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Scene #32
Walking in to a police station is similar to walking on stage at
the Miss Universe pageant in the bikini section. Every eye in the
place is focused upon you, judging, critiquing, wondering which
inappropriate person you slept with to get here. For your part,
you desperately want to fidget and yank the metaphorical bikini
bottom out of the crack of your ass. But you don't, because the
last thing you want to show this audience of petty criminals,
hookers and drunks is any sign of weakness. The trick is not to
ignore them. That's a beginner's mistake. The secret is to stare
them down like any moment you were thinking of walking over and
kicking them in the head with your steel tipped boot. It helps if
said boots make a sharp ringing sound as you stride across the
greasy marble floor in the reception area. It also helps if you
are wearing black leather and have a few tattoos. Not many people
are brave enough to have tattoos these days, too many stories of
them staging nasty and bloody coups in order to escape their human
canvas.
The only problem is whilst my initial street cred
is good, my overall intimidation factor is not high. It's hard to
actually pin point my problem. I'm tall for a girl, 5.10ft and I
have a few old scars that clearly state I've seen some trouble.
Why do people instantly underestimate me? It might be the boobs,
I'm slim but there's no hiding the fact that I have curves. Or
maybe it's the long wavy black hair I keep back in a ponytail.
Some have called my looks beautiful; jeez some have called them
mesmerizing. People aren't frightened by lush full lips, purple
eyes, high cheekbones, skin the colour of moonlight and deep
cleavage. The sad thing is they should know better and be
completely bloody terrified.
You don't wear weapons into a
police station unless you have a death wish. There are multi
detectors at the entrance door, paid professionals who can pick up
not just hidden weapons but harmful intent. Of course I never go
anywhere without at least some protection but then I hide mine
better than most. You'd have to know your 17th century weapons
pretty well to spot them. At first glance you'd only see the
boots, the skintight leather pants and matching black waistcoat. I
keep the waistcoat buttoned quite low so the cleavage provides an
initial distraction. Then you might notice the long bands of thin
leather I have wrapped around each forearm. They encircle each arm
about 60 — 70 times and there are small silver hollowed circles
interspersed in the leather every 2 feet. Most women consider them
a fashion accessory. Men tell me they find them sexy. Around my
right upper arm I wear a similar wrapping of leather but this time
instead of small silver circles the leather is interspersed with
silver crosses. The three bindings known as P'tangs are not just
deadly weapons they also help to camouflage my tattoos. If anyone
ever asks about the black tattooed lines streaking down the backs
of my arms, across my palms and to my fingertips I tell them they
are snakes and the leather strips keep the tattoos bound to my
body. People will believe anything these days.
There's
nothing quite like the reception area of a police station when it
comes to gathering extraordinary people into a concentrated area.
With only the most casual of glances I scanned the magically
enhanced versus the nulls. The freaks are easy, for me they
radiate a very earthy vibe of soil, rock and minerals. The nulls,
or straight humans were wary of the more obvious freaks; the guy
with four arms, the woman with pale blue skin and the 10-foot dude
in the iron handcuffs chained to the floor waiting to be processed.
More worrisome were the few who had no visible freak factor but
were still giving off the sense of earth and stone. A couple of
them were prostitutes and I really didn't want to think about what
freak anomaly they could possibly be hiding under their minuscule
outfits.
That just left the mage, which is the politically
correct term for fey. There was a big campaign back in the 60's
launched by some rightwing reformist that proclaimed that fey was a
sexist reference. Personally those of the blood could care less;
they'll answer to either. What mage really means was that they
either had mental magic or specific touchstones that they could
command and call their own. There seemed to be only 2 fey present,
each giving off an airy light vibe: one was a Buddha Boy, covered
in his gangland brandings and saffron colours, sitting hunched over
shivering, probably coming down off a sugar high. The other fey
was standing by the front desk dressed in a 10,000 dollar Armani
suit, clutching a Burberry briefcase, waving some documents under
the desk sergeant's nose. Fey never do anything by halves and
that's what makes them good junkies and killer lawyers.
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