Sharde remained silent and worked to treat Ashton’s wounds. Her alchemy skills were not exactly high-end, but unlike Blackthorne she did train those abilities. She pulled a small bottle from a place that clearly could not have held such a bulky item while it remained concealed. Weak, barely more than flavored water due to her low skill levels, the healing tonic was not meant to be ingested. She lightly poured the syrupy contents over the worst of the fox girl’s visible wounds.

A white foam rose up where the fluid touched her open wounds giving off an appearance similar to what happens when hydrogen peroxide was poured on a cut. The healing tonic indeed amounted to little more than a mild astringent, but it did keep her injuries clean and bolstered her natural healing slightly.

“Burn it down!” roared the lead hooligan. He went back to work hotwiring the car he was using as protection. While his men kept the thing busy, he and a few others worked to take it down altogether.

The mimic’s horn played a funeral dirge, but this time no one died. The weak had been culled. Only the higher level hooligans remained. Despite the power of its horn, it was not impossible to resist. They all had special abilities to quickly take down opponents via surprise attacks, but most of a mimic’s power tended to focus on either physical or magical prowess. This was clearly a mimic focused on physical prowess.

The mimic’s engine roared. It leapt straight into the air then shot fire from its tail pipe. Like a rocket, it shot forward past the encirclement that the hooligans used to lob Molotovs at it and crashed down on the pavement with enough force to cause its hubcaps to fly off.

“It got loose!” shouted a hooligan just before the car’s headlights speared it. Caught by the light, the hooligan trembled as a sudden onset of paralysis kept it immobile.

The funeral dirge played once again as the car ran down the mohawked deer caught in its head lights. For good measure, it backed up and skidded its back tire against the unfortunate monster’s face. Flesh and bone flew in a sickening arc before it splattered the side of a nearby truck.

A hooligan screamed angrily and ran toward it from the rear, Molotov in hand. A sound like a gunshot rang out as the mimic used one of its skill, backfire. Flame burst from its tail pipe and set the man ablaze. The hooligan screamed and spun around in a circle as he burned.

By this time Ashton had begone to recover a bit. She was far too injured to heal her wounds quickly, but she was at least able to remain conscious.

“Shara?” she asked hoarsely.

“I see that your many wounds have harmed your eyesight, citizen,” replied the red clad heroine.

“I am,” she said as she struck a heroic pose. “The Crimson Sharde!”

Ashton sighed at her. “Seriously? Shara… Thanks for helping! You saved me… but why are you here? You aren’t scheduled today.”

“Justice does not keep to a schedule,” replied the Crimson Sharde in a manner that she deemed to be quite mysterious.

Ashton tried to level a flat expression in her direction, but her injuries caused her to hiss in pain. “Damn. Expressions are painful.”

“You should rest citizen. There is a situation going on nearby, and it is best to let it play out on its own,” said the Crimson Sharde.

“What situation?” asked Ashton. She tried to roll over toward the edge of the building in order to see, but she could not muster the energy to do it.

“Try not to move. You’ll live, I think, but you are pretty banged up,” said the heroine.

Properly chided, Ashton attempted to remain calm while her supposedly mysterious benefactor related the events thus far. She found the bit about the car hard to believe, but the skills Shara used did not seem to be too surprising. She had already shown her that she could jump pretty high from a standing position.

“What’s the plan?” asked Ashton.

Before Sharde could answer, Ashton’s phone rang once more. This time she had enough energy to reach for it. However, the information provided for the caller made her squint her one good eye at the screen. “Civil Defense Services?”

Sharde gasped then immediately leaned over and stared at the screen. “Sounds important! You really should pick that up.”

“Huh? I guess…” Ashton answered the phone.

A strangely robotic voice greeted her in a professional manner. “Greetings citizen. Our records show that you have attempted to acquire assistance from local law enforcement but have not received help to date. Is this correct?”

“Uh… Yeah?” asked Ashton. Who were these people?

“Understood,” replied the robotic voice. “Please state the nature of your emergency or select your current emergency situation from the listed event scenarios.”

She started to answer but was surprised by the sudden emergence of a message screen akin to the ones that appeared in the dream. A list of scenarios was presented to her. They ranged from the understandable to the outlandish.

Were there really people under attack by machine gun wielding zombie penguins? How bizarre. “I guess I’m under siege by superior forces?”

“Please specify the nature of the forces,” said the voice.

“Hooligans, and a living car thing—” said Ashton, only for Sharde to cut in.

“Urban mimic,” said the heroine.

“Yeah… urban mimic,” agreed Ashton, as though she understood what that meant.

“Understood,” replied the voice.

A new message screen appeared. This one offered her the ability to call upon Civil Defense Services to render aid to her in exchange for a token.

“You want… a token?” Ashton winced as her confused expression sent a trill of pain throughout her face.

“I’ll pay!” exclaimed Sharde.

“Uh… can someone else pay on my behalf?” asked Ashton.

A message window appeared in front of the cosplay loving heroine. She happily pressed the accept button.

The robotic voice spoke up once more. “Thank you for using Civil Defense Services. A thematically appropriate representative will arrive shortly to render aid. Please avoid meeting an untimely demise until after the time of your appointed rescue.”

She wanted to thank the voice for the supposed aid, but the line went dead. Ashton looked to Shara, rather the girl who claimed she was not Shara. “Uh… Crimson… Sharde, was it?”

“Yes! It is I,” she replied cheerfully.

“They said that they would send a thematically appropriate representative. Any idea what that means?” asked Ashton.

Not the Shara opened her mouth to speak, but before she could so much as utter the first syllable of her response as the blare of an obnoxiously loud police siren echoed through the embattled parking lot. The friendly neighborhood crusader poked her head up then gasped in delight. “No way!”

“What?” asked Ashton. She tried to force herself to sit up, but Not-Shara had to help her up. She joined the cosplay ninja in taking in the ridiculous sight that had appeared before them. A single dirt-encrusted police cruiser had appeared. There was only one occupant, and that occupant had already exited the vehicle.

Black and chrome from head to foot, only the lower half of his face left bare, was the spitting image of a 1980s movie icon. Though, there was one major departure. He wore a cowboy hat.

“You are all under arrest,” announced the armored officer.

“Who the hell are you, tin pig!” snarled the hooligan’s leader.

“My friends call me Barclay. You can call me RoboSheriff,” replied the weirdly misnamed police officer.

Shara could not resist. She shouted from the rooftop. “I’d buy that for a token!”

“This my life now?” asked Ashton, her eyes wide. Robocop had stepped out of the eighties and put on a cowboy hat.