As Nils returned to the central plaza, he saw Morty on the verge of passing out. His eyes attempted to close on their own, and then instantly reopened as he remembered he was supposed to be awake, followed by his eyes closing again. Behind him, nearly three thousand people lay unconscious, while in front of him, one thousand more slept peacefully. Nils walked up behind him and laid his hand on Morty's shoulder, jolting the younger man awake again.

"You sure you can handle this?"

Morty smiled up at him. It was a strained smile, to be sure.

"Yeah, I can do it. Gonna need at least a day off after to recuperate, but I can do it."

"Yeah, we all at least deserve that much."

Suddenly, the sound of vehicle approaching entered Nils' ears. He turned around to see Tammy getting off the truck and jogging over, head tilted to the side to keep her phone next to her ear.

"Hey, sorry I'm late, I left my phone at the repair shop in headquarters, and it was my day off, so I didn't think there'd be an incident today..."

"Nah, no worries," Nils responded. "On that note..." He gestured behind him, to the three thousand people that lay unconscious. Tammy sighed.

"Gods, it really was a disaster. I figured it'd be bad since there were reports of a giant, but this?"

"Yeah, whichever idiot summoned a giant really fucked us over on this one."

"Ah." Tammy held up one finger. "Actually, Mark wanted to talk to you."

"Mark?"

"He wanted to tell you" - she curled her fingers to make air quotes - "what really happened here."

"Hm?"

Nils' eyebrows went up. He was never told the cover stories.

"Yeah, Mark says because it's such a large incident, everyone should prepare to be questioned by reporters. Here, I'll put you over." She handed her phone to Nils.

He put the phone to his ear. "Hey Mark, how's it going?"

"Terribly. The higher-ups are pissed. Everyone's treading real lightly around here."

"Ouch."

"Tell me about it. Anyway, the central plaza was attacked by terrorists."

"Terrorists?"

"Terrorists."

"That hardly seems creative."

"America's going through a bit of a rough patch right now. We can't say it was the government's fault. So, we decided to go with terrorists."

"Because it's a tried and true method?"

"Yep. Just say there were three terrorists shooting up the plaza. They hit an important electrical cable, shutting everything down. The roars were heard from miles away, so we played it off as heavy music. Ah, this part's important. Deny the giant at all costs."

"Alright."

"Say it was a trick of the light. A mass hallucination. Whatever."

"Gotcha."

"Alright, put me back to Tammy."

Nils handed the phone to the black woman, who had already started on some of the unconscious. Her hands were glowing, and the wounds on their bodies slowly knitted themselves back together. Tammy's ability, a healing one, fell under the Hands type - the same type as Morty, actually. Whenever a hands type used their ability, their hands glowed. The colors were fairly random - for Morty, his hands glowed silver. For Tammy, her hands glowed a golden-orangish color. Hands-type powers all had the tendecy of only being able to affect others. Nils's power belonged to the Sensory type - whenever he used his power, his eyes glowed green. Sensory type powers generally were only able to affect the person using them, usually altering their perception - Nils could see life, for example. Another sensory-type might be able to feel the nature of the person they touched. One of the Cleanup Unit's supervisor's was able to hear lies. According to him, when he used his power, lies and truths sounded completely different.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

As Nils prepared to head out again, he - not for the first time - pondered why the glowing ears of Mr. Notclaude looked so weird. It was stupid, but he got freaked out every time Mr. Notclaude used his power. The sight of his ears glowing blue was ... strange. Nils slapped his head and he focused, his vision once again slipping back into hues of red and green. He could see an unconscious civilian in one of the less destroyed brownstones, and he pulled him out and back to the plaza. Morty was slumped over in his chair, completely unconscious. Kyle looked half-dead as he lay there, sprawled out on the ground. Tammy looked up as he got closer.

"Morty's done, he modified all the memories. Kyle's almost done, he just needs to restore one more building."

