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Because Trant was a lefty dink, he suggested that the C-Wing needed a team building exercise, and because Pryce had heard the arguments echoing throughout the silk mill, he agreed. Jean had tried to argue, said that Jamrock couldn’t afford not having six officers and Trant not on duty. Pryce had responded that their presence would not change how overwhelmed the precinct was which like, yeah, true, but it felt like a poor excuse.
But he was the boss.
So Kim drove Harry and Jean in his Kineema and Trant took Chester, Mack, and Judit in his Coupris (the paperwork situation was so bad and backlogged at the 41st that Chester and Mack’s transfer hadn’t gone through completely, so when New And Improved Amnesiac Harry came back with the Kimball, they decided to give C-Wing another chance and their paperwork was yanked from the system, like they never even left). Judit and Jean had shared pitying looks at their car arrangements, Judit had offered to switch, but Jean sucked it up and refused. “My partner, I’ve got to suffer through it.”
(In the end, the only one who suffered during the drive was Kim, tapping a rhythm with two fingers on a steering lever as he stared at Trant’s bumper. “Would you feel better if you played Speedfreaks?” Harry asked.
Kim shook his head and replied “There’s no point to listening to fast music if I can’t drive fast.” The tapping stopped as he realized that he was complaining like a child in front of Jean.
But Jean just snorted. “Just go around Trant, do it Lieutenant, free us all from our suffering.”
“Yeah Kim, go so fast you’ll knock our tits clean off!”
“I will gladly sacrifice my tits to the cause. The cause of not doing this shit.”
“I’d hate to be responsible for you two losing your tits,” Kim said and kept at an even speed.)
Their trip ended in a vaguely okay and incredibly empty part of Grand Couron, next to one of Couron’s housing failures. It was a drab building, gray bricked, with tarps over the windows, so plain it was more like a prison than a home. Though, to be fair, the sparse graffiti did add pops of color, though that certainly wasn’t the owner’s vision.
There were three things out of place with the rest of the building. The first was a shed parked at one corner of the building. The second was also a shed, at the other corner of the building. The third was a tiny—and yet obscenely tall—lime green motor carriage, parked sideways across the faded lines of parking spots. The horrific parking job was only slightly made tolerable by the fact that it was the only one there.
The door of the motor carriage opened and a man with long blond hair and a sleek goatee dropped out of the MC as the others pulled in and flanked his. He adjusted his sunglasses, raised his hand, and waved.
“What the fuck!” Jean yelled out the window when the Kineema had been turned off and he was once again audible.
“Hey Vic,” the man—G-Bevy to six of the eight there, Guillaume Bevy one reasonably guessed, and a man wearing Jean’s wig to the eighth—said, waving lazily at him. “You still doing shitty?”
“Always! Now what are you doing here?”
“Trant said that he was conducting a C-Wing team-building exercise, invited me, I got curious, Torson please don’t pick me—” the last words left in a rush of air as Mack wrapped him up in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground with a whoop. Bevy choked and Chester ran over and gave him three hardy pats on the back that were probably supposed to be comradely but mostly just seemed aggressive and then he laughed about it.
“How the fuck did Trant get ahold of you?” Jean yelled—which really wasn’t necessary anymore—as he slid out of the Kineema.
“We talk regularly!” Trant said cheerfully.
“The fuck you do that for?” Vic slapped Bevy’s lower back (ass-adjacent) as he passed. “Crazy fuck.”
Mack laughed and let Bevy stand on his own two legs again. Judit slid in to shake his hand and give him a polite greeting, and then Harry approached with a friendly grin.
“Hi, good to meet you, I’m Harry,” Harry said and stuck his hand out.
Bevy narrowed his eyes (which no one could tell behind his lenses, but he was sneering a bit so it was implied). “I know.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
There was a bit of awkward silence that Kim let linger, watching Harry carefully.
Harry swallowed, then forced The Expression onto his face. He snapped finger pistols at Bevy. “Your hair does not look like a wig at all!”
“Excuse me?” Bevy said and Kim stepped in to introduce himself, complimenting his work on a recent story that Kim mostly remembered. Harry attempted to slink away, to hide like a shameful salamander hides under a rock, but Bevy addressed him again. “So the amnesia story is legit huh?”
Harry grimaced and nodded. He started to say ‘Sorry’, saw Kim and felt the exasperated aura of Jean behind him, and didn’t say it.
Bevy sighed, chewed his lip, then walked over to Harry and held his hand out in truce. “Guillaume Bevy, reporter for Channel 8 where I’m a professional nuisance to cops. Up until fairly recently, I was a police reporter for C-Wing.”
Harry shook Bevy’s hand with a nod. “What’s a police reporter do?”
“Your reports, most of the time,” Bevy said because he could only not be sarcastic for so long. “Call me ‘Bevy’ or ‘G-Bevy’, just not Guillaume. Don’t need the disco comparisons…again.”
Harry nodded, considered a few different nicknames, and tucked those fun thoughts away into his mental jacket pocket, for later use.
“So what are we doing?” Chester said, or rather half-yelled like a child who was getting ignored.
Trant clapped his hands. “Right! Is this building Bevy?”
“This is the assigned building.”
“We get a whole building to ourselves?” Mack gaped.
Jean pointed his finger at Mack’s face. “No, no. Stop entertaining that thought right now.”
“I wasn’t entertaining anything!” Mack protested even though he was fantasizing about going into rooms with a sledgehammer and sledgehammering walls. The building was a Grand Couron staple: abandoned, but presentable enough to be a decent mirage of sustainable life. Some of those buildings deserved to be broken down to the foundation, deserved to have something useful happen on their soil. But wrecking teams were expensive and Mack deserved good things. This one was a bit less impressive, the windows were covered with tarp, but that just made them more destructible.
“Stop.”
“Vic, stop glaring at me. Look, I don’t know what the fuck happens on these! Maybe we were just going to chill here and drink beer, maybe we’re not, I can’t be blamed for considering the possibilities!”
