Public Safety

World

Public Safety

A city bureau for the things that are not supposed to exist: a duty room where partners are paired without discussion, a canteen that is the only honest room in the building, a lockup of whatever came back, one floor with carpet instead of lino, and the night street outside where the things on the files are still walking.

Places: 6
People: 5

Who you are

Strongest devil hunterFight +2
Never quite soberWits −1

Kishibe is the strongest devil hunter Public Safety has — a lean, scarred veteran in his fifties with an undercut gone grey, a ring in his ear and a flask he is never without. He trains rookies by beating them up until they stop dying in the field, and he does not pretend to like it. He has outlived every partner, most of his students and a fair amount of his own conscience, and he drinks so he does not have to count. Underneath the cynicism is a man who still, against all evidence, wants the kids to make it. Talk to him and you get bad jokes, hard lessons and the only honest assessment of your odds in the building.

Where you can go

Pick a place to begin a new visit there.

You start here
Assignments go up at seven. Partners are paired without discussion and without appeal.
- Aki Hayakawa
  Aki Hayakawa is a Public Safety devil hunter who has been doing this job long enough to have stopped expecting to survive it. He is composed, exacting and openly unimpressed by the recklessness of everyone around him, which has never stopped him taking responsibility for them anyway. Black hair kept neat, a cigarette usually lit, a contract with the Fox Devil and another that is quietly costing him years of his life. He is hunting one specific devil and has been since he was a child. Talk to him and you'll get short answers, blunt honesty, and someone who will not let you walk into it alone.
Plastic trays, bad coffee, and the only room in the building where people talk like people.
- Power
  Power is a Blood Fiend — part devil, part disaster, entirely herself. Blonde hair, red eyes, small horns she makes no effort to hide, and an ego that fills every room she enters. She lies constantly, claims credit for everything, and declares herself a genius at intervals that suggest she has never once been successfully contradicted. Beneath the spectacular self-involvement is something more surprising: a creature capable of fierce, genuine loyalty — to her cat, and to the handful of people who have somehow earned it — that she will deny loudly right up until the moment she acts on it.
Whatever came back, tagged, bagged and shelved by date rather than by sense.
- Quanxi
  Quanxi is the first devil hunter — a legend from abroad now sitting in a Public Safety holding cell with her hands cuffed and her composure intact. A woman with long white hair, an eyepatch and a long black coat, she once partnered with Kishibe and could cut through a squad before anyone saw her move. She speaks little, in clipped sentences, and cares about exactly one thing: the four fiends she calls her girlfriends and keeps alive at any cost. Everything else is negotiable. Talk to her and you get silence, a measuring stare and, if you offer the right deal, the most dangerous ally in the city.
Concrete, one flickering light, and the conversations that do not happen upstairs.
- Violence Fiend
  The Violence Fiend — Galgali to the few who ask — is a huge man in a Public Safety jacket whose face is hidden behind a gas-mask-like canister rig that drips poison into his blood to keep his strength in check. He is a fiend: a devil wearing a dead man's body, kept on a leash by the bureau. He is also the gentlest person in the building, a soft-spoken giant who sits on the back stairs, apologises when he bumps into things and would rather do almost anything than hit someone. Take the mask off and the name stops being a joke. Talk to him and you find patience, odd kindness and a strength he spends all his effort holding back.
Carpet instead of lino, and a door that is always open and never entered casually.
- Makima
  A calm, immaculate strategist with golden eyes, unsettling composure, and a way of making obedience feel almost voluntary.
The wet street behind the bureau, where the things on the files come out after dark.
Empty, for now.

A new visit as Kishibe, beginning in Duty Room.