FA side story: Mike and the Gang have a Run-in with the Law

	I got the call at about two AM as I was driving through the old part of town. It’d been a quiet night so far, but that didn’t mean things weren’t dirty. Not like me though. I’m clean. Not on the take, no smokes, no drugs; not even the ones they tell me I’m supposed to take. Pfft, what do they know? Doctors... What were we talking about?
	Oh right. According to dispatch, some rent-a-cop got himself a career defining moment earlier that night when he nabbed himself a perp trying to break into a pizza joint, and needed a real officer to come and clean up the mess. That was where I came in. It was only about a block away, and everything about the incident looked like a simple smash and grab, but something told me to stay on my toes, and as I soon learned, my hunch ended up proving true.
	Things went from zero to crazy the moment I stepped into the building’s lobby, and announced my presence. “Hello?” I declared; in my grittiest, most authoritative voice. “Officer responding to a call here. Is anyone- Holy crap, get off of him!”
	My outburst was directed towards our overachieving rent-a-cop, who was sitting along with some kind of bipedal plastic dog on top of a beanbag, which itself was on top of their would-be intruder. At first I wondered if this was the result of my lack of meds acting up, but I decided to play it cool just in case. At my order, the two on top got up and put their hands in the air, while their captured assailant -who looked to be about one doughnut short a coronary and cover in enough sweat to fill a fish tank- mistakenly began thanking me for the rescue.
	“Oh god, thank you officer. They tried to kill me!” He was lying, obviously. Even a rooky with several completely manageable psychological disorders of could see that, but it was fun to watch the rent-a-cop sweat a little while his burglar groveled.
	“Now wait just one second!” The dog started getting mouthy about then, which added a few points to the weirdness scale as all three of them began fighting amongst themselves over who did what. Eventually I broke them up and took down their names, before getting to the statements. Seeing as it was rent-a-cop who called, I started with him; who everyone seemed to call Mike, despite it not being even close to his actual name.
	“Mike,” I said; watching him roll his eyes at the unwanted nickname I would be sure to call him for the rest of the night. “You first. What’s the story here?”
	“Well, for me it started in my office.” Typical. Here I was out patrolling the means streets while private-industry here gets to hang around in his nice cushy office. “Hey, are you gonna let me finish?” Oh yeah, I actually blurted that out right then and there, but what the hell, I was the one with the badge. “Anyway, I was in my office with Foxy when I noticed a figure moving through the main room. This room, actually.” He gestured to the room in question, before pointing over to a shattered windowpane near the entrance. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure out how he got in. After seeing him head for the maintenance room, I decided I should probably investigate.”
	“And what did your “investigation” uncover?” I made sure to say in my most sarcastic voice.
	“Well, I didn’t know where Chica was at the time, so that made me extra worried.”
	That’s when I asked the question; the one that had been staring me in the face this whole time.
	“Wait, who’s Chica?”
	Rent-a-cop- Mike- Whatever- then pointed over his shoulder at some kind of giant bird sitting at one of the tables and waving in my direction.
	“Hey,” it said. “I’m Chica,” it continued to say. “Your gun is cool.”
	Already I liked the thing, which made up considerably for the self-doubt I felt at not seeing it the moment I walked into the building. Something about this case was throwing me off, and I didn’t like it one bit.
	“Alright, we’re getting off track,” I told the growing ensemble of cartoon characters fate had decided I should spend my night with. “Mike, continue.”
	“Right, uh, like I said: I saw him,” Mike nodded over to the intruder. “Going towards the maintenance room, and me and Foxy decided to see what’s what. The door was closed when I got there, and the lights inside had all been turned all the way off.”
	“How does that work?" I asked in my most causal tone. Small talk like this helps put your interviewees at ease. Classic tip of the trade.
	"What?"
	The lights? Are there like, a bunch of switches? Do you guys do dimmers here?"
	Mike seemed confused. No wonder he wasn't a real police officer.
	"Just um, just normal florescent lightbulbs,” he explained. “We turn most of them off after the place closes up for the night."
	“Oh, I was thinking of putting some dimmers my apartment next time I get some project money.” See, small talk. Now this Mike fellow was completely at ease.
	“Uh... cool,” he was clearly impressed with my DIY prowess too. “So anyway, when I turned the lights back on, this guy was standing in the middle of the room, and then Chica,” he pointed back at the bird, “jumped out from behind one of the maintenance tables and shouted, “Hey, it’s that fat guy again!”.”