Harry snorted. “You think Trant’s cool enough to let us just shoot the shit?”
“I didn’t realize coolness was a factor here,” Trant said, so cheerfully it was hard to hear the dry sarcasm dousing his tone. “Regardless, we do not ‘get the whole building’, Bevy just, ah, got permission for the outside, right?”
Bevy snorted. “Yeah, I yelled inside if everyone was good with this and no one's said no, we're fine. This is owned by the bank anyway, they give less of a shit.”
Harry looked around at everyone to see how much he needed to care about squatters, but over half of the gathered group had spent their childhoods couch surfing (including Harry, not that he remembered) and none of them could be bothered to give a shit.
Bevy slapped his hands together. “Anyway, Trant came to me with for help with a ‘team building exercise’—”
“The air quotes are really unnecessary,” Trant complained softly.
“—and I thought about how I put furniture together with my roommates, and how that tested our friendship.”
“Furniture?” Chester scoffed.
“Yeah, it can be a quite stressful experience when you don’t bully your roommates into putting the bed frames together for you.”
Mack pointed an accusing finger at Bevy. “Hey, our mattresses are on the floor, don’t talk about shit you don’t understand!”
Bevy stared at Mack and then shook his head and held up his hands. “I’m mistaken then.”
“Yeah you are, fuck you.”
“Fuck me then.” He blinked, but no one could see his eyes so it looked like he just started disassociating for a second. “I’ve lost the plot.”
Harry raised his hand. “You were in the middle of a metaphor Mr. Bevy.”
Bevy took a second to have his world pop back into alignment after seeing Harry Fucking Du Bois acting like a shy schoolboy, then continued. “Right. So that was tumbling around in my mind—” Bevy said, spinning his hand next to his temple to illustrate the tumbling, “—and I thought about what would be beneficial for…you all to undertake. And so, I came up with this.” He gestured at the wide gray walls of the buildings. “Call it community outreach. We’re going to enrich the lives of the residents here.”
“The team building exercise is this,” Trant stepped in. “You will be divided into two teams, and assigned a side of this building. And on your side, you will enrich the building for the residents.”
Kim sighed. “Are you asking us to engage in graffito?”
“Kim, why are you sighing like that? Graffiti isn’t a crime,” Harry protested. “The only victim is property.”
“Spoken like someone who draws dicks on everything,” Judit said with a sigh.
Chester squawked out a laugh and then slapped his hands over his mouth.
Judit raised a finger. “May I request a ‘no phallic drawings’ rule?”
“Request granted,” Bevy said. “Boobs are off the table too. They are not enriching.”
“‘Not enriching’,” Chester scoffed. “Some of us don’t have the privilege of regular boobs in our lives.”
“Sounds like a you problem. But to answer the lieutenant, no, it doesn’t have to be graffiti.”
“In fact, I’d prefer if it wasn’t just graffiti,” Trant said, then grinned. “Why don’t you just think of these as extensions, build the most enriching extension!”
“They won’t be up to code though,” Harry said under his breath, looking over at Kim. Kim nodded gravely.
Bevy pointed at two opposing corners, where the back of a shed could be seen. “I’ve purloined these sheds—”
“How the fuck do you purloin a shed?” Jean muttered.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Your MC is so small.”
“Anyway!” Bevy coughed. “They’re filled with various shit of questionable importance and relevance.”
“Feel free to use this garage as well.” Trant said, turning to gesture vaguely at it (and he was turned away from Jean, and the wind was blowing towards Trant and pushing his voice away, and Jean was still caught up in the sheds, and Trant didn’t speak loudly anyway, so his words drifted away; these details are relevant and important to Jean specifically, though not quite yet). He turned back with a grin. “This is an exercise in creativity, in thinking outside the box, and thinking quickly too, as you’ll only have thirty minutes. Thoughts?”
Everyone gave vague reluctant but affirmative sounds in response.
“Excellent!” Trant said with a grin, and then Bevy took up the speaking torch again.
“Now, for teams we thought we’d make it simple: Vicquemare, Du Bois, and Kitsuragi on one team. McLaine, Torson, and Minot on the other. Sounds perfect, right?”
“Wrong,” Jean grunted. He looked over at Chester and pointed at his nose. “I will pay you to swap with me. Any amount, just so I don’t have to work with him on my technical day off.”
Trant clapped his hands together thrice. “Jean, that is exactly the sort of behavior that this exercise is aiming to fix.”
“Name your price McLaine.”
Harry pouted, but Jean was glaring at Chester and didn’t see it. He wouldn’t’ve given a shit if he did see it though.
Chester leaned in close to Jean and said in a low tone, “Actually, this sounds like a lot of fun, we get to fuck around, and I don’t want the Kimball killing my vibe.”
Kim turned and looked Chester in the eye.
Chester flinched back and raised his hand like he was going to wave, then decided against it and faced forward.
Kim cleared his throat. “Considering the…unique configuration of C-Wing, the three of us working together is logical.”
Jean crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “Fine,” he said like it was fine and he wasn’t grabbing his arms like he was trying to dig his nails in through his shirt.
“Great. Any other complaints?”
None of them had any, but they still took the lull as Trant and Bevy looked over the six of them to converse.
“Dude, I’ve got so many ideas,” Mack whispered to Chester.
“We don’t even know what we’ve got,” Judit said, overhearing them because Mack couldn’t really whisper.
“Minot, I’ve got so many ideas. So many of them. One of them will work, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll improvise.” He mimed an explosion near his temple to illustrate his mindblowing ideas.
“Just try to contain your grand ideas to reality. So it’s feasible.” It was meant to be a statement, but it felt tired and begging.
“Don’t let your dreams be dreams, Torso!” Chester encouraged.
Judit let out an ever-suffering sigh.
Harry clapped his hands together. “Well, we’ll need a foreman first of all!” Harry looked over at Kim and pointed at him. “Kim, you’re dressed like a foreman.”
Kim looked over at Harry and raised an eyebrow. He was dressed like a pilot.
