Participants:
| Scene Title | Any Ordinary Day |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | As part of her training-mandated ride-along with Marisa Blomgren, Detective Demsky experiences her first day in the life of an NYPD officer. |
| Date | June 11, 2019 |
Traffic in the New York Safe Zone is nothing like the New York of old.
Vehicle traffic accounts for less than fifty percent of all transit in the city. Foot traffic, bicycles, and the handful of electric busses get New Yorkers where they need to be. The addition of foot carriages and horses makes it feel more like a third-world country, which in many respects it is. But for the NYPD, the donation of a small fleet of Yamagato Lapis SUVs means being able to patrol the Safe Zone with a measure of security and style.
But it also means being stuck in traffic behind three horses, five bicycles, and six hundred pedestrians getting out of work in Bay Ridge. The streetside markets are flush with pedestrians at this hour, and the idling hum of the Lapis’ electric motor is all but deafening in the environmentally controlled cabin of the vehicle. A teenage boy skateboards past the SUV, stuck in traffic as it is, eliciting a sigh from the woman in the passenger seat.
“Maybe we could just get out and walk?”
Not that they have anywhere pressing to be at the moment.
Bay Ridge Ave
Bay Ridge, NYC Safe Zone
June 11th
5:12pm
Following graduation from the police academy, new NYPD officers — even those appointed directly into SCOUT — must pass a five-week period as an FTO (Field Training Officer) who rides along with five different officers. This period is presently a formality, but one Captain Wilson has eagerly approached to make sure the new recruits get fully immersed with their new coworkers.
Colette Demsky’s first week is assigned to Detective Marisa Blomgren the Ohio-born and — more well-known around the bullpen — invulnerable detective. As a young woman, Colette would’ve been full of needling questions for Detective Blomgren, but today she sits with her elbow propped up on the side of the door, chin on her palm and blind eyes focused vacantly out the passenger side window of the SUV.
Sometimes, being a cop means being stuck in traffic.
Back when Marisa Blomgren was a rookie cop, this would have been tedious and insufferable at best, and likely would have been accompanied by a considerable amount of complaints. Thankfully, Detective Blomgren has gotten those days past her; her time with the West Milton Police Department, while rarely involving traffic, did often come with an uncomfortable amount of quiet downtime.
So it’s admirable to the (occasionally) bulletproof blonde that Colette isn’t clawing at the windows or inundating her with questions and statements of how boring it is to sit in a nicely air conditioned car.
“We could,” she replies, reaching out and lifting the decaffeinated coffee and taking a sip, before setting it back in the cup holder. “But sometimes, traffic is just another part of this.” She points one finger skyward and twirls it once to indicate the entire experience of being a cop. “Also, I’m enjoying this air conditioning, aren’t you?” The cop cars in West Milton were so run down that half of them had no AC, so this is a welcome change.
Not to mention, getting out would take them away from the radio.
“S’kinda’ weird actually,” Colette admits with a furrow of her brows, watching pedestrians go by out the passenger-side window. “Only vehicles I’ve ever been in that had air conditioning were military aircraft.” She looks across the cab to Marisa, “I ride a motorcycle most places I go, so I’ve got the wind., y’know? But this thing…” Colette motions to the touch screen center console of the Lapis, “is so nice I’m afraid I’m gonna break something if I sit crooked.”
Outside, the foot traffic hasn’t let up at all, though they’ve been able to crawl six feet forward through it. A narrow line of pedestrians move aside as a trio of six foot tall bipedal labor drones come walking down the street, painted safety cone orange and bright yellow, each of them carrying a half dozen bags of cement powder on their way north.
The Yamagato machines disappear back into the crowd, and Colette exhales a sigh through her nose. “An’ m’never gonna get used t’shit like that,” she says to Marisa, gesturing at the drones’ backs.
