off the record

Brian A. Dixon

 

Magrill had been in a lousy mood from the get-go. The Sergeant's first task at the station house on the morning of his fateful clash with a resident cape had been to endure an unpleasant one-on-one with his Captain, the sort of talking-to that was sure to end up on his record. Dunn had been hopelessly attempting to get his ill-tempered partner's mind off the subject ever since. In fact, Dunn was almost glad when the report of an industrial accident over on 29th Street at Capitol Hill came over the radio and it seemed certain they would be the first responders. At the very least, he was sure it would provide a much needed distraction. If he had known that The Cyclone was going to be involved, of course, that sentiment might have been different. Sergeant Magrill's opinion on the subject of capes was no secret.

The first sign that a cape is involved in your operation, Officer Dunn well knew, is the appearance of an audience, and quite an audience had already gathered in front of the warehouse off of Southeast 29th Street. "What the hell is this all about?" Magrill growled as he turned the corner, police cruiser rolling toward the crowd. "You'd think they were selling tickets."

Dunn flicked on the lights and the siren and only then did the men and women reluctantly begin to move out of the way. Their legs were shifting as they stiffly walked to the far edges of the sidewalk, but their heads and their necks were locked in place; they were staring into the alleyway with all the focus and intent of true rubberneckers. The crowd of people parted just enough to allow the cruiser to pass. It was then that the two officers had their first full glimpse of the scene of the accident and Magrill, instantly afire with new frustrations, slammed his fist on the steering wheel. "I should have known," he said with a sigh, turning to Dunn as he threw the car into park. "That blue bastard's here already."

The Cyclone had beaten them to the scene. That in itself was not surprising, of course. The man regularly patrolled the skies over Oklahoma City and he moved with the speed and the grace of the wind itself. Now, he was down on one knee on the pavement with his back to the crowd, cerulean cape spread across his shoulders like a draped flag. There, lying on her back on the asphalt before him, was the limp form of a workwoman wearing a worn jumpsuit. Her hardhat had been carelessly tossed to one side. In the center of the alley, no more than twenty feet from the loading dock at its rear, was a banged-up forklift, its engine still running roughly.

Then there was the obvious reason for their summons, the gaping hole in the crumbling brick wall that made up the left-hand side of the alley. For more than a moment Dunn was unable to take his eyes from the sight of it. The forklift had clearly been driven straight into the wall and the bricks had come tumbling down. The hole that remained was almost ten feet tall, surrounded by deep cracks that radiated in all directions. A loose pile of fallen brickwork and debris now spilled over into the alleyway. As he stepped out of the car, Dunn surveyed the distance between the wall and the forklift at a glance. He could easily imagine The Cyclone separating the two massive, immovable objects with his own bare hands. In fact, there seemed to be an almost noticeable bend in the forklift's frame at the very height of a tall man's shoulders. "Would you look at that," Dunn breathed.

Magrill's radio crackled an addendum as he was stepping away from the cruiser: "Car Two-Forty, callers now reporting a metahuman already on the scene."

"Yeah, no kidding," Magrill groaned.

Dunn tore his attention from the destruction long enough to turn and address the crowd. "Everybody stay back, please! We have emergency vehicles that are going to need access to the scene. Please, people, back!"

At first, The Cyclone didn't give any sign that he had taken note of the officers' arrival, and he seemed utterly unconcerned with the increasingly noisy crowd of spectators that had gathered to watch him as he knelt in the dim shadows of the alley's ruptured brick wall. His head was down and he was talking to the woman in low tones, a gravelly whisper. "Just lie still," he told her. "Don't try to breathe too deeply. It's going to be alright."

Magrill stepped up behind the crouching man without any hint of hesitation. An uneasy Dunn noted that if his partner had taken another half-step forward he would have been standing on the costumed man's cape. Magrill cleared his throat before asking, "So, what? You were just flying by?"

Magrill wasn't a particularly tall man - he was at least a head and a half shorter than his own partner - but he seemed downright miniature when The Cyclone finally turned and rose before him. The man in the powder blue costume was massive, his cape hanging from broad, strong shoulders. The angular mask on his face framed a pair of cold blue eyes that gleamed like cobalt above hard features, features that could well have been carved from a block of ice. It was true what they said, too; the man had an almost supernatural presence. There was an electric charge to the air about him. When he spoke Officer Dunn felt a slight breeze blowing through the alley, as if the summer wind was impatiently waiting for the hero's next command. You could feel the extraordinary power coursing through the man's body, even when he was simply standing statue-like before you. "Officer - ?"

"Sergeant. Sergeant Magrill and Officer Dunn," Magrill replied, a sarcastic smile spreading across his thin lips.

The Cyclone responded with an assured nod, eyes moving between the two policemen. "Yes. Just 'flying by.' Thought I'd lend a hand."

