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[Text]

This is Hank Anderson, and I recently got my promotion so it's now Det. Hank Anderson. Which is why I wanted to make this announcement.

[Hank still wants to research into the missing people and initiate his vague plan to devalue the iterations. Right now the public see them as a protective force for good. Hank wants the people to see other fucking people as their reliable protective force. That in the many variations of temperaments and personalities and creative resolutions to conflict, they can find their safety.]

I have a case that could use some assistance from some specialized outsiders. If you could come to me and lay out your experience and training, I would like to offer you temporary deputy work in helping solve this case.

Necessary qualifications include:
-Combat against armed opponents
-Negotiation and Interrogation
-Ability to secure an area until CSI arrives (cursory crime scene analysis a bonus)

Due to Dualis's policy on providing payment through credit, if you would want rewards we would have to attach a name to your activities. However if you'd want to work off-record [which is as close to anonymously as he can get] we could come to some sort of arrangement such as donated payment.

I'll be at the cat cafe to conduct interviews 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon for the next week. You can show up when it's convenient to talk. Sounds like a fucking weird place for it, yes, it'll make more sense when you're there.

I've also arranged for donated goods to be offered when people come in and might find themselves in a state of disrepair or any nicer version of saying fucked the hell up. New clothes, medical things like crutches for people with chronic conditions, sanitary supplies like soap and toothbrushes, things of that nature. So if you want to donate something to the people coming in there's a donation box in the dormitory's lower entryway and they'll be taken to the temple.

[Action]

Like he promises, Hank's waiting around at the cat cafe whenever someone shows up. Usually reading a book, sometimes bored, sometimes deeply into it. Right by his side though? A mammoth green cat, purring and resting her head against his arm. She's twitching her tail to and fro.

Hank is pretty sure he'll be able to tell if someone is bullshitting their credentials and whether they'll do intentional harm with their new role. It's hard to do background checks when different universes are involved, but he thinks he's figured out a way to beat the system without having to use any of the department's lie detectors.

Note: Plotting post here.

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you seem good at it! so it shouldn't be a surprise

as okay as i ever am! i want to find out more about them. the mechanical us.

[The part about 'the mechanical us' doesn't make it to him. It's censored out for him. But he can guess what she means with just 'them'. There can't possibly be another 'them' besides the Heart.]

Thanks. I do what I can.

[He wasn't good at it for a while.]

Maybe you should stop in to talk too at some point.

Okay! id like to

i would offer to help with your case but i dont have qualifications. i can come by when you dont have any interviews though

Sure. I don't expect these to be all that long. I could use the company.

[And he can tell her the shitty news about the police.]

She comes later just after someone else has finished up and he's by himself. There's a flower in her hand for him. Gladiolus, strength of honor and conviction, sometimes she likes the symbolism of simple things. She hands it out for him with a half smile, not quite as big and bright as her usual smiles, but it's something. It's a bit more difficult to smile after the robots and the deeper implications she's spent her time speculating in regards to them. Maybe speculation isn't a good thing, but it's all she's been doing since it happened. Speculating and beating herself up over not having seen it coming.

"It's a sword lily." Get it? Because he's just got himself a promotion.

Well, he wasn't expecting that.

She offers him the flower and he offers her a sad sort of grin, just thinking of the times he could have used little kind gestures like this during the past few years. There were people that tried; the occasional free meal from his favorite food cart. Occasional free drinks. It usually felt nice, whenever it happens.

Connor put his mind in a much better place than it had been in a long time, but little things like this usually help.

He takes the flower and lays it on his book, careful not to mess it up. "It's not that big a deal, really. The flower is nice, thank you." He doesn't know the meaning. Just that it's a sweet gift.

She catches the bit of sadness and offers him another smile. "Even small deals can be big ones that deserve flowers." It's probably a silly thing to say but she knows a lot of what she says can seem silly. "You're welcome. You could let it dry then make a page marker!" Bookmark to the ordinary people out there.

"Did you find anyone to be a temporary copper with you?"

"There's a few people interested. It's something to work with."

He gives her a thin sort of smile.

"Copper, huh? Never been to Britain so I've never gotten the pleasure of being called one of those exactly."

