Confrontation, Conversation and Choice "And why, Lieutenant, did your men not handcuff this miscreant?" "Because, Captain, she's not a miscreant. She was at the bottom of the heap, getting pounded. My inspectors intervened and brought her here to my office for a chat." "Disturbing the peace!" "Captain, one unarmed teenager is not a threat to the well-being of any citizen. You don't bother with most of the brawls that occur with them, bloodless or not. Why are you so uptight about this one?" "Because, Lieutenant, we are dealing with a shifter! Shifters are dangerous entities who need to be controlled!" "There are murders, forgeries, embezzlement, and you are worried because one shifter is seemingly out of bounds? Captain, kindly leave and get back to your sane, safe job and let me handle this as I see fit. If there's has been any danger involved in the affair, it has been the mob that tried to kill her." Marshall, sitting on one of the comfortable chairs in Derek Vega's office watched this confrontation with acute interest. She did not interrupt as the two men faced each other down-- Friedricks with a glower and the obstinancy of injured pride, Vega calm and without fear. "I want her in custody!" "There are a few problems with that, Captain... one of them being that she has done nothing illegal or self- destructive that would require me to arrest her. The other has to deal with the fact of her being a shifter--a shifter can become any living creature and escape from our custody; it is impossible to confine a shifter against his will; it would be like trying to arrest a tornado... That's why there are provisions in the law that state that a shifter must be tried in a court of law by shifters. The law still is the law and it states that without sufficient proof, no one may be jailed out of hand... and if you try, I have the duty to stop you." Friedricks glowered and ground his teeth together in frustration, but his inferior in rank did have the law on his side. "Well, see that she is out of my sight when I come by this evening!" The old cop's face was impassive while he rose as his captain vacated the extra chair, nor did he do more than was due respect toward his superior before slumping back down into his chair and covering his craggy face with calloused hands. "Have you ever," he asked softly, "just had one of those days?" "Certainly, but less frequently than you," Marshall replied. "How do you put up with him? I would have flung him in a broom closet with duct tape over his mouth and wrapped around his body to pin his arms." "An engaging spectacle... However, he is my superior officer." "Too bad superior rank doesn't come with superior leadership ability or interpersonal skills this time," muttered the teen. "He could some lessons in both..." "Granted. Now that he's gone, would you mind explaining exactly what happened at the DNA Casino?" "For starters, it was probably my good fortune that it did happen where Raven could help--Michael's a shifter, too." "The son of the owner of the casino? Never would have guessed..." Marshall shrugged, "We all have protective magic that shields us, for the most part, from harm. His just works better. Anyway, I was mediating a dispute in the casino when there was a major disturbance on the floor; I went to investigate and found Drake being pounded by two really nasty bullies and their toadies. I kinda took over as the punching bag of choice since I flatly ordered them to leave and threatened to call security. They jumped me." "You could have shifted," Derek pointed out. "Would have made it worse: if my attackers didn't know I was a shifter and I transformed, the reaction would have been, out of fear, to kill me. If they had had the sense to run, the people in the casino would have panicked because I would be in a morph meant to intimidate--tiger, for example. If they did know, same scenario with slight variation: they would have told everyone that I was a shifter, ensuing panic for what I might shift into. And there is always the chance that I would need to defend myself from other enemies and not have the energy in reserve to do so." "So these idiots used you like a punching bag until my inspectors got there. By that time, of course, there had to be enough people on top of you to do damage to your bone structure." "I got lucky. Two black eyes, a cut lip, various bruises, strained arm, slightly bruised shoulder blade... Not too bad, considering the one on top of me had a shard of glass in a pocket and could have done serious damage with it." There was a knock on the door, interrupting the story. "Come in!" Cosmo stood uncertainly in the doorway, a grimace on his face. As he moved into the office, both its occupants noted how pale he was. "You're still not well, Cosmo," Vega reported, dark eyes filled with a rough sympathy. "Take a nap here... You want me to call Ace?" "Yeah. Sonny Boy kinda wrecked my wrist-comm and what's left isn't worth trying to repair--have to use it for spare parts." "Kick you out of the Sunset?" Marshall wondered, raising an eyebrow. "Before he did, he made sure that I couldn't call Ace and had his goons knock me out and leave me in the Surge Warehouse up on Race