Elmer Arrietti, fifty-two year old bachelor and current Police Commissioner of Kharon the moving city, had both a literal and figurative headache on the morning that Tatiana had walked into his office at 6 A.M. and offered the services of a very special group of people.

That was two days ago, but as Elmer now walked slowly toward a bowling alley with the familiar weight of his ball in his backpack, it felt like an age.

The literal headache on that day was due to the fact that Commissioner Arrietti hadn’t yet had his morning coffee. That week’s shipment of coffee from Franksburg had been delayed due to raids by some of the remnant ‘Chosen’ that had escaped from Kharon’s purging of the southside of Chicago a few days prior. Finally, a squad from the Order Ducis has departed and personally escorted the caravan, catching two of the three remaining Chosen at large in the process.

Not that Elmer really cared about the Chosen’s capture, those were foreign problems. No, all Commissioner Arrietti needed to do was maintain a stable domestic situation. And that went much more smoothly when he had his coffee.

And although Commissioner Arrietti stoically endured as he was forced to rely on alternate forms of caffeine, Elmer personally hated matcha. Because tea leaves were what the leadership had decided should be cultivated in some of the fields in Kharon itself, meaning that it was basically always plentiful.

The figurative headache two days ago was largely due to Commissioner Arrietti finally being demanded to perform his job. After all, in a post System world, just designating police as authority figures wasn’t enough to give them an edge over most of the population. Without an identification Skill, it was impossible to tell whether a criminal was an NCC or was Level 50 and possessed a powerful Fate.

An individual that looked rather meek could have the same destructive power as a Raid Boss. And the benefit of Commissioner Arrietti’s job was that he could pass on the truly dangerous cases to the Order Ducis.

Basically, the police force of Kharon had slowly been constructed with the goal of identification in mind. Although the men and women underneath Commissioner Arrietti could hold their own in a fight, they couldn’t be compared to the applicants to the Order Ducis who were forced to endure the attentions of Ajax the Precise and Helen the Hellfin every day.

Which had worked. Identify the threat level, address the lesser ones while passing the larger ones over to the Order Ducis. It was a reliable arrangement. Until the vast populace that had been oppressed in the isolated area of Chicago’s southside had filled Kharon up to its seams.

Suddenly Commissioner Arrietti’s desk was filled with reports of the previously oppressed population not adjusting to freedom well and taking it out on local businesses. Or rather, that the harsh lessons that these people had learned at the hands of the Chosen were hard to part with. They had existed for almost three and a half years in an isolated time where the only thing that mattered was whether you were strong. Might was the ultimate virtue in that place. Shaking that mindset was difficult.

So sometimes, when someone at the market took the melon you wanted, you took it back. Or when someone said something insensitive about you. Or something derogatory. Or when someone was so outwardly happy and successful that it inspired bitter feelings in envious people, those envious people lashed out.

And suddenly the police were heavily in demand, lest the growing tensions between the original population of Kharon and the new populace erupt.

And on that day of two headaches, Tatiana had come with an offer. She talked about a whole group of capable specialists who would iron out the small problems plaguing Kharon. Commissioner Arrietti had happily agreed to employ the group of individuals that Tatiana had brought. Although she was very vague on where they came from, and Commissioner Arrietti knew better than to ask questions considering the various animalistic features that the two leaders possessed, she assured him that these individuals were extremely capable.

Feeling guilty, Commissioner Arrietti had immediately assigned them some sticky cases. Although the people allowed into Kharon had been the oppressed class, they weren’t like the individuals stuck in the frozen time in the Wildlands; these people already had years to develop skills necessary for survival. As it turned out, about one-half of all the disturbances in Kharon could be traced back to the same score of people.

That night two days ago, as he was laying down to sleep in his one-bedroom apartment above a magical laundromat, Arrietti had consoled himself that Tatiana wouldn’t have extolled the virtues of this group for no reason. And although these individuals causing disturbances were dangerous, they were still living in Kharon. The moss spirits would interfere before things got too bloody.

After several pep talks, Elmer had finally found the peace to go to sleep. That was two days ago.

Yesterday, Commissioner Arrietti had spent most of the day with an anticipatory headache. Because after sleeping on the decision, it was extremely short-sighted to send this group of individuals that Tatiana valued so highly to seek out the unpredictable elements amongst the new population. At least before understanding their capability, he should have been more careful.

So he felt a headache coming on as he had clutched his precious Franksburg coffee yesterday morning and walked slowly to his office. Yet there was nothing waiting for him when he arrived. The night shift had nothing to report. A few smaller incidents surfaced as the morning dragged on, but without any large incident, Kharon’s police precinct was relatively peaceful.

Time marched forward yesterday with only a single noteworthy thing occurring.

The leader of the group Tatiana had brought, Heiffal, came in the early evening and gave a very serious report. His tone was filled with the utmost respect as he relayed the fact he and his group had gone to speak with each of the individuals that Commissioner Arrietti had mentioned. Heiffal stressed that he couldn’t guarantee that there would be an improvement in their behavior, but that they had at least found the residences of the stated individuals and made amicable contact. Heiffal relayed that several had even agreed to pay back some of the property damage that they had caused.

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Commissioner Arrietti was so pleased by the fact that the situation hadn’t blown up in his face that the following conversation then happened:

“Excellent!” Commissioner Arrietti had even slapped his palm against his desk in his excitement, shaking the relatively sizable stacks of reports on his desk. If the culprits paid up, that was at least an hour of requisition paperwork he could skip. “Truly amazing. No wonder Tatiana recommended you so highly.”