"People-people I hope," and not creepy robot replacements. Maybe she's a bit paranoid now. Just a bit. She won't rightly admit it though, because she doesn't like imparting her worries onto others. The role she has is to smile and be there for others, right? Not bring her problems and concerns onto them.

She nods enthusiastically. "Copper.I have a friend whose a copper! Sort of." Self-appointed one. "Britain is lovely," there's a nostalgic sound to her voice. "Was. Maybe it will be again. You should go if you can!"

That makes Hank lean back, and he looks back to the baristas and waits for a little bit of noise from the coffee machine before leaning in again.

"Okay, the department? No one even knew the black-out happened. Other than a few people across town, most of 'em didn't notice. So I'm not bringing it up anymore. I got a really big fuckin' hunch, so I'm going to go check it out tonight or tomorrow. I know the person to talk to."

Then, more gently he adds in.

"Yeah. I'd like to see it. Only other country I've hit is Canada and that's like, just a short drive back home. It's where me and my partner should be going next."

Her eyes widen at that and she frowns. That doesn't imply anything good at all. It's rather ominous in fact. "Be careful."

There's more she wants to say to that but now she's not sure how to. Or if they should. Who knows who might overhear things if they spoke too much.

"Kait used to watch Quincy, it was about detectives and stopping the bad guys by any means! She was always serious business about being our constable, kept herself shielded most of the time so she could sneak around in the shadows to punish the lawbreakers," at least everyone also acknowledged that Kait was nuts too. "She came out of shielding for static lines though. We could talk without talking. Without people knowing. Karl said nobody likes eavesdroppers. I wonder..." She looks up at him as she trails off. She wonders if she could try that with people here and if it would give them a way to talk without worrying about people hearing what they have to say.

"Whose your partner?" She realizes he's mentioned him a lot and she's still not quite sure.

"His name is Connor." Endless fondness in his tone as he rubs the palm of his hand.

"I actually got a mod so I could communicate with him without talking. I didn't fuckin' think it'd come in so useful."

His smile is a little sad. He feels her pain a little. "I pretty much lost my job back home. I threw it away to save his life; it was an easy choice. But I missed it. This was my chance to be a cop again and I fuckin' love the work. Your girl Kait's got the right idea." Sort of. He always saw detective work as a way to help stop suffering by resolving threats. Whether that resolve involved incarceration or proving someone's innocence or returning property or limiting illegal goods.

"So yeah. I wanted to enjoy myself, too. If I was fuckin' stuck here, I wanted to make the most of my last chance to be a cop. But see, it's good to meet people too."

"I've met him, he's very nice, even though people wanted to use him for bad things," she smiles brightly. "I have a Connor back home. He reminds me of him. People wanted to use us for bad things too" She fights to keep any trace of sadness out of her voice and expression. Sometimes it hits her how much she misses him in particular. All of them, actually.

"He was lucky to have you there to help him. Not everyone will give up something important to them for someone else." Most people won't. Most are selfish and the worst in them comes out when bad things happen. When they'd messed the country up back home that's all they'd seen: the absolute worst in people.

"What if bad people here control the mods though?" The words come out before she can really think that maybe she shouldn't say that so openly.

"It didn't seem like a bad thing at first, you know... It seemed like he was stopping androids that were hurting people when their programming fucked up. But when he saw what was really motivating them, or saw something was more important, he did the right thing. If he wasn't that type of guy, I wouldn't have made that sacrifice for him.

"He did a good job of getting away from what they made him. What they literally made him, part by part to be. He became something else." And that he could do that, that anyone could do that, helped give him hope. The cases that they went to gave him hope. Just a few months back he was shattering and now he had something.

But what if they didn't get to go back? A fear of his from the start.

"If there weren't people like Connor doing that awful job, or people like me doing mine, then he would have been dead, or the people that he helped would be dead. I think we need to do this for now. Maybe we'll change our minds later."

"That's how it is. At first things seem like they're not so bad, that it's what you're supposed to do, but then it gets all complicated." She's speaking from experience with that. It's strange how things can seem not so bad and then just completely go to shit.