"The ambulance should be here momentarily," Dunn chimed in, doing his best to ignore his partner's emotionally charged remarks whilst moving behind the towering hero to reach the woman on the ground.

She was conscious, albeit dazed, eyes wide and lips trembling for breath. A quick, cursory examination didn't seem to reveal any outward signs of injury. "She's going to be alright," The Cyclone said evenly as he watched Dunn check her over. "I don't think we have anything to worry about. She was forced to veer the forklift, hit the wall, but managed to walk away from the wreck. Fortunately, the brickwork took more damage than she did. She's shaken but unhurt."

Magrill's distrust was blatant, undisguised. "Why don't you wait and let the paramedics be the judge of that."

The ambulance arrived almost on cue, announced by the cascading trill of its piercing siren. The Cyclone didn't hesitate. He turned away from his stand-off with Magrill and returned to the woman's side. "Excuse me," he said quietly to Dunn.

Then, with arms as strong and as steady as those on the forklift before him, The Cyclone lifted the limp body of the fallen workwoman into the air in one swift motion. A gust of strong wind rushed past the policemen as he rose, howling through the decimated brickwork as it went. Magrill frowned as the crowd of men and women packed tightly around the waiting ambulance let out a gasp that voiced both surprise and delight. Then, as they watched the caped man move closer with the woman in his arms, they cheered their hero on.

When the paramedic opened up the back of the ambulance The Cyclone was there waiting and he placed the woman on the proffered stretcher with a gentleness that seemed almost contradictory to the unimaginable strength and power he so obviously possessed. Dunn noticed that the man's rock-hard features cracked briefly before they took her away, just long enough for him to smile at her. Then The Cyclone turned toward the alley once more and began to make his way towards the forklift.

"Make sure you give the big man his space," Magrill said with obvious sarcasm out of the side of his mouth, loud enough and clear enough for the superhero to hear him.

"I'm sorry," The Cyclone said suddenly, turning fast on his heels to face Magrill. He had to lean forward to look the Sergeant in the eyes and the effect, Dunn considered, was downright humiliating. "Have I done something wrong, gentlemen?"

Magrill didn't back down under the Cyclone's cobalt gaze and, at last, the pent-up rage he'd been rationing out slowly in drips of acrimony and drops of sarcasm came pouring forth. Dunn could only wince as he listened. "It's hard enough to respond to some of these calls," the Sergeant barked, "to help the people that need our help, without dealing with the complications that follow you around like that damn cape of yours. Look at this mess!"

With a furious jerk of his arm Magrill gestured to the crowd of onlookers, a crowd that had only grown in size and unruliness since the arrival of the ambulance. All of their adoring eyes were locked on the colorful, dominating figure of the Cyclone. At the forefront of the sea of spectators now stood an eager photographer who lowered his camera just long enough to grin and call out, "Nice work, Cyc!"

"I go where I'm needed," the superhero replied.

"You go where there's an audience!"

There was an audible crack in the air and Dunn, as he watched The Cyclone's teeth grind and his nostrils flare, could feel the hair rising with static electricity on his arms and the back of his neck. "Come on, Magrill, the woman's going to be alright. Cut the man some - " He reached out to place his hand on Magrill's shoulder, but the gesture was angrily cast aside.

"An audience?" The Cyclone asked with astonishment, his unwavering focus on the Sergeant. The ambulance let out a brief blare of its horn and he watched as it pulled away. "You think I care at all about this unnecessary attention?"

As he said the words the flash of the newspaper photographer's camera flared strobe-like again and again upon the hard-edged features of his face. For a moment he shut his eyes to the flickering light and let out a sigh that seemed to bring forth a slight gust of the wind.

Magrill turned to glare at the conspicuous photographer - who was now fearlessly inching his way past the police cruiser in an effort to capture the masked metahuman from a more flattering angle - before leveling his gaze on The Cyclone once more. "I think that you capes wear your masks but you do it in part because of the attention it brings you. You're always in the spotlight, and you don't care how many cops you've got to step over to get there. You pay lip service to the force, and when you swoop down on the scene of some crime or some accident in search of another cover story you don't stop for a second to think about the men and women who make a living out of responding to that sort of thing."

Then, with a snort, he added: "And they call you superheroes."

As Dunn tried frantically to think up some way of breaking the escalating tensions, of pulling the two men apart, he couldn't help but consider there was some validity to Magrill's angry words. Even if Magrill was wrong about The Cyclone, Dunn felt his fear of the costumed heroes was perhaps well-founded. His partner's sentiments had been stewing for a long, long time down at the station house and his sentiments were not solely his own. Many an officer felt the same about the costumed heroes, and with good reason. With a cape on the scene, the police were regarded as nothing less than weak, unnecessary, out-of-touch and out-of-date. A uniform and a shield meant next to nothing when placed alongside a colorful costume and bold logo, particularly as far as the media was concerned.

