Patrols [Crit]

The Manta Carlos police department was understaffed at the best of times. It wasn't that the island had a high crime rate, but instead the simple mechanics of it. If someone grabbed a purse and flew off, they'd have to send someone who could fly after them. If someone reported a ghost, they'd have to send someone who was good with ghosts to investigate. Powers made everything a thousand times more complex, and it meant that having a partner was far from the hard-and-fast setup it was elsewhere. Sure, two people with vastly different power sets could be partnered up, but if one had to take off flying after someone, their partner might not be able to follow.

It made the whole thing a good deal harder than it had to be, but there was also no real way around it. It was simply a part of life on the island. His old partner had shattered his lag, and he'd be out for at least a few months. Which meant he was getting a new partner - only there was some hold up (who knew why), which meant he was abruptly partnerless.

So they'd called in one of the part timers - the people who weren't part of the police force officially but occasionally did duty - to go on patrol with him. He'd never met the guy, but he'd been told at least a bit.

Lelei. Several years with the force. And of course the piece of advice that told him he looked funny: Don't stare.

Not that anyone would be able to tell Angelo was staring under his mop of hair.

He was waiting not that far from the police station, near where his patrol usually started. Leaning up against the side of a building in his uniform, he was easy enough to spot, although he'd yet to spot anyone.

Of course, he didn't actually know if Lelei would be coming in uniform or not. Part timers sometimes did, and sometimes only came in basically half-uniforms, to show they weren't full cops.

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He was sort of thankful that he'd been warned not to stare when someone finally approached him. Was this 'Lelei'? Considering he was wearing what looked a lot like a uniform (Even if it was clearly not a cop uniform), the answer was almost definitely 'yes'. It wasn't hard to figure out why he'd been told not to stare. Lelei was very clearly not human. He was... well, some kind of shark man. If nothing else, Angelo couldn't help but be amused by the thought of it. He certainly had the intimidating part down, although he couldn't help but imagine a shark man with row after row of razor sharp teeth helping some senile old lady who thought kids walking on her line was a crime punishable by death.

"Yep." He stuck his hand out for a handshake, giving the street a quick once over. While they were definitely in the shady part of town, it had been a quiet day so far, and Angelo doubted they'd get much action beyond making their presence known. He wouldn't need a partner for that by any means, but it wasn't as if cops got to pick and choose when a crime was committed. He always had to be prepared, because there was no telling when a building might blow up, or someone might get robbed or murdered nearby.

"That'd be me. Angelo Genovese. And you're Lelei..." He trailed off with a grin, barely visible under the sheer size of his hair. "Forgive me if I skip the last name, I'm pretty sure I'd murder it." His accent was clearly American, although there was a faint undertone of an italian accent. He'd grown up speaking both. He managed Lelei's first name correctly (having been coached by the same man who'd told him not to stare), but he wasn't even going to make an attempt at that mess of a last name. He was assuming it wasn't even a human language, but he was entirely wrong on that fact.

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Angelo couldn't help but laugh at the idea of them in... what, some buddy cop drama? Life had taken him a lot of strange places, but it hadn't taken him nearly far enough to put him in one of those. Just to an island filled with other people like him - people that were only human in the most general sense of the word.

"You should get yourself onto the force properly if you're this excited." Maybe there was a reason he wasn't on it, but if there was, Angelo didn't know it. As far as he knew, Lelei was a perfectly upstanding citizen who for one reason or another only worked sometimes.

"So I assume you've got..." He paused, making no attempt to hide that he was looking Lelei over. "Super strength and a variety of water breathing type skills?" It was always useful to know what other people could do, especially when they might be put into situations where those things might actually matter.

That said, he didn't know if it qualified as 'super strength' when it was really just 'giant muscles beyond what a human body could make'. "I've got sort-of-invisibility, and generally enhanced everything." And he could tell if someone had just died, but that wasn't exactly a helpful skill, beyond saving a few seconds knowing if someone was worth checking for a pulse.

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It wasn't a bad bicep, as far as biceps went, although it was hard to say just how good it was when he had only ever met one shark man. Maybe they were all buff as hell. Maybe he had really big bones. Or maybe they had really thin bones, and the flex was even more impressive than it would have been on a human.

He couldn't quite resist the urge to lift his right arm, giving a flex of his own. He was buff, but it wasn't quite as impressive, and his sleeve covered most of it anyway, but he felt obligated to do so.

"Pretty useful." He admitted, surprised it worked at all on land. But he nodded, and started off down the road, his eyes sweeping the area even as he walked. He had no real special senses unless someone was dying nearby. Otherwise he had to use his eyes and ears. "It's not true invisibility. I just don't get noticed by people. You ever completely missed that someone was standing nearby because they were quiet? Like that, but to an extreme." He wasn't invisible or camouflaged, but instead was mentally invisible.

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Angelo was also of the general opinion that being unnoticeable was better than invisible. Being invisible meant one sense was turned off, but that didn't stop someone from hearing you, or smelling you, or anything else. Being unnoticeable affected everything, and as long as he wasn't too obvious about it, no one would notice him. Breathing, for example, wasn't noticeable - no one would notice him standing in a corner breathing. If he started yelling, or if he really stank? Well, his power wouldn't quite hold up there.

He could only shrug when asked how he did it. "I dunno, how do you remember to blink? I just do. If I don't want someone to notice me, they don't." He'd not even been fully aware of it the first few times it had happened. "And no, it wouldn't work if you were already staring at me. If I slipped around a corner it would, or if you hadn't spotted me yet, but I can't shake off someone who is already looking right at me." If only. That would certainly be useful in fights, but he had no such luck. No, it was best used for evasion and scouting. "To be honest, it's even iffy if someone's really paying attention and checking every corner. It's slipped up a bit a few times - I have to try and stop breathing to keep it from breaking." Those were always dicey as hell to manage.

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