Alfred felt himself frown as he stepped into the PSD central command station. His careful eyes quickly zeroed in on his partner.
Arthur looked nearly ragged, large purple bags riding under his eyes giving him a deathly, sunken look. But despite his appearance the man seemed to be throwing himself tirelessly into his work as if possessed by a vengeful spirit. The Brit ran his fingers across his keyboard in a hectic fashion, poisonous green eyes glaring darkly at the monitor. Though probably unaware of the fact all his coworkers seemed to round his cubicle with unwavering precision, avoiding the deranged man at all costs. Other however took to whispering and sending weary glances at the Inspector.
He has been like this ever since the encounter with Francis Bonnefoy.
Alfred sighed, knowing already this was going to be a long day. He shook his head and walked over to the snack counter and tapped in an order for a coffee. He himself felt tired and heavy. It was all because of the recent bout of crazy crime cases that have been popping out from quite literally nowhere. What once were the safe streets of their city Halbru has now been spawning evil and dangerous scum from its depths, and they struck at the strangest times.
The blonde himself had a case file of the first bizarre crime that popped up sitting and waiting for him at his desk. It depicted a woman being beaten to death in the midst of a crowded street. No one stopped to help her and even went as far as stareing and pointed while she was murdered right before their eyes.
Currently the perpetrator was still being looked for.
But these crimes foreshadowed an even darker event. With everything that's been going on, linked one after another, it was quite clear that someone was arranging these events. It was just too much of a coincidence that all the loons this city produced decided to wreck havoc at this exact moment.
Which was also why Arthur was acting like one of those said loons.
The fallen Inspector believed deeply that these events were linked to Bonnefoy. And while everyone else thought he was delusional Alfred wasn't ready to pass on the Brit so fast. If anything he wholly agreed with him.
With a coffee in his hands (in a nice new mug that had the ensign of the American flag waving on it) Alfred made his way over to his desk greeting, as he went, the people in his unit. When he came to Arthur the Brit barely spared him a glance before returning to his work. Alfred sighed again.
Once seated the blonde opened the case file and started reading it over.
The woman's name was Kat, a woman from Ukraine. She had been casually walking down the street when a man in a helmet came and knocked her down. Apparently he held her down and began to beat her. This, of course, shouldn't have been possible. Every street, road, walkway, official building, or commercial building came built in with Heta scanners that scanned every person that passed under them. However when the man began beating Kat the scanners showed that he didn't evince any criminal thoughts or intentions. So naturally the PSD wasn't contacted in anyway and the street drones did nothing to help the lady aside from questioning her sudden rise in distress levels as she slowly died.
Alfred's first thought was that the man had been Bonnefoy but that realization was quickly thrown out the window. Francis was a lean and tall man and while the helmet guy had been tall his stature was more wide and muscled than lithe. Then Alfred had wondered if the man was the same anomaly as Bonnefoy but it was later suspected that the helmet had been responsible for the man's low criminal-capacity.
It was distressing however that no one lifted a finger to help.
It was understandable though because the street scanners hadn't signified anything dangerous about the man, everyone assumed that it was safe. When they saw a women get beat to death most had thought that it was just a promotion for a new movie or a stunt to raise awareness. It wasn't till a video was leaked onto the Internet that people began to question the event and the reliability of the Heta system. And while these might seem like meaningless conversation online it was actually more deadly than that.
If people began questioning the system that governed them, the only barrier between a civilized community and complete anarchy, these circulating ideas suddenly took on a much more dark and ominous form.
What was even more disturbing was the fact that more people with helmets showed up after the incident and now terrorized the street. It wasn't even safe to go out in some districts anymore.
The worse part was probably that is meant Bonnefoy was right in some ways.
"Yo! Alfred," a heavy body draped itself across his shoulders and the surprisingly pleasant smell of German Paulaner beer invaded his senses. Alfred looked up and gave the other Inspector a glare.
Gilbert grinned lazily down at him; his usual playful and mischievous mien was in place despite the world's current cruel intentions. As per usual the German Inspector found amusement in bothering and annoying pretty much everyone around him.