“Same,” Marisa agrees, glancing to the console. “Ohio didn’t really put much priority in air conditioning for their cop cars. Can’t say I blame them, but at least a freon refill would’ve been nice in the summertime, you know?” She smirks. “I feel like I’m going to accidentally put a hole in this fancy screen if I have to mess with it in the middle of an emergency.”
The invulnerable cop’s eyes never leave those drones as they cross into her field of vision. She never really had to fight the things during the war, but she’s heard enough stories from the people she helped rescue to fill her with a healthy sense of dread at how advanced robotics have gotten — and how dangerous they can potentially be.
“You’re not the only one,” she commiserates, shaking her head. “I didn’t really fight any of them, thank goodness, but I heard plenty of stories about the ‘bots they had running around during the war.” She reaches out, snagging the decaf coffee again and swigging the last of it down.
The sigh Colette exhales is a slow and patient one, watching the yellow-colored bipedal machines march out of sight into the crowd. “Yeah…” comes so belatedly as to be hard to ascribe to any one specific thing Marisa said. “It was…” her brows pinch together, briefly. “Yeah.” The war is apparently a difficult topic.
“So…” Colette’s blind eyes stare vacantly out the passenger side window, watching a tall woman carry a cardboard box of oranges and lemons down the street on one shoulder. “Ohio? Doesn’t sound like crime’d be, you know, busy out there? I didn’t spend much time that way, before or during the war. Definitely not after.” She looks down to her lap, then affords Marisa the courtesy of looking at her with milky white eyes when she’s looking at her with her ability. “Is it still there?”
Ohio. The state.
It’s, horrifyingly, a reasonable question.
Shaking the empty coffee cup as if to ensure there is nothing left, Marisa places the cup back in its holder once more, and quietly drums on the steering wheel as she stares at traffic ahead. For a place that doesn’t have many cars, there is sure a lot of traffic. “Maybe we should request horses instead of cars. Might be faster,” she points out, glaring at a horse’s rear end up ahead.
The questions about Ohio prompts the blonde’s eyebrows to shoot up a bit, turning to peer thoughtfully at Colette. “There’s not really all that much crime out there, no. Mostly out-of-towners trying to prey on the mom and pops, teens being assholes, domestic violence issues. It was pretty boring, if I’m being completely honest.”
She shrugs nonchalantly. “After being blown up by the Central Park bomb and pulling people out of the rubble during the war, though, it was kind of a welcome change for a while.” Marisa mentions the bomb in Central Park so casually, as though everyone just gets blown up and comes out just fine.
She pauses. “Yeah, they didn’t get hit too hard. My parents have a farm a few miles out of town, they didn’t really understand much of it. I think my dad had to shoot at some wannabe looters once, but that’s about the extent they saw of the fighting. They shot at more coyotes than anything else.” She sounds almost jealous. “Nobody really bothered the farmers.”
“S’funny you should mention horses,” is what Colette chooses to latch on to. “There’s a kid I knew, she was an orphan I helped take care of before the war. Hailey. She actually applied to apprentice with the NYPD’s stablemaster, s’far as I know they actually are using horses. Not a lot just yet, demand and training, but it’s a thing.” It’s easier to talk about simple things, horses and old friends, moreso than it is the war. Even if she’s the one that brought it up.
It’s the talk of the bomb that had rattled Colette the most, moreso than anything else. Though she looks out to the pedestrians walking alongside the SUV on the sidewalk, her attention is more focused on the conversation inside the cab. “I didn’t know you were there,” sounds apologetic, if only half-heartedly.
