Known rebels, Haeun thought as she settled further into the warmed passenger seat, the beginnings of yet another snowstorm swirling beyond the windows. She'd be so glad when this bleak winter was over. Warm and sunny was more her speed.

Winter in Central City was always a grim feeling affair. No one went anywhere unless they had to, and when you did see people, they tended to be hunched in on themselves, stone-faced with a sort of comical determination to get wherever they needed to be without letting on that they were freezing their noses off. The snow always ended up gray and slushy within moments, and it seemed to be able to soak through even the most water-tight boots. Even the wind sounded miserable, whistling around corners with a lonely sort of sound.

Summer, in her opinion, was the best season. Most found it to be too hot, to bright, but that was when she felt most at home. Even the occasional humidity didn't bother her so much. Summer was when people seemed looser, more carefree. They wore little splashes of color with their work or school uniforms, smiled more, relaxed in the shade outside shops and restaurants with sweet iced drink. Summer was when the government allowed a few street performers to entertain on the corners, when businesses lit their signs every night, and people had the energy to laugh once in a while.

For now, though, it was winter, and she'd just have to endure the biting wind and the glum atmosphere until it ended.

Seungri - her new partner, she thought with a little uncomfortable twinge - navigated the mostly-empty, slightly-icy streets with ease. Except for the murmur of radio chatter, it was silent in the car. A little too silent, Haeun thought, shifting to look at Seungri.

"So..." she began, voice a bit high with nerves. "I, um..." She coughed. "I was born in 2090...you?"

"Same," he replied with a little smile. "So I guess you're not really a dongsaeng, huh?"

"No," she allowed, still feeling ridiculously awkward.

"But you're still my hubae," he reminded her in a mockingly stern way.

She managed a bit of a smile. "Yeah."

Another long, discomfitting silence followed, until she broke down again, giving in to the urge to fill it. "Um..."

"Hmm?" Seungri tilted his head questioningly, and Haeun found her nerves easing somewhat at the casual gesture. He was a probationary officer too, after all, and friendly enough. And, she added with a tinge of humor, fairly small - she could probably take him if it came to a fight. She'd always been a bit small for her age, herself, and that hadn't changed when she'd hit puberty, but she'd made a point of learning to use that to her advantage if need be. No doubt she could get the drop on Seungri if she needed to.

Not that she would, of course, but still. It made her feel much less intimidated to think of it that way.

Thinking of fights put Haeun in mind of the assignment, though - her very first assignment. Four rebels, she remembered, and her stomach flip-flopped all over again. She hadn't thought much about it until now, actually, but something about the assignment seemed a little...haphazard?

"Er, this...this assignment," she began again.

"Mmhmm," her partner hummed absently.

"Is it...I mean, the report said they outnumber us. Shouldn't we, y'know...outnumber them?" she finished in a mutter, feeling a bit silly.

"Ahh." Flashing her a quick grin, Seungri thrummed a little beat on the steering wheel. "Scared of a couple of malcontents, New Girl?"

"N-no!" She straightened up indignantly, flushing bright red. "Of course I - how dare - I...no!" Fuming, she glowered at him with all the authority she could muster. "Regulation seven-seven-nine-point-six-two--C under Section Five of Chapter Sixteen - Reconnaisance and Potentially Dangerous Situations - states that dispatched personnel should always number more than reported suspects whenever possible to prevent-"

"-to prevent unnecessary injury to any party and to foster rapid and safe resolution of all confrontations and/or situations, especially in cases where the suspects may have a tactical advantage, i.e. - weapons, vantage points, or in a contained area when the officers make entry after the suspects, and blahblahblah, blah blah." He looked over at her, lips still quirked mockingly. "Blah."

She crossed her arms arms - a bit childishly, perhaps, but he wasn't exactly being mature, so she felt somewhat entitled - and slumped down a bit. "I'm just-"

"No, no," Seungri laughed, "I'm sorry. I'm not used to having a hubae. It's fun," he added with a flash of teeth that was at once both friendly and challenging. "But you don't have to worry. The chief wouldn't have just sent the two of us out if he'd had reports of them being armed or aggressive. Ninety percent of these calls are about covert meetings, illegal demonstrations - you know, where they chain themselves to things or whatever. We hardly ever get called out to the kind of shoot outs or hostage situations or whatnot that you're thinking of. What, you think the chief would've sent you into a firefight on your first day?"

"Oh...n-no..." Haeun felt sillier than ever, but comforted, nonetheless. Something still gnawed at her, though. It was a little thing, and she almost didn't bring it up, but... "But I thought...I mean, they're known rebels." She thought back over her lessons in the academy. "Aren't all known and/or possible rebels automatically classified as being dangerous?"

Seungri's expression tightened for a second, but the tension was gone so quickly that Haeun believed she must've imagined it. "Sometimes," he hedged, "but 'dangerous' and 'armed and dangerous' aren't the same thing...no matter what the textbooks say."

She didn't have much time to think over that before the car was rolling up to the curb. Seungri was running it in regulation 'silent mode' - which didn't make it silent, exactly, but much quieter, operating entirely on electric power rather than a noisy combustion engine. It made the car move a good bit slower, though, and Haeun used that time to scan the storefront keenly. Her heart began to pound when she spotted the door, jimmied open clumsily, and a brief glimpse of shadowy figures moving within.

"Unit seven-seven-G-G-B to dispatch," Seungri muttered into the radio, "confirmed forced entry to eight-oh-five-four Main Street, signs of movement inside. Officers Lee and Yoo to make entry, stand by for recon, over."

