Guardia's Finest Prologue
By Captain Gaul
My friends told me I have a talent for writing, and that I should use that talent for something other than police reports. Me, I like writing police reports. As far as I am a writer, I've been trained for brevity, and police reports demand that. And, because I'm typically the only surviving witness on the patrol for these various "incidents", my reports could very well be works of fiction, and nobody would know the difference.
But this story, I can't write as a police report. My license to arrest was issued 997 AD and expires 1017 AD, and, as I found out at the time, most of the story takes place outside of those two dates. Don't ask me how or why, because I'm a patrolman, not a physicist. I suppose I could apply for a license extension, but I still couldn't extend into the past-for some reason, the boys in clerical administration don't understand the point of that.
I'm sorry, did I introduce myself? My name, that is, the name by which you may refer to me, is Captain Gaul, or, if you're in a hurry, Captain. 'Sir' will do as well. I'm, as you might have guessed, a captain, a captain of Guardia Patrol. I don't work in the castle, or the tower dungeons, or at the chopping block. That's not my line. I'm part of the patrol. We police the continent, quell imp riots, deal with disturbances of the peace, arrest lawbreakers, check on expired permits, things like that.
Of course, the job's great fun. The so called "system of justice" introduced by the chancellor circa 600 AD (I do know my history) has become so vague and obtuse that I can, if I feel like it, arrest someone for whatever the heck I want to, and sleep soundly knowing that any cockamamie charge I come up with will in fact be part of the legal code by the time the case goes to trial.
Not only that, but there are no laws dealing with police brutality in Guardia. That's why I don't work in Porre.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad cop. But when you spend all day arresting vandals, retrieving cats, and busting Taban for not renewing his Tinkerer's Permit, sometimes the only way to get rid of that stress is to beat on someone's back with a nightstick until they fall to the ground unconscious. And sometimes, it turns out they deserved it. Sometimes.
But hey, I'm wasting time. I'd better get to the story. Crono's looking over my shoulder, and I've seen what he can do with that sword of his. Yeah, I'm getting to it, Crono.
.