Potted Plant and Honeybee 🌱🐝

Part 1 - Newcomer.

Knock, knock. Somebody banged against the door, but Meli did not answer focusing on the large amount of papers she had to go through. She already had a feeling what this was about, and she definitely did not want to deal with this. Not now. Definitely not now. Later probably either.
But the person just stepped in after knocking for the tenth or so time. A man with large stag horns and petals in his hair had entered. Did his horns grow? Maybe it was just the flowers that made them seem larger. Meli briefly looked up to reassure who it was (she already had an idea) before returning to the paperwork she had been doing.
"Why didn't you answer to my knocking? What if it was something serious—" The large man probably wanted to add something, but before he could continue he was interrupted by the lady sitting at the desk.
"But it wasn't anything serious, right, Captain?"
Police Captain Pond did not answer. Instead he looked at his subordinate as if he was a child who did something wrong. Sometimes that man could be pretty ridiculous, but he when necessary he showed his serious side. This was not one of these instances.
"If it is about a new partner, then you surely know that I am not interested," Meli told him. Her gaze went over to a framed image standing on her desk.
It depicted three people - a woman and two men. The woman was Meli herself with her black wavy hair tucked up in a ponytail and the weird strands of yellowish blond, which indeed were natural, but people kept asking about. In this image her yellow bug-like wings which came from the fairy side of her family were visible. This was not something common. She rarely showed them let alone using them.
In the middle stood the shorter of the two men, who was just a little shorter than Meli standing to his right. He was a fishman with pale silver skin and short blue hair.
The other man appeared pretty human, had dark brown skin, black hair, but also unusual bright yellow eyes. Unlike the other two on the photo, he did not wear a police uniform, but rather a simple black suit and a honeycomb patterned tie.
"I don't need a partner," Meli mumbled while placing the image face down. There was no point in saying it loud. She was always ignored in that matter anyway regardless of the volume and how often she repeated it.
"This person is different than the previous candidates. He is kind of like you. You'll really like him!" Wasn't that what he also said the previous five or so times? Yes, they had been different, but Meli surely did not like those guys that the captain had brought from other stations.
"This time it's also a hero!" He said it with such enthusiasm - Meli just couldn't expect the person to be any good. And he was a hero on top of that. They were never good. She prepared for the worst yet.
"No, I am not gonna work with a masked vigilante with 'superpowers', who—" "I go get him quickly." The captain left the room before Meli could finish her objections.
"Who what?" A male voice asked from behind her.
Meli turned around shocked as she had not seen anyone besides the captain enter. There on the windowsill sat a cloaked figure - the cloak being green with a camouflage pattern. His face was hidden behind a mask that seemed to consist of two parts - one for the mouth and goggles for the eyes.
"I really would like to know what you think about heroes. Also, not all of us are vigilantes." He flashed out a card. The stamp of the SFPD was on it, marking him as an official hero. The card read: Hero Name - Blackwood. Gender - M. Birth Date - 4/25/xx07. Wouldn't that make him nineteen currently?
"Where did your boss go? I need to speak with him about this."
"Funny, I just wanted to do the same." Yeah, there was no way she could work with this kid. "Also, did you come in through the window?"
"Yep!" The hero had stood up and was now walking through the room looking through the shelf.
"Stop that!"
"Stop what? The window thing?"
"No, don't touch anything here! Just.. sit down on the sofa!" She pointed angrily at the only other sitting furniture in the room that wasn't her chair.
The room wasn't very large, so the few furniture pieces in there were kinda crammed together. There was her desk and chair close to the wall opposite the entrance. There was a shelf on both the left and right side of the room. On the right to the door was hanging a billboard thing, while a sofa stood to its left. There was also a pot plant in the corner right by the window.
"What's with that image?" The boy, now sitting on the sofa, was pointing at a rather large painting hanging behind Meli. "That's a rather bizarre taste of art if you ask me."
Apparently what the painting was portraying was a young lady surrounded by various creatures walking through a kind of park. But it looked more like the images of someone's geometry textbook had been put together to form whatever this was. Though admittedly a tangram image was better than his. Sure, the green was probably recognizable as plants, but the other colourful spots did not resemble any known species aside from maybe amoeba. Very square amoeba. Only one figure in the image was clearly identifiable. It was a demon.
If you weren't told what was on the painting you'd be more confused than Meli was whenever she looked at it.
Captain Pond finally returned and exclaimed: "Oh, there you are!" after seeing the hooded figure on the sofa.
"Captain, I don't need a partner!" Both Meli and Blackwood said almost synchronous once Mr Pond had stepped in.
"But you two seem to understand each other quite well already!" The captain smiled at both, then he went closer to Meli whispering something to her: "I know you're not a big fan of heroes, but that kid really needs some guidance." He looked back, kinda like to make sure the boy in green didn't hear anything. Blackwood seemed to be working on some mechanical thing and not paying attention to the two police people. But the goggles made it hard to tell whether he was actually looking at them.
"Plus you two have a bit more in common than you think." Captain Pond gestured to the frame lying on the table. "Now continue your work! I hope you two will get along well." With this the stag horned man left.
"Wake me if you need me, Ms Peyton," as the captain left the room Meli's newly assigned partner wrapped himself with his cloak like a blanket and made it himself cozy on the sofa.
"Wait! But I never told you my name...." It was probably the Captain who told him. That probably would make sense, even if she herself wasn't told about this new partner beforehand. "I hope you at least took off your shoes. He probably isn't listening anymore..." Thus she returned to regular work.
For the next few hours Meli did not spare a thought on the sleeping kid on her sofa. This was until somebody from the forensic division came to bring some documents.
"Oh, is that your new partner?"
"Hm?" It took Meli a bit to process the question. Oh yeah, she totally forgot about Blackwood, who was now doing something on his smartphone, while still lying down.
The young man answered the question for the colleague. "That would be me. Or maybe not. Does that really matter? Now go tell your besties some rumors about me." He gestured her to go.
"Oh.... Anyway, detective, that's the reports for this case," and the person from the forensics department quickly left.
"What was that?"
"What was what? Detective, you have the weird habit of not specifying things."
Meli didn't answer and just gave him a exasperated look.
"Is the only thing you're doing here paperwork?", he wasn't lying down anymore, and was putting on his shoes. So he did take them off. Good.
"The police has many important jobs. More than just capturing criminals, but a hero like you won't need to worry about such things."
"Oh yeah, these mountains of paper are soooo important. You've been sitting here for at least four hours if not more." The mask made it very hard to tell what facial expression Blackwood currently had, but he was most likely smirking. His tone was kinda taunting. Yes, definitely. Meli could downright feel it.
"Now that my energy is charged we can go out and do cool things. Wouldn't that also be what you want, detective Peyton? Steal the spotlight from the heroes! Make Police great again!"
Actually, yes. Meli barely felt her legs anymore and honestly she could really take any kind of break from those papers. Ye, maybe she should go on a patrol, even if she wasn't assigned for one today.
"Anyway, I'm gonna wait outside. If you don't come within ten minutes I'll leave without you," Blackwood told her, dropping something onto her desk. Her police badge and ID! How the heck did he get those?! And when?! Of course he was already gone before she could ask.
She should follow him. Not because they were partners - they weren't. She didn't feel like they were. It required more than her boss telling her so for someone to become an actual partner. Meli just kinda felt responsible for him now. But she didn't even like him! He was an annoying brat. But still a kid.
In the end she decided to finally stand up. Not because of the boy, but because she felt like going with him would be more exciting than any more hours of staring at paper. That and she didn't want heroes to constantly be in the limelight.
She stretched her limbs, which were very sore from hours of sitting, and went out. It had been a while since she had been on patrol. Heroes usually did this part of her job. There was also that incident... It was a surprise she could keep her job after that.
But when Meli left the building she could not find the boy anywhere— No, there he was. Hiding in the tree crown. With his green cloak and the bad lighting around (it was already dark outside and one of the lanterns was broken) Blackwood would have been barely visible to most, but not to Meli. "Gotcha! You can come down now." She looked up the tree he was sitting on.
"Woah, that was cool!"
"Was it?"
"Are we gonna take a real police car?"
"Well, no. It looks like a normal car." The way he had said 'real police car' though - it was kinda funny to her.
"Still a cop car," he responded.
The young hero seemed very excited about sitting in the car. He kept asking Meli about the various buttons, but she only responded with: "I am driving and can't look. Also keep your sweaty fingers off of them."
Then for a while they were driving around silently.
"Requesting backup in Sector 14 at a bar called The Rabbit Hole" the car's communication unit said. On the in-built screen appeared a map with a blue spot.
"Does this mean we get to turn on the siren?"
"It's the big blue button."
"Aye!!"

