The cops, and Beast-Beauty, are planning something truly heinous.

On the next leg of the drive on your little tour, you find yourself not-so-subtly staring at Beauty in the seat between you and Jane. The lone male guard had been dismissed after this first event, which didn't bode well for what Beast-Beauty had planned next. You just couldn't get a read on this woman. Apparently she was one of those time-transplanted superheroines, though you still weren't quite sure you believed her answer - she talked like a typical shallow Acropolis City teenager. In any case, she sure had some interesting ideas. A week ago when you'd fought and apprehended a gang of punk-girl vandals who'd been spraying anti-League of Propriety graffiti and decrying you as a tool of the patriarchy (despite the League's lopsided 70% female/male gender ratio), your reaction had been one of bemused disbelief. Now you weren't quite so sure.

"So," Beast-Beauty says, addressing you and Jane with a grin. "I think you girls will really like this next stop."

"Let me guess," you say, trying not to sound too obviously sarcastic, "We, or hopefully just you, are going to be spending the next few hours giving lap-dances for the local flatfoots, or something equally perverted?"

"Ooooh. Hehhee! Actually, that WOULD be a good idea for one of our tours. Especially if I got myself cuffed and gagged and blindfolded like the misbehaving little bitch I am..." her voice got dreamy for a moment but then she refocused her hazel eyes on you. "No, it's not going to be anything perverted though. Or rather, we'll be helping our heroic men in uniform stamp out some of the BAD kind of perversion."

"Uh... how so?" Jane on the other side of the Justicemobile (a term indiscriminately applied to any and all vehicles owned by the League, regardless of size or shape - this particular one was an SUV) asked, sounding a bit unsure herself.

"Well, you girls know that one of the a-list and a few rising stars are going to be holding some kind of, uh, 'L.G.BLT' charity fundraiser or whatever you call it tonight." From one of the leather seat-pockets, Beauty pulled out a couple of flyers advertising the "Annual Gay-Bi-Trans-Pan Super Saturday", a symposium and fundraising event for celebrating diversity and supporting the change of discriminatory adoption laws and partnership benefits.

Apparently it would feature an appearance by Maiden America (very brief, since she had other important functions to get to and a long list of rookie heroes to mentor) and be presided over by Whole Glory. Most of the way down through the page, a brief mention of Dr. Rainbow giving a presentation on the 'Intersectionality between bisexual identity and dual-citizenship for immigrant heroes' catches your eye. Well, that answers that question of exactly which team she was on, you suppose... and also casts her sudden affection for you in a different light. You made a promise to catch up with her in the next day and apologize (again) for the Gloomy Sunday situation. You dearly hoped that you hadn't been blithely ignoring signals from her and making her feel rejected... She was just so cute and sweet-natured that it was hard to imagine her as a sexual being even after seeing her get violated in front of you by both men and women.

"Well, good for them." you say with a little swell of pride in your chest. "I'm proud that my partner is still making public appearances so soon after that sicko vulture **** and his cronies dragged some painful memories out of her past and showed them off, like they did to me. Are we going to be making an appearance there? I mean, it's for 'allies' too, right?"

Beast-Beauty blinked at you and then gave you an irritatingly condescending laugh, shaking her head and wiggling her nose at you. "No, silly. I mean, if you want to advocate for the end of the human race through the promotion of unnatural mating on your own time, more power to you. This is more of a little... indirect pushback."

"...of course." you say, squeezing your eyes shut and wincing. Jane in the other seat looks a bit shocked too, but having never worn the spandex herself, can't bring herself to contradict a 'heroine'.

Beauty continues: "So, this little outreach program is run by Captain Johnson. Ohhh, what a man he is..." her eyes flutter and go dreamy for a moment, and her pointed ears redden. "Ahem. So, I'm not sure how well you know him or the local department under him, but a lot of his peers and journalists don't understand his heroic efforts to enforce the right order in this town. I mean, leaving aside the constant, totally bullshit complaints of brutality by the Police **** when they enforce law and order," she says, referring to the ACPD's own in-house hero team, "they also tend to get their undies in a twist when Big John tries to enforce order, y'know, sex-wise."

