What was the worst thing in the world?

Vandals, criminals, perverts, hooligans, delinquents, disobedient children, and the list goes on and on and on. Avery didn't really care all that much about some youngsters who were defacing some public property in the fine town of Hargeon, but she could understand why some people would be upset by it. After all, this was the town where they lived, not that she knew what it was like to live and work in a town for any more than two weeks at most, but if she was the kind of person who liked to live and work in a place for a long period of time then she imagined she wouldn't be happy if some vandal was constantly defacing the property in that area... yeah, that was probably reasonable to assume. Intimidating others didn't really seem like the kind of work that she was used to; of course, she preferred these kind of legitimate jobs as opposed to being asked to launder money, kill other people as though she were some sort of assassin, or anything intense like that that could put some kind of bounty on her head. Still, wasn't this request in the same vein as those ones? In the end, even if she was being asked to by a policeman who was being backed by the law enforcement head honchos in Hargeon, wasn't she just coercing people into not doing the things that they liked to do because it disturbed others?

Well, she supposed it wasn't a problem if her backside would be covered by the legitimate authorities. She was asked not to hurt them, which was restricting her ability to do the job more than anything else, since without use of real force then maybe it wouldn't be so easy to get this job done after all. This was especially true in the case of kids and other kinds of deviants; if you really wanted to scare them then you needed to make an example out of someone. If you can't do that, then obviously the job will become much more difficult. Avery let out a deep sigh as she headed over to the area where the vandalism was worst. The officer that she had spoken to before the mission started was pretty clear about how she was not to actually hurt anybody, but he hadn't considered the fact that maybe all these crimes weren't being committed by one person or even a small group of people. If it was a large group then it went without saying that Avery was supposed to defend herself. The officer hadn't said anything about it, but she was sure that he wouldn't mind if she did. After all, shouldn't her safety be prioritized over the safety of some hooligans who liked to wantonly break the law?!

She sure hoped so, and this thought weighed heavily on her mind as she entered the street where the graffiti seemed to be the most prominent.

500/1000

She had been expecting harden gangsters or criminals, but the group that she had been confronted by were anything but that. They were kids, teenagers, but still kids to her. Of course, this was to be expected and she was mentally kicking herself for not realizing sooner that they would be children and not real criminals since their most dangerous charge was that of petty vandalism and graffiti. If they were renowned murderers or wanted for hit and run or something like that, then she could be expecting more of a challenge. She didn't really think she'd struggle against a bunch of kids though, and it was obvious that they didn't take her, being a young girl and all, very seriously either. That was going to be their downfall; not that it mattered whether or not they actually took her seriously or not. She'd be able to take them all out either way, and she quickly proved this when she knocked one of the graffiti kids in the back of the head with the handle of her polearm when he turned his back on her and returned to his defacing drawings, muttering something sexist while he did so although the contents of his murmur were lost on her. Kids these days weren't as articulate as their previous generation counterparts, it seemed.

Her attack of their friend didn't see to sit too well with the others and they began to surround her. She had no idea what they thought they could do armed with a bunch of cans, but she supposed it was good that they were showing them to her since she would be able to use this as proof later to show the officer that she had done her job to the best of her ability. The kids looked like they wanted to fight at this point, but at the same time were stealing glances at their knocked out friend, probably worried about whether he was okay or not. He clearly wouldn't be since she hadn't hit him that hard, or even anything even remotely sharp but they, of course, didn't know that and were clearly intimidated by the spear that she held in her hand. She decided to reason with them, talking down to them like they were the younger brothers that she never had and it actually seemed to work with all the kids apologizing and agreeing to disperse.

It looked like she had earned the respect of some gangsters to be, and although she had finished her speech by telling them that there were better things out there in the future than being hardened criminals, she doubted that her words would affect them too much although they would probably try. Poverty breeds poverty. Crime breeds crime, after all. After getting them to give her their graffiti cans and putting it in a trash bag, she brought the whole thing over to Officer Maki who inspected it before congratulating her on a good job well, well done.

1000/1000