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"Professor?" I glanced over to spot team Crystal Velcruse, Mars Graty, Fox Alcotte, and Daisy Melisse. All of team CMAD. "Do you… play with those often?" Miss Velcruse asked.
"Only when I'm in a contemplative mood. So yeah. All the time," I confessed as I lowered the glass weapon into the case. "What can I help you with?"
"Well we had our meeting with the detective in charge of the investigation…" Velcruse began.
"Asshole," Graty muttered.
"He said he didn't need some kids getting involved and messing things up," Velcruse finished. "He wouldn't share the crime scene photos with us or let us look at the evidence. He totally stonewalled us."
"And you expect me to bail you out because the detective isn't letting you help with the investigation? That's life sometimes. Some people don't play nice with others," I informed them.
"But you had more information than he had anyways. We showed him the dossier you gave us and he took off with it. You have to show us where you got it. We have to learn how to work around the police when they won't cooperate with us. We need your sources," Velcruse insisted.
"How did you have more information than the police working the case?" Melisse wondered. "Please, sir, we have to learn to do what you did. Please?"
"If the police won't cooperate with us and let us in on the investigation we have to be able to do our own investigation. We don't know how to do that or where to start," Alcotte reasoned.
"Yeah you do," I disagreed.
"We do?" Melisse asked.
I closed the display case with a click. I hunched over and looked away from them at the ground.
"I don't understand," Graty murmured.
"Who do you turn to when the police fail you? Who does everyone turn to when the police fail them?" I asked. "Not a trick question." I swept my gaze over them in turn.
"I still don't get it," Graty pressed.
"You don't mean… criminals!" Melisse gasped with her hands rising to her face.
"No…" Velcruse hummed.
"Yep," I affirmed with a pop of the 'p.'
"But… why would criminals help us?" Alcotte asked.
"Why wouldn't they?" I pressed. "What do criminals do?"
"Drugs, murder, crime, human trafficking, prostitution," Alcotte listed.
"They avoid the police and Vale Guard. Would a serial killer make that easier or more difficult?" I begged the question.
"You're saying that criminals will help us find the serial killer because… it brings police attention?" Graty affirmed.
"It's bad for business. The only thing worse than a serial killer for business is the Grimm," I nodded.
"Okay… alright… so, how do we start with that?" Velcruse asked.
"There are information brokers in the city," I informed them. "And every single one of them wants this serial killer taken care of. All of them."
"Information brokers?" Melisse asked.
"You think drugs and people are the only things worth buying and selling? Information can mean the difference between winning and losing territory, drugs, people, or power. It's a valuable commodity," I said.
"This is where you got your information from. Criminal contacts," Velcruse puzzled. "Information brokers in the city. People who are almost, but not quite, criminals."
"Bingo," I snapped my fingers at her.
"So how do you get these sorts of people to help you?" Graty asked. "They won't do it for free."
"Some might. Like I said. Serial killers are bad for business. So they are getting something out of a team of hunters with boots on the ground trying to catch our woman. Some have more to gain from it than others. Some will do what you want and help you find her for free."
"But some won't. What do we do then?" Melisse asked.
"Well, you all have something to sell these people," I lectured. "You have some things they can make use of. If you want them to scratch your back you had better be willing to scratch theirs."
"Trading favors?" Velcruse realized.
"With criminals!" Melisse gasped again.
"You all have aura, weapons, and semblances and you know how to use them. That has value. It can be traded if you're willing. You can also threaten them if you think you get away with it. You can use your power to get what you need. If you're willing to back it up. If you're willing to pay the price. It depends. How bad do you want to find Cerise and put a stop to her?" I held it over them.
They just stared at me.
"Not very glamorous. Is it?" I tagged with a playful grimace. "It's not all monster slaying and hero playing. When you mean it you have to mean it. If you want to play the game you have to sacrifice your pieces. The Headmistress would probably disapprove. She'd probably want you to keep applying pressure on and working with the police or Vale Guard. But if you want results then you gotta bend the rules. And you'll find that if you're a powerful hunter, the rules are made of plastic."
"Do you bend the rules?" Melisse asked.