"So, during a big heavily-covered event thrown by the League promoting unnatural sex is the perfect time for us and a few select members of the department to do some down-and-dirty cleaning up of the more seedy corners of Acropolis. Tonight's gonna be a big crackdown on houses of prostitution! And although women who extort money out of innocent men for those kinds of services are bad, the bathhouses where icky unnatural sex is bought and sold are even more of a problem. I mean, most of the time it's not even older men using younger men like you'd think! It's guys of the same age doing that sort of thing, and actually exchanging money for it!"

You're in mute shock, which Beauty takes for a sign of agreement, seemingly. "Messed up, I know. But thank the fates that Acropolis was gifted a man like Big Dick Johnson to sort things out! With a little help from a conveniently downgraded superheroine," she points a thumb at herself, "and a couple NCPs who are superheroines in all but name - that's you guys, Rikki and Jane! - we're going to bust a few of both the hetero and the gay brothels, and toss everyone we bring in into one big lockup for the weekend! Then we'll 'accidentally' turn out the lights and leave them unsupervised, and with a little luck, some of them will learn to love the way nature intended again! And if they don't, well, I'm sure Captain Johnson and his boys will know how to give the straight ladies-of-the-evening a proper punishment before sending them on their way."

Crawling over to one of the windows, Beast-Beauty momentarily shifted into the form of a chocolate Labrador and stuck her head out the window, panting, before coming back in and resuming her humanoid form. "Ooooh! We're almost at the police station, girls! I hope the two of you aren't shy about swinging a nightstick!" You desperately, desperately wished that your initial lap-dance guess had been the correct one, it seemed as innocent as a summer stroll in the park compared to Beast-Beauty's real intentions.

Your mastery of bird puns and witty repartee fails you; only a more blunt declaration feels appropriate. "WHAAAAT the FUCK is wrong with you?!" you spit at Beauty. "You can't do that!"

Beauty is immediately downcast and looks over at Jane, who is silently shaking her head as well. "...Oh. Um, sorry? I guess I kinda misread you two. I guess you might say I have... egg on my face? Eh? Eh, Nightingale?"

Your stone-faced, blazing eyed disbelief makes the pun die on her lips. "Okay. I tend to kind of stampede into touchy subjects like a cow sometimes, so sorry about that. I hope there'll be no hard feelings. Jane, Rikki, you can go ahead and go back to the HQ, I can handle this part myself. Hehh, in fact, giving you a lift back to the HQ in their squad cars could get some of the cops less sympathetic to Big John's initiative out of the way..."

"No! Hell, no!" you shout back at her - it's all you can do not to raise your voice to a level that would burst her eardrums. "Damn it, I want to be a part of a team that I thought was great! That fights for justice, and compassion, and EQUALITY! I'm not going to sit by and let you drag it through the mud! I'm going right back to HQ alright - and I'm going to storm up to every A-lister that I see and demand they put a stop to this insanity! You'd need a whole superpower just to list all of the things wrong with what you just said!"

"You mean List-Lass?" Beast-Beauty asks, perplexed. "Er... Okay. Sorry, if you feel that strongly about it..."

Just then, the passenger side door opens and you see a couple beefy officers standing at the vehicle's side. "Beastie! Heyyy, always good to see you," one of them says. "You planning on giving all of us in the 'Beastie Boys' web forum another livestream anytime soon?"

A guttural, commanding voice barks from behind him. "That's enough, Waters - there'll be time enough for your fanboy crap later."

The two men step aside, revealing a third man... rather on the short side, considerably less than five and a half feet tall but with broad, stocky shoulders, a cleft chin, flinty unblinking eyes, and a no-nonsense moustache making him look like he stepped out of a 1960s cop drama. So this was 'Big John'. You suppressed the urge to roll your eyes. You might find the irony cute if the guy wasn't apparently such a scumbag.

"I got Alpha Squad organized and ready to roll out and kick doors," he says, cracking one of his knuckles and staring the three of you in the van down. "Miss... Drakeson there in the driver's side? I overheard a bit of your conversation. I'm not a man who's easy to impress but you did some damn fine work the past couple weeks helping me people out with some difficult situations. I don't want to bust open your identity so I won't say much more, but I was looking forward to being able to count on your support for this little 'Tour'. Police **** gets busy, so these little outreach services with the League are a good way for my officers to pick up a few new tricks and get some backup with dangerous situations... despite the rumors that he's gone for good, I suspect Spunkmaster is involved in some of the dirty joints we're about to kick over, and that means other serious villains could be comin' out of their gutters too."

