But How Hard Can I Go, Though?

Rory's biggest challenge was looking for something new to focus on. Back before she was Adrastia that was college and then it was superheroing. Well, she couldn't do that anymore so now Rory had to have something else. If she didn't find something else she'd go fucking insane and never drag herself out of this damned depression.

That was what led Lorelai to sit Angelo (her new caretaker, she guessed) down after school one day and ply him with questions about what it took to be a police officer here and how much he actually got to do, or fight. Was it all busy work? All talking? And how much red tape was there anyway?

She was customarily aggressive about her prodding, but then, would anyone expect Rory to be anything but aggressive in any given pursuit?

"So," she said finally, "if you had to sell being a cop to me, how would you do it? Would you do it at all? Why? Or why not?"

Christ, it was like a fucking interview.

That was a pretty good pitch. It was the same thing she had been doing as a superhero. Mostly for the people with some PR thrown in. Rory still struggled to determine if she enjoyed the adrenaline rush or the helping people part more. She didn't know. All she knew was she couldn't live without this sort of thing. It was an intrinsic part of who she was.

She set her hands on the table and nodded. It didn't sound so terrible when Angelo put it that way. Maybe Lorelai had been thinking about the cops all wrong. Maybe.

"That sounds a lot like what I was doing minus the paperwork. Not that paperwork is an issue for me."

She tapped her chin, relaxing (to the best of her ability) against the back of the chair. "I think I could work toward something like that. Better than being an arena fighter. Or a college professor or something.

"Got any stories you're willing to share with a starry-eyed pupil?"

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Besides," Rory shrugged, "I was never one of the big fighters even back home. I was more of a.... delegator."

When Angelo asked about the New Years Party, that sparked some interest. Jude had mentioned it briefly once but Rory couldn't remember Jude ever going []into[/i] it. She shook her head and leaned forward over the table to hear better.

"No, he didn't. Why, what happened?"

"Holy shit. You stared the dude down hard enough he backed off?" Rory laughed, clear awe in the expression she wore and the way she tried to lean even closer. This dude was a serious badass!

"That sounds like something I would do..." She said after some thought. "I hope everyone was okay? It's weird to think this place has some mass way of turning off powers. My group and I dealt with some things like that, but it wasn't as available back in our home dimension as it seems to be here.

"We just had this scary prison called 'The Birdcage.'"

What was it like? Rory wished she knew. She'd never wanted to send people there because... well, it sounded terrible. What kind of place could the Birdcage have been that no one knew what was going on inside? Or no one was willing to say?

She drummed her fingers on the table. "Jude's dad was pretty scary, but his anger was the cold kind. Jude... Jude has something in him like that, maybe just not as fine-tuned.

"As for the Birdcage. No one really knew. No one ever got out once they went in and there was never any information about what was happening on the inside. It was a death sentence, but worse. And metahumans went there for pretty much any crime they committed. The first few you were dropped into a simple prison, especially if your powers were mild, like mine. But a few strikes in and..."

Lorelai winced.