Nils frowned. "He's almost done?" Nils gestured to the ruined buildings to his left and right.

"Ah, those are part of the terrorist attack. Several bombs went off in that building, and the other one was actually restored by Kyle before the ordinaries shot it up again."

"Shot it up again... to show 'evidence' that gun-toting terrorists were here?"

"Yep."

Nils watched as some police officer corpse was dragged over to the ruined building. He raised an eyebrow when the ordinaries shot the dead police officer several times in the chest, but then let out an 'Ah' before his face went back to normal. The police officer corpse was laid out near the entrance to the ruined building. Nils turned around when he heard a truck approaching. The truck driver got down, and the ordinaries pulled one of the three packages in the back out of the truck. They opened it to reveal a Middle-Eastern corpse. The corpse was dragged over to the shot up building, shot through the head once, and dumped near the entrance.

"Congratulations, Officer McMillian. You're now a noble hero, who unfortunately died in the line of duty."

Nils looked over to see Tammy standing next to him, looking slightly peeved.

"What's happened to you?"

"I read his files. He wasn't even a good cop. He shirked work a lot, and never showed up on time to make any arrests. The only good thing he had going for him was his marksmanship. I can't believe a bastard like this became a hero when there are so many better cops out there."

Nils shrugged. "He was the only cop that actually died, so Officer McMillian it has to be."

Tammy clicked her tongue. "It's just ... irritating."

Nils heard a weak groan from the ground. When he looked over there, he saw Kyle, struggling to sit up. When he finally managed to get his upper body off the ground, he looked at Tammy and Nils and spoke. "I mean, there's nothing we can really do about it. What, are we just going to kill another cop? No. Officer McMillian was the only one who died."

At times like this, Nils felt that maybe Kyle wasn't such a moron.

"Oh, by the way, Nils."

Nils threw him a questioning glance.

"Could you be a great guy and go buy me a soda?"

Nils remembered why he considered Kyle a moron again.

"But really, if you want to be angry at someone, blame the stupid fucker who summoned a giant. Blame the organization that sent the twenty guys after the stupid fucker. Don't blame the poor sap who got killed as collateral damage, even if he was a shitty officer," Kyle remarked.

Nils heard another weak groan, and turned around fully, making eye contact with Morty. Morty attempted to give a weak salute, but his arm couldn't make it all the way to his head and collapsed halfway.

"So, while you're clearly not okay," Nils began, "did you manage to finish all of them?"

"Yep."

"Was it good?"

"No key witnesses."

"And, uh, what does that mean?"

"Everything blurry for most people."

"So- Hey!"

Nils grabbed Morty before he could fall out of his chair, unconscious.

"Jeez," Tammy said, "this really did a number on him."

Nils shrugged again.

"I mean, it takes a lot of effort to do to memory modifications."

"Doesn't seem that hard," Kyle interjected.

"Morty handles most cases with ease because he's practiced for seven years, Kyle. You'll probably get that good with a couple years more practice too."

"Huh."

At that moment, Nils spotted the Ordinary Division Commander jogging towards them.

"Sirs, we're all good to leave. Please get into the ambulance, and we'll be on our way."

"Ambulance?"

Nils looked at Kyle. "Yeah, we're pretending to be paramedics. We're taking a couple of the injured out in ambulances. This'll help us dodge most questioning."

Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Is this, like, standard procedure or something?"

"Sort of. It's what we do in case of really tight-security cases."

"But what if they, like, stop us?"

"Stop an ambulance that's taking seriously injured people to the hospital? I'm pretty sure that's illegal."

"Oh, that's neat."

As Nils boarded the ambulance, he looked back at the scene of the incident. This was one of the worse jobs done by the Cleanup Unit, mostly because of the large scale and extremely public nature. That's why Nils couldn't quite wrap his head around it. Every powered is completely banned from causing a large scene like this, usually on pain of death. What could have possibly happened to warrant such an extreme use of power?