# 1
By Brian Campo
This is a work of fan fiction. The Savage Dragon and all related characters are owned by Erik Larsen, and I do not contest that ownership. This story is in no way official and it should not be taken as such. All characters in this story not owned by Mr. Larsen are owned by me, though I would gladly loan them out if asked nicely.
Warning: This story may contain graphic violence, sexual situations and harsh language. If you shouldn't be reading it, don't.
First Day on the Job part one
City Hall, Chicago, Illinois- "Just the man I wanted to see." said Capt. Jacob Wallace, halting Police Commissioner Fred Alloway in his tracks.
"Hello, Jake." said Alloway. He stuck out his hand, which Jake accepted with a shake. "How are things at the Academy?"
"Good, good." said Jacob. He looked around at the heavy hallway traffic and said, "Look, can we talk somewhere private? I got something I want you to look at." He tapped the file folder he was carrying in the crook of his arm.
"Sure." said Alloway, and he turned to speak to the woman who had been walking with him in a low voice. She nodded and continued on down the hallway alone. Alloway lead Wallace in the opposite direction, back toward his office. Several interns were waiting there with papers for the commissioner to sign, but he waved them away and told them to come back later. He held the door open for Wallace and then followed him into the office. Once inside, he closed the door and sat down at his desk. Jacob took a seat on the other side and crossed his legs in that way that only very skinny men could do.
"So, what do you got?" asked Fred, while he closed some appointment books on his desk, and cleared off some papers into a drawer.
"New recruit." said Jake.
"As I understand it, you get a lot of those down at the academy."
"Not like this one. She's different." He slid the file he had been carrying across the desk to Fred, who pulled a pair of glasses out of his jacket pocket. He put them on and opened the file.
"I'll be goddamned." he said, looking at the picture on the first page.
"My words exactly." said Jake. "I got her four weeks ago. Once I got over the surprise, I figure, this is just some little genetic quirk. She just looks like him, that's all. Just because someone is born that looks like Elvis doesn't mean they can sing like The King. There's no guarantee that she is anything like the Dragon."
"But...?"
"But, we got her bench pressing Greydog busses filled with bags of sand. We got her two-thirds of the way through a boot camp designed for super powered Freaks, and I haven't even been able to make her break a sweat."
"Is she related to him? Great-Great-Granddaughter, or something?"
"There's no way of telling. She was adopted at at nine years old, and there don't seem to be any records of her before that."
Alloway flipped some of the pages in the book, studying them. "She's got a good school record, I see."
"Yeah, she's smart. Also, when you talk to her, you get the strange feeling that she is actually listening to you."
"Well, that's got to be weird."
"No shit. My sergeants usually have to repeat themselves four times before a recruit gets an order straight. She says, "Yes, sir." and hops to it the first time. It's enough to make a guy want to quit his job."
"Well, you may not have to quit your job, Jake. You let this girl graduate and join the force and I doubt you will still have a job, anyway. The mayor is going to shit bricks when he see this."
"Yeah, well, I voted for the other guy. Look, Fred, I think this girl would make a great cop. She's got brawn and a good head on her shoulders, and the city needs more cops like her. The mayor and the press are going to eat her for lunch, but I think if we can get her in, she can take it."
Alloway, flipped a couple more pages in the file, looking over letters of recommendation from teachers and scores from Academy shooting ranges. He turned back to the first page and looked at the photograph of the girl with green skin and a fin on top of her head.
"If the mayor hears that I helped you sneak this by him, he'll probably have my job, too." he said, looking up at Wallace over the rims of his glasses. His eyes turned back down toward the picture of the girl. He stared at the picture for a minute, nibbling on his lower lip thoughtfully.
Finally, he sighed and said, "To hell with the Mayor, if you say she'll make a good cop, then by god we'll make her a cop."
