She couldn't believe it. The New York Pastry Department.
Rossi looked at the piece of paper. Her reassignment ticket. Courtesy of a chief with a bad attitude. And her, "consistent and dangerous inability to follow the chain of command."
Whatever. She wished she'd spit in his coffee more.
The "NYPD" was housed in a small apartment block on East 106th and York. Nowheresville, inbetween the thrumming Harlem and the blockbuster rest of the city. A desert of possible recognition in a city where people went viral for filming rats eating pizza.
Course, she wasn't in it for the fame. She wasin it for the excitment, however.
A dirty smushed bag of chips twirled past her boots in the light morning summer wind. Yeah. Plenty of excitement round these parts. Come to think of it, she'd heard about this department -- famously the only one in the whole city staffed by Locals, and just Locals -- but... well, she couldn't remember hearing anything about what they'd done. She'd seen them in parades and holidays and even some of the summer BBQs the NYPD held every year. Heck, they'd appeared at her academy graduation as an honor guard. But Rossi Perelli was just realizing, standing outside little Precinct 00, she had no idea what they did here.
She shouldered her bag. Well. Time to do what (future) detectives do best.
The door was open. She poked her head in.
"Hello?
Nothing.
She stepped in. "... Yo! Anyone here? It's Officer Perelli! The... new hire."
...Nothing. Nothing? Really?
It was a cute little office. A few desks loosely facing each other. Strip lights hung from wires anchored in a high ceiling. There were a couple filing cabinets, here, and there. The computer screensavers bounced from one corner to the other in asynchronous ballet. Empty coffee cups littered the desk. A small coffe-ground encrusted collection. Seeing actual grounds when she peered inside, Rossi had to admit she was surprised. She didn't think Locals drank coffee.
Her fingers lightly traced the rim of one of the cups as she circled and office chair and flopped odwn into it. Just an empty warehouse in Harlem. That's where every tragedy, comedy, ex, breakfast, funeral, decision, and moment had led up to in her life. This was her life. She leaned her head back in the chair and sighed.
"BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK!!!!!
(cont).
Clarity dollied back into her vision with Hollywood speed. She threw herself up into a sitting position, yanked by whatever wonder drug had just been pumped into her veins. Gasping for air, she finally got a picture of where she was.
An office, cramped, but neat. Pictures of the NYPD with the mayor. With kids at a swimming pool. The top of the Empire State Building. A couple bookshelves on either side of the room. And a cot. Which she was now in.
Surrounding her, the Pink Donut. In a tie, pants, dress shoes, a nice blue shirt. Stocky. Maybe five-five. To her right, disposing of the syringe in a medical waste bag, a tall donut in the same dress. Wearing a cap that covered its eyes. Six feet. Quiet, barely paying her any attention.
She let herself catch her breath. Looked around the room. Landed on the Pink Donut. It had a nametag, she realized -- Homer. Just like that.
She looked at it. "Homer?"
It nodded.
She wiped her nose and extended her other hand. "I'm Rossi Perelli. I'm your new rookie."
The rest of the morning was... actually pretty normal. They set her up at a desk. Homer and Longjohn -- the tall donut -- were finishing up paperwork in the office, so it fell to Bismarck -- the K9 officer, a 3'2" Jelly Donut Local who always wore his full body armor, it seemed -- to get her entered into the system. Precinct 00 was part of the overall NYPD infrastructure, but due to their separate nature, Rossi learned over the course of the morning, they were required to use an entirely distinct verification system.
The donut holes rolled around on the floor while Bismarck pointed her to the various pages and forms she'd have to fill out. His movements, unlike the simple Homers's or the silent Longjohn's, were... fesity. She didn't know if she'd upset him by riling up his donut holes, or if he was just like that. She had a feeling it was both.
The login process took over an hour. After that, Bismarck came over, and nodded. He typed in a few commands and brought up a gridded webpage full of numbers, names, and addresses. That's when Rossi found out what Precinct 00 really did.
Because it was assumed the Locals wouldn't be going out on many calls, they were used as the bureaucratic wastepaper basket for Precincts all over the city. Any spreadsheet, log, database, or other genus of mundane analytics Officer Who-Gives-A-Crap didn't want to do themselves, they sent over to Precinct 00. Now that Rossi thought about it, she remembered officers joking about "double-o-ing" a project or casefile. She'd assumed it just meant they'd toss it out, or throw it to some computer intelligence designed to handle the crap-grubbing. Once again, she was unsurprised to find she'd underestimated the NYPD
There was a backlog of Patrol Logs from all Five Boroughs stretching back years. All of them, all of them, according to Department policy, had to be double-checked for accuracy. That meant comparing, line-by-line, three separate spreadsheets -- one for officers, one for patrol logs entered manually by those officers, and one for the GPS pings automatically sent to the database from their squad cars, every four minutes. Normally this work would be done through a bookkeeping computer program, maybe even a designated Local if they managed to find one, if one existed. But the Department believed -- the automated voice of the database management software informed her thorugh a guided orientation -- that such work could only successfully be accomplished by diligent, careful, human effort.
