Sighing heavily, Ramus looked both ways down the street before walking past the café and pausing at the mouth of the alleyway separating it from the boutique next to it. Ray raised an eyebrow dubiously, but Ramus gave him a firm nod. "I'll just be a few minutes."

Ray clenched his jaw, rubbing the seam of his prosthetic hand with his living one. "Give a signal if you have any trouble, sir."

Ramus chuckled humorlessly. "I somehow doubt that will be a problem."

"Yes, sir." Turning away to scan the street in either direction, Ray leaned against the wall, arms folded.

As he stepped into the alleyway and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, he frowned, furrowing his brows. Why had he agreed to this meeting? He'd been asking himself that very question ever since the call had come in on the SLD's secure line, just over thirty minutes ago. Not that it was entirely unprecedented; they gave information to the Heroes of Paris on a regular basis, including bringing in some of the Heroes on occasion for specialized assistance. In fact, there had been a period of two months nearly the beginning when Pegasus and Turing had been in the building almost as often as he had been! Given that Pegasus had helped design their computer system, Ramus wouldn't be surprised if he still had access to the system – probably even with Prefect Raincomprix's approval.

And yet, for him to have a specific meeting to give out information about a case was still out of the ordinary. The fact was, police information was to be guarded carefully, not shared without prior approval: if the criminals found out the wrong information, that could jeopardize an entire investigation. And under normal circumstances, the Heroes of Paris respected that and didn't request sensitive information unless it directly affected them or one of their investigations; in turn, the SLD rarely interacted them while they were patrolling the city, unless the Heroes captured a super-criminal and required the special transport. It went against every fiber of Ramus' police training to break the rules, but here he was. Doing something he would never do under normal circumstances. But… what had been "normal" about the last week-plus of unrest? And under these circumstances… Ramus frowned. Police procedure be damned, he did still owe them an explanation.

"Lieutenant," a familiar vaguely-synthetic voice greeted him, as the Owl emerged from the shadows halfway down the alleyway. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us."

Ramus nodded back in greeting. "Hello, Owl, Nabatala," he added, as the girl in question dropped off the rooftop above them to land next to the Owl. Ramus pursed his lips. "I wish I had better news to report – not that there's any such thing as good news, given the situation."

"At this point, I'll take anything, sir," Nabatala responded, relief evident in her voice. "Seeing people at each other's throats, tearing each other apart over this… it's exhausting. But if you've figured out who's responsible for all of this, and why…" She let out a breath. "If we could just tell people that there's a reason this happened – if we could tell them who caused it. That could actually stop all of this insanity!"

The Owl hummed. "Then we can actually stop the bad guys and get back to normal," he agreed, nodding. "So…"

Ramus grimaced. "We've followed every possible lead, all the evidence from the scene – we even found some possible evidence there that had been missed by the previous technicians' sweeps of the crime scene. The SLD's mission is the super side of things in the city, so… that's what we did. Our investigation was specifically focused on any connection the officers involved – or M. Nasri, for that matter – might have to the super-criminal underworld of Paris," he began.

Nabatala's eyes narrowed. "You don't think Kharim had something to do with what happened to him, do you?"

"It was a possibility." Ramus shook his head firmly. "As soon as we looked into his family background, though, we completely dismissed it. There was nothing there to indicate that he had superpowers, or knew anyone with superpowers, or any connection between his family and any super-criminals operating in Paris. So, then we turned our attention to the officers themselves. We didn't rule out anything as a possibility with them. Alien shapeshifters. Mind control. Body swapping. Illusion magic. Illusion tech. Cloning. Bribery or blackmail. It's absurd that this is what my life has become now," he added under his breath, "but that's where we are now. We investigated any possible cause for this incident, and we found that, so far as we can tell, it was definitively caused by the actions of Officers Bruno Gaume and Eva Blondeau. Acting on their own compulsion. Without interference from the Lynchpin or any other outside force." He gave the two heroes a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry we couldn't come up with anything else, kids," he apologized. "But… sometimes people just do bad things because they made that choice for themselves. There isn't always a super-criminal behind it."

