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The way it starts is this: a young man is sitting in the bull pen, staring at everything around him with a sense of tired, wry amusement.
It sticks out because it's such a peculiar reaction. He can't be more than, what, thirteen or fourteen? And it's rare enough that they get any kids that young (though not as rare as Jake would like), but when they do, it's almost always for drugs or fighting in school or, when an especially hardass officer is feeling harsh, truancy. And the kids always react in one of two ways: they're terrified, or they're pissed as hell.
But this kid does not fit any of those boxes. He's staring around him with an expression that's less you don't scare me or holy shit I'm in so much trouble (the standards), and more huh, so now this . The now really sells it, Jake thinks. He doesn't know how the kid is getting all that nuance across--though he'd sure like to, that seems like a handy trick for dealing with Rosa--but that now is definitely there and definitely Concerning with a capital c, because it implies that other, worse things have already proceeded it.
Jake leans slightly towards Boyle, who's busy jotting... something... down on a clipboard. Based on the level of concentration on his face, there's a 50/50 chance it's notes about a case or his weekly grocery wish list.
"Hey, what's the kid in for?" he asks quietly.
(Take that , Santiago! Now who's incapable of being subtle!)
( Still you , replies the Amy in his head.)
Boyle glances up, following the direction of Jake's nod--oh, yep, he's made it to "cheeses-I-would-buy-if-I-could-afford-them"--and frowns thoughtfully. "Oh, yeah, weird situation. Apparently they found him fighting the air in an alley."
"Fighting the air? Like, it was windy or something?"
"No, like, stabbing at nothing with a nasty pocketknife. The officers weren't sure what to do, but the kid claimed he wasn't enrolled in any schools so they brought him here for the meantime to make sure he doesn't attack any random tourists or anything while they try to sort it out."
"Huh," Jake says. Boyle's still talking, giving him the rundown on the latest exotic snack blog he's found, but Jake's attention is focused on the kid, curiosity itching at his skin.
And--well, it just kind of... stays there? He's been keeping an eye on the situation, and officers have been making calls all afternoon with no success. Not for lack of trying, either--they've called half a dozen local schools before just trying the school district themselves, they've tried social services and half-way homes and double-checked against all missing persons reports and AMBER alerts. The kid doesn't show up anywhere, not in name or in pictures, and there wasn't anything on him except that knife the officers already took into evidence. There's not a lot to go on and, as far as anyone can tell, there's no one looking for him anyway.
But as the day progresses and gets later and later, the kid starts to watch the windows more intensely. He tries to talk his way out of the station a few times, even--Jake can catch the snippets of "just give up already, I told you no one is looking for me--". He's watching the sun set with some kind of... fear? But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Jake is pretty sure that the people who treat getting arrested as a minor nuisance aren't usually afraid of the dark. Maybe he has some kind of deadline?
Whatever the circumstances, by the time it's dark out, the station is mostly empty and the officer trying to sort the situation out looks truly exhausted. Jake finally gives in and walks over.
"Hey, if you wanna head out, I've got it from here," he promises the officer. The poor guy--Officer May, or maybe Jay?--jumps at the chance, hurrying out with a quick thank you; he’s already got his phone out and a series of apologies streaming for missing an anniversary dinner by the time he’s three feet from his desk.
The kid looks up with that same amusement, only this time there's fear underneath it. Jake's pretty sure he's afraid of the dark, even if that's not super logical. He sure hopes the kid's not afraid of him.
"Look," he says, sitting down with a sigh, "I think we both know at this point that I'm not going to be able to find a home that's looking for you. But I'm guessing you're not on your own, either."
The kid raises his eyebrows. "How'd you--"
"Your clothes. They've been fixed, right? I can see the stitches. But I'm guessing you don't have a ton of experience with that yourself; the smaller tears aren't quite as neat."
The kid looks grudgingly impressed. Jake takes a second to do an internal victory dance.
"So there's at least one person out there who's got your back, and I'm guessing they're pretty worried by now. I know procedure here is to get DSS involved, but let's be honest, that can go wrong pretty easily. I think it's probably better for everyone involved if I get you back to whoever is worried about you right now, assuming you're actually safe, healthy, and cared for. Are you?"
His eyes are saucer wide now. "Yes sir."
" Actually safe and healthy? No drugs, steady access to food, education, and health care, no risk to your life or your health?"
"Yes, I promise."
"Okay. Well, that's honestly better than a lot of kids have it already, and better than plenty of kids in the foster system end up with. If you can give me directions, I'll give you a ride home."
"Are you sure?" the kid asks, his face screwing up. "It's kind of a long drive."
"I'm sure," Jake says, holding out his hand for the kid to shake. "I'm gonna need a name, though."
"Alex," he says with a soft smile. It's the first one Jake's seen since he got here. "Fair warning, the turn-off is labeled as a strawberry farm."
"As a--wait, what?"
----
The next time, it happens while Jake's already in the middle of chasing down a perp. He's trying to cut him off by ducking down an alley, but he runs into a bit of trouble along the way.
