NOVEL NEXT 2.27.2 – Super slipup
2.0 - Edited by: Rellawing, AlliterativeArts - 11/30/2020
Aurora held up her ID card and called Detective Kirby since she had his information and a secure line. She trusted him, so she decided he would be the best one to arrange a quiet arresting of the thugs.
“Detective Kirby, you’ve got five minutes,” he said.
Aurora explained the situation in a somewhat oblique way. When the conversation concluded, he replied, “All right. Let me make a few calls. I’ll head to the third precinct now, meet me on the rooftop. A couple of uniforms will be there in less than ten minutes. Make sure your friends are alright and keep an eye open if you don’t want to be there when they arrive. Just watch things from a distance.”
“Thank you, Detective. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time lately. I’ll soon see you on that rooftop.” She disconnected the line and looked at her Mother and Quinn. “Now we just have to find out how much damage control is possible.”
She sighed, walking over to take Goonie’s hand. Her mom squeezed her hand back gratefully, if not with much strength.
“Did you hear my side while I was talking to Mistral and the Detective?” Aurora asked the two quickly and quietly. The two nodded, getting the general drift of what was happening. “I think at the very least we’ll have to get reinforced doors and windows.”
Goonie and Quinn both nodded emphatically. A moment later Goonie shooed Aurora away and pushed herself to her feet, a little unsteady.
“Are you really okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?” Aurora asked, chewing her lip. Quinn nodded to express her own concern and looked at her mother, standing to support her. Goonie again shooed the girls away with a warm smile. “It was a shock… a literal shot in the gut, but it doesn’t hurt any longer.” She patted the remaining wound but winced. “Well… that’s not quite right, but I think it’s healed. Check my back, would you?” She asked Aurora.
Aurora nodded and checked for an exit wound. There was a hole through the backside of her blouse, so the bullet must have passed through cleanly at least. “There’s not a bullet in your body, I think. I hope that my halo’s healing takes care of any potential infections.”
Now that the danger had passed and Goonie seemed to be safe, Quinn found the energy to glare at Aurora. “Hey, you endangered mom’s life. What the hell were you thinking?” she yelled.
“Enough, Quinn. I understand your worry,” Goonie looked at Quinn and soothed her with a patting of her shoulder. “I’m fine. It’s true things went poorly when our girl didn’t think things through first. But, no one is perfect. She’ll learn.” She looked at Aurora and touched her face gently. “You should get moving. You don’t want to be spotted hanging around here, right? You’d best get to it.”
Aurora chewed her lip again and Quinn gritted her teeth slightly. “Don’t you need to be here when they arrest them? To make sure these assholes don’t get free?”
“We’re fine. You tied them up, Quinn.” Goonie eyed the unconscious thugs. “I reckon a couple of tough girls like us can handle these goons if they wake up before the officers get here. Get going, girl!” Goonie urged for Leona to go.
She hesitated briefly as there would be some questions they’d have to deal with, but what she was about to go deal with wouldn’t be any easier.
“We’ll tell them you swooped in and saved us in the nick of time. You want to break down the back door before you go?” Goonie suggested with typical mirth and good humor.
“I’d hate to bust it up too bad... Living here would be even less secure while we waited to get the existing damage fixed… but I’ll do my best to not cause a lot of damage.” Running to the back door, she studied it for a moment. She pointed her finger and pinpointed a blast on the knob to minimize the damage. Trying the knob, it was still locked firmly. She pointed again and hit it again, repeating until the door opened. At least they wouldn’t have to leave the door wide open. A lock would be easier and cheaper to replace than a whole door frame. Forensics should be satisfied with this.
Aurora leapt outside and blasted into the air. Behind and below she saw a couple of police cars on their way. Their sirens were silent, but still flashed. When they came to a stop before the door, Aurora charged off to the third precinct, the closest department to their home.
When she arrived at the roof, no one was waiting there yet so Aurora sat cross-legged and waited.
While she waited, she fiddled with the communicator until the rooftop door opened and interrupted her. Aurora looked over her shoulder and flitted up and over. “I’m not going to ask,” Kirby said. “I’m just going to assume that you were investigating a case when you happened across that home invasion. There’s been a few in that area recently. But look,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder when she landed. “You have to be smart. I understand that when you have your kind of powers, it’s easy to believe you can just save people whenever you want, but sometimes blazing in halfcocked just turns a volatile situation deadly.”
Aurora nodded seriously. She knew she’d messed up. It was only out of sheer good fortune that things had turned out for the best this time.