Three weeks later- Maxine Chalmers walked into the thirty second precinct with her douffle bag slung over her right shoulder and a plain manilla envelope in her left hand. She wore a large, gray, hooded sweatshirt, a pair of loose fitting black jeans and bright red and white sneakers. On her head, she wore a backwards baseball cap, the bill of which just barely covered the fin that was laid back across her scalp and down the middle of her neck.. She walked up to the front desk and told the sergeant there that she needed to see Capt. Bill Hughes. The sergeant stared at her and her green skin for a moment and then shook off the surprise.
"I'm sorry, ma'am." said the sergeant, his face blushing a bright red.. "His office is on the second floor. Ask anyone up there and they'll point the way."
"Thank you." said Maxine, and smiled to show there were no hard feelings. She was used to the stares and the looks of shocked surprise. She knew what it was like, there were Freaks that made her jaw drop right open. It wasn't like with racial differences, where you eventually got used to different skin colors and stopped looking. Freaks came in all different shapes and sizes and just when you thought you'd seen everything, the city threw a new one at you.
Chicago was now at thirty percent Freak population and would probably double that in the next ten years. Most people believed that the current mayor would be the last to use the anti-freak campaign to win the seat. The Freaks of Chicago were fast becoming the majority, and going against them would be political suicide.
It had worked for John Robertson, though. He had won the last election by peppering his tv ads with Freak paranoia and promises of Freak control. The fact that he was elected was proof that there was still a lot of fear in the human population of Chicago.
There was good reason to be afraid. There were as many bad Freaks in Chicago as there were bad humans. The problem was that a Freak was capable of a lot more damage than your average human. When a Freak went off the deep end, whole city blocks went down in property value. And of course, the only Freaks you saw on television were the ones who had just turned a downtown shopping mall into a big hole in the ground. They didn't show the normal Freak, the ones who worked day to day on normal jobs, trying to support their families. There were plenty of Freaks on the police force, but if they did something good, the media played it down, instead looking for the angle of how the Freak could have caused the problem in the first place.
No, Chicago was not a friendly place toward the Freaks that lived here. Jobs were not easy to come by, and places to live? Ha! Good luck! No one wants to rent to someone who has the potential to turn their property into a disaster zone. There were some legal channels that a Freak could take, but then they ran the risk of getting an anti-Freak judge who would smack them with a contempt charge for sneezing in court.
It was no wonder so many of the Freaks turned to crime. It was just about the only way to survive. There was always plenty of work available if you had some kind of super power and didn't mind breaking the law. The Freaks might be at thirty percent population on the outside, but in Chicago's prisons, they outnumbered human inmates three to one.
She took the stairs to the second floor of the station, where she asked an asian woman in uniform where Capt. Hughes' office was. The woman pointed down the hallway and told Maxine it was the third door on the left. As she made her way down the hall, she could feel the eyes of the other officers following her. She ignored it.. She knew it was going to be like this. The cops just needed time to get used to her, that's all. She found the door with the Captain's name on it and knocked on it's glass window.
A voice inside told her to come in, and she opened the door. She stepped into an office that was in a state of clutter that only a Captain could get away with. The window was open, and she could smell the last traces of a cigarette that had been put out a moment before she opened the door.
"Captain Hughes?" she asked the heavy set man behind the desk.
He stared at her for a second and said, "Yeah, that's me. Can I help you, miss?" He had a boxer's nose and a broad jaw that looked like it had taken a punch or two in it's time. His sideburns were gray, but there was still more pepper than salt in the hair on top of his head. She guessed he was in his early fifties.
"Yes." she answered. " My name is Maxine Chalmers. I just graduated from the Academy, and Captain Wallace wanted me to come see you." She handed him the manilla envelope she had brought with her and stood at ease until he waved her to a chair in the corner. She sat with her hands in her lap and watched him as he read through the papers in the envelope. When he got done, he put the papers back in the envelope and sat back in his chair.
"So," he said. "do you got the fin tucked under the hat, or what?"
She nodded and took off the hat for him to see. The fin stood up on end, like the feathers on the head of a cockatiel. He grunted in reply to that, put his hands behind his head and leaned his chair far back.