Jean let out a groan of eternal torment and looked over at Judit, who looked up at him. He shared a solemn nod with her, knowing how they, the mature ones of their groups, would suffer most from this.
Judit was looking just over Jean’s shoulder at Kim, nodding at him as they were the mature ones of their respective groups and would have to “watch the kids,” as it were.
Kim raised an eyebrow at Judit because he was intimately familiar with his flaws and the depths of his immaturity; he had transferred to be with Harry, after all.
“I guess that’s a no?” Bevy looked over at Trant and shrugged. “Let’s call that a no.”
“Excellent then! Lieutenants, your side is on my right. The others, my left.”
“We’ll be supervising,” Bevy said, looking back and forth at the two teams as they took their places, raising his voice to be heard as the distance lengthened between them. “Just popping in and out, don’t try to recruit us, we’re just here to watch. That’ll be all then. Thirty minutes, your time starts…”
Trant put a whistle into his mouth and blew. Everyone turned to their assigned sheds and threw the doors open…
→
Except for Harry, who covered his face with his hands and stood shock still.
“Oh for fuck’s sake—”
“Shhhh, I’m trying to find my vision.”
“His vision,” Jean sneered. “The fuck does that mean? The fuck is he doing? Actually, you know what?”
Kim hummed.
“I don’t care.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I’d appreciate his help, but…no, I said I don’t care, and I don’t.” Jean slapped the door of the shed a couple times. “How’s it going in there? Find anything useful?”
“Yes. I think this is going to be a help,” Kim said and came out of the shed with a rainbow patterned kite.
Jean stared at the kite, then looked up at Kim. “Kits. Be serious here.”
“It’s a pop of color.”
“I’m going to pop color on your face,” Jean replied like a schoolboy. Then he remembered that he was talking to Kitsuragi and straightened his shoulders back while he ducked his head down. “Sorry sir, I didn’t mean that.”
Kim opened his hands and let the kite drift to the ground. “Your point has been made,” he said, voice dry as bone. He turned and went back into the shed, and Jean followed, metaphorical tail tucked between his legs.
Trant sighed and shook his head. Team was not being built.
←
Mack jogged to his shed. “We’re going to do this in under thirty minutes, if anything!”
“Easy!” Chester responded.
Judit sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and dove into the fray.
→
Harry still had his face covered, living in his own little world where they weren’t on a time limit. Jean and Kim had taken stock of the shed and were now just talking through various ideas and possibilities, none of which were particularly good. Kim was not a creative person and Jean was not a solo thinker. The kite, striped with dirty boot prints, was looking more and more appealing.
And then, inspiration. Jean looked over at Bevy and snapped his fingers. “G-Bevy. Is this shed available to use?”
Bevy sighed. “Yes, you can use anything—”
“Nononono, the shed.”
“Oh.” Bevy thought for a second, then decided it was funny. “Go ahead.”
Jean clapped his hands. “Great. So, we move the shed—well, first we take all the stuff out, we knock the back out, then we pick it up and put it on the front door! Easy, that’s an extension right there!”
Kim sighed. “You said ‘lift it up’ like that’s going to be an easy thing to do.”
“It’s an idea.”
Kim only hummed and stared into the shed, rubbing his chin, just silently taking in the whole of the shed. He nodded to himself and stepped in.
Jean looked over at Harry.
Harry shivered as the wind blew over him, the first sign in minutes that he was not, in fact, a statue.
Jean waved his hand at him. “I don’t even want to know what he’s thinking about,” he said to no one in particular and entered the shed behind Kim.
←
Bevy was not kidding about ‘shit of questionable importance and relevance’ because the sheds were filled with so much shit. It looked like he raided a couple construction sites (and after Mack threw piping across the road with a disgusted shriek, Trant said that nothing had been used, and that it was all leftover, no Mack, he did not break into a house to get their shit pipes).
Chester poked his head out of the shed. “Do we need guttering?” He brandished said guttering. “You know, if it rains?”
Judit and Mack stroked their chins in synchronized thought. “I’m going to say we can probably go easy on the ‘guttering’,” Judit said, and Mack nodded.
→
They were starting to have a concept. Kim had found a tarp and wheeled out an old trash bin, and Jean was struggling with a slab of wood that was probably a door in its past life.
Harry, meanwhile, was doing nothing, absolute fuck-all.
“Harry! Maybe give me a hand!” Jean said, rattling the wood half to jog it loose, half to get Harry’s attention. “Thirty minutes, Harry!” Jean reminded, like that would spur Harry into moving. “Thirty minutes!”
Harry remained un-spurred, so Kim walked over to Jean to help. They pulled it out and tried to get it to stand upright. It wavered, Kim grabbed his trash bin and they balanced the door against it.
“That’s a wall,” Jean said, “that’s a wall right there.”
Kim hummed in reply, glancing at Jean for a second before looking away, shoulders relaxing a fraction. Jean wasn’t quite grinning, but he was smiling, quite proud of their construction of a door leaning against a trash bin.
And, as if sensing Jean’s happiness and joy, Harry shivered and woke from his stupor. “I’ve got an idea.”
Kim hummed a curious sound and looked over at Harry. Jean made a sound too, but his was more a grumble or a growl.
Harry looked at the two of them, the trashcan, the planks of wood. “We’re going to need a MC,” Harry said with confidence and walked away.
Jean stared after him. “But—huh—no wait! No! Come the fuck back here shitkid!”
“What!” Harry called, almost around the corner of the building.
“Get! Back! Here!” Jean yelled, pointing at the ground with each word.
Harry wandered back to them. Kim wasn’t in the mood to lecture Harry nor listen to Jean lecture Harry, so he took a small pallet and brought it to the construction zone. Harry snapped finger guns at Kim. “Looking good!”
Jean snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s face until Harry looked at him. “Hey, pay attention shitkid.”
“I am!” he said, looking over at Kim as he examined a t-shaped bit of plumbing.
“Sure. Whatever. What the fuck are you going to do with an MC?”