She smiles at him. "I guess some people really can rise above their programming on their own. He's impressive." If only everyone could do that. There were a few people back home she wishes could have taken that route on their own. Instead they had to be sorta pushed in the right direction, and that wasn't nearly as great. How would Luke feel about a robot being better at changing than he was? It's a slightly amusing, and sad, thought to have cross her mind.

"It takes good people to want to do the bad jobs." At least that's what she thinks. "And there's a lot of bad jobs that need done here, I think." She hesitates for a second and then leans in. "I think I'm going to try looking for a few things. I never really know what I'll see or if I'll remember though. Maybe it'll give us something helpful, or maybe it won't. But, I'd like to help more!"

Hank leans forward.

"Okay, so, Arkady. I want you to listen to me. I do think you can help, but I need you to play along okay?" He says it all very quietly, with a look of forced pleasantness and a tone of voice that blends into other yammering.

"I think I have an idea of what's going on. I have a person I can verify it with, and if I'm right? You're going to have to be very careful who you talk to about it, okay. Don't talk in messages. Don't talk to people that don't live in our building about it. Always discuss it with background noise or- well, I guess in your brain if you can manage it.

"But if I'm right, I'm gonna ask you for help, okay? I'm just a fuckin' human. I can throw punches. That's it. I'm up shit creek if I'm by myself."

She nods enthusiastically. "Yes sir, copper sir." The tone is playful but her expression shows she does understand it's serious and she takes it that way.

"That's what I wanted to offer," she taps on her brain. "I think I could make it where a group of people could talk with their brains to each other. We call it a static line back home. All of us can talk in our heads for a little bit and nobody knows. If we ever need to be really secret, maybe I could do that for anyone you want to include." She's not sure how long she could hold a meeting like that, it's not like she's tried. But maybe it'd be helpful in the case of an emergency where they really don't want to be heard or potentially found.

"Good. Everyone should always ask for help. Human or not."

He snorts softly. Copper won't stop being mildly amusing to him.

"Do you have to be like you and your siblings? Or have you been able to do it with regular people?"

Hell, even just her being able to think at regular people would make her a valuable messenger, a break to any sign of a paper trail.

It will be what he is referred to as probably forever now. Once she decides something amuses her, it sticks.

"We're not siblings." She realizes that probably makes it weirder, that they're all basically the same but not actually siblings. But, it's an important distinction for her. "We fuck around too much for that." It's an attempt at a joke that she probably finds more amusing than others might. If only they knew the extremely complicated relationships that troubled teens end up in when they're left mostly on their own.

"Others too. Sometimes we gave information to Alice that way. She was like you." Regular. "I think she got used to it." Sort of. Not really. But it was useful. "She was the only normal person we trusted to know about us. So we had to tell her things where other people wouldn't know and get scared."

"I don't know why I thought you were. I guess it was how you talked about 'em."

He blinks hard, once. But, well... "I guess not being related is a pretty good prerequisite to fuckin' around." And that's really all he can add to that without being more awkward than he is. Which is pretty fucking awkward. It's a talent of his.

"Anyway, yeah. It'd be helpful." He's making a note of it. Especially if they have to warn people someone's coming. "Just be aware some people have powers, too." And if he's right, those people are doubles. They'd have the same abilities that their originals had- and wouldn't be afflicted with the forced limitations. Her communication might show through; another thing they'll have to be careful.

"We've always been together so I guess we kinda can act like siblings." From birth they were always around each other. Or connected. She grins, practically feeling his awkward blink. "Usually it is. Unless you're really weird. And we're not that weird."

"I want to be helpful!" she looks excited about the idea that he seems to like her offer. "I know some people have powers. I'll be careful."

"Angel, you've been nothing but helpful." He calls her that again as he hears what seems like a self-disparaging note. He could be reading it wrong, but he wanted to be sure. She's absolutely done a ton in his book.

"I'll make sure you know what I find out."

"If you say so, then I believe you. You're the authority right," she teases just a little bit. There's a smile on her face and she gives him a quick hug before pulling away.

"I'll let you know if I find anything too. Be careful though. There's nothing more dangerous than people who want to control people and secrets." Though she doubts he needs to be told that.

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