"Do you have any idea what you are getting into, young lady?"
"I'm becoming a cop." she said matter of factly.
"Yeah, but do you know why Wallace sent you down here, to the thirty-second precinct? Do you know what we do here?"
"You take the Freak calls."
"That's right." said Hughes. "We're just a regular cop shop, until somebody that isn't human starts doing something they shouldn't be. Then the thirty-second gets a call, and we go tangle with them. You ever gone toe to toe with someone who can pitch a Volkswagen like it's a baseball? That's what we do. For every human officer we have here, we have one Freak cop It's the Freak cop that usually gets messed up. The human cop can't do much more than shoot at the perp, and half the time they're bulletproof, so it's the Freak cop has to jump on him and try to restrain him. We go through a lot of Freak cops. You understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes, sir. You're saying that being a cop can be dangerous."
"And you're sure you want to do this? Wallace has nothing but good things to say about you, and I know he's a good judge of whether someone has what it takes to be a cop. We can always use another Freak cop down here, but are you sure you want to do this? If the perps don't kill you, the media will. They catch wind of you, and your every move is going to be printed on the front page every night. They are going to eat you alive out there."
"Sir, I've been working my way to being a cop since I was eleven years old. There is not one thing you could tell me that would make me change my mind."
"And this isn't some ploy to get yourself some fame in the Dragon's name..."
She knew that would come up, but she still felt her face flush red and her hands clench into fists. It couldn't be that she just wanted to be a cop. They had to find some angle, some reason why she would be doing this. "With all due respect, sir, I find that to be insulting. Does every Freak that tries to join the force get this same kind of run-around from you?"
"I'm sorry, Miss..." he looked at the file folder for a second, having forgotten her name. "Chalmers. We've never had a Freak apply that is a spitting image of Officer Dragon. There are a lot of people in this town that like the Dragon and what he stood for. There are also a lot of people in this town that remember the damage that was done and the lives that were lost when the Dragon fought his famous battles. They aren't going to be too happy to see another Officer Dragon on the force. If we take you on, the proverbial shit is going to hit the proverbial fan. Do you understand why I would be wondering if you had ulterior motives for joining up with the thirty-second? The last thing we need down here is a super powered Freak who is out to make a name for herself."
"I just want to be a cop, sir. Nothing more, nothing less. And, I'm not Officer Dragon. My name is Maxine Chalmers. If you hire me, it's going to be Officer Chalmers, not Dragon."
Hughes took a deep breath, exhaled it loudly, and tapped his pencil on the desk. Coming to a decision, he picked up the receiver to the phone and dialed a number.
"Dispatch? This is Captain Hughes. I need you to radio Dan Williams and tell him to come back to the station. And tell him to make it snappy." He hung up and turned back to Maxine. "Come with me, we need to get you a uniform."
Half an hour later, Maxine walked out of the women's locker room in a brand new set of police officer blues. Hughes, who had been waiting for her outside, told her to follow him and lead her to the armory.
"I suppose they trained you with a Faustin at the academy?" He said over his shoulder.
"Yes, sir. I know how to use them." Faustins were semi-automatic 28 mm handguns. They were pretty much standard police sidearms down at the thirty second, since most of the criminals had gone bulletproof. You could be as bulletproof as you want, but if you got hit with a slug an inch and quarter in diameter and it was traveling at the speed of a nine millimeter round, you were going to be on your ass. It didn't matter if the round penetrated your armor, if you got shot with a Faustin, the next thing you would be seeing was blue sky, when you landed flat on your back.
Learning to shoot a Faustin was an odd experience. Because of the size of the bullet, you expected a hell of a kick from the gun. There was barely any kick in reality. The secret was in the bullets themselves. Each cartridge had three parts: the bullet, the gas chamber (gunpowder was replaced with a more potent natural gas derivative, Propatane), and a chamber in the back that was filled with a thick gel. When the gun was fire, the gas chamber was shoved back, but instead of shoving against the frame of the gun and making it kick, it shoved into the gel chamber, which absorbed the shock. The result was a kick only a little more powerful than firing a twenty two. The hardest part of firing the gun was actually supporting it's weight. The bullets were heavy, and the gun it's self was rather large. For humans, it was a two handed ordeal just to keep the gun held up high enough so you could aim at what you were shooting. Maxine could fire it proficiently with either hand, the weight didn't bother her.