Avenue... Wringing his neck would be such a pleasure, but I don't think his bodyguards are going to let me get close enough." "Let me call Ace, then," Vega interposed. "While we can't do anything about young Surge, I can make sure you get home in one piece. After I get more coffee." Marshall grinned as the old cop wandered out to get more coffee "I noticed he has a chessboard over there." "You play?" Cosmo asked, intrigued. Marshall hadn't volunteered this information to him yet and he loved games of strategy almost as much as Raptor XII liked kidnapping people in the VR world. "Not too well, but if Lieutenant Vega runs into Friedricks like I think he will, this hunt for coffee could take a while. Before you came, Friedricks was in here demanding that I be arrested just because I was a shifter." "A shifter?! No way!" Marshall nodded. Cosmo watched, fascinated, as one arm slowly grew feathers, beautiful ale gold in color, barred with dark chocolate. "Those are real?" "Touch. Find out." He reached out and touched the false primary where her thumb should have been; it was soft, flexible and strong. "Wow... Friedricks wanted to arrest you. Why? He think you're dangerous or something?" "On the nail head." Feathers slid back into wherever they had been, replaced by the green cloth of her shirt on an appendage. "Hunh. Reminds me of what he said when I asked him about why he'd arrested Hodgekiss a few months back during the X-Oshi craze... Said he was `an animal and he wasn't sorry to have arrested him.'" "We could try my idea of duct-taping Friedrick's mouth shut and binding his arms to his body with the rest of it and flinging him in a broom closet. Vega was adamant that doing so would bring trouble." "He's right. White or Red?" Marshall tapped Cosmo's right hand and he opened it to reveal a White pawn. "White makes first move," he reminded her. When Lieutenant Vega came in again with his coffee some fifteen minutes later, he found Marshall and Cosmo hunched over a chessboard on his desk. "Knight takes Bishop... Check! Any luck with that trick you said you had been practicing before your absence?" "Yeah. Ace has it down to a science now... He wants to talk with you at some point, Marshall." "Is he angry?" "I can't tell. He's got this inscrutiable look to him whenever I ask and he hasn't consulted Angel about it yet, though I did see a file on shifters up on the screen yesterday." Derek dialed the Express while this conversation was going on. Ace answered, blue eyes holding a question. "Derek! A pleasure to hear from you." "The same, Ace. Cosmo's in my office... Ran into some trouble at the Sunset and came here. He still looks a little pale and he almost collapsed on my floor. Would you like me to bring him to you?" "At your convenience," the magician assented. "Leaving Zina in the middle of a practice session is not a wise thing to do... We'd have to practice more for the same effect." "All right, I'll bring him down just so I can get away from Friedricks for an hour or two..." "Good. You can have lunch with us like you promised last month." Derek was actually smiling when he closed out the transmission. "Finish your game, you two," he advised. "We leave in five minutes." "I won't be going with you, Lieutenant," Marshall said, glancing up from the board. "It's time." "Promise me you'll see Ace afterward, though," the old cop instructed. "I give my word. Bright your days, Lieutenant, Cosmo." With decided care, Marshall rose and walked out the office door, eyes beginning to glow eerily. "Come on, Cosmo." "Why'd she leave?" asked the boy. "Where did she go?" "It's very simple... Remember Marshall is a shifter. Every few months or so, she has to take on a form other than human. I've been keeping my eye on her--at night or among others of the shifters, she can morph out, but during this time, she basically becomes a wild creature." "So that's why she gave me her electrodollars!" "It would be one reason, sure." The pair walked companionably outside and got into Derek's ancient sedan, and soon the car entered the stream of steady traffic. Marshall watched from her chosen place on police headquarters' roof and smiled, though a hawk's face shows no emotion at all. Moving from foot to foot, she waited until the vehicle entered traffic before launching up, wings flapping until she gained a thermal that bouyed her up over the lanes of moving cars. With sun warm on her feathered self, she sailed above and to the right of the old sedan. "Wow... What freedom Marshall's got to have if she becomes a bird! Nothing except her and the wind. " Derek glanced at the boy and saw the regret on the young man's face. "Just wish she could be accepted as easily down here as up there..." Marshall could hear perfectly well his sentiment as she skimmed over the roof of the sedan, and screamed petulantly in assent of his sentiment. The confrontations she had experienced today: physical, mental, friendly and not, told her that the world might not be ready for a shifter who was as open as she about her gifts, but that was the world's choice... People could love, hate, accept or deny the existence of the shifters, especially her. Her choice was to speak, to show, to live.