."
"And Magneto," prompts Twinker. His mouth curls up into a little smile that is the antithesis of sincerity. "Why don't you tell us about that?"
Polaris shifts, wincing at the pain, and incidentally stalling. "He was there. I felt him before I was out, but I don't know anything more than that."
"When did you call him in to rescue you?" Proust asks politely.
"Call him--?" Lori's a little too tired and hurt to disguise her reaction to that properly, but she confines it to looking a little flushed. "I called for help, sure, just anyone--"
"--You said you felt him," Proust prompts, while Twinker opens his mouth -- likely to say something rude, by the set of his face. The older detective's face grows more pinched. "Does that mean he could feel you?"
Polaris rolls her eyes at whatever was not said, just on principle. "Possibly. I don't know how similar his powers actually are to mine."
Twinker says unpleasantly, "Pretty damn similar, I'd bet. Considering your relationship." Take /that/, Miss Mutant.
Polaris tries to bland the man out, though it doesn't work quite like it's supposed to. "What relationship is that?"
"We know about your relationship," says Proust, stating the obvious with a little more sharpness in his voice than before. He straightens somewhat in his seat, settling both feet on the floor to tuck them a bit under the chair. "Did you orchestrate his appearance? Or was he just your backup after you started the riot?"
/Now/ Polaris reacts. "/What/?" There's real fear in her face. "I didn't start anything. And we don't /talk/. I've said barely three sentences to the man in my life. I had no idea he was there until I felt the fields warp."
"If you can feel him there, it makes sense that he can feel you," Proust points out in his even, measured voice. "So you knew he was there. Is that why you started the riot, since you knew he would come save you? Or was it something else? Some sort of initiation? Like gangs with their first blooding. You couldn't pull it off on your own, so you had him there to pull it off for you in case you couldn't?" Twinker shifts, an impatience in his face that translates to the creak of linoleum underfoot.
"I didn't start /anything/. Ask anyone there, it was the President's speech." Polaris's fingers are clenched tight around the railing, half under the sheets, now. "Do I need a lawyer, here?" She's trying to sound confident, but it comes out wavering.
Twinker says, punctilious, "We're not charging you with anything." The /yet/ hangs unspoken in the air, as tangible as the thin hospital sheets. "If you think we should, though, feel free to say so. After all, we got two dead, killed by -- do you call him Daddy? Or just Pops?"
"From all reports, it was the demonstration of mutant powers that started the violence," says Proust, not to be outdone in the Let's Shit On Polaris parade. His eyebrows rise pointedly at the girl. Hi.
"He what--?" Polaris's eyes go wide. "He killed two people? Why?" Her shock seems to have chased away any of the teeth-gritting that tried to begin at the 'daddy' business.
Twinker and Proust both smile. It is a remarkably similar expression, neither of them amused. "To save you, apparently," says the former. "What'd you think?"
Polaris just stares at them for several moments, frozen. "Oh, hell," she says, at length, with the drifting intonation of proper shock.
Proust examines his fingernails, Twinker's gaze fixed on Polaris with the beady fixation of a ferret targeting his next rodent kill. "Two people dead. Decapitated, one of them," Proust says with macabre cheer. "The other one got rebar through the chest and then ripped in half, I think it was. So I gotta wonder. Magneto's little girl happens to be in the middle of a group that happens to get violent after a demonstration of mutant powers, which happens to result in two dead people. It doesn't take rocket science to add one plus one and end up with two."
"What demonstration?" Lori asks, still struggling to catch up after the earlier shock. "I have no control over whatever the /fuck/ he does. If you'd asked me yesterday I'd have said he'd /watch/ the crowd kill me rather than risk himself. We know the other exists, but--" She grits her teeth.
It is the younger man who reaches into his pocket, producing a notepad that he flicks open and thumbs through with deliberate, finger-licking care. Ah. Here it is. "A lamppost, apparently," he says with precision. "And you allegedly attacked people with pieces of flying metal."
Polaris holds up an empty wrist. "A bracelet. Just sharp enough to feint to keep people back. And it was in my /hand/. I don't know what the fuck Magneto was doing otherwise."
"Allegedly," says Twinker, emphasizing the word with a nasty edge to his voice. His pinched mouth curls at the corners, dipping towards a sneer. It is not a good expression for him, but his face is uniquely suited to it. "We only have your word for it at the moment."
"Why don't you ask him?" Lori sneers right back.
"We will," Twinker says, now smugly satisfied. "We've got a lot of questions for him. Whether he'll be up to answering them once the Feds are done with him is another question altogether."
"You work for -- Purgatory, isn't it?" Proust asks, flipping another page on his notebook.
"Yes," Lori says absently, back to numb in her expression and her voice. "He--you guys got him?"
Proust makes a note. "Mutant club, isn't that?" he says.
"Thanks to you," Twinker says, smugness deepening. "From a certain point of view."
"We make sure anyone's safe, who comes in," Lori says, with the staunchness of a party line often repeated. As to the other, she swallows, then speaks with a expression that matches the words and the tone exactly. "Good. Now maybe he'll stay the fuck out of my life."
"Everyone," repeats Proust, solemnly, and his pen pauses over the pad. "Including Magneto?"
"I was the bartender, not the bouncer. If they dealt with him, I'd never know it. I never saw him." Polaris smooths the sheets with her free hand, not looking at them.
Proust says skeptically, "You'd never know it if /Magneto/ showed up at the club?" Pull the other one, it has bells on it, says his tone of voice.
Twinker shifts again, impatience growing visibly. "We'll investigate," he says, harshly. "This is a waste of time. --Do you have any other statements to make, Miss Dane?"
"I would if he came in my range. Obviously, that means he /didn't/." Her teeth grit to the point of grinding this time. She hesitates, clearing wanting to add something, but unable to find the right words for it. "You can't punish me for being born."
"Creating a situation where Magneto will kill people?" Proust says, flipping his notebook shut and rising to tuck his pen into his pocket. Twinker smiles. Like many of his expressions, it is about as charming as a razor blade in lemonade.
"Think again."
"We'll be back, and the Feds'll be by a little later," Proust says, more mildly. "You'll have a police escort back home. Don't leave town."
"I didn't create, /they/ created--" Lori masters herself, and gives it up. "You're too kind. Give him the finger for me when you next see him, would you?" There's intense emotion behind the words of /some/ kind, impossible to be precise about just /who/ it's directed at. And then she pretends they're not there, rearranging her sheets to go back to dozing. Or perhaps staring /very/ very intensely at the wall.
Proust nods, at least, bidding farewell to the woman, even if it is only the sketch of a farewell. He follows his partner's stalk out of the room, pursuing that man's thin-voiced order to the officers standing guard outside the door. "You check the ID of everyone who goes in and out, you got that? There's that blue-skinned bitch, what's-her-name, Myst--"
The door swings shut.
[Log ends]
Cops follow up on Polaris and give her a bad time. Sekrit is out, yo.