Hughes asked the officer in the armory for a Faustin, ammunition for it, and the paper work to check one out to Maxine. While the clerk went to get everything, Hughes reached into his shirt pocket and then held out his hand to Maxine. She saw that he was handing her a badge. She took it from him, and he said, "Don't make me regret this, Chalmers. Okay?"
"I won't, sir."
"On payday, you might want to think about buying yourself a some more uniforms. In all the pictures I've ever seen of the Dragon, his uniform was either in shreds or gone."
"I'll do that, sir. Thank you."
When they were done getting her gun checked out, they left the armory and were greeted by a cop in the hallway outside. He looked to be in his late twenties, with close cropped red hair and a friendly face. He was skinny, and it looked like he always had to worry about the weight of his gun belt pulling his pants down.
"Hey, Captain." he said. "Dispatch said you wanted to talk to me."
"I do, Danny." said Hughes. "I got someone I want you to meet. This is Maxine Chalmers. She's your new partner. Maxine, this is Daniel Williams."
He was naturally a little surprised, he held out his hand to shake Maxine's. "You look just like the Dragon." he said.
"I get that a lot." said Maxine. "You can call me Max."
"I'll do that." said Danny. His eyes kept wandering over to the Captain and the expression on his face clearly said, "Just what the hell are you getting me into?"
"Now, Danny." said Hughes. "I want you to take her out and start showing her around the town. Take it easy, try to steer clear of trouble, and let her get a feel for the job. Try to bring her back in one piece."
Danny chuckled nervously. "I'll see what I can do. You ready to go, Max?"
She nodded and followed him out to the garage. "You just get out of the academy?" he asked her once they were out of earshot of the Captain.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Oh, you just got that wet behind the ears look. You look as scared as I was my first day here." He grinned, and Maxine thought she might get to like her new partner.
"How long have you been on the force?" she asked him.
"Eight years." He pulled a PIN card from his pocket and slid it through the slot on one of the police cruiser's doors. He got in on the driver's side and unlocked her door for her.
"So, what do you do?" he asked as he started up the car.
"What do you mean?" She put on her seat belt and adjusted her gun holster so that she could sit comfortably.
"What are your superpowers? Same as the Dragon, or can you shit fire, or what?"
"I can lift small buildings and I break stuff really good." She smirked at his tactful way with words.
"Oh, yeah?" He looked a little surprised. "You don't look all that big. Are you invulnerable?" He drove the car out the garage, and then turned on the hover craft turbines. The car lifted off of the street and they started gaining altitude.
"From the muscle in I'm invulnerable. My skin can be cut or burned. If I bang my hand real hard, the skin will bruise. Why all the questions?"
"Just curious." he said. "I like to get to know my partners. It's kind of important to know if they are invulnerable. My last partner wasn't."
"What happened to him?"
"Killed in the line of duty. Got hit by a plasma blast or some damn thing. Blew off everything from the knees up."
"I'm sorry." said Max.
"He was a Jack Ass." said Danny.
"Oh." she said, arching her eyebrows and rolling her eyes in wonder. It was good to know he cared so much for his partners.
"No, I mean it. He was a Freak. He looked like a donkey. When he kicked somebody they would fly for a mile."
They were cruising up through Chicago's busy air traffic now. Hover cars had become so popular over the last fifty years that it was less nerve wracking to drive on the streets below. There were some signal buoys and signs here and there, but it was pretty hard to direct traffic when all of the vehicles were driving at different speeds and different altitudes. Basically, when you drove the skies, you kept one eye looking out the windshield and one eye on the proximity radar and hoped the guy in the car headed in the opposite direction was doing the same. Traffic laws up here were sketchy at best, but the city gave the cops a lot of leash when it came to reckless drivers.