Detective Kirby’s phone rang and he responded, putting it to his ear, “Hello, Detective Kirby. Oh? Thanks. Okay, I’ll be right there.”
Hanging up, he turned to Aurora. “Okay, here’s the story so far. Only two of the attackers are conscious right now. The other two have been beaten pretty badly. They probably won’t wake up until tomorrow at the earliest.”
Kirby let out an exasperated sigh before continuing, “Look, no one’s going to cry over some asshole home invaders, but again, be careful. When you’re ready, they’re in interviewing rooms downstairs. If you want to come in with me, or if you want to just go in on your own, tell me when we get there. One of the awake ones is the one you caught outside. He says you dropped him from 30,000 feet or something. The other’s the guy who seems to have started the shooting inside.”
Aurora nodded. “The one I dropped admitted they were going to rape and rob the lady they followed home. I thought a little scaring was in order. Maybe he’ll think twice about being such a creep. No, I doubt it.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’d like to question them.” Aurora wondered if they’d even be honest with her about what they knew about her secret. How could she be sure the unconscious man hadn’t discerned her identity? “It might be best if I didn’t look like myself when interrogating them.”
“It sounds like you want to talk to them privately.” Kirby looked at Aurora and pulled out his badge and handed it to her. “It’s definitely skirting the line with what the brass would be okay with but you can use my shield,” he said, ”The authorities, who you will be acting as an agent of when you go in there, are absolutely allowed to lie in an interrogation so it’s fine if you tell them you’re a cop to find out what you need, just don't rough them up, got it? No matter how much Hollywood might make things look, that’s illegal.”
Maybe what he was doing was too but Aurora was grateful for his help regardless. She accepted the badge with a smile and focused. She thought about his typical clothes and put on a long coat, blouse, jeans, boots. She changed her hair color to blonde, but not satisfied with just that, she tried to darken her skin a bit and applied some makeup to give the impression of more age. She wasn’t sure she looked significantly different, but she hoped it would be enough to keep the home invaders from recognizing her as Aurora or Leona.
Detective Kirby nodded. “Hmmm, good, but your body language’s still the same. Otherwise you look fine. A totally different person aside from the figure. The coat hides that nicely though. If you could put on a few pounds it’d be perfect. Well, go on inside. The shooter’s still tweaking a litter. Probably hasn’t come all the way down from whatever he was probably on. People’s judgement goes into the toilet when they’re that high. Not to mention he’s still freaked out on top of that. You should be able to get what you need out of him easier.”
Aurora took a breath and stepped to the rooftop door, but as she reached for the handle her communicator went off. Aurora pulled it from one of her faux coat’s pockets. It was Mistral!
“Sorry, I have to take this,” Aurora apologized and leaned against the door and spoke, “Mistral. How’d yours go?”
“It was actually quite the fight. I’ll tell you about it later if you want. What’s going on with you? I called around about your situation. Are things okay?”
“I’m about to go into an interview room at the precinct to question them,” Aurora replied quickly. Though she trusted Kirby she didn’t want to indirectly reveal even a clue to her secret identity. Someone besides him might hear.
“Don’t worry too much. You have a lot going for you on your side of things,” Mistral said. “First of all, if it happened as fast as you said, they’re probably not sure what they saw, so you might want to lead them a little if they seem unsure. Second, since you’re new, no one knows what your powers really are yet so you randomly teleporting in is completely plausible to them. You could have teleported ‘the girl’ out up to changing places with her on site. Finally, if they weren’t there for you specifically, they have no idea what they were getting into, so remember that too.”
“Remember to focus on why you’re in there with them, to find out what you want to know. Why they shot when you flew in or teleported or whatever, and if they actually intended to kill anyone. Make sense?”
Aurora nodded. “Except I may have said something revealing in the heat of the moment. That’s very possible. I’m new to this. I don’t think I was too specific, but since she was shot, I lost my reason for a moment.”
“Just play it cool. It’s your city, right? Throw a little Avenger attitude in there.” Mistral’s voice changed a bit to be a little raspy and gruff. That’s right! My voice could change too!
Aurora nodded as Mistral continued her unflattering impression, “Like, ‘What made you think you’d get away with that in my city? I am the last bell, I am midnight, I am the AVENGER!’” Aurora giggled as Mistral coughed a little and discontinued the rasp. “I know that’s not you, but it’s not going to hurt misdirecting them a little. If you think you need more help, seriously, call Andromeda or Dragonmage, they may be willing to help.”