So it was a nothing job for nothing people. And once again, Rossi found herself facing a new and horrifying existential fact that this was her life for the foreseeable future. And nothing would change that.
She started on "Entry 1".
Ten minutes in and she wished she had her service revolver for reasons that would make Nona say a whole extra daily rosary.
She had to wonder -- she wasn't a religious person. Sure, yes, no duh, she went to Christmas Eve mass and Easter Vigil. But that was for Nona. After the discovery of the frontier and the emergence of Locals, her Grandmother had become even more convinced of her faith.
"Don't you see, Rossi?" she would say. "Our Lord works in mysterious ways."
The girl guessed what the old woman was getting at was what a number of religious folk from every walk had said in the wake of the hidden frontier: if this was real, what else could be?
Rossi sighed. She loved her Nona. And she didn't mind going to church. One of her clearest, most distinct memories from childhood was sitting in a pew on a Friday afternoon. Her Nona next to her, praying as the priest gave the homily. And her gazing up at the stained glass window next to her and above. It showed a young woman in a suit of armor. Her boot on the neck of a dragon. A halo around her head. Behind her, a field of flowers. She liked to imagine such a violent, quick battle taking place in such a beautiful place. The thought the young knight, aided by God, would make sure no blood spilled on any of the flowers. That you could, with help, fight monsters and keep the world beautiful at the same time. No one, nothing, had to share the mess of your work. No stains, anywhere. Just a job done, a sacred mission complete, and the World as pretty and full as it ever had been.
Plus, how cool would it be to fight a dragon?
Another question occasionally tugged on her: maybe you had to fight it... but did you need to kill the dragon too?
Something tapped her shoulder. She turned around. Bismarck had come over with a fresh pot of coffee. It gestured to her cup.
"oh. Sure." She passed it over. "Thank you."
The donut filled up her cup, then handed it hand nudged his head. She got the message -- must be breaktime.
She got up and followed the little guy. They went down the hall into the breakroom. Homer was reading an outdoor magazine in the plush armchair. Longjohn was waiting at the folding table, a fan of cards spread out in front of him, opposite another fan of cards and an empty chair. There was a third empty chair at the table. The donut holes snoozed underneath.
Bismarck climbed up into the chair. He looked at his cards, then at Rossi. He motioned to the empty chair.
"You sure?"
He motioned again.
She took a seat at the table. She'd never played poker with donuts before.
Turns out, Bismarck was bad. Really bad. And Longjohn was merciless. It became pretty clear to Rossi pretty quickly that Bismarck's aggressive playstyle was directed almost entirely at her. She guessed he'd brought her on in the hopes she'd lose.
By the end of the game thirty minutes later, Longjohn had a stack of chips three feet tall. Rossi had a little pile of twelve. Bismarck had nothing. The small donut hole had come up to Rossi in the meantime, nuzzling her leg. She pet him on the head as she laid her cards down. "Flush."
Longjohn nodded and put his down. Bismarck looked between the two of them, quaked, and slammed his cards everywhere. He got off the chair and flipped it over.
An alarm sounded. They all looked up.
At the switchboard station in Chicago, a lone Original Stuffed Pizza sat in a dark room sipping coffee. Cheers played on an old boxy T.V. ontop of the board.
A dull red bulb went off on its command console. It toggled a button and sent it to Precinct 00 in new York.
The bulb dimmed. It waited. When it stayed in the dark, put its feet up, and went back to watching Cheers.
It took a second for the siutation to register. Perelli didn't even think Precinct 00 got alarms. And this wasn't a loudspeaker/dispatch call-out -- this was like a siren for a bombing.
The Locals were in an entirely different mode. The donut holes scampered past her out the door. Bismarck scrambled out of his chair after them. Longjohn coolly laid his cards down. Homer was already by them. He nodded. Left. Longjohn followed. Perelli, after nother stunned moment, snapped into it. She ran after them. A light queasy pit started to form in her stomach. What her brother used to call a "stomach smile". It worked its way a little onto her face.
Finally. Some action.
His hands danced over the keyboard. Static crackled the air.
On the desk in the dirty warehouse garage, a chunky 30 year-old computer bucked. Small bands of electricity crawled up and down its sides. On-screen, a pixel landscape, some nostalgic RPG. A blocky character standing in front of the mouth of a cave. Wide. Gaping. Endless. In the middle of a mountain range.
