By: Daiyu Tang
I heard it on the scanner first… “Fight at the butcher, possible weapons” so I did what any self-respecting ghoul with a press badge does in Hathian: headed over, pulse up, camera up, expectations for a peaceful afternoon, lowered.
By the time I arrived, the alley beside the Pawn Shop was a living pinball machine like those from the Arcade nearby. HPD officers Michael Montanari and Chris Knight were already in it, bodies tangling across a filthy bench while a blonde in a hoodie shouted and a woman with a bat paced like a metronome set to ‘regret’. Sgt. Lyssandra Ritter jogged in, head on a swivel looking for trouble and there was plenty of that to go around, as always in Hathian it might be the case that the HPD are the ‘biggest gang’, but there are plenty of citizens, criminals or groups that can punch back. Sometimes they do it quickly, before all of the backup arrives. Meanwhile,
“Break it up!” Knight barked. “The clown face on the bottom has a blade!” Montanari warned, pointing at a man pinned in the pile.
I stayed where an adult (not paid to be a cop) would: away from knife lunging distance. Click. Click. Street theatre: the blonde, Athena, grabbed at Montanari to peel him off someone; the bat-carrier who I know as a worker I think from the Pawn shop, one Katya Petrova. There were threats shouted along the lines of ‘Touch her… and I will come for you’ which is kinda the lowest bar in Hathian threats.
A second later, a cracked phone sailed through the air and pinged off Athena’s head from Officer Mini-Goth. Athena staggered. Knight yanked her by the hair, trying to free one of his cop buddies. “On the ground!” he snapped. She hurled lunch onto Knights’ boot in answer. Hathian romance. Nothing says ‘I want HPD to treat me with respect’ than projecting your vomit at their feet.
It should have ended with bruises. Instead, a man who had approached seemingly from the Pawn Shop raised a pistol. Ritter clocked him, voice flat and loud: “GUN!“
Officer Down, Shots Fired
Two shots rang out. Vitonie (‘Mini Goth’) a recent HPD regular who’d been bleeding already from earlier in the fight jerked, clutched her arm, then she spat blood and collapsed possibly hit by a second round. Ritter returned fire once with what might have been a hand-cannon for the speed it put the shooter down. He buckled, thigh blooming red and I ducked behind the garbage truck and kept shooting (the camera, not a gun… calm down we’re not Special Forces at the Observer yet).
Ritter planted a boot over the dropped pistol and got on the radio for medical support while her colleagues started to clear the scene.
The street did that post-gunfire freeze where everyone remembers they enjoy living. Katya tried to herd people back, “We’ll visit him in hospital” while Athena half-sobbed, “Don’t die, I didn’t even tell you I love you yet!” to the downed shooter. Poetry always happens after gunfire, but this is probably the Hathian warning – tell someone you love them (or wanna smash them) before they get shot and possibly taken away for good. From the voices around the shooter I understood his name was ‘O’, which means nothing to me. It appears that people now have code-names in Hathian! “Stay down, mister,” Ritter told him, in no mood for any more fucking around.
The FDH’s paramedic support arrived like an avenging angel and one of the EMS threaded through the crowd and started to work on officer and shooter alike. Around them, officers finished cuffing the face-painted brawler, who contributed helpful commentary like “Police brutality!” and “Criminal lives matter!” from the pavement.
When the ambulance doors slammed, the street exhaled. Knight and Montanari kept weapons low until the guns were gone and the gurneys rolled. Ritter, half freckled in trash thanks to a stray bag, waved off gawkers, myself included.
Editor’s View
Hathian fights are louder than the truth but not bigger than it. Today the difference between ‘ugly‘ and ‘dead‘ was a sergeant with eyes up, two beat cops who didn’t let their own adrenaline make the decisions, and paramedics who hustled. Also: one more reminder that bringing a gun to a fistfight doesn’t make you brave; it makes everyone else bleed and may seal your own fate, something ‘O’ is learning.
HPD, you know where to find me, send your official statement and we’ll print it in full. Civilians who were there and want their say (on the record), same offer. I’m easy to spot: Asian, camera, and the only one who who can successfully climb a streetlight in platform boots for a better shot.