***

Sector 14 was not a nice place. Well, it had many bars and casinos, but it was also very worn down, and the buildings looked not very habitable.
A few cops and a hero were standing not far from a bar - The Rabbit Hole. Meli approached the small group. "I just happened to be close by so I came with—" She wanted to say partner, but that's not what he was. Then there was also that the kid was nowhere to be seen. Where did he go!?
"Good evening, detective, we just found a very important member of the Xian Gang," a colleague in civilian clothing explained. "We need to apprehend him before he can escape and we'll lose his tracks again."
The Xian Gang! That name struck a nerve. It was a powerful underworld group. But so far the police had little success in fighting it. Meli had encountered those hooligans before.
Her colleague seemed to explain some kind of plan, but Meli wasn't listening anymore. Where was that guy? Then she it came to her. Quickly she ran into the bar.
What awaited her there was not exactly what she had expected, but at the same time she was not really confused and expected exactly that. The whole room was filled with wooden vines. They seemed to avoid most furniture and also the few people that could not escape and were hiding under tables and chairs.
There is the middle of the room was Blackwood sitting on top of a bundle of feathers, flesh and roots.
"You are slow, officers."
"Hmph hmm", said the captured one, wrapped into so many vines that he couldn't even speak.
"Who's that?", asked one of the officers.
"I am Blackwood, the master of plants!" He jumped off, did some kind of weird pose and laughed maniacally. Meanwhile the other hero and the police officers tried to carry the hunk of a birdperson to the police car.
"Do you know him?", someone tapped on Meli's shoulder and pointed at the young man in green.
Meli didn't know how to respond. What was even going on? That idiot. What if something would have gone wrong? Couldn't he have at least waited for her?
"I.... He's definitely not my partner."