𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐂 𝐒𝐀𝐅𝐄𝐓𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 than she'd ever really imagined it would be. Sure, she helped keep people safe- but she didn't really get to enact much in the way of justice. And now, seeing it up close, despite her popularity at the precinct... even Karen wasn't stupid enough to not understand that there were things being done that weren't for the sake of doing the 'right thing' so much as they were 'making the right quota'. Things that were brushed aside or ignored in favor of keeping their own lives more peaceful.
It's what's led her to this- skulking around at night- when she's not studying to get into a school she never thought she'd want to join, in order to be able to better help people- in order to enact justice more directly.
Was it technically vigilantism? Maybe. Did Karen think that was necessarily a bad thing? Well, as a supporter of most types of 'heroes'- not really. All she was doing was what her superiors and her coworkers refused to do for the sake of their futures and reputations: taking out any trash that didn't want to go willingly.
Tonight though she's responding to a report of a scuffle- one that's gone ignored by the nearest precinct. She sees someone she thinks might have been involved- or at least caught up- fleeing in the other direction, but when she arrives on the scene, all she sees is a victim and no perpetrator. Or so she assumes, until she sees the knife in his hand, clutched tightly, expertly still, and her instincts (undeniable, after this many years of training) screaming that the slight figure limned by the dim light at the edges of the street lamp's each is incredibly dangerous.
It gives her pause enough to reconsider what she needs to do. Can she take this person to a hospital, or will that be dangerous? Not just for him, but for those in the facility as well.
No, she decides, looking grimly down at him- at the shadowy way he's dressed, so similar to her own but still so different- she can't take that chance. But then where-?
❝ Haha.. Well, isn't this a shame? Only getting to see a cutie like you when I'm about to bite it.. ❞
Karen's head whips to his face from where she's knelt to inspect his wound, and feels her face heat immediately. Of all things to say on the verge of death, and that's-!?
Fumbling for her phone, Karen calls for the only person she can really trust to help her with something like this- and not alert her idiot brother that something's up.
"Hello- Hanekawa-san? Yeah- it's. I need help. The no-questions-asked kind of help. Can you come quickly-? Yeah. I'll send you my location."
Snapping her phone shut, Karen reaches carefully under the slender body, scooping it into her arms and straightening as if he weighs nothing at all. Then again, to a woman her size, he likely doesn't. Somewhere between that and his passing out, however, Yugamu may hear a reluctant mutter as his rescuer curls him tighter against his chest.
"Some nerve he's got to call me cute when he looks like that..."
Hanekawa-san and her bodyguard, true to her word, show up to help in no time. She doesn't ask about where either of them learned to treat injuries the way they did, and they don't explain, which suits her just fine. What doesn't suit her is the mess left on bed sheets that she's forced to throw away, lest Koyomi drop in unexpectedly and find evidence.
Evidence of what though, Karen isn't really sure.
All she knows is that now she's called out of work for a couple of days, and is now standing guard over an ivory-pale young man with a recovering gash in his stomach as though something tried to eviscerate him. It's not the only injury (though those are healed and scarred over) he's got, and it only brings up more questions. But for the moment, Karen is content to follow Hanekawa-san's instructions on caring for the injury, even while she quietly sits and theorizes about just what could have left him in this state to begin with.
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