Harry grinned and stretched his arms out in front of him, thumb and pointer finger pointing outward to form a rectangle, and he framed his idea between his fingers. “Reverse the MC onto the front of the building.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Jean, it will be a better extension than this,” Harry said, gesturing at the door and trash bin combo. Kim raised his eyebrow at Harry and put down an old wooden chair with powder blue cushions.
Jean held out his hands in a similar framing motion, but in between his fingers he held only mocking. “Well go find an MC then! And we’ll do this while you’re…fucking jacking MCs!”
Harry snapped finger guns at Jean. “Yes! You do that! Right!” And Harry marched away with his head held high.
“He’s nearly fifty,” Jean muttered to no one in particular.
Kim put down a ladder he was holding and looked at Harry’s retreating back. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head. “He named me foreman and then fucked off…”
←
Mack continued to work while Chester and Judit looped around to neutral ground for more material. “What’s the chance that the garage actually has something useful?”
“Low,” Judit grunted, opening the garage door. They looked into the darkness, grimaced, and dove in.
Judit rummaged around and dragged out two tall sticks of wood. “Okay, I’ve found some sturdier bits of pole we can use as a…column, or bracer. Is there anything—”
“Oi, Judit! Look at these massive spoons!”
→
Harry sidled up to Bevy, bent in on himself to make him look smaller, meeker. “Mr Bevy, can I perhaps—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Can I even ask—”
“No.”
Harry pouted.
Bevy sighed and felt guilty despite his best efforts to not give a fuck. “I heard you. You want an MC. There is no way I’m letting you behind a motor carriage when your Coupris is in the bay.”
“But I didn’t do that! That man is dead!”
“Okay. Then I don’t let strangers handle my MC.”
“Completely understandable, have a nice day.” Harry saluted and wandered away from Bevy. He now had no plan, but a little exploration with a pinch of Jamrock Shuffling was the perfect recipe to stimulate the brain juices. He peered over at the garage, where his fellows were rummaging. He laughed. “Whoa, Chester those are massive spoons!”
“They are!” Chester yelled back.
“How much for them?”
“You can’t afford it, Mullen!”
“Harry, would you like spray paint?”
“Officer Minot you are beautiful, but in a feminist way.”
“I do not know what that means,” Judit said and began rolling spray cans towards him. And with those spray cans, an idea rolled over too.
“Hey, how much longer are you going to be using the garage? Cause I want it.”
“Just push in any time,” Chester said, tucking his spoons into his back pocket.
“No, I need the garage. As a whole.”
“You can’t take the garage as a whole. It's neutral ground.”
“I argue that this building is very poorly constructed.”
“I would agree,” Judit said.
“And this building is off center. This garage is not located in the exact center, as it should be. It is more on this side, my team’s side. So this is our territory.”
“Can you prove that, Mullen?”
“Yeah, get out some measuring tape, Cheese—”
“That has not and will never be my nickname and you will not make it a thing.”
“—and I’ll prove it!”
“I’m inclined to believe him,” Judit said, “but you can’t bar us from supplies regardless of orientation.”
Harry gasped. “Officer, do you think so lowly of me? I thought we’ve connected over this brief stretch of time. I’m not insulted, I’m sad. I don’t want to cheat, I just need the garage in its closed state. So I’d like you to not be there. For the foreseeable future of this task. Which’d be the rest of it.”
“What if we need your garage items for our vision?”
“Try not to?”
Judit sighed. “See anything else useful?”
“No, we’re probably good,” Chester said, grabbing up things other than the spoons that he set aside. “The garage is yours, Tequila.”
“Thank you for your sacrifice. You will regret it when you see what I’ve done!” Harry let out a triumphant laugh and closed the garage door.
←
“Oi, Mack!”
“Yeah?” Mack yelled back to Chester as he ran back to their extension.
Chester tossed an array of clutter onto the ground and reached into his back pocket. “Look at what I’ve got!” Chester yelled, holding his massive spoons over his head. Mack yelled some inarticulate sound back at him, no words formed but the joy clearly present, a wide grin splitting his face. Chester made a similar sound in return and jumped up and down with the enthusiasm suited for a man two decades younger.
Bevy looked over the scene and said half to himself “There is no love more pure than the love between two heterosexual men and their massive spoons.”
Chester threw one of his spoons at Mack and the wide scoop slapped Mack in the center of his big dumb bald head, which only made him laugh louder. Judit sighed and thought of home.
→
The Lieutenants had made progress. Conceptually, at least. Construction-wise, they had a plan for the other side, and their slab of wood that was once a door and was now a wall was ready to support a ceiling. Kim held one corner of the tarp while Jean tucked the tarp over the top of the wood. “Good?” Kim asked and Jean raised his thumb and walked back over to Kim.
The wood fell over, the tarp billowing off the top of the wood and fluttering down to Kim’s feet.
Jean sucked in a breath against his teeth.
Kim dropped the corner he was holding, letting it join the rest of the tarp in a sad little pile, put his hands on his hips, and hummed.
“Guess that was always going to happen,” Jean muttered.
Kim nodded and tapped his foot at the mess.
←
The Officer Team’s idea was to create an awning. They had a large tarp tied around one gutter, and had planned to utilize a window for another corner. It would stretch out to a center point that Judit was working on. She had the base of a flagpole with only half of the pole, and she had taken one of the long sticks she had taken from the garage and wrapped it in tape. It was at a bit of an angle, but it was only to be expected. It would never be a perfect fit, but it looked quite sturdy to her.
But Mack looked at her handiwork and crossed his arms over his chest. He sighed. “Oh, Minot…” Mack said with a voice gentle and soft like he was talking to a child. “That’s not going to work.”
She looked over at him, mouth agape. “Did you just dismiss—”
“One bit of bad weather and that’s not going to hold.”
“You can’t just dismiss it!”
“I’m not dismissing it. I’m just saying it needs to be durable.”
“These aren’t permanent extensions, there is no durability.”
