Rikki Barnes

She hears it on patrol, scared, unhappy yips accompanied by the unmistakable noises of assholes getting their kicks by doing what they do best. It barely takes her any time to go from the top of a building to the alley, where she finds a couple teenage idiots terrifying the shit out of a dog.

Rikki gets their attention with a sharp whistle. She’ll fight them if she has to, but they’re barely worth the effort. They’re not exactly supervillains. “I’m gonna give you a couple seconds to look at me and figure out that you’re hopelessly outclassed right now if you wanna fight.