"So, are you from Chicago?"
"No." answered Maxine. "I grew up in Texas."
"Oh, yeah? When did you move to the States?"
"Two months ago. I came out here to join the Academy."
"I'm surprised the Texas Rangers didn't try to recruit you. They like you rough and tumble types."
"They did. My dad is a ranger. I wanted to go my own way, so I applied to the Academy. What about you? How did you end up being a cop?"
"The people in my family have always been cops. That's what we do. We just kind of assume from birth that we will end up joining the force someday. There's no use fighting it, if you are a Williams, you will end up a cop."
"Do you like it?"
Dan shrugged. "Most of the time, yeah. Every once in a while, you'll get a Freak who shoots snot out of his finger tips or something, and I think about quitting. I keep saying, "Nothing is worth this. I'm never coming back to this piece of shit job."
After a long hot shower, I'm ready for more, though."
" 32." squawked the radio.
Dan picked up the mike and said, "This is 32."
"Animal Control is calling. They need backup with a Freak dog."
Dan rolled his eyes and said, "What's the addy?" He reached into a holder attached to the dash of the car and pulled out a pen and paper, which he handed to Maxine.
"2238 West Larsen avenue."
Maxine scribbled down the address and Dan rogered out on the radio. He turned the wheel and stepped on the gas.
"This is classic 32nd precinct bullshit." he told her. "You see, whoever made the call to their precinct probably said something to the effect of "The dog is freaking out.". As soon as their dispatch heard that word, "Freak", they panic and call the 32nd. Now we are headed over with guns drawn and it's probably a poodle stuck in a drain pipe or something."
"Should I have my gun drawn?" asked Maxine.
"Just a figure of speech." said Dan. "Relax. This isn't going to be a big deal."
They skipped through the midmorning traffic, leap frogging over, under and around the other cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Maxine grabbed the arm rests for her seat and held on tightly as Dan maneuvered this way and that. She hadn't decided yet whether Dan was a good driver and had a lot of confidence in his abilities, or if he was a really stupid driver. They were having a lot of close calls and narrow misses, but he didn't seem to be noticing.
Less than five minutes later they were pulling up outside a two story blue and green house. Animal control was waiting outside by their van, hands in their pockets. A large woman in a pink moomoo house dress was standing on the porch ringing her hands and looking very worried. A crowd of neighborhood children and adults were gathered in the yard.
"Look pissed." Dan told her, and opened his car door.
"Here comes the Freak Patrol." Maxine heard one of the animal control men say as she got out of the car. She slid her baton into her belt and gave them a cold squint as she walked towards them. They stared at her fin and green skin and looked fidgety.
"What seems to be the problem?" Dan asked them.
"This ladies dog went Freak on her, and it's got her kid cornered down in the basement."
Dan suddenly looked like he was taking this seriously. "Is he all right?"
"Yeah, for now. He jumped into the freezer, and the dog can't get to him. But if we don't get him out of there soon, he's either going to run out of air or freeze to death."
"What does the dog do?" asked Maxine.
"Don't know. Haven't even seen it yet. I just know it's big. The kid and the dog were upstairs when it went Freak. It fell through the upstairs ceiling, through the downstairs floor, and into the basement. It tried to get up the stairs, but the staircase collapsed under it."
"Come on, Max." said Dan, and he started for the house. The woman in the house dress hurried down the steps to meet them.
"Are you here to help my baby?" she asked them, rubbing at her eyes and sniffing.
"Your son will be fine, ma'am." Dan told her.
The woman looked at Maxine, and was a little taken back at her appearance. "You look just like the Dragon." said the woman.
"Yes, ma'am. We need to know your boy's name."
"His name is Tony. Do you want to know the dog's name?"
Maxine resisted the urge to shout, "Why in the hell would I want to know the dog's name?!" and instead, nicely said, "Yes, ma'am. That would be good."