“Minot, with an attitude like that, you’ll never move up in the world. You’ve gotta whole-ass everything. All your ass or none of it.”
Judit sighed. “Fine, what would you do?”
Mack grinned and slapped his hands together.
→
“I’m going to run around the corner to check on the shitkid.”
“Oh, that’s unexpected. I’d’ve thought you’d leave him to his own devices.” ‘Like you had said’ was left unsaid, but the implication was there and Jean knew it mostly because he was thinking it.
“Yeah but it’s been too quiet, I don’t trust that.”
Kim hummed and nodded, putting some things back in the shed, but he offered no further comment.
“I’ll be back in thirty seconds!” Jean called over his shoulder as he ran around the corner.
Harry had begun his construction by getting out a plastic container to hold all of his spray cans, flattened cardboard boxes, and an obscene amount of gaffer tape. He tore out a long stretch of tape, twice as long as the bit of cardboard he had, centered the cardboard in the middle, then stuck it onto the garage. Then the process began again.
Jean rounded the corner and stared at the scene in front of him, the long strips of tape, the one bit of cardboard becoming unstuck and dangling, Harry working on it. He shouldn’t ask. He should just let it be. There were battles to pick and this was not one of them. “Where’s the MC?” Jean asked because he had no self control.
“Couldn’t get an MC. I’m doing an extension here.”
Jean could feel his face heating up. He fought to keep his voice level. “Well why aren’t you doing it with us down there!”
“Well, if we have two, we’ll have a better shot at it!”
Jean had no response to that. It was a shitty fucking argument and fuck Harry Fucking Du Bois, but he couldn’t respond so he just left.
“How’d it go?” Kim asked as Jean stamped back to their workspace.
“Absolutely ridiculous!” Jean spat.
“About what I’d expect.”
←
The Officer Team had pretty much finished constructing their extension. The tarp was secured, they had built supporting walls along the one side, and now were just adding details. The concept had evolved from an awning to a spectacular blanket fort, but that was just a plus.
Chester jogged over with a pillow. “Just going to put a throw cushion in there, okay?”
Mack and Judit hummed thoughtfully and nodded.
“We need that added comfort.”
“Oh Chess, you didn’t need to explain. We know, we understand.”
“It’s an intrinsic part,” Judit agreed. She peered into their little homey extension. “Did you happen to see anything like couch cushions? Something with a little more…”
“Already ahead of you, Jude!” Chester called and ran off.
→
“Oh Harry,” Kim said at the sight of Harry, voice concerned and pitiful. “What is that?”
“Hi Kim!”
“Hello,” Kim said, giving him a small smile. He had snuck over to see what Harry was up to. Now he knew what Harry was up to. Jean would need him back…
“Hey, can I see that tape for a minute?
“The one here?” Kim asked, picking up a well-used roll of black tape.
“Perfect!”
Kim walked over to Harry, helped him tape the board on to form a giant cardboard square made of four flattened boxes, and then Jean rounded the corner and saw the scene.
“What!” Jean shouted.
Kim flinched and at least had enough dignity to look chagrined. “Well…you know how it is. Officers from Couron are very persuasive.”
“Kim, I’m from Jamrock.”
“I know, I hoped that my joke would lighten the mood.” He paused. “Did it work?”
“No,” Harry said.
“No!” Jean screeched.
“Darn.” He noticed tape peeling and leaned over Harry to flatten it.
“Hey, how’s yours going?” Harry called, all cheerful like he wasn’t ruining Jean’s life.
“Oh, it was going alright when Kim was helping me!”
Kim looked at the untapped portions, how the cardboard puffed up, fighting the adhesive, yearning to be free. “I’ll be back, Jean. Did you need anything?”
“I need so many things!” Jean yelled, flipping his hands in the air and stomping away. Though he only stomped just around where his technical-superiors couldn’t see him slam his forehead against the wall. He could feel his brain cells falling away at the impact, could feel whatever was left boiling away in the heat of his anger. Soon, he’d run out of brain cells and then he’d be free.
Trant poked his head around the corner. “Ah, there you are.”
“Here I am.”
“So you’re working on two extensions? It’s an excellent strategy.”
Jean held up his hand and snapped his fingers together, like an alligator snapping its mouth closed. “Don’t you—no. Shut up. Mouth fucking closed. That’s—that’s not an extension, that’s a poster.”
←
Judit was working on a door for their blanket fort of an extension—or more specifically, writing ‘Welcome!’ on it and drawing a rainbow with black marker—when she suddenly went “Oh!” like she had discovered something.
Chester and Mack turned to her, Mack bouncing on the balls of his toes, ready to run.
“Could we…” she cleared her throat. “We should add a cat flap.”
“Yeah!” Chester and Mack said. Mack ran off and Chester grabbed a bit of cardboard and propped it up next to the wall.
“Perfect,” Judit said, and Chester nodded.
“Cat for the cat flap!” Mack yelled and chucked a stuffed cat at Judit’s head.
She squeaked as she caught it. “Were you aiming for my face?”
“Of course. It’s easier to catch something when it’s coming at your face. It’s science.”
→
Kim and Jean had gotten as much done as they could, Kim checked his watch, saw there wasn’t much left. “We should check on Harry.”
“Should we? Yes. But must we? Must we?”
“Come on, Vicquemare,” Kim said, walking away. Jean grumbled and followed.
Harry had evidently not cared too much about the no graffito ruling, because he was holding a face mask to his face, stepped back a couple steps as he sprayed color onto the cardboard. Harry tossed his spray can into the box when he saw the two of them approach and pulled his mask away from his face to reveal a proud smile. “Hey guys! What do you think!”
“You’ve written ‘Extension!’” Jean said, then sighed. “On the garage.”
“And drew a smiley face!”
“And written ‘improvement’ under the smiling face,” Kim noted. It was rather cramped down there.
Harry’s grin was wide.
Jean thought of several violent scenarios and let them marinate in his head.
←
Judit looked over their handiwork. “You know, I am actually happy with this.”
