Rumi was elbow-deep in what could generously be called an oozing regret puddle when her night got worse.

The demon—a slippery mimic—had finally stopped pretending to be a trembling old man and was now twitching and snarling, half-merged with the concrete wall behind him. Rumi stood over him, soaked to the bone, her boots squelching every time she shifted. The air smelled like someone had deep-fried fear.

“Don’t move,” she muttered, breath coming short. Her hands glowed faintly—magenta patterns crawling up her wrists, flaring with each pulse. She was tired. She was cold. She was 94% sure there was kimchi soup in her hair.

The alley buzzed with old neon and dying streetlamp hum, all puddle shimmer and cracked concrete. The kind of place people avoided. Unfortunately, not tonight.

“Hey! You there! Freeze!”

She didn’t even turn. Just shut her eyes. Counted to three. Whispered internally: Please be a hallucination.

It wasn’t.

Footsteps. Confident. Fast. Official. A new voice this time—firm, clean, and full of very lawful misunderstanding.

Rumi turned, drenched braid sticking to her back like a limp rope, only to be hit full-on by a flashlight beam that made her flinch. She instinctively shielded her eyes with one arm and stepped slightly aside, revealing the twitching… whatever-it-was behind her.

Only problem? In the shadows, it looked like a person slumped against the wall. Possibly injured.

Now she looked like the unhinged attacker. Fantastic.

“I can explain,” she said flatly, rain dripping from her chin. “But you’re going to hate it.”

The officer’s body language shifted—tense, skeptical, maybe a bit baffled. Rumi clocked it all in a heartbeat. Great posture. Calm under pressure. The kind of person who probably ironed their socks.

Meanwhile, she looked like she’d lost a dance battle and a street brawl simultaneously.

“Look, I know how this looks,” she tried again, louder this time. “But if you could just stop advancing for like… ten seconds, that thing behind me is about to molt or burst or start singing backwards, and I would really prefer not to repeat last Thursday.”

The mimic twitched again, making a grotesque squelching sound like wet bubble wrap.

Rumi's hand twitched. Her breath hitched. Her brain screamed: Please don’t make me deal with this and a public servant right now.

She took a step closer to the officer—just close enough to smell their cologne beneath the city grime. Her voice lowered, strained but earnest.

“I swear I’m not robbing him. I’m not mugging anyone. I’m not doing anything illegal unless you count supernatural pest control.”

Then, because exhaustion made her reckless and everything was already sideways, she added, deadpan:

“Unless being unbelievably attractive and underappreciated is a crime. In which case… yeah. You caught me.”