On the ground next to the computer table, an open doorframe, rounded at the top. The guy's partner paced behind him, eyes flicking to the monitor. Then to the frame. He had a radio backpack on with a croooked thin antenna and old headphones. He cupped one to his ear while he paced. "It's too much. We should kill it."
The Computer Man glanced at the frame. In the middle, almost too small to see, something pale green. A little square. A pixel. Grass color, from the other side.
"No," the guy kept typing. "It's just enough."
She didn't expect them to have a garage.
Or a battlevan.
She didn't even think they really existed -- but that was what was writte on the side of the monstrosity that took up 90% of the space in the warehouse garage. The only other stuff that could fit were the donuts, her, some lawnmowing equipment -- why? -- and a row of SWAT armor and R9 stun rifles.
Because there hadn't been time to properly fit her for armor, Homer had tugged her over to his locker and pointed at the spare set he had. They all dressed together in a tense rush. There was no precedent for this with her, and the realization slugged her like a rubber blluet. She'd gone out on calls before, sure. But Phil had always been pretty chill and the worse she'd ever seen was a drug den apartment fire. They couldn't do anything when they arrived except make suer the neighborhood didn't crowd too much and get in the way of the oncoming firetrucks. Once that had been done and the trucks came in, all there was left to do was hang out and make sure nothing too sideways happened. Phil had actually popped the trunk and brought out two beers. She'd almost refused. They drank them while the firefighters worked and the building burned. It had been the end of May.
The crack of Homer's R9 snapped her out the reverie.
Homer tapped on her helmet. He pointed at the back of the van. The message was obvious. Get in and hold tight. She nodded and headed around the back, pulling open the door. The van was pitch black save for a red light. It was cavernous, fifteen seast on either side. She took a spot in the midle. Through the cabin up ahead, there were thumps and poudings on teh bulkhead. A slat opened up in the center. Homer poked his head through. She saw Bismarck crawling behind him, a donut hole riding on his shoulder. Another donut hole squeezed its head in the space between Hoemr and the edge of the slat. With a free hand, Homer pointed to a terminal just to the right of where he was.
She went to it and keyed it up. A navigation map was already running. Perelli recognized the software -- military-grade, probably with a dedicated satellite uplink. Where the hell did pastries get military hardware from, and for what?
The van's engine rumbled to life. The whole chassis shook. Something crackled -- speakers. The navigation screen switched to a quad-sected view of four partitions -- HOmer, the driver, Longjohn in the crowd control hose, Bismarck in the sidecar sonic cannon, and Rossi in the back on hardware. On his screen, Bismarck was fiddling with a bunch of knobs and dials. She'd never seen a sonic cannon with that configuration -- then she realized it was a radio."
"Calling all cars,
Calling all cars,"
The garage door shuddered up and slowly rose.
"Be on the lookout for a tall lightskinned brother with dimples,
Wearing a black kangol and sneakers,"
Late-morning light streamed in, bouncing of the walls and reflecting off Rossi's visor.
"Last seen on Farmer's Boulevard,",
The door was almost up. "Heading east,
Alias, LL Cool J."
The door was up. The engine roared. Homer checked his mirrors. Longjohn was still. Bismarck hopped up and punched the ceiling. Rossi could see her reflection in the NAV console. She was a badass. Almost like a knight.
"He's BAD.
AAAAAAAHHHHHH --"
Homer throttled the engine. Cape Canaveral had seen quieter days.
"No rapper can rap quite like I can --!"
There was now a chunk of green the size a small frozen pizza in the middle of the Front Door.
The man at the computer had finished typing. Now he was busy bringing jugs of coolant up from the warehouse basement. The other man was still pacing, hand smushing a headphone against his head.
"Hey," the Computer Man heaved, eraching the front door. He had no time to double over and pant, and moved immediately to pour the coolant into one of the tanks shaped like an office watercooler. "Can you get off the radio and help."
Radio Man shook his head. He held up a finger. The Computer Man was, for a moment, remorseful he'd left his sidearm in the truck.
"No?"
Radio Man only emphasized his one finger.
"Hey, asshole -- "
"Shut up! Dude, shut up, right -- " he went quiet again. He listened.
The Comptuer Man wiped his brow and sighed. He poured more coolant in. Looking up, he saw the spot had grown. Like, a family size pizza patch... of grass... his stomach growled and his arms burned. His eyes darkened. He was so tired of being hungry.
He emptied the last of the coolant. The Front Door was still steaming. More, it looked.
Radio Man took off his headphones.
Computer Man noticed his look. "What?"
They sent the NYPD."
"Yeah? So?"
"No -- The NYPD."
"... Load the truck."