“Right… thanks Mistral. I’m thinking about interrogating them as a detective first. I want to get what they saw out from them. Detective Kirby is helping me with that. If that fails, I might just try putting out some authentic Avenger. I was certainly vengeful enough. Certainly not my usual sunny self, anyhow. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Okay,” Mistral replied. “I’ll be waiting.”
After hanging up the call, Aurora took a deep breath and Detective Kirby patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll make sure the intercom doesn’t accidentally turn on.” He nodded. “Go do what you need to do… Whatever that is.”
Aurora nodded and headed down with him down the flight of stairs and through the hallways. In no time Aurora stood before the interviewing room.
Opening the door and stepping inside, Aurora reminded herself to change her voice a bit, though her powers probably wouldn’t help her much in that category.
Inside she found one of the guys she’d blasted looking around nervously. “I wanna make a statement about the crazy woman who blasted the hell outta me. That’s not self-defense. That’s like crazy vijy-lantee stuff.”
Aurora settled down in the chair across from him, forcing herself to relax. She forced herself to emulate Kirby’s body language a little, at least from her viewpoint.
“Alright, what do you want to say?” She waited, looking at him with a neutral expression.
“Look, I went into the wrong house… we did, just to check if whoever was in there was okay. The door was open, then the next thing I know, waa-pow, there’s a flash of light and I hear someone start shooting so I started shooting ‘cause I think I’m getting shot at and all of a sudden this chick with wings is there and she starts blasting everything moving. She shot me in the chest and in the leg and then my ass!”
Aurora couldn’t help smiling at that. “‘Your ass’, you say. How inappropriate.”
She leaned forward, clasping her hands. “And that’s all? That’s your statement? You didn’t see anything else?”
“Well, yeah, her shooting me in the ass is proof I was not a threat, can’t really do it while I’m facin’ ‘er! So she shot me in the ass and that means money,” he nodded.
Aurora snapped, leaning forward, “One of your pals confessed to attempted theft and rape. At the very least that would make you an accessory to some serious felonies. What do you have to say about that?”
“Hey, I don’t know what no one said. Alls I know is that we were looking to crash at a friend’s house and we had the wrong house, totally innocent,” he said. “I weren’t there for no rape or anything like that.”
“You kicked in the front door of the place,” Aurora replied, shaking her head. “That’s quite the literal way to ‘crash’ a party. Must be pretty popular with the stupid crowd these days, huh?” She shrugged. “I can’t think of any willing host who would be happy about paying for the door repairs later, especially not here in San Isidro.”
Standing up theatrically, Aurora walked away towards the door. “You think about how stupid you really want to play it.” She opened the door and walked out, closing it behind her.
Well, that felt better. She looked at the Detective waiting. “I got most of what I needed from that one. They’re playing dumb and trying to wiggle their way out by telling every story under the sun. How about the other conscious one?”
Kirby nodded and gestured for her to follow him over to the next room. This one held a man holding an ice pack to his jaw that she recognized to be the one she had dropped.
Opening the door, she stepped inside, affecting the manner that she’d copied from the Detective again. “Alright, what’s YOUR story, big guy? Got slugged, eh?” she asked, settling down in the chair in front of him.
The man repeated a mostly similar story but told it a little calmer than before. At least this guy wasn’t constantly changing his story for the police like the other one, “Next verse, I’ve heard this chorus before.” Aurora growled.
“Yeah…” The guy shook his head. “Okay, we heard about some home invasions been happenin’. Since that bitch at the cafe kicked us out for toking a little in front, we decided to go teach her a lesson to prank her. Rough her up a little, steal some valuables. Maybe have some fun with her a little… we didn’t know she had a family and all of a sudden that superhero was there, blasting everyone like crazy.”
“I see…” Aurora nodded. “So she was on you pretty quick, huh? I hear you’re the only one that managed to get away. That true?”
“Yeah, I took off as soon as she started going nuts,” he said. “I din’ do nuthing.”
“But she caught you anyway. You remember much about what she did to you?” Aurora pressed.
“She made me spill, like, ain’t that entrapment or somethin’? All I know is I’m tied up, she brings me up so high I can barely breathe and then she makes me say I broke into her house when I totally didn’t. We were at that chick’s house from the cafe.”
“I see,” Aurora responded, “I hear it’s a trend for superheroes to use ‘street’ to communicate better with people on your level. Instead of ‘my city’, they might say ‘this is MY HOUSE’, for example. ” Aurora thought she might have slipped up and called it her house in the heat. “Think she was being territorial like y’all were?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I take back everything she made me say,” he said in an ensensed tone.