"A bit of trouble" meaning a gang of kids with knarly-looking baseball bats surrounding a large man in a trench coat whose face is very... is "scartastic" a word? He needs to ask Santiago if that's a word, because if it is, that's what this guy is.
He almost just keeps going--this is his case dammit, and he wants to slap the cuffs on himself--but his stupid morality makes him stop. The others will catch the guy; Terry's on top of this. He needs to stop and make sure no murders happen for the sake of stroking his ego.
"Detective Jake Peralta," he announces, showing his badge. "What's going on here?"
The guy in the trenchcoat snarls at him. That sounds weird even in Jake's head, but there's no better word for the strange sound the guy makes. It makes all the hair on his arms stand on end, like some long-forgotten instinct is letting him know to get the hell out of there.
"This guy tried to beat us up," a cute little girl with brown pigtails chirps, "so we're fighting back."
Jake is opening his mouth to ask for some more clarification there, please and thank you, but before he can get the words out Trench Coat Guy shrieks and starts swiping weirdly floppy arms at the nearest kid.
"Hey," Jake shouts, pulling his gun, but before he can get any further one of the kids swings their baseball bat again and Trench Coat Guy just--disappears.
Well, he doesn't disappear, exactly. More like... he crumbles into dust? Or pollen? Like something from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only with less of a poof and more of a--something that doesn't poof. Whatever. The important thing is that he's suddenly gone.
Jake blinks a few times and puts his gun away, because now he's just a cop standing in an alley with his weapon out around a bunch of kids and that's never a good thing.
"Uh--what was that? What'd you just do to that guy?"
"Huh," the one with glasses says, squinting at him. "Weird. Must be from a family of Clear Sighteds. Mortals usually forget right away."
"Okay could someone please explain to me what just happened!" He means for it to be a question, but it comes out as a panicked exclamation instead.
"Don't worry about it," says the one with the spikey bat. "It's just your eyes playing tricks on you. Hey, we've gotta go, but--what's your name again?"
"Jake Peralta," he says on autopilot. Most of his brain is still occupied by the thirteen different levels of freaking out he's doing right now.
"Good to know. See you around, Peralta."
And then the kids just file out of the alley, like no big deal, nothing to see here .
Well. Now there is nothing to see here, if he's being technical. Nothing but an extremely freaked out NYPD detective who's now behind by a case in the bet.
Dammit .
----
The third time, the kids come to him. There are two of them and they burst into the station calling his name, which is unexpected to say the least.
"Oh, good. I was worried this was the wrong station," the girl says when she sees him. She's gasping for breath with one hand clamped onto her side, the other fisted tightly around--is that a gun? She's twelve , she can't possibly have a license.
"Uh, hi, do I know you?" he asks, putting everything else on the back burner for the meantime. She doesn't look like she wants to shoot him or anything.
"Nah, but Alex told us you're cool," answers the boy standing next to her. He's holding some kind of switchblade with casual expertise.
Jake is starting to wonder if all the pre-teens in the city are part of some secret war he doesn't know about. That, or there's a new, young gang that somehow knows about him specifically. Neither theory really makes sense, but it's what he's got.
"Alex, like the kid I dropped off at that farm a month ago?" he clarifies. They both nod, beaming at him. It's a very disorienting picture: two filthy kids with wide smiles and lethal weapons. It's--look, it's not what he was expecting at 9AM on a Tuesday morning, okay? He's unprepared for this extremely unlikely scenario.
"Ooookay, so what can I do for you? And are you allowed to be carrying that--" he glances down at the girl's gun, only for a second, it flickers and he thinks he sees a crossbow instead. He frowns, blinking a few times, and nope, it's a gun again. Maybe he needs more coffee. "--gun?"
"Oh, yeah, don't worry about it," she says easily, which does not make him feel better at all. He's actually worrying more , now.
"Uh-huh. Can you show me a registration for the weapon please?"
She frowns at him in confusion, like he's the one being weird here. "What are you talking about? Aren't you, you know, one of us?"
"One of who?" he asks. His gang theory is picking up traction, here.
The boy sighs and rolls his eyes. "Leave it to Alex to mess this up, jeez. You can never trust Hermes kids."
"Hermes kids? Is that the name of some new gang?" Jake says hopefully.
They turn to him with identical deadpan stares. It's actually a little eerie.
It also makes him more than slightly defensive, which is why-- "What? It's a reasonable assumption! There's been a lot of kids with weapons all of a sudden!"
"You're... not even clear-sighted, are you?" the boy sighs. He sounds so disappointed.
"I have perfect vision, I'll have you know! Santiago's the one who needs glasses!"
"Whatever," the girl rolls her eyes, "just--can you give us a ride? We need to get across town to that park with the big creepy fountain."
Jake almost says no, just to spite them for thinking his idea is dumb. Then he remembers his job is to help the community and there are two kids standing in front of him asking for his help and he's not that much of a dick. Besides, he knows the spot they're talking about and it's right next to that bakery Charles keeps talking about. He's been meaning to swing by anyways.