	Again. That’s what he said it said. Things were only growing more complicated, as the web of clues slowly expanded into a web of... more clues. With circumstances this dire –not to mention my growing displeasure at the sound of rent-a-cop’s voice- I was forced to result to drastic measures, and interrogate one of the automated performers. I decided to start with Miss Foxy; the dog thing, who apparently had some prior history with this guy. Normally interviewing robots was the work of NASA engineers, or at least a comp-sci major, but even though I only had a bachelors in liberal arts, I would be damned if a let a good source go to waste just because it looked like something that just walked out of a furry convention.
	“Well,” This was Miss Foxy talking. I uh, just wanted to make that clear. “For the record, after Chica called him a fat guy, I suggested something a little lease hurtful, like: sweaty guy, or ill-kept guy.” I nodded along as it spoke. This one seemed to be fixated on politeness, and showing yourself to be an attentive listener is the polite thing to do. “But yes, I had seen his skulking around the lobby a few days before. Adults aren’t allowed in here without a child- Present company excluded, of course.”
	“That’s very polite of you to say,” I replied politely.
	“Oh, why thank you. Anyway, he was just caught looking inside from the lobby windows at first. This tends to happen every once in a while, you see. Gawkers. Eventually we determined he was looking at Spring. Uh, another one of us robots.”
	Another puzzle piece revealed itself just then.
	“Right. And where is this “Spring” right now?” I interrogated further, with my most interrogatory voice. That’s a real word; you can look it up.
	“In the maintenance room, recharging,” Mike chipped in; not that I asked him.
	Mike then continued to chip in and explain that all of the robots need about three hours of recharge time a day, and that their intruder had most likely been watching them from outside, and broken in when he saw Spring go into the maintenance room; knowing that his target would be offline and vulnerable.
	“So, this fat guy here-”
	“I have a name!” the fat guy interrupted me. Not polite at all.
	“So this ill-kept guy broke in to... What? Steal a robot?”
	“I don’t know if he had a plan exactly.” Mike was talking again. God I was really starting to hate that guy. “Foxy told me before you came that he was thrown out two days ago after sneaking his way in. Apparently he was trying to touch Spring while she was on stage.”
	“Yes, that’s right. Miguel, one of our daytime security guards, politely told him to leave before escorting him outside of the building.”
	“He threw me into a dumpster!”
	“Do not interrupt the dog!” I snapped. Not very professional of me, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Things had clearly gotten out of hand, and Mike just wasn’t up to the task of keeping this band of troublemakers in line. Not like me; I knew just what to do. Whatever was really going on here, this Spring character was at the heart of it, and after asking to see the maintenance, it was clear why.
	Spring, apparently a rabbit of some nature, was adorable. Like, really, really adorable. The moment I laid eyes on it, I could hear a voice in my head telling me to ruffle its scalp and pet its ears, while an even louder, more sensible voice told me to not do those things, because they were weird.
	“Okay, just as a recap,” I began to recap. “This guy was observing the bunny here through the front of the building, then broke in through that window there,” I then pointed to that window there. “Then, once he was inside, came into the maintenance room to finally be with the target of obsession.”
	The four of them stared at me blank faced; Mike and his animal friends going through my flawless deductive reasoning one arduous step at a time, until he conceded to my brilliance with a flat, “Yeah.” while the perpetrator was no doubt trying to hide the panic brought about by his scheme being figured out so cleverly. Still, there was more to this case that needed to be unmasked, and so my ceaseless questioning continued unabated.
	“So if Mike and the dog followed fatty here into the room,” I then pointed dramatically to Chica, who I later learned was supposed to be some kind of baby duck. Seeing as it had a body like an amazon and a personality like a fourteen-year-old boy, the facts just didn’t add up. Still, some cases were beyond even my jurisdiction. “Anyway,” no, wait, I didn’t say that. I’m getting off track. I said, “So, if Mike and the dog followed whatshisname into the room, then what was Chica doing there hiding behind a table.” There, that’s what I said.
	Mike then sighed and brought my attention to Spring’s face, which had an assortment of crudely drawn penises strewn about its otherwise adorable visage. It was a crime, alright. A crime against curtness. Unfortunately, my badge only gave me authority to handle one kind of crime: Actual crime.
	“I uh, I didn’t want anyone to see me,” Chica admitted as I put the metaphorical spotlight on her. It was very big of her; almost as big as she was, because she was very tall. Intimidatingly so. “So when fatty-”
	“Not my name!”