"Wait… what?" Nabatala blinked several times, staring at him in shock. "They–they just shot him? Just because? Bu–but–but why?"

Ramus shrugged helplessly. "That, I don't know," he replied. "When I presented our findings to the Inspectorate this morning, the Inspector in charge of the investigation shared that his team was combing through Officer Gaume's social media and internet history for anything that may suggest that this shooting was targeted–"

"–You mean they want to know if he was a racist asshole and shot that guy just because he's Algerian," the Owl interjected, folding his arms. Nabatala flinched, and the Owl looked over at her. "Er, sorry."

Ramus nodded. "Whether that's the case or not, I don't know – and it's not my job. I investigated any 'super' connection and… nothing."

"Nothing," whispered Nabatala, sniffling. "They just killed him for… nothing."

"What about shapeshifting?" demanded the Owl. "We don't know every way they can do that. Maybe it was someone else pretending to be them."

Ramus shook his head. "We interviewed them, and at the same time we scanned them from head to toe – skeletal structure, brainwaves, Sarsavat even probed their emotions on the subconscious level – and everything checked out. They knew what had happened, their emotions and mental state were consistent with the circumstances, and they were 100% human."

"Mind control?"

"Brain scans didn't show any gaps in memory, and they didn't say anything about someone else controlling their actions."

"Lynchpin?" pressed the Owl. "Bribery – trying to make people distrust the police or the Heroes of Paris!"

"We checked into that, kid," Ramus informed him, his mouth twisted around in frustration. "We went through their financial records for the last twenty years, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Blondeau had purchased a new vehicle recently… but even that was innocuous: her grandmother died last year, and she received an inheritance check two weeks before purchasing the car. Not a bribe."

"But what about–"

"We looked into every possible scenario and even some impossible ones," Ramus interrupted the Owl. "The only possible explanation that my department has been able to come up with is that they were acting of their own volition to do what they did. I'm sorry, but there really isn't any more to it than that."

The Owl folded his arms. "I'd like to see the evidence for myself."

With a shrug, Ramus extracted a USB drive from his prosthetic. "Knock yourself out," he told him, handing the drive over. "Your or Pegasus can double check our findings, or try investigating for yourselves. And if you find anything that we missed, I would be happy to reopen our investigation and look into it. But I think you'll find exactly what we did: sometimes, good people make mistakes. And sometimes, bad people just do bad things. Which of those it was in this case?" He shrugged one shoulder. "That's not my call."

Nabatala sniffled, wiping away tears from her eyes. "So that's it? A couple cops shot an innocent boy, and now the city is going to tear itself apart because of it? Isn't there anything we can do?"

"We're doing all we can," Ramus replied. His mouth set in a thin line. "Trust me: the Paris Police Prefecture takes incidents like this very seriously. When an officer breaks the law – and especially when they do so under the cover of the office – it's a stain on all of us. The Inspectorate will pursue this as far as they possibly can. These two officers will not get off easy for what they did. That's what we can do."

"But what about the rioting?" demanded Nabatala, planting her hands on her hips. "My brothers can't go outside to play at all!" The Owl's head shifted slightly. Nabatala held her hands out. "What about that?"

The Owl turned to face her. "It's going to be okay. We can keep them safe."

"Not all the time!"

Ramus put a hand on her shoulder. "I said that's all we can do," he told her, looking her dead in the eye. "That doesn't mean it's all that anyone can do. You can do things that we really can't. You change people's hearts and minds. You inspire hope. You protect those being hurt by the rioting, regardless of their skin color or religion or citizenship. Just by being a Muslim superhero – one who is even an immigrant yourself – you show the city that there is a better way, that immigrants are not the enemy but have just as much right to live here as anyone else. You represent another way. That's something that you do."