“I’m so impressed by it,” Chester agreed.
“What more could we do?”
“Nothing.”
“No, celebrate!” Mack said, then looked around for one of their keepers. “Hey Trant! How many minutes do we have left?”
“You have five.”
“Let me see if we’ve got some beers we can sip in there!” Mack yelled as he jogged over to Trant’s MC and stretched into it. There was a couple seconds pause, then, “Oh no!”
“What!”
“There’s no beer!” There was barely enough time to comprehend the lament before Mack cried out again. “Let’s have a banana then!”
“Trant, why do you have bananas in your car?” Judit asked as Mack ran over, holding up three bananas in triumph.
“It’s a tasty snack in a biodegradable wrapper.”
“Psychopath,” Chester said, taking a banana from Mack.
“Psychopathy no longer considered a mental illness by the MIHD, and is officially considered a pseudo-scientific diagnosis, so we should remove it from—”
“Sounds like something a psychopath would know,” Mack said, caring not for proper terminology. He unpeeled his banana. “Hey, wanna eat this in our extension?”
Nobody answered, they just pulled the door open and went inside.
—
Trant and Bevy had their watches synchronized and when the thirty minutes were up, twin whistles pierced the air. “Alright all! Come over here!” Trant called and waited as everyone shuffled over to them.
The Lieutenant team looked about as Bevy expected with Jean half tired and half angry and both halves desperately craving a cigarette. Harry was meeker than he expected, but at least with Jean, some things never changed. The other team looked surprisingly happy. “They were having a…sort of tea party in the finished product,” Trant said under his breath to Bevy.
“How is something sort of a tea party?”
“Well, there was no tea, just bananas, for one—”
“Yeah okay, I’m fine with that being my only context. Hey all, welcome back. How did we all do?”
“I wanted to be on Jude’s team,” Jean said immediately. “Really badly.”
“Awwwww, Vicky,” Mack said, voice pitched high like he was talking to a baby and not to an incredibly irate adult man. “Did you not have fun?”
“Torson, I will unhinge my jaw like a snake and swallow your cock fucking whole if it meant I wouldn’t have to work with them again.”
Trant’s ever-present grin widened. Bevy coughed into his hand. Harry, despite being ninety percent of the ‘them’, tried to hold back a giggle and his nose made a noise like a tea whistle instead. Kim, the remaining ten percent, had such a straight face that only Harry could tell how hard he was trying not to smile.
Mack, however, had no fucking clue how to respond. He laughed, said “Um,” then “Well that’s,” and then Jean held up his hand to silence whatever sentence he wasn't going to complete.
“No-no, you misunderstand me. You’re thinking too highly of yourself. This isn’t a homo-sexual compliment. This is the depths of my suffering. This is how deep it fucking goes Torson.”
“Wow,” Trant said, clapping his hands to draw attention. “Okay! Wasn’t that…ahem, Bevy, would you like to see what the Officer Team has done?”
“Yep. Come on everyone, it’s show-and-tell time,” Bevy said to the crowd of thirty and forty-somes.
They rounded the side of the building to view the Officers’ extension. Considering it was just a tarp pulled out from the building with various bits of vaguely flat objects forming a concept of a wall, it was not only impressive, but rather homey. Harry thought he would pay rent to live there. Jean looked it over, looked at Judit, and nodded at her.
“G-Bevy, I’m not sure how they were when you were supervising them, but I found them to be quite agreeable the entire time.”
“Oh, they were a splendid team. I particularly enjoyed some of the things I heard our favorite duo say.”
Chester and Mack narrowed their eyes at Bevy.
“Don’t give me that look, I was surprised. Some things were unlike you.”
“Please enlighten us,” Harry said, half joking and half genuinely looking for more information about the team he supposedly assembled. But most of the half was joking and teasing.
“I heard a surprisingly sensible ‘one bit of bad weather and that’s not going to hold’ from Mack then at another point I heard an odd Chester quip of ‘Look at these massive spoons!’”
Judit held back a laugh by turning it into a sneeze, which only made Mack start chuckling and Judit to actually laugh.
Trant walked over to one of the embellishments on their extension, a roll of fabric with a brick pattern on it. “It’s worth admiring the ambitious brickwork which, as you can see, is delightfully reversed from the traditional configuration.”
“You sure there isn’t some culture that uses vertical brickwork?” Chester asked, fishing.
“Very sure,” Trant said, slapping the bait away.
Bevy nodded to himself as he looked over the house and turned to the officers to give them his verdict: “The only thing this house is missing is two liters of Potent Pilsner.”
“They come in two liters?” Mack said to himself, voice full of wonder. Jean slapped his arm. Harry pretended not to hear and did not allow his mind to confer.
“And that’s a compliment, right?” Judit asked.
Jean beamed the thought ‘Don’t fucking talk about booze’ to Bevy’s brain. He did this by mouthing the words ‘Don’t fucking talk about booze’ and rapidly flicking his eyes over to Harry.
“It’s homey, is the point.”
“We did share a banana,” Mack said.
“Someone needs to retake their sexual harassment course,” Harry said.
“It was consensual banana sharing,” Judit said mostly for the novelty of saying such a sentence.
Harry sputtered out a laugh. “Jude!”
“I do not want you judging my choices, Du Bois.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it!” Harry laughed.
Bevy cleared his throat and waved everyone around the building again. “Now the Lieutenants, they’ve done two extensions,” Bevy said-slash-warned everyone. “This one is what Harry did.”
Trant looked upon the garage door and its cardboard sign that declared it an extension. There was little else to it. Mack openly laughed at it.
Harry cleared his throat. “I’ve appropriated an existing structure.” Harry grinned and leaned towards Trant, wagging his finger at him. “You quite like it, I can see—”
“No, I don’t like it,” Trant said with a flat voice and looked at Harry with the slightest frown and Harry felt such lightning pain that he thought he had been shot again, but worse. “The fact that it’s an existing structure means that it’s not an extension to this house.”
