Shadow Hunters

Charges

The morning toil came to an end.The girl shivered despite the blanket wrapped around her. The wild man wasn't given similar favour. The two policeman threw him to the cell and let him curse to his hearts content.

The other nicer police man sitting on the desk opened a huge diary and scribbled in her name. A much skinny one in his loose police outfit typed in the same information into their computer.

The cursing man in the cell was charged of assaulting a defenceless minor. The doctor in the station heed to her injuries- a band aid on her knee and ice pack on her head. No problem at all. But the inquiries posed the most problem.

"The man assaulted you first you say?"

Her lower lip vibrated. "Yes."

"Have you met this man before?"
"No"

"He could be a stalker..."

She knew better. But the method for a plausible explaination was deeply lacking.

"No. He was attacking a... a dog so I intervened and he attacked me as well."

The police man swivelled the pen between his fingers, his blue eyes weighing on her. A tedious pause. Then the questions again.

"What were you doing out in the street during a storm?"

"I was on my way to work." It was a semi truth.

"Where do you live?"

"17 Street of Enville Plaza"

"Your work place?"

"A cafe. The Cherry Coffee Cafe around the street."

"That is two blocks away sir" the skinny one told his boss, apparently after searching for it on the net. "On the opposite direction from where she was found." The skinny police man's voice exuberant with a tad of suspicion.

The other police man with the pen turned and looked at her, his expression waiting an explaination.

She stuttered. "Its the dog. I was gonna check on him first since the storm was so aggressive. There I saw the man hurting it so I wanted to rescue it."

"You have hurt the man on his head. Account says with a wooden board?"

She agreed. "Yes because he was unstoppable."

The police man heaved a sigh. "Its muddled up miss. First you say he assaulted you first now you admit on hitting him first."

Her ease dropped. She was wrapping away a good story. She regained herself to clarify.

"You have to understand. I was there first to check on the dog but after sometime, he came in and attacked the dog. The dog was squeeling for help and no matter how much I yelled for him to stop he wouldn't!" The flashing image of a mighty shadow creature screaming in pain clouded her mind, her voice filling with angry desperation the more she recalled.

"It was the only thing left to do! I didn't know he was insane. I just had to stop him from abusing an innocent creature!"

From the far, the wild man fouled the air with his obscinities.

The fat police man pondered for a while. "Are you in any gang?"

"No" she answered timidly.

The skinny police man on the computer consulted  his partner. "The guy is crazy sir. And you know how teenage girls have a soft spot for street dogs and cats. Maybe she was just helping the poor thing"

The police man put down his pen and knitted his fingers.  "Maybe but with the increasing gang nuisance in the city, I can't let her slide so easily."

He picked up his telephone receiver and spoke into it.
"Yeah...I'm sending this girl to you. Screen her."

For the minutes after, she was immersed in confusion. "Let's go miss" the police man called toward another police man and instructed him to escort her to department 6.

"We need the  department of civic disciplinary to do a check on you. I need to be sure your not involved in any gangs."

She was two steps away when the same police man called out. "This has nothing to do with the current case here. It's a simple screening." His voice sounded half apologetic and half strict.

She was walked through the hallways to another compartment of the station. This one had five officers in charge and she was made to sit on one of the desks.

The officer in charge of that desk sat opposite to her and wore a stern look. He gave her occasional glances as if scanning her face and typed furiously into his keyboard to search results from the database for CC tv footages collected over for the last three months. It was odd. The city's own police department never significantly meddled with the numerous gangs littered in the city. However, the city police's own dormancy toward the issue has lead up to a fluctuation in vandalism and gang fights spurring all around, sometime wild rivalry resulted in jammed traffic, closed shops and malls and much other adversery. The situation itself called for control.

She had nothing to worry on this matter. Her participation in gang obligations is closs to none. Even her friends and acquintaces are not known to be members yet the fifteen minute wordless search made her anxious.

The officer stopped and studied his computer screen. He called out the other officers in his department to his desk to point them to a video clip. "Do you see any resemblance?"

She was sweating. The world outside was violent and shivering and she concentrated on its finest details. The men spoke in short sentences, sometime simply grunting and nodding. It took another five minutes.

At the end of that five minutes, they agreed. Her blond shoulder length hair was clearly distinct in the coloured night lights. Her height and clothing choice seems the same as well. Out of the thirteen extracted footage, she was clearly seen on seven of them, working her hand tool on the circuit box, triggering an entire street to light less utopia. Perhaps not a gang agenda, but this was enough of a law break.

"You have been tampering with our circuit boxes." The officer on the computer stated. "I'm afraid this calls for some serious police actions."

The statement ruined her. The circuit boxes. Against everyone else's recklessness, the circuit box incidents she committed were just scratches. It was done with the intention to save, it never occurred to her as a true simile to a crime.

"No! I do it for a reason."

The other officers who gathered around the desk dispersed back to their places, signing a good catch.

Most would start with denial. She started with an explanation. "I don't do it for the sole purpose of destroying properties or...or as a part of gang activity. I am not in any gang!" She breathed out loud. The sentence was very sincere. The officer waited for more of her testimony, his dark eyes watching her.

"Its not like you think at all..."

"I know why you do it." The officer cut her off in his serene voice. "But they are not your people.."