The cops push your head into the police car like you’re trying to resist. Which you are not.
There are Press and News choppers and even your neighbors have come out to watch you be taken away. You didn’t know everyone cared so much.
At the back of the crowd you make eye contact with Keiko Nerima, red energy dances angrily in her eyes and down her hair strands. She just bought her house across town, you haven’t seen her since she graduated the Program and you wonder how she knew to be there. Then Shepard Li steps out and that answers that. You took the ‘villain’ out of the supervillain, but the ‘super’ precognition ability stayed.
The door slams in your face and Keiko is already turning to Shepard.
The cop car pulls away amid sirens and flashing lights. It’s 5am.
“So I don’t get it,” the driver says as the sirens blare and your city streaks by outside.
“Ask.” The other cop turns in his seat to look at you through the iron grate. They haven’t updated this fleet of police cruisers yet and you feel old-timey and yet also indignant at being arrested to begin with.
“You ask.” The driver pretends he has to pay attention to the empty road.
“I’m not asking!” Passenger cop is the kind of cop you hate most. Self-important and probably senior. He’s the kind of cop who serves the Program with a warrant a week.
“Ask me what?” You blame your backtalking on the early hour and your blatant disdain of cops. But hey, you made it into the car alive, at this point if they kill you it’s an execution and you’ll just be another statistic.
“Shut up! No talking!” The cop in the passenger seat thumps his fist against the grate and you shrink back a little. Your heart’s been pounding a dubstep remix since your door was busted down by the swat team before dawn and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing. Your immediate flight response has turned into your version of fighting. You curl against the leather seat and glare at them as they turn around.
“So did you do it on purpose?” The driver blurts, like he can’t help himself.
The other cop thumps his fist against the grate twice when you don’t answer fast enough.
“Answer the damn question!”
“I don’t even know what I did!” You work at a rehab center for supervillains! Last you checked psychology wasn’t a damn crime yet. Getting in touch with your emotions was still legal as far as you know! The villains like you because you have tattoos that say “Mom” on your knuckles and “Forever” on your inner wrist. They seem to think “Mom” and “Forever” are badass, which they are.
“Terrence Johnson Valdez!” The driver doesn’t turn but you see his fingers tighten on the wheel. “Elizabeth Jackson!”
“Last I heard they were doing fine,” you sound guilty. Maybe you always sound guilty. There’s nothing to be guilty about. “I didn’t know helping people was a crime!”
“You freed them from prison!”
“Have they broken the law since then?!” You lean forward and the cop in the passenger seat thumps his fist on the grate right in front of your face. You flinch back, but you keep glaring. Once you hit critical mass on fear there isn’t much worse you can feel.
The cops are silent and suddenly you realize: you did nothing wrong, these guys are just cops. Being bad cops.
“Oh okay,” you say slowly, feeling the fear churning in your gut turning into steely anger. Resolve that let you face down The Inferno with only a mild sunburn. “You’re holding grudges against civilians. What are your names?”
They don’t answer.
“Give me your badge numbers.”
They say nothing.
You’re going to sue the ever-loving fuck out of these cops.
Your lawyer used to be Destructo-Man. These cops are going down.