"Petey. I don't know what's gotten into him. He's not usually like this. You're not going to have to shoot him, are you?
"Not if we can help it, ma'am."
Dan went through the front door and Maxine followed closely. The damage to the house was extensive. There were matching holes in the floor and ceiling of the living room, each about six feet across. There was a door leading to the basement in the kitchen, and someone had slid the refrigerator over in front of it. Apparently they were worried the dog would find a way up to the door. Maxine slid the fridge out of the way, while Dan pulled his gun out of his holster. She did the same and took a step back so he could open the door.
Dan carefully grabbed the doorknob and then silently mouthed the words, "One, two, three." and jerked the door open. Maxine slid forward, covering the entrance with her gun. No sign of the dog. The staircase lay broken and splintered eight feet below them, like the animal control men had said. Maxine signaled to Dan that she was going down into the basement, and he nodded in reply. She crouched down, put her free hand on the bottom the door way, and hopped down onto the broken lumber. As soon as she hit the ground, she crouched low and brought her gun up, waving it back and forth and looking for targets. Dan dropped next to her a second later and almost lost his balance on the rubble. Maxine used her free hand to steady him until he found his footing.
"Ready?" she whispered to him.
"Yeah, let's do it." he muttered back.
"Tony?" Maxine said in a loud voice. There was thump from the freezer.
"Tony," she continued. "This is Officer Chalmers of the Chicago Police department. We're going to get you out of here, all right?"
After a few seconds, they heard a muffled, "Ok." from the freezer. Maxine stepped out onto the concrete floor of the basement and took a few tentative toward the freezer. From the far end of the room, there was a low rumbling growl, and it sounded like something very big was getting up off of the floor. Dan crossed behind her, his gun trained on that end of the room. It was dark down there, and they couldn't see what was making the noises.
"Get the boy." said Dan.
"I think I should take the dog and you should get the boy." said Maxine.
"I was hoping you would say that." he said, and he walked sideways to the freezer. The freezer light lit up the basement with it's weak glow when Dan opened the door, and Maxine got the impression of a large black shape on the other end of the room.
"Be real quiet." she heard Dan whisper to the boy.
"Ok." stammered the boy, his teeth chattering horribly.
The thing at the end of the room began to snarl, and started moving their way. Maxine exhaled and took a shooter's stance, ready for anything. Dan clambered up onto the wreckage of the staircase and raised the boy up toward the door way. The dog erupted out of the darkness, and Maxine was so shocked by it's appearance that she forgot to fire.
It was a pomeranian. A pomeranian the size of a rodeo bull. It looked like a giant puff of fur with legs below it and a set of gnashing teeth in front. It ran towards Maxine's right, ignoring her and going after Dan and the boy. She dove in front of it and braced for impact. The dog drove her along the length of the room and into a washer-dryer set, which crumpled under the force and weight of the two bodies. The dog pulled away from her and turned back toward the staircase. Dan was pushing and shoving on the boy's rear end, helping him get up onto the floor of the kitchen above. The dog scrambled towards them, it's feet slipping and sliding on the cement floor. Maxine clutched at it and only ended up with one of it's hind legs. The dog tripped and smacked it's chin on the floor with a with a loud yip. It turned back on it's self, teeth snapping. Max gritted her teeth and swore when it latched it's jaws around her wrist. It hurt like the dickens.
"Bad, Petey! Bad!" she shouted, and clubbed the dog along side the head with her gun. In retaliation, the dog turned his head and switched his hold from her wrist to her shoulder. It then dragged her out into the middle of the floor and shook her savagely, like a normal dog would do to a rat. She whipped and snapped back and forth in the dog's jaws, feeling every joint in her body pop under the force of the assault. Her gun spun out of her grasp and slid off across the floor.
The boy's mother had appeared at the doorway above and helped pull her son to safety. Once he was out of the way, Dan ran back down off of the rubble and toward the dog.