The photographs being snapped by the newspaper photographer who was creeping behind them would almost certainly appear in full color on the front page of the Journal Record, the Oklahoman, or the Oklahoma Constitution with OCPD officers Magrill and Dunn unapologetically cropped from the image and omitted from the captions. The public paid good money to see the capes, not cops.

The departments couldn't deny the assistance provided by superpowered individuals, of course. Crime rates and fatalities were kept low by the intervention of heroes like The Cyclone, but what did that mean if all the capes were after was glory? It was an unsettlingly prospect, to think that they might patrol the streets and skies of the nation seeking only what might deliver their next cover story or on-air special. It was the prospect that bred distrust and called upon cops to keep the heroes at arm's length. The after-effects of their involvement left a sour taste in every patrolman's mouth. The venom Magrill was spitting at The Cyclone now was proof enough of that.

"You can keep all the fortune and the fame you're chasing," Magrill snapped, firing further accusations. "All I'm after is keeping these people safe. If you want your identity kept secret in this town all you've got to do is wear a badge, that's what I think, because nobody's going to see what it is we're trying to do out here as long as we're in the shadow of someone like you."

The Cyclone shook his head in cool denial. "Sergeant -"

"No," Magrill continued. "As long as you're out here posing for that camera, I don't want your help."

Magrill's comments were punctuated by a startling an unexpected noise. Somewhere above the din of the nearby crowd there came the sharp, abrupt crack of shifting stone. Dunn turned to his left and stared in wide-eyed horror as he suddenly realized what had caused it. A spray of light-colored brick dust was gently drifting through the air from the cracks above the hole the forklift had punched in the wall. The sound of another shift came immediately after and the officer watched, paralyzed, as the cracks in the wall lengthened themselves before his very eyes, branching as they went. The fear in Dunn's face was mirrored by the expression the overenthusiastic newspaper photographer, who was standing dangerously close to the side of the rupture, now wore.

"Oh, God," Dunn whispered, his eyes locked on the ill-fated photographer.

The change in atmosphere came without warning. It was as if a focused, localized storm had descended from the heavens with a sudden flash of lightning, and the alleyway was rapidly filled with a wind so strong it nearly knocked those who were unprepared for it to the ground. A thunderclap echoed off the brick wall just as it began to crumble and The Cyclone was suddenly airborne. Sergeant Magrill found himself tossed to one side of the forklift, shielded from the imminent collapse. He landed hard with his back against the machine.

The windstorm furiously whipped loose newspapers, leaves, and bits of alley trash past Dunn's face. He watched through squinting eyes as The Cyclone followed, his arms outstretched as he flew and his cerulean cape snapping in place behind him. The image of it was fleeting. It took less than an instant for the masked man to snatch up the hapless photographer. A blink of the eye later and the two figures were hovering in the tempestuous air above the police cruiser. The photographer clutched at The Cyclone, clawing desperately as he looked down at the alleyway below and panicked, but the hero had him held securely by a single, well-placed arm.

The crowd suddenly fell silent and they all watched as a large portion of what remained of the brick wall came roaring down, shattered bricks and fragments of stone piling precisely at the spot the photographer had been standing on a heartbeat earlier. The summoned wind gusts that were holding The Cyclone aloft soon carried the dust cloud away and the crowd watched in soundless awe as the hero and the figure he had saved settled slowly to the pavement on one side of the debris pile.

"Damn," Magrill said quietly.

Even the Sergeant couldn't deny that he was awestruck.

The wind died down after another moment or two and the photographer took to his feet once again, testing them cautiously at first. Life slowly but surely returned to the quiet crowd, their murmurs steadily rising in volume. The Cyclone stepped over to the forklift, leaning forward to stare Sergeant Magrill in the eyes one last time. "Sorry to be a show-off," the Cyclone said to him.

Then, he departed with the speed and humility of an unceremonious exit; another noisy burst of air through the alley seemed to grab The Cyclone by the cape. He took to the air and he was gone, reduced to a sapphire speck in the bright, blue, cloudless sky above Oklahoma City.

Officer Dunn made his way to Sergeant Magrill's side to make sure that he was all right. Both men were shaken and Magrill pushed his partner away without saying a word. Dunn looked to the crowd, concerned that the two might have to take special measures to evacuate the area, but the mass of spectators didn't need to be told what to do. Either because of the sudden revelation of danger or as a result of the unannounced departure of their resident superhero, the crowd had taken to the streets and was dissipating as quickly as it had formed.

The only voice to be heard was that of the rescued photographer, who was calling after Magrill in his shrill voice. Although his partner was liable to smack the smile from his face, Dunn couldn't help but grin from ear to ear with satisfaction when he heard what the newsman had to say. "Hey, officer? I don't know what y'all were arguing about earlier but I think you ought to have another talk with The Cyclone. Son of a gun saved my life but he stole my camera!"