"All the time. How do you think I got all of these?" I splayed my hands down at the weapons in the display cases. "They should all be in evidence lockers somewhere. All of them. But no one has come up to me and told me 'you can't do that. You can't keep those.' I had a Councilor of Vale in here the other day and he didn't say a fuckin' thing to me. So I can keep them and I did. You think I did it by following orders? When I hunted down Tyrian Callows, another serial killer, in Atlas I ran favors for an information broker and drug dealer. When I tracked down Cinder Fall for the Special Forces I deployed asymmetrical warfare tactics. I cornered her using both sides of the law. That's how serial killers come across my dashboard like Facestagram posts. I don't do it by playing very nice. So that's my advice. Don't play nice. You have to be even more mean and ruthless than your prey. That's how you beat the Grimm. That's how you beat spree killers and mass murderers."
"Where do we start?" Velcruse decided.
"Put pressure on the police. I hope you didn't give the detective the full dossier because that way you have something to bargain with. Make him work with you. Tease him with some information then promise to trade for crime scene photos and evidence. Get your hands on those photos and that evidence. Force him to play ball. While you're doing that, come at Cerise Genfield from the other side of the law. Start with Junior's bar downtown. Junior is an information broker and he's the biggest one in town. Tell him you're after Cerise and that Cloud sent you. He should be game to at least chat."
"We gave him the whole dossier," Graty admitted. How naive.
"See what else you can scare up. Drop a rock in the lake and watch to see what other fish swim around. Drop a couple of nets in the places you think Cerise is swimming. One over here and another over there. Make deals and make moves for power and information. Close the noose on her. And when you find her, call me because I think she's probably too much for you guys to handle with her Shaker rating being so high. Finding her will be enough for a good grade. Now get out of my office and go get your feet wet somehow. Whether it's with the police or with Junior it doesn't really matter. If you want to win the war you have to pick your battles and you have to fight some of them."
"But with criminals?" Melisse continued.
"Arrest me," I told her brutally. "I'm the biggest mass murderer in all of Vale if not the entire planet. If you really mean to stop every single criminal, then start with me."
"But nobody could take you in," Velcruse said.
"Now we're cookin'. What does that tell you?"
"To do as much as we can get away with," Alcotte decided. I think it dawned on him. I could sort of see it take him all at once when he realized.
"There you go. Now go and put in the leg work and elbow grease. You want to catch a killer? How bad?" I leveraged. "How bad do you want it?"
"We'll catch her," Velcruse claimed. "I want to catch her."
"How bad?" I shrugged unchallengingly. She seemed like she wanted it but until she started dancing it was impossible to really tell.
They filed out of my office as a group. Miss Melisse shot me a last nervous look as the door closed behind them. I sighed. That was a tough lesson. It was right up there with 'respect your opponent's heatmap and spacing' and 'you will probably die doing this.' Those two and 'know your own value' and 'know the prices you're willing to pay' were pretty much the sum of my experience as a hunter. It couldn't get any more boiled down than that.
I pulled up team CMAD on my scroll and sent their photos to Neo. I called her. She answered but she didn't greet me or anything.
"I've got a treat for you. Follow these kids from Junior's and intervene if they run into trouble. Send me the location if they find Cerise Genfield and keep them safe. Do it and I'll give you Cerise as a toy."
"..."
"We'll also go clubbing. I just made a shitton of money," I agreed to her demands right away. I caved immediately. "Just keep the kids safe and don't let them do anything stupid. Send me their location if they do try some dumb shit like actually engaging Genfield."
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I didn't have to wait particularly long. I'd rather I'd passed my entire evening without hearing back from Neo. But I saw that gleam in Velcruse's eye. I'd been young and stupid and wanting to prove myself once or twice.
I arrived to ambulances in downtown Vale underneath a towering skyscraper. It must have been three hundred stories and an extra spire. There were police cars and sirens and I walked right through all of that to the exact location Neo had sent me. There was the retort of a sniper rifle and emergency responders all over hit the deck. I just kept walking. I passed under some tape and made my way to the ambulances. Neo was leaning next to it with a smirk.
"And?" I asked.
She pointed straight up the skyscraper. I peeked inside the ambulance. Velcruse was strapped down. She had two broken legs.
"Hey kid," I said. The rest of her team was sitting inside. A sniper round dinged off the bulletproof wall of the outside of the ambulance and men outside shouted.
"I found her," Velcruse said helpfully and slightly dazed.
"I told you to run away from fights you knew you couldn't win." I sat down next to her. "You've got a good shot at a long career. Not every huntress can say that. But what you did when you fought Genfield was just stupid. And you won't make it far like that. What'd she do to you?"