"Awe, ya' really have'ta glare at me like that?" Gilbert gave him a wounded puppy look. "I promise ya' I'm not up to no good."
Alfred rolled his eyes, "Yeah. Tell that to my last coffee mug. The poor thing never lived past 15 years."
"Are you two just going to chat all day or get something done?" Ludwig called coldly from across the room, his German accent thick with annoyance.
Gilbert looked over to his younger brother and grinned wickedly. "Of course not little bro." He then looked down and winked at Alfred. "I'm always on duty sir. Just like you always are with Feliciano over there."
The little Italian man looked up at the mention of his name with a soft, "Ve?" And Ludwig began sputtering at the accusation.
Alfred and Gilbert grinned at each other.
The two shared a weird sort of camaraderie with one another. They hadn't always been like this. Gilbert didn't exactly like Alfred very much when they first met. Of course the issue that they were on two different level standings also added to the situation.
On one hand you have Inspectors like Alfred or Ludwig. They had high standings in the PSD and were well respected. They were also like normal citizens, they could live anywhere they wanted, they could go where they wanted, buy what they wanted, eat, drink, have fun wherever they wanted. However, for Inspectors like Arthur, Gilbert, even Romano, Feliciano, and Kiku things were slightly different.
The branch they belonged to in the PSD was different from the branch that Alfred and Ludwig belonged to. It was a branched called Enforcer. It was a branch specially made after the Heta system was put in place to help protect not just innocent bystanders but the livelihood of the main Inspectors as well.
Enforces are also people called latent criminals. These people are like the ones that their division apprehends, people with high criminal-capacities of at least 100. Normally they would just be locked and up and end of story but the Heta system found a new use for them. Because of their natural presentiment ability to think like a criminal and their inherent sense of just what their target would do in a situation was better than any piece of technology that could be used. Also, they were the ones normally in charge of actually killing a person if it came down to that.
Because the PSD criminal investigation department often came in contact with unhappy and dark things their high ranking Inspectors seemed to find their criminal capacity going up after a while and they slowly came closer to being a latent criminal themselves.
Gilbert's situation was much the same.
He was once a well-respected police officer in Germany, a detective in his own right. However the placement of the Heta system in other countries quickly changed that. When Ludwig and Gilbert's father had died in America the older sibling was quick to travel to join his baby brother. However America had been one of the first to convert to the Heta system long before either had been born.
It was not propitious for our German cop.
Gilbert had seemed fine at first. They took his first scan in the airport leaving for the American nation and had come out rather high but nothing out the ordinary. The trouble truly began when he discovered what the Heta system actually had in place.
The idea that you could just shoot and arrest or kill anyone on the streets was outrageous to the German cop. And while he wanted to be there for his baby brother the thought that Ludwig lived with and openly accepted a crazed system, especially with a job as Inspector, just sent Gilbert into a spiral to dark and dangerous thoughts. Before long his criminal capacity was up the roof and he lost any right to return to Germany. But because of this previous occupation in criminal investigation the Heta system quickly offered him a promotion to Enforcer.
This was also the reason why Ludwig was so cold to his brother now a day. He was probably disappointed and angry with his older sibling and felt insecure of the same fate befalling him. He was afraid Gilbert's fall from grace would eventually portend to him as well.
Being an Enforcer wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It gave you benefits and was definitely better than being a latent criminal in one of the city's loony bins trying to lower your hue. However you didn't have many rights. You had to always stay in the PSD building; your home was in there. You had to do everything anyone higher than you said. It was much like being an attack dog of the government, though that had long since stopped being an acceptable term. It still didn't stop people from saying it behind their backs though.
"So Alfie," Gilbert drawled. "Why's grumpy over there acting like the harbinger of Satan?" His motioned to Arthur, "Is he… Performing dark magic or something?"
Alfred let himself snort.
The German laughed and pulled himself from the younger blonde's shoulder.
But Alfred continued to look over at his Enforcer partner. A worried look etched on his face. He had seen this look on Arthur's face before, and it was not an auspicious one at that. Whenever the older Inspector got into one of these moods it meant that something bad was coming. And Alfred had a feeling that they haven't yet seen the worst of Francis Bonnefoy yet.
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