"Fine," he agrees, "but I do still need proof that you're allowed to have that gun."
----
Eventually, he learns to stop asking questions. He never gets answers anyway, and it's easier to just--not. Not ask. Not get confused. Not "waste precious time", as one obnoxious teenager accused him of doing.
He's never seen any of these kids hurt anyone, except for that one time with the guy who dissolved, which he still can't explain. They mostly just ask for rides and band-aids, sometimes if he has a granola bar they can eat on the way. It doesn't take too much time or effort, and they're always so happy afterwards, like he's solved an impossible problem instead of just driving them a few blocks over. They're kind of weird, sure, but overall harmless as far as he can tell. And there's some strange itch at the back of his skull, some gut feeling telling him to do it. Jake's a detective, he knows to follow his hunches.
It's worth it. Even the teasing the rest of the squad puts him through, constantly making little jokes and remarks about the strangely violent orphanage he must be running on the side.
He laughs it off and keeps going. It's the least he could do. It's his job to help people.
----
Or at least, that's how he thinks of it until things get strange . All of New York just--stops.
He doesn't know if that's the right way to explain it, but he doesn't know of a better one, either. All he knows is that he gets crazy tired in the middle of the day, and then he blinks and suddenly there's a small herd of concerned kids crouching over him, shaking him awake. He knows immediately that something's wrong--everything is still and quiet; he can't hear the distant noise of traffic like usual and it's just wrong for New York to be this quiet. He's freaking out at first, but then he sits up and everything gets worse.
The whole station is unconscious. For a split second, he thinks they're all dead, but then Terry's steady snores sound through the bullpen and he knows that they're just asleep, like he was a moment ago. Still, it leaves a bad feeling in his mouth.
"What's going on?" he demands, looking around at the huddle of tweens. He's known that something odd was going on with this whole situation for a while, but this seals it: they all look even more tired than usual, dirty-stained and ripped up clothing. They're each clutching makeshift weapons with hands so tight the knuckles are almost flourescent white.
"You're Peralta, right?" he hears one of them say distantly. Most of his focus is on the squad; he can't quite tell from here whether or not Rosa's chest is moving and what if she's dead--
Oh, there she goes. Jake actually feels himself relax as her chest moves up and down, her breaths barely perceptible but still there.
"Yes, now what's going on ?" he repeats. His head swivels as he turns back and forth, trying to take in everything around him and form some kind of explanation. He feels another hand brush against his own and smothers a flinch, looking down.
It's one of the little girls. She must be no older than ten, her hair pulled back tightly, a gap in her front teeth. The side of her arm is all scraped up, an out-of-place Garfield band-aid not quite covering the injury; the bright colors, blue and orange, stand out against her dark skin.
"We're supposed to find you," she says, her voice thick with exhaustion. "You can help us, right?"
Jake doesn't know what's happening, if he's being honest. He's not sure what's going on and he doesn't know if his squad is alright and he's pretty fucking terrified of whatever can make all of New York City go quiet.
But there are children standing here, looking up at him, asking for help. That's his job, first and foremost, before all the cool detective work or the exciting cases or the competitions with his coworkers: to help people.
Jake takes a breath and pushes aside his confusion. He looks down at the little girl holding his hand and asks what they need.
----
He doesn't get his explanation for a full 48 hours.
The rest of the world wakes up after the first day. He spends all his time putting his remedial field medical knowledge to training, helping a bunch of sandy-haired kids with bright smiles wrap injuries and bandage small limbs. It makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, but every time he offers to go out and fight whatever is causing those injuries, he gets the same response: no, you literally can't; your weapons won't work.
Which seems dumb, but the girl who gives him the lecture (and who is wearing a strange combination of punk-goth clothes and delicate, ancient-looking jewelry) is so confident in what she's saying that he knows not to doubt it. This whole situation is too weird for him to trust his understanding of the universe, anyway.
He hangs back, grumbles under his breath, and does his best to help how he can.
But it's not until a day after everyone wakes up that he actually gets the explanation he's been waiting for for the last few months. Everyone else had just kind of... woken up, and started going about their days again. Which would be weirder, if he hadn't already seen New Yorkers blow off life-changing events like they're nothing on a daily basis.
So when an unfamiliar kid with messy dark hair approaches him a day or so afterward, he jumps at the chance.
"Jake Peralta, right?" the teenager asks. Jake thinks, briefly, that maybe he should just start wearing one of those hello-my-name-is stickers at all times.
"That's me," he confirms. "Can I help you?"
"Actually, I think I can help you," the boy says, looking sheepish. "Will mentioned that you were working with the Apollo kids on medical stuff, and that you seemed pretty confused. He asked me to swing by and fill you in, now that things are a little less... dire."
"Ohthankgod. I have so many questions, you have no idea."
"I figured, yeah. How do you feel talking over cheeseburgers?"
"That sounds great. What's your name, by the way?"
"Oh," the boy says, pausing halfway through his turn, "sorry, I should've said. I'm Percy. Let's grab some food, and I'll do my best to explain what's been going on."