“I want to set fire to it,” Jean said, without prompting.
“Completely understandable.” Trant cleared his throat. “You said there were two extensions?”
“Around the corner is what myself and Vicquemare did,” Kim said. The group of them rounded the corner and Kim gestured at the sad little tarp that was clumsily draped across a trash can, a slab of wood, and some awkward configuration of stackable shit that wasn’t entirely visible. If one was generous, it could be called a lean-to. Otherwise, it could be called fucking shit.
“You know, looking at this, I don’t know who to hate more,” Bevy said.
“He didn’t want to join us!” Jean said, voice pitching a bit higher in aggravation as he pointed at Harry. “Maybe if he joined us, we could’ve! We could’ve done something!” Jean went over to the shed and kicked it with the side of his foot and then marched back.
“Now that didn’t seem necessary,” Kim said.
Jean turned away from Kim because he really didn’t want to yell at Kim again.
Trant and Bevy talked to themselves for a second before Bevy nodded and faced the officers. “Now, time for the judging.”
Harry was shocked by this. “Wait, we were being judged?”
“This isn’t Revachol East, we don’t get participation trophies,” Chester said.
“Officer team,” Bevy said and began counting points off on his fingers, “great cooperation—”
“Oh lovely,” Trant agreed.
“—wonderful final product, and you three created a lovely home life for yourselves. If I were to divide five points among the teams—”
“Why would you use that system?” Jean muttered. “How the fuck does that make sense?”
“—I would give you all four points.”
Mack whooped and slapped Judit and Chester on the back. Judit stumbled forward and nearly fell on her face before Chester grabbed her. He was used to Mack’s shit and knew to always plant his feet.
“And just because I can’t bear to give no points out…”
“You made up this system, you just made it up, why are you constraining yourself?”
“Vic. Hey. Fuck off.”
Jean flipped Bevy off with both hands.
Bevy gestured to Kim. “Lieutenant. I do not know you at all, so this is not a reflection on you personally. Though I do remember reading some of your cases, and they were quite admirable.”
Kim bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“But your behavior was spineless.”
“Excuse me?” Kim asked and Harry choked on his spit.
“You gave in and helped Du Bois with his bullshit.”
“Spineless,” Jean hissed at Kim and then looked away quickly so he wouldn’t be caught in the heat of Kim’s glare.
Kim looked at Bevy. “Please understand that my behavior was not because I was giving in. I was simply being kind to the elderly.”
Harry probably would’ve been insulted by Kim saying this to him, but he was too busy holding onto his knees and trying to breathe through the laughter that shook his entire body.
Chester held up his hand and shook it back and forth, waving away his excuse. “Nonono, Kitsuragi, you’ve got to understand, it’s too late for him. It’s too late! Five, six years he’ll be in a home!”
“Yeah and I’m going to build an extension on that home,” Jean spat.
Kim bit his lip and didn’t respond further.
“So anyway, you and Du Bois get one point.”
Kim, still biting his lip, nodded. Harry was muttering “oh god” to himself as he tried to breathe.
“Vic,” Bevy said, continuing with the scoring, “I felt your pain. I loved it. So you get two points.”
“Pity point?”
“Pity point.”
“Fucking swell.”
“So what do we win with our four points?” Mack asked.
“The pride of having four points.”
“I’ll take it.”
Bevy clicked his tongue, probably winked behind those glasses.
Harry straightened up, huffed out a breath and rubbed his mouth. He slapped Kim on the back, taking a steadying breath. “Sorry Kim, for giving you a bad score.”
“Apologize to me, fuckwit!” Jean hissed, which made Harry giggle.
“It’s fine, Detective,” Kim said, patting Harry’s arm.
Bevy cleared his throat. “Well guys, congratulations on making it through the training exercise, I can honestly say I’m incredibly surprised by how this turned out.”
“Is that it?” Chester said, eyebrows raising.
“McLaine, I didn’t quit that long ago. I know all of you. Mostly,” he said, glancing at Harry and his wide smile, a smile that was never so genuine. “So I didn’t plan on anything else.”
Trant gave a helpless shrug, showing that he also didn’t have faith in them.
“I don’t care what all of you are doing, but I’ll be packing up the things I actually want to keep.”
“Need help?” Harry asked, perking up like a dog.
“Most of it’s in the garage,” Bevy said, which didn’t answer Harry’s question, but he began walking that way anyway. Kim followed Harry, as he often did and because three people were walking one way, everyone else started walking too.
Jean took up the rear, his brow furrowing. “Garage?” he muttered. He looked at Judit. “Did you know about a garage?”
Judit raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Yes? Harry put cardboard on it.”
“I fucking know that, but—” Jean realized he never thought about where Harry got the cardboard and spray paint from. Jean covered his face with his hands and said loud enough for those at the front to hear: “Please tell me there’s another garage.”
“Huh? Why?” Harry asked and Jean lowered his hands from his face just in time to get a lovely view of Harry opening the garage. “I don’t think there’s another one.”
Jean walked past everyone else to look into the garage. Fuck, there were some things in there. Structural things. Useful things. “Did you…open the garage? Find anything neat?” Jean’s words were said with an even tone but clipped, with the punctuated finality of scissors closing.
Judit grabbed Chester and Mack’s shirts and hauled them back, hissing “Get out of the splash zone.”
“Yeah, there were a lot of spray cans in there. Shiny, not really used, hey, those yours G-Bevy? Do they get packed up?”
Bevy sucked his teeth and shook his head, not because they weren’t his (they were) but because he was not getting involved.
“You know,” Jean said, tapping his foot on the ground. “You know, I worked with you for four years and after being with you all day, I don’t know how I did it for that long.”
“Vic,” Mack called. “None of us have our holos on, so maybe stand next to a police vehicle so nobody calls the police on the police.”
“I’m sorry!” Jean said, yelling just a bit. “It’s just, you know, a surprising situation! I didn’t know that at one point Harry opened the garage, saw everything, and then did—” Jean gestured with both hands at the extension-slash-poster, “—that!”