"She let us get close and then she just dropped ten 'g's on us," Alcotte informed me. He had his arm in a sling. "Maybe more. Crystal was closest."
"She broke my aura and my legs just like that," Velcruse snapped her fingers. She wouldn't look at me. She was staring out the back of the vehicle.
"I'm going to take care of this. And I want you to have learned something from it." Another sniper retort echoed across downtown Vale. There was more shouting.
"I'm sorry," Velcruse murmured.
"I just want you to live. I'm glad you're alive. You got lucky," I informed her. "You can't count on that." I patted her on the arm gently and climbed out of the back of the ambulance. I walked around to its front and felt my danger sense roar.
I swiveled my body to the side and dodged a sniper round that landed like a meteor. She was up at the top of that tower fucking with gravity and making each round hit like a city bus. I narrowed my eyes up at the tower. I stepped to the side and dodged a sniper round that threw up asphalt. I couldn't make her out with the glare of the sun in my face.
I left Remnant and drew my sword as I flew up to the top of the tower. She shot me with the force of a pickup truck condensed into a bullet and I cartwheeled to the ground and landed in a small crater on a rooftop.
I shook it off and flew at fast enough to break the sound barrier straight up until I was above the tower. Then I flew down at it. She tried to crush me to Remnant. She dropped twenty 'g's and bullet on me as I approached. My path curved but not by so much that I missed the tower. I flew straight up and ripped my way through the girders around the spire. She backflipped, tried to crush me, and shot me in the head all at once. I dodged to the side and closed the gap on her fighting 'g' forces all the while.
I approached her with a tight frontflip and brought my weapon down on her in a helmsplitter. She blocked with her rifle and threw her hand to the side and slammed me into the tower. I stood up orthogonal to her plane and resisting the force of sideways gravity. She then pulled me down and slammed me into the girders hard enough to shake them. She shot me three times in rapid succession all while approaching me and I felt the 'g's increase on me. I clawed to my feet and flew at her just above the girders. I reversed, tractionless, and backflipped. Then I brought my weapon from low to high in diagonal strike behind me. Her weapon turned to a long sword and blocked and I flipped over her and brought my weapon down on her again.
She tried to crush me to the ground way below but I just floated. I pushed off the ground and against the 'g' forces and kneed her in the face and whipped my sword in a diagonal arc across my body in a personal favorite. She hit the ground and I flew at her since she was forced to give me respite. I pivoted and did a sliding forward tilting attack that I favored as I moved above the metal girders we were fighting on. It rocked her.
She whipped around and thrust a hand out at me and I felt the 'g' forces try and fling me off the skyscraper. I started sprinting. I was sprinting in place against the wind and pulling gravity. I ran until my feet left the ground and I was hovering slowly closer to her.
She transformed her weapon and took a shot at me point blank with twenty 'g's pushing away from her in my direction. I rolled in the air to the side and approached her. I brought my weapon down on her like I was some kind of genetically engineered demigod. Which, I mean, I might be. And I realized most people don't have to sit around and wonder 'am I a demigod?' But I really wasn't most people.
I stepped in, grabbed her, and slammed her to the ground. Then I jumped and as I was falling I pushed my sword upwards with both hands, one at the hilt and the other near the middle of the back of the blade like I was bench pressing it. The blow caught her in the chest and popped her in the air. I landed and jumped above her and with my weight shoved downwards in a brutal impaling spike that smashed her back into the girders below us.
Then I stepped in and Cross slashed her.
She flew off of the tower from the last hit and I caught both her and her weapon.
Neo teleported to the top of the tower and waited with her arms folded. She checked an imaginary watch with a sly smirk.
I landed and tossed her to Neo. Neo grinned up at me and teleported away with her victim. That was the last I'd see of her. I slung Genfield's weapon over my shoulder. Police swarmed the tower but it was already clear.
Emergency responders were able to start moving injured civilians and team CMAD without fear of sniper fire. And pretty soon they had all cleared out.
"Hey you," an officer came up to me. "We need to take that into evidence."
I snorted in his face. I shoved him away with an open palm. "Hey! You hunters can't just do whatever you like! There's regulations."
"I killed her. I'm keeping it. That's all there is to it. You can try and take it from me. Come on. Try," I welcomed.
He didn't. He simply glared.
"I thought as much," I murmured. "Stay out of my way. How about that?"
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-WG