“Sorry, big guy, no can do. Before she even really did anything you started with your confession pretty candidly stating what you were there to do.” Aurora shook her head. “Your amigos clammed up tight but you… you squealed.”
Aurora chuckled. “A word of advice. If you by some miracle get through this without being convicted of a crime, I recommend not breaking into any more ladies’ homes, or shooting up said lady’s houses, IN MY HOUSE! Comprende?” She slapped her hands on the desk fiercely, looking into his eyes with intensity.
“Yeah… if I get off, no more crime for me, ever,” he responded meekly.
Yeah, right.
“Heh… first smart thing you’ve said all night.” She waved a hand and stepped out. She smiled when the door was finally closed, thinking it was reasonably safe to do so. Asking Mistral for more advice might help her better handle any more future situations like this one, but things seemed to work out for the most part.
Thankful for not having to use it, she passed the badge back to Detective Kirby. The guys were ready to believe anyone who came in was an officer. “Thank you, Detective. You’re a great friend. I think I got everything I needed.”
Kirby responded amiably, “All right, I’ll tell the lead they can question them if they need to. You need anything else?”
“On this, I’m good,” Aurora nodded.
“Regarding Padua though, did you receive my email just prior to the break-in occurrence? About that missing boy?” she asked.
“Yeah, I was just looking into it when you called.” Kirby checked his watch. “I’m already pulling some OT, might as well go the distance and look into this Bruce kid more.”
“Thank you again, Detective,” Aurora smiled and sighed. “I need to be on my way for the night. I still have a few calls to make.” She extended her hand and he shook it.
Quietly walking with Kirby up to the roof, she allowed her disguise to dissipate when they got there, glad to have this off her mind. Concentrating on maintaining the illusion could be like nettles on the skin.
Sensing she was about to fly off, Kirby smiled and spoke, “I’d like to think we’re friends,” he said. “And though we’ve only just gotten to know each other, I want you to know you can trust me.” He looked her in the eyes. “I’m never going to pry into anything personal and if I find out anything about you, or at least I’d let you know first. And, unless I think it’ll interfere with a criminal investigation, I’ll make sure word gets back to you if something does leak. But I do have a price for all this confidence.” He chuckled softly.
Knowing that he wouldn’t be too demanding, Aurora nodded, prompting him to continue, “I have a son. If you’re single too, would you mind giving him a call? He’s a very polite and handsome kid.”
Seeing her complete lack of response, he waited for a moment and then laughed hard enough he nearly doubled over. “I’m sorry, I’m totally lying between my teeth. Seriously, I want to be your dependable ally here in the fight against crime. So when I find out something about this camp, you’ll be the first to know. I’m going to work on that right now.”
Aurora had nearly died when he made his ‘request.’ After her brain finally rebooted, she laughed along with him, grateful that he took the time to cheer her up after her mess-up had rightfully caused her to feel so down.
“Sheesh, you really had me going there. But anyway, thanks again, Detective.” Aurora laughed again. “You’ve been such a good friend to me, I am already thinking about you in those terms. I’m glad it’s mutual. I seriously would have had to consider your request for everything you’ve done to support me. But I will say, it wouldn’t have been easy for me since I only like girls.” Aurora laughed even louder.
“Ha,” Kirby chuckled and retorted, “Don’t let that get around. I’m already getting some reports from cybercrimes that you’re popping up on the web already. Have you seen ‘Angel Fights Angel’ yet? Someone took some footage of that building collapse in Seaside and made it look like you were fighting some crazy villain and collapsed the building on her.”
“Wow…” Aurora blinked. “Some people… I can’t believe someone would do that. I consider the crane to be the best job I’ve done so far as a superhero. Damage to private property aside, which would have happened anyhow...” the angel said wryly. “It’s the best example that I'm a member of the Society of Sentinels.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and laughed self-deprecatingly. “I guess people will be how they are. I’m sure there are plenty of others who put the real footage on the internet, at least.”
Kirby shrugged and spoke, “Anyway, don’t let me keep you.” He stifled a yawn. “We both have things to do. And don’t you worry, I’ll figure out what that camp’s doing up there and you’ll be able to participate when we bring them down.”
“Thank you. Truly.” Aurora said simply, shaking his hand one more time firmly.
Leaping up into the air, she beat wing back to her family, who she was still worried about. She supposed they might all be staying somewhere else tonight for security reasons despite her best efforts to minimize the damage to their backdoor’s knob. It wasn’t a good idea to stay in an insecure home in San Isidro.