Colette’s focus drifts from the window to Marisa. “I…” she reaches up, tugging down the collar of her uniform to show a tattoo on the side of her neck covering a scar. It looks like a pulse reading from the EKG. “See those two little black marks,” she points with her pinkie to what looks like an imperfection in the tattoo, “those’re from a Company isotope tracking injection.” She lets the collar rise up again. “I was near Ground Zero too. But I was in the process of being returned from a bag and tag. Caught sight of half the blast, blinded me in one eye.” She motions to her right eye. “Blew out the other using my ability. But…”
There’s a rueful smile that crosses Colette’s lips as she lets that story die off. “S’good t’know there’s some folks who’ve been through some shit in our team. Doesn’t make me feel like such a fuckin’ weirdo half the time.” Reaching down for her own coffee, Colette finds it at room temperature and with a little left in the bottom. Neither stops her from finishing it, as she flicks a look from Marisa to the street ahead. “Radiation didn’t get you?” She asks.
The news of horses brings a smile to Marisa’s face — which, admittedly, is rarely without one. “You don’t say,” she replies, blue eyes finding one of the horses ahead. “We had a few horses on my parent’s farm,” she points out. “Maybe I’ll trade in the car for a horse. Certainly would be faster.”
Blue eyes turn, then, to the isotope marks, sympathy finding its way into her expression. “That’s awful,” Marisa replies, shaking her head. “Man I’m glad those fuckers are no longer a thing.” She doesn’t have one of those scars, thankfully — just a myriad of other scars from her years of being almost invulnerable.
“Kind of,” Marisa replies to the question of radiation. “It got me, it just couldn’t kill me. Not for lack of trying.” She reaches up, tapping a fist gently against the side of her own head. “I survived the initial blast with some burns and cuts and bruises, but for the most part intact. The radiation…well, it stuck around for a while. I’m fortunate enough to not have had to suffer from it for more than a few seconds at a time.” Treatment was complicated — as it always is in her case. “It got me in waves.”
Marisa glances toward Colette, blonde ponytail drooping to the side as she cants her head toward her companion. “I agree, it’s good to know that there are other folks who have seen so much and lived to tell about it.” She smiles. “I feel like we have a good team here.”
“Sure hope so,” Colette says as she looks out the window, brows furrowed. “The world’s a fucked up enough place… it’d be nice t’have something good in it for— fuck’s sake.” The transition between bored conversation and profanity is quick. Colette sits up straight and looks over to Marisa. “Fucking— kid down the street is tagging a building with a Pure Earth logo.” She isn’t jumping out of the car, but for all the ways her muscles are tensed up, Colette looks like she wants to. But she’s the trainee here, it’s Marisa’s call.
Sure enough, at Marisa’s 2 o-clock, past the sidewalk and down an alley diagonal to them there’s a young man in a t-shirt and shorts, spray-painting the words PURE EARTH over a pre-existing stencil art of the American flag.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking shitting me,” Marisa complains under her breath. “You’d think the little shit would have the common sense to pull this at night instead of in the middle of the fucking day,” the woman complains — despite the wholesome and cheerful attitude, she seems at least as familiar with profanity as her partner. She doesn’t bother with the lights; instead, she simply pulls the vehicle off to the side of the road.
“Ready to make your first arrest?” She asks, shaking her head incredulously as she unbuckles her seatbelt.
“Normally I wouldn’t bust a kid for graffiti, but,” Colette unfastens her seatbelt, “you’re goddamn right I am.” She eyes the young man out the window again, then looks back to Marisa. “Pull up a little further past the alley then let me out. I’ll go around in case he rabbits.” She says confidently, “I’d rather not have a fucking foot chase through downtown if I don’t have to.”
The graffiti artist, in the meanwhile, is continuing to add shading to the P on “Pure” without any heed to the world around him. Worse, none of the pedestrians on the street walking by the alley seem to notice or care.
“Normally, I agree — if it’s art, it’s art, but. Well.” She eyes the artist, rolling her eyes. Then, with a nod, Marisa pulls forward just a bit in the car, before throwing it into park and tipping her head toward Colette. A good portion of her is quite thankful that, at the very least, her rookie is not really a rookie — at least, not in the way she was years ago when she was a rookie cop. “See you soon,” she replies, winking to Colette before slipping out of the vehicle.