He gives you a hard look. "I hope that my good friend Beast-Beauty there didn't mangle the intent of tonight's operation? She tends to go off half-cocked. Just a standard bust of some sleazy pimps and madams so the citizens can enjoy a clean, safe weekend, that's all."

Having super-hearing is a versatile power, and though it's far from foolproof, sometimes it serves you as a lie detector. Captain Johnson speaks just a little too fast and forcefully, the tell-tale mark of someone lying through his teeth.

You knew that subtlety would be wasted on this man even more than on Beauty, so you let him have it. "Shove that line up your ass sideways, you creep." you say to him, crossing your arms. You almost threw in 'little', but that kind of insult would belittle you more than him... no pun intended. "You know who my partner is and how powerful she is, right? She wouldn't look kindly on you taking advantage of her well-intentioned appearance to engage in this kind of shady shit." you wave the rolled up flyer at him. "You better call this raid of yours off. Otherwise she'll be coming charging in to catch you red-handed when you step over the line of 'enforcing the law' into outright bigoted ****, which I know a pack of gorillas like you will."

"Hey!" Beast-Beauty says. "You're saying 'gorillas' like it's a bad thing!" You ignore her, as does Captain Johnson.

Captain Johnson nonchalantly reaches into his shirt pocket and produces an e-cigarette (which rather undercuts his hard-boiled persona, but you aren't complaining, since at least it won't stink nearly as bad as a real cig would) and takes a puff. He's silent for a few seconds, looking for cracks in your resolve, of which he finds none. "Alright. Well, Beast-Beauty was all behind this initiative, but I guess the juniors like you have a voice too. Got a real mouth on you, Drakeson. Reminds me of some of the bad parts of my ex-wife... and some of the good parts, too. I suppose I could exercise some authority and change Alpha Squad's assignment for tonight to crowd control at this event being done by the pervert priest, your Rainbow-flavored-fuckbuddy and whoever else. Little bridge-building, you know?"

You raise an eyebrow at him, not quite trusting what he says. "Is that so." you say flatly.

"Sure. Of course, you can't just fire up dogs like Alpha Squad for a chase and a takedown, and them take them to the doggy park and expect them to be good boys."

"Oh, oh, ohhhhh!" Beast Beauty squees with delight. "I love your animal similes sooo much, John." she says in a flirty tone of voice.

"So," 'Big Dick' (who certainly lives up to the more negative definition of his name) says to you with a cruel smirk, "don't be surprised if they get a little rough in the process of doing something so pedestrian. It'd be a real shame if some of those fruits and nuts got their teeth clubbed out after having a little too much to drink and displaying some 'disorderly conduct', don't you think?"

"They wouldn't dare..." Jane says from the other end of the Justicemobile, shocked again. "Glory and maybe even Maiden-A will be right there!"

"Hey, costume-clad heroes can't step in and stop the ACPD from enforcing the letter of the law." Johnson shrugged callously. "So, what do you say? The bathouse-and-brothel raid starting to sound more acceptable to you now?"

The musclebound, muscle-headed brute who'd mentioned Beauty's fanclub before (and had been making eyes at her the whole time) rubbed his chin and chuckled darkly. "I dunno, Captain. I think you might not be giving red here enough credit. If you gave us that crowd detail, between them and the League's Most Beautiful Superheroine there," he pointed at Beastie, "I think we might end up being more... distracted. Less wound up and ready to bust heads, more ready to play a nice little round of grabass, you know?"

"Heh heh. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's a possibility too." Captain Johnson nodded along with an incredibly smug smirk on his face. "So what's it going to be, ladies? Alpha Squad is gearing up right inside the station. You want me to tell them to switch out their entry gear and bulletproof vests for vibrators and lube?"

You aren't quite sure how you're going to get out of this one with your principles intact. You had no idea the ACPD was this corrupt. In fairness, this short-stack of a Captain seemed to be the main problem... perhaps you could shame 'Alpha squad' into ditching his assignment and going on a proper patrol instead?

But disturbingly enough, the thought of what that squad of brutish, loutish, corrupt bastards might have in store for you was nagging at your thoughts and even making you a little... excited. Which was just all kinds of wrong. But then, sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of two wrongs. Nightingale 1 taught you that, and you're learning the truth of that more and more every week...