"Please don't hurt my baby!" The woman in the doorway above shouted at them. " He doesn't know what he's doing! He's a good dog!"
Dan raced in close and drove the toe of his boot into the dog's side, eliciting a yip of pain from it. It let go of Maxine and turned to snap at Dan. Maxine was up in an instant, shoving herself off of the floor and onto the dog's back. It twisted, trying to bite at her, but she kept out of it's reach. The dog backed itself across the floor, shaking itself, trying to dislodge Maxine from it's back. She slid one arm under it's front leg and then up over the back of it's neck. A second later she did the same with the other side, trapping the dog in a full nelson. She applied pressure, ever so slowly, until the dog was forced to drop and roll over onto it's side. She wrapped her legs around it and pinned it's back legs back with the heels of her boots.
"Cuff it's back legs." she told Dan. He pulled out his cuffs and did as she told him. The dog would make a little jerk every couple of seconds, but she could tell from it's breathing that it was calming down. It knew it wasn't going anywhere, so it was giving up the fight.
"Ok, Dan." she said. "Why don't you tell the animal control boys to get down here and to bring a lot of tranqs." After a pause she said, "They better bring some for the dog, too."
Fifteen minutes later, Maxine toted the drugged dog up out of the basement, and out to Animal Control's truck. A crowd was gathered outside and there were several news vans setting up down the street. A reporter and a camera man were running up behind her when she slid the dog into the cage.
"Officer Dragon! Can we get a few words?" said the reporter.
"My name is Officer Chalmers." she told them, pushing past them and heading back to join her partner. Dan was on the porch questioning the mother and the little boy, who was now wrapped in blankets and being checked out by some paramedics..
"How long have you been on the Force, Officer Chalmers?" asked the reporter.
"Since about eight o'clock this morning." she said.
"You've been on the force for -" he checked his watch. "Three hours, and you've already managed to destroy a house?"
She fixed him with a glare and said, "The dog was who damaged the house. My partner, Dan Williams and I simply rescued the little boy and captured the dog." She turned away from the reporter and made her way over to her partner. Dan was putting up his notebook and stepped down off of the porch to meet Maxine.
"I got their statements." he said. "You want to get out of here before any more of these sharks show up?"
Maxine nodded and they went to the car, camera man and reporter in tow.
"How do you feel about the Mayor's stand on Freaks, Miss Chalmers?" the man shouted at her back. Maxine ignored him and got into the car when Dan got the door unlocked. The reporter was still tapping on their window and snapping off questions when they started the engine and drove off.
"Are you the secret love child of the Savage Dragon?" she heard him yelling behind them.
"So," she said to Dan. "Do we have any idea what happened back there with the dog?"
Dan reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little sandwich baggy with three pills in it. "The kid gave it some of these. They are supposed to "make you into a he-man overnight" "
She took the bag from him so she could have a closer look. "Looks like they work. Did he say where he got them?"
"He said he got it from some kids at school but he wouldn't give me any names. I figured he'd had enough for a day so I didn't push him. We can go back and talk to him later. Let's just head back to the station so I can show you how to file a report on this kind of stuff."
"You going to give these to the lab?" she asked him, waving the little baggy.
"Yeah." he said. "Keep a good hold on those. The last thing we need is them falling in the wrong hands."
Fifteen minutes later, they were walking through the front doors of the police station. Every eye in the room was on them as they moved toward the staircase leading to the second floor.
One cop, a burly, balding detective, called out, "Hey! Where in the hell did you find that hideous thing?" A sudden quiet struck the room.
Dan spun on his heel and started back towards the man. "Watch your fucking mouth, Reeves. That's my new partner you're talking about."
"I know." said Reeves. "I was talking to your partner."
When Dan caught on a second later, he grinned and started to laugh. "Asshole." he said before turning around.
When he got back to Maxine, she said, "You know, I think I'm going to like it here." She snickered, trying very hard not to laugh.
"Oh, yeah." said Dan. "Laugh it up, Fin-head."
She cackled and followed him up the stairs.