She takes her time, hands on her belt, sauntering toward the entry to the alleyway in order to give her partner enough time to slip around — shouldn’t take too long, thankfully. She even pauses for a moment to warily eye the work of the ‘artist’, frowning. If it were a teen doing a tag, or an artist doing that thing that graffiti artists do where they make amazing artwork while working with what she can only assume is a difficult medium, she’d probably just roll her eyes and slog on through traffic.
But this little shit is defiling a symbol of her country with a symbol of hate. “Excuse me, sir,” she calls once she’s close enough. “I’m going to have to ask you to kindly cut that out and come with me,” she continues. “I’m afraid you are under arrest for vandalism.”
The second that voice rises, spray paint cans drop with a clatter and the artist takes off away from Marisa down the alley. He knocks over a trashcan as he starts to run, hoping to delay her pursuit. But before he gets more than fifteen feet, he skids to a stop with a breathless “fuck!” Materializing at the mouth of the alleyway, Colette has a hand on her holstered banshee and her free hand raised palm-up in a halting gesture.
“Stop!” Colette shouts, “NYPD!” The perp scrambles backwards, bounds up and hops onto a dumpster and uses it to jump to a fire escape, legs kicking as he struggles to pull himself the whole way up. “Son of a bitch,” Colette hisses.
Of course he’s running. Marisa rolls her eyes, taking a brief moment to curse at the skies. They never make it easy. After her brief moment of irritation, she’s then takes off after the man. “Piece of shit,” she growls under her breath. His skittering halt when confronted with Colette gives her a little bit of ground, and she’s climbing up that dumpster right after him.
She takes a leap after him, attempting to wrap her arms around his legs and drag him to the ground — or into the dumpster, whichever comes first. She’s not worried about hurting herself — one bump and she’ll be fine.
Marisa’s fingers find purchase on his pantleg and with her weight added, the perp’s fingers slip from the fire-escape ladder. He falls backward, even as Marisa does. She lands first atop the dumpster, wind knocked out of herself, but doesn't feel the second hit when she rolls off and strikes the ground afterward. The perp feels two hits:
His back hitting Marisa and his shoulder hitting the alley. Before he can even start to move, he's staring down the barrel of a Raytech Banshee bleeding into view like a speed painting. Colette sheds the sheathe of her invisibility, banshee in a two-handed grip. “You alright, Blomgren?”
The woman coughs as her breath is knocked out of her the first time around; as usual, the second one doesn’t make it any worse. Marisa doesn’t stay down for long, rolling easily to her feet and pulling her cuffs out with a scowl. “I’m good. Irritated that this little shitbag had to add resisting arrest to his charges.”
She promptly begins to read the man his rights as she rather roughly goes about handcuffing the guy, rolling him unceremoniously onto his stomach and driving her knee into the small of his back as she attaches the handcuffs. Once done reading him his rights, she snorts derisively at him. “Congratulations, you may very well be the first arrest of the newly reinstated NYPD. I’m sure lots of people are going to be thrilled to talk to you.”
She shakes her head, attempting to drag the guy to his feet.
“I didn’t do a fucking thing!” The vandal shouts, struggling as he’s hauled to his feet but knowing better than to fight back. Colette lowers her banshee as Marisa reads him his Miranda and cuffs him. Taking a knee, Colette pats him down, searching for weapons or contraband and comes up empty.
“Sure,” Colette says with a shake of her head, “nothin’ at all.” Rising to her feet she backpedals toward where Marisa had parked the SUV. “We’re gonna take you down to the Watchtower and you can explain to them how you slipped and tripped and some bigoted bullshit spilled out of your can.”
“Fuck you,” he barks at Colette, who looks past him to Marisa, then back again and just closes her eyes, turns around and shakes her head. For all his fire, the young vandal doesn’t have much more to say, other than turning red-faced and mad.
“No,” Colette says to herself on her way back to the SUV, “fuck you buddy.”