Harry could tell that Jean was a bit mad at him. His face was red, the veins in his neck were bulging, and you know. He was yelling, full throated yelling. Harry made Jean mad a lot, but not mad enough to yell like that.
Which was the best explanation Harry had as to why his composure failed him and he sputtered out a laugh and could not force himself to stop. Jean kept talking, started pacing, face getting redder, and Harry’s face reddened with laughter.
Mack was also laughing at this point, Chester kept squeaking out laughter that he was trying desperately to keep down, Judit was trying to muffle her laughter into the crook of her arm, both Trant’s and Bevy’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, and Kim had begun to bite his lip. Hard.
And Jean kept ranting. “Like! That blows my mind! More than anything else! I thought five fucking minutes ago, ‘oh, it’s bad enough that he’s done that and put the cardboard on and gone “this is an extension”, and just kinda looked at us like “what the fuck are you going to do about that?” and then waltzed away’.”
Jean was as much speaking with his hands as he was with his volume, drawing a square in the air, flapping his hands over the air-drawn square, scrawling on the square, loud gestures for his loud words. Everyone was laughing out loud, except for Kim, who was still rather successfully hiding his laughter in a coughing fit.
“I didn’t know that he’d also gone—” Jean mimed opening a garage door, as Harry would’ve done, “—‘oh! The perfect stuff!’ and then—” Jean mimed closing the door and made a noise in his throat, a vaguely eeeeyyyyhhh sound that perfectly illustrated Harry’s existence as he flapped his hands at the garage. Kim fully lost his composure and began to laugh openly. “Done that shit!”
Harry, who really should’ve been ashamed of himself, was curled on the ground, laughing like he didn’t just turn Jean completely red and put him at risk for a stroke. “I’m—I can’t—I can’t breathe—” Harry wheezed out.
Then they heard It, a single sound so surprising it broke through the laughter and they all stopped. Everyone looked at Kim, who had covered his mouth with both hands and was looking back at them all with wide eyes.
Chester wondered if it was safe to bring it up, but he had to know. He pointed at Kim. “Did you just—“
“No,” Kim immediately replied, then winced. It did not take a detective to know that such a rapid denial was an admission. Kim’s neck pinkened as the amount of people who knew that Kim Kitsuragi snorted when he laughed tripled.
“That’s kinda adorable,” Jean said, with a wide grin that looked so unfitting on his face, especially when his veins were still bulging on his neck.
“Vicquemare,” Kim warned, but he couldn’t find a way to continue before Judit wheezed.
She covered her mouth with both hands, face turning bright red, and she squeezed out, “Sorry, Lieutenant, I don’t mean to—” but it was too late, the silence had already been broken and nearly everyone was laughing again, but at Kim this time.
Well, not really at. Not exactly with either, because Kim wasn’t quite laughing, but he was beginning—just beginning—to smile behind his hand. It counted. Harry managed to get to his feet enough to stumble over to Kim and drape an arm around his shoulders. He leaned heavily against Kim and laughed into his jacket.
In the commotion, Trant perked up like a dog and slipped away from the group to jog over to Kim’s Kineema, where the radio was crackling with an incoming call. He took Kim’s distraction as permission enough (if he couldn’t tell him no, then it could be called permission, right?), and opened the door. He picked up the radio, greeted Jules, almost distracted him with small talk, and then received the message.
Trant leaned out of the motor carriage, put two fingers between his lips and blew before he remembered that he couldn’t whistle like that and fished out his whistle. He blew two loud, harsh whistles, catching everyone’s attention as he jogged back. “Sorry to interrupt, Jules called over. Something’s happening in the Grand Couron area, and he wanted to check to see if any of us were free before sending someone else over, even though it is a day off.”
“Fucking knew that Jamrock couldn’t handle shit without us…” Jean muttered, but the bitterness was dulled by the lingering smile on his face. He cleared his throat. “You have anything else other than ‘there’s a crime’?”
Trant shrugged. “Jules wouldn’t tell a civilian more.”
Kim cleared his throat. “I’ll go…” he trailed off and just gestured at his motor carriage and jogged over to it.
Harry stretched his arms over his head and cracked his back. “Well you know what they say: Crime never sleeps and we’re insomniacs.”
Jean stared at Harry. “Do you know who says that?”
Harry never thought to ask that. “Well…it’s an idiom so…people?”
“Me. I came up with that.”
“Oh? It’s good.”
Jean had no clue how to reply.
Harry cleared his throat and gestured to the officers. “Anyway, you all can just…eat bananas in your extension some more. You should enjoy your day off. Your lieutenants can handle this.”
“You volunteering me shitkid?”
“Oh, shit, sorry—wait, you would’ve gotten mad if I didn’t offer.”
“You’ve figured out the dynamic shitkid. Come on.”
Judit cracked her neck as Jean and Harry walked away. “Gods, it’s been a day.”
“A good one for once,” Chester said. “We got to see the G-Bevy again!” Chester said and punched Bevy’s shoulder. “Seriously, great to see you again, man.”
“Uh-huh,” Bevy said, scratching his beard. The Kineema roared, quite literally, to life, and tore off down the road. “Hey, Trant, remind me of the leadership situation.”
“Three lieutenants. We’ve done some fudging on paper so that it fits with the RCM standard protocol if anyone tries to complain because functionally it barely feels that we have two. Vicquemare has been promoted to Lieutenant because of how he picked up the slack in Du Bois’...well, you remember. But he was a Satellite-Officer beforehand, so the power dynamic is still off-balance. Lieutenant Kitsuragi is respected but new, so he has no rapport. Certainly the least of our problems, but there is awareness that he’s also learning how to work in our unique situation. Du Bois has the highest rank because you can’t just demote a double-yefreitor, but there is the whole…amnesia that creates a lot of complications.”
“God Jamrock’s a fucking mess.”
Mack laughed. “Hell yeah it is! Wanna come back to this hot shit?”
“God I’m so fucking tempted.”