“Please, we are here to assist with small matters such as this,” Heiffal said rather demurely.

The deference in Heiffal’s tone was so genuine that Commissioner Arrietti released a deep guffaw. The headache he had nursed for weeks finally seemed to be clearing up. “You know, I really like you, Mr. Heiffal. How would you feel about joining me for bowling tomorrow? All the government employees of Kharon attend every Wednesday. You are practically an honorary employee, so you should come.”

“Bowling?” Heiffal had frowned. “I… am unfamiliar with this term.”

“Oh?” Perhaps it was at that point that Commissioner Arrietti had first sensed the strangeness around this humanoid with animal characteristics, but he brushed over it at the time. Perhaps Heiffal had simply grown up in a country without bowling. “Well, then I must insist you come! Although it is a game at its core, heh, it has a habit of showing the true concentration of a man during play…”

Immediately, Heiffal’s eyes had sharpened. “Indeed? Well then please forgive me for imposing.”

And now, today, Commissioner Arrietti had one of the creepiest days of his life. For one, when he had arrived at the precinct headquarters this morning, there was a letter of apology from a notoriously aggressive individual from Chicago, who went by the nickname “Three-Horned Devil.” The letter rather verbosely described the change of heart Patrick Shane had last night, and how there was no need to send the ‘Visitors’ back to his residence.

“Huh,” Elmer had said as he sat back in his chair. He took a sip of coffee. “That is… odd.”

Then the morning had continued to be extremely quiet. Too quiet. After a week of constant complaints, the lack of anything… was disturbing. There were no calls. There were no requests for assistance. There were no complaints. So, being the type of individual with a propensity for anxiety headaches, Commissioner Arrietti had sent out extra patrols of plainclothes officers to try and figure out what was going on in Kharon.

When the patrols returned at lunch, they all told the same story; the entire population that had been transplanted from the Palace of the Chosen that had once been Chicago were suddenly behaving like model citizens. But his officers told some worrisome stories about why. All the people talked about these ‘Visitors’ with deep respect that bordered on dread.

Already, there was a booming serious of horror stories about the Visitors. So much so that mothers were overheard hushing their children with the threat of a Visitor. For Commissioner Arrietti, the most disturbing part was how uniform the reports about these Visitors were.

Obviously, the people said, you could tell a visitor by the fact they were part animal. But that was only in the daylight, and Visitors were tricky. For one, if they wanted to speak with you, they would arrive at dusk so the darkness obscured your features. Even worse, the Visitors always knew where you lived and when you were home.

Homes were very important to Visitors, the people said, because the Visitors did not have a home of their own.

Commissioner Arrietti’s coffee grew cold as he tried to make sense of what was just hearsay and what had actually happened after he had unleashed this increasingly mysterious group of people that Tatiana had put at his disposal. So in the afternoon, he ordered his officers to try and obtain some concrete information on what had happened these last two nights.

What he obtained was basically a collection of gossip. But Commissioner Arrietti forced himself to continue to comb through the reports.

From what his officers had gathered, it was definitely true that this group of people with animalistic characteristics visited the criminals on the list that Commissioner Arrietti had provided. But it was the details of what actually happened next where things got murky.

There were a lot of stories about people attempting to hide from the Visitors who came to speak with them. However, the current public sentiment was that this was a mistake; ignored Visitors would circle around the house and find a window or opening where they stare at you. If you hurried to the next room to avoid their gaze, the Visitor would already be at a window in that room, looking balefully at you while they continued to knock on the glass pane.

To Commissioner Arrieti’s relief, there was another agreed-upon fact: If you actually answered the door, the visitors were extremely polite and would simply ask to enter the home. You could reject them. But, exactly five minutes later, another knock would come at your door. When you peaked out the window, you would find two visitors standing there.

If you rejected them again, they would come back with three. And then four.

From the reports of his officers, people were saying that at one point, someone refused until there were a hundred Visitors waiting silently outside his door, entirely filling the street. These stood impossible still, like corpses, and would knock until dawn when the whole city would be filled with waiting visitors.

“Okay, but,” Commissioner Arrietti had interrupted his best field agent who had been giving him the same rumors he had heard all day. These Visitors started to seem less like real people and more like a supernatural haunting. “What happens when the Visitors go inside to talk?”

The woman had shrugged. “People don’t like to talk about it. Anyone who is visited just… changes. Not personality-wise, but more like… they really don’t want to be visited again. And… Boss, I get that the city is peaceful, but I don’t like that we had to rely on threats and fear to earn peace.”

Commissioner Arrietti frowned. “What do you mean? Threats and fear?”

Shrugging, the woman had said. “I don’t know where you found these people, but no conversation would start a reaction like this. The entire city fears them after two days! If I didn’t know better, I would say that these Visitors cut the head off of the local crime syndicate and took its place. The Chosen are gone, but the Visitors have taken their place. It might keep things peaceful for a while, but this isn’t how we should help these people. If things continue like this-”

They had been interrupted by an insistent knock at the door.

“What is it?” Commissioner Arrietti had said with annoyance, suddenly very aware of the drops of sweat on the back of his neck.

The door creaked slowly open, revealing Heiffal’s familiar features. His mild gaze went from the frozen investigator giving her report to the increasingly sweaty Commissioner Arrietti. Four individuals stood in a neat row behind Heiffal, their animalistic features marking them as Visitors.

“We came to bowl, per your invitation,” Heiffal said formally.

Which was why now Elmer Arrietti, out of his police uniform, led five silent Visitors forward toward the bowling alley. His hand that gripped the strap of his ball bag was extremely sweaty.