"Copy, seven-seven-G-G-B," the automated dispatcher replied, tinny and jarring. "Proceed with caution, over."

Seungri rolled his eyes as he replaced the radio. "Hear that, New Girl? DispatchBot is concerned for our safety."

She managed another awkward smile, hands shaking as she unbuckled her safety belt and practically stumbled from the vehicle.

"Easy," Seungri murmured. "Don't go knocking yourself out now." His hand rested under her elbow briefly, and she felt suddenly calm, as though his absentminded show of steadying her on her feet had steadied her mind, as well.

For a second, when he drew away, she thought she saw something - like the waves of heat one could sometimes glimpse rising off the street in summer. It appeared to send snowflakes tumbling about in a little swirl, but it was gone in an instant, and like the oddly severe expression that had flitted across her partner's face earlier, Haeun decided it was only her eyes and her nerves playing tricks on her. You need to be thinking less about snowflakes, she scolded herself, and more about this potentially dangerous situation you're about to stumble into.

She let Seungri take the lead, copying his movements as he drew his gun, aimed at the floor but ready to be brought to bear. He edged along the wall, reaching out to inch the door open further, allowing the pale gray sunlight to stream in. The shop was silent, no more movement, no sounds of...of...rebels...doing rebel...things? Haeun shook her head, annoyed at herself, but before she could speak up, announce that they must have run off when the squad car had rolled up, Seungri cocked his head towards the front counter, stepping carefully over what she realized was a trail of rapidly-melting slush leading around the end of it.

Even as her heart began to pound anew, she found something odd about this entire situation. Why would rebels break into an internet cafe? If they had needed internet access for covert...rebel things, wouldn't blending in with the rush of students in the morning have better suited their purposes? And why hide? Why not run out the back? Why had they stuck around?

Ahh, she thought to herself, you're doing it again! How many times had her parents and friends had to admonish her about her tendancy to overthink things? Yours is not a thinking job, she reminded herself harshly. Leave that to your betters - they know the ways and whys of the restless malcontent better than you.

But when Haeun followed her partner around the end of the counter, those little niggles turn into blaring klaxons.

The four...rebels, she supposed, though now she was a bit confused on that front...

The four of them were huddled, shivering and pale, as far into the corner as possible. There were two boys and two girls, and the oldest of them couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Dressed in filthy, damp clothing, all four of them looked similar in the way siblings usually did, and one of the girls has a busted lip and a black eye. She was holding on to the youngest of them - a boy no more than twelve - and he was shaking in her arms, tears tracking down his cold-burned cheeks.

"Please," the other boy, the oldest, said as he scooted until he was crouched in front of the others. His eyes found Haeun's, and she knew the surprise and pity she'd been feeling showed on her face from the way he looked to her for mercy and understanding. "Please, we just wanted to get warm - we didn't touch anything, I swear! Please, we'll leave, we just-"

"Identify yourselves," Seungri cut in, his cold tone shocking Haeun further. He tapped the square-inch datapad attached to the front of his coat - a new innovation designed to help improve the department's service, it monitored all surrounding conversation and background noise, automatically transcribed everything said, and could be made to record video. It also had an uplink to the Peacekeepers' database that could be used, as Seungri was doing, to help identify potential rebels and felons.

The children - they're children, Haeun thought with a sudden jolt - seemed to shrink in on themselves even further.

"We're not hurting anyone," the girl with the black eye insisted.

"Identify yourselves," Seungri repeated unwaveringly.

"But-"

"Identify yourselves," he said once more, his tone now inching towards exasperation, "or we will be forced to assume that you are the dangerous element we're looking for and take you in for interrogation per standard procedure."

The children exchanged wary glances, and one by one, stated their names.

As soon as Seungri tapped the datapad to link to the database, a sinister little chime went off. Shoulders stiffening, Seungri raised his weapon and trained it on the youngest boy, and the children huddled closer together, voices rising in desperation.

"Confirmed rebel presence," Seungri said over them without emotion. "Proceeding to apprehend suspects and deliver them to the Hub for interrogation."

Haeun's brain stuttered at the sudden turn of events. Interrogation? Those...those kids? She moved forward on autopilot as Seungri covered her - in case one of them tried to bite her, she supposed? As she secured the cuffs around their depressingly thin wrists, she avoided their eyes, but there was no shying away from the quiet sobs of "no, please".

Day one and Haeun hated herself already.

"Don't," Seungri said nearly silently as she shut the car door on her very first perps.

"Don't?" She blinked at him, standing there with his lips pressed together in a tight line, looking a good bit older than she knew him to be. She wasn't too sure what her emotions were doing right then, but whatever she was feeling, it was unpleasant, and it seared like acid. She glanced at the kids, shoved into the back of your squad car like violent criminals, and she clenched her jaw. "Don't what?" she hissed. "Don't comment on the unlikelyhood that four homeless, harmless kids are dangerous malcontents? Don't point out that they were unarmed and cowering when I cuffed them while you stood there with a gun pointed at them? Or maybe you mean don't talk about how they really hadn't touched or taken anything, are not in possession of any contraband of any sort, and came peacefully?"

"Any of that," he snapped, closing his eyes momentarily as though fighting off a headache. "All of it. Just..." He fiddled with his datapad, and for the first time Haeun noticed that the little green 'working' light was off. When had that happened? "Just don't, okay? Whatever you're thinking right now, or feeling, just keep it to yourself. Trust me," he added darkly. "It's for the best."

Haeun stared at him, bewildered and upset, as he slid into the car. Her stomach churned in a whole new, but no less sickening way.

This was not what she'd signed up for at all.