	“Shut up!” she shouted very intimidatingly. “When fatty came in the room I thought it was Mike at first, so I hid. But then I realized that it was an intruder, so I continued to hide.” The logic checked out. “When Mike actually did come in, I figured then was a good time to pop out and assist him with his arrest.”
	“Ah!” I stopped her. “He’s isn’t a cop. I’m the only cop here. Not him. Only I can do the arresting.”
	“So how come you haven’t done it yet?” Mike grumbled; because he was a dick.
	“Because, I’m still trying to piece everything together. Not that you would know anything about that, mister not a police officer!” That seemed to shut his trap, and made me feel pretty good about myself too. Like I was a big man. Not as big as the bird though, but still pretty big. Come to think of it, I also wasn’t able to stay as polite as the dog. And I sure as hell wasn’t as cute as the bunny. The more I stayed in that place, the more I felt like the machines were slowly supplanting me as they put all of my best features to shame. The only thing I could fall back on was my detective skills, which had yet to be matched by that lowly rent-a-cop Mike... yet.
	“So um, do you want someone to continue telling you what happened?” the bird asked; making me realize I had been standing there for some time lost in my own thoughts.
	“Y-Yeah, sure. Uhh, you,” I pointed to fatty in the back, for nothing more than variety’s sake. “What happened next?”
	“Wuh- What, me?” He seemed surprised I had called on him, probably because I and everyone else had been yelling him up until now. “I, uh, I’m completely innocent. I- I just wanted to see my precious Bonnie again.”
	“Bonnie? How many robots do you have running around in here?”
	“No, you see, Bonnie is more of a product line than a name,” the dog kindly explained. “I’m a Foxy, but I’m not THE Foxy, and this is Chica but she’s not… No wait.”
	“Whatever,” I snapped; instantly regretting it. The dog was just trying its best, and I wasn’t doing it any good by shutting them down like that. I made a mental note to apologies later, before continuing with my questioning. “So what you’re saying is Spring is also Bonnie.” All four of them nodded in agreement simultaneously. I wish I could have recorded it; it was really cool to watch. “Alright. You, talk more. You wanted to see the bunny.”
	“Yeah. We had been such good friends when I was a kid. She would laugh at all my jokes and play my favorite songs on the guitar. I just- I just wanted to booplsenoot her one last time.”
	“Whoa! Hey! Is that a sex thing?”
	“No!” he insisted; though Mike would go on to point out that he had his fly open when he caught him. “It’s just a boop on the nose. She used to giggle whenever I did it. It’s been so long since I’ve felt her cute button.”
	It was at about that point that I decided fatty wasn’t allowed to explain things anymore. The dog and the bird, I liked, and even Mike was downright tolerable compared to this guy.
	“From what he’s said,” Nope, never mind, barely tolerable at best. “I think this guy is just an obsessed fan. The Bonnie he’s talking about probably isn’t even our Spring, since this one is usually pretty quick to tell people not to call her that.”
	“You should have just let me boop her snoot! Why couldn’t you let me just boop her snoot?!” the disgusting fat sweaty man began to shout.
	“Shut up!” That one came from all of us. It was a pretty unifying moment. I really felt like a part of something there.
	“Alright,” I sighed; exasperated by the ravings of a man who no doubt operated several Deviant Art accounts. “So was this when Mike tackled him and called up the boys in blue to do what he couldn’t?”
	“Well… no.” Mike seemed hesitant. Weak. Vulnerable. Pathetic. I could go on.
	“That’s when he threatened to kill me!”
	“Oh, I did not,” he shouted back. “I just- I may have told him that I would shove my flashlight down his throat if he so much as stepped one inch closer to Spring.”
	“Mike, you don’t have to tell him that,” Chica said; glancing towards me.
	“It’s true,” I concurred; mostly just to feel like part of a moment again. It wasn’t nearly as good as the first one. I shouldn’t have tried to force things.
	“I know, but, I just feel uncomfortable lying to cops.”
	“And we’re all very proud of you for it,” the dog put its hand on Mike’s shoulder.
	I didn’t know what they hell any of that was about, but it made me feel like I was watching an after-school special. Shaking off the saccharin feelings of shared understanding between man and machine, I once again tried my best to get back to the investigation.
	“So I take it he uh, tried to bop that snot, or whatever?”
	“Well I didn’t shove my flashlight down his throat, if that’s what you were going to ask next.” I wasn’t. Mike had terrible intuition. “He made a move and I chased him around the room until he ran out the door and tripped over a chair.”
	“Is that true?” I looked over to fatty.
	“N-no.”
	“Yeahhhh, it is. You suck at lying,” I said; because it was true, he was terrible at it. In spite of all the deviations, this case was all coming together really well. I didn’t even have to threaten anyone with my gun or anything. But there was still one last thing I was confused about. “So where did the beanbag come in?”
	“Oh, I can explain that,” the dog chimed in; which made me pretty happy. It had pretty quickly become my favorite character in all this. “I got the idea from something called Squeeze Therapy. It’s something you do with autistic children where you, uh, well, you squeeze them.” I remembered to nod. Nodding was important. “Since he was already on the floor and Mike was so averse to touching him after realizing how ill-kept he was, it just seemed like that best solution to hold him until you arrived.”
	And there it was. A simple case of obsession getting out of hand? Maybe. But the devil is in the detail, as they say; and the detail of this particular case were all stupid enough that I felt downright sane in comparison. Still, as happy as I was to finally work everything out, I couldn’t bask in the accomplishment for too long, as Mike once again began to bitch at me.
	“So, are you going to take him away or what?”
	“Yeah, I guess,” I mumbled. Suddenly this case wasn’t nearly as interesting now that I had to do some actually work. “I’ll probably need you two to come down to the police station for some more thorough statements. Oh!” I glanced around the room; my amazing powers of insight once again aiding me in my job. “Hey, you said this place had a security system, right? Did you get any of this on tape?”
	“Stupidly enough: No,” Mike answered bitterly. “Somewhere along the line we stopped using the cameras to actually record stuff. Now they’re just live feeds and general deterrents in case people get it in their mind to do something they shouldn’t.”
	“Makes sense.” I would later come to understand that it actually did not. “So is there anybody you can get to cover for you while you’re down at the station?”
	“Well, I called my boss after we caught this guy, but he hasn’t called back or-”
	As if the universe itself went out of its way to make Mike shut up right then and there, a car came screeching into the parking lot and stopped -half propped on the curb- before a man stepped out and let himself in through the lobby.
	“Hey officer,” a person who I would later learn was Mike’s boss approached us with an unflappable smile and a casual canter. It was downright eerie how friendly this guy looked considering the circumstances, but I was already too disinterested by then to really care. “I don’t know why you were called in. Nothing wrong here. You can- Hey, who’s the fat guy?”
	“That’s why I called you, sir,” Mike moaned. “He broke in.”
	“Yes, I was just about to take him and,” I looked over at Mike and sneered. “your man here, in for questioning.”
	“Oh a little windowpane is nothing to worry about. Just uh, don’t come back.” He glanced between me and the suspect. “That goes for the both of you.”
	“Sir!” Mike continued grovel.
	“Oh, alright,” he sighed, before turning his eyes towards... whatever the perp’s name was. “Listen, you, if I see you around here again, I’m going to have Miguel throw you in the dumpster, capiche?”
	“Actually, he already did that,” he was politely informed by the dog. She was always so helpful.
	“Fine,” he tried again. “If I see you around again, I’ll throw you into the dumpster myself. The one we use to clean up all the glass you broke. Now get out of here before I- Well, before I do that thing I just said.”
	“Are you sure you should be making threats like that in front of a cop?”
	“No, it’s fine,” I replied disinterestedly to Mike, who said that last line. Admittedly he was right, but at that point I was desperate not to spend the rest of the night filling out paperwork and taking down statements from people whose names were already slipping form my mind. “It’s his property. Or something. I don’t know. Whatever.”
	The intruder -Jim? No, that wasn’t it- called his mom to pick him up after I cut him loose. Maybe it was wrong letting a mentally unstable criminal with no scruples about breaking into private property simply get away like that, but that’s just how the job goes sometimes. The world isn’t strictly black and white, but painted in various shades of grey. I’ve been told there are other colors to, but that’s always been a sensitive subject for me, so most people know to avoid it when I’m around.
	Still, at the end of the day, the damage had only been minor. A shattered window and some sweat stains on the carpet are a small price to pay compared to whatever ungodly things that weirdo was planning to do to the bunny. And even though my time there basically accomplished nothing, I still felt fulfilled as I got in my squad-car and headed back out onto the mean streets; confident that I had made a real difference in the lives of those I had just assisted, and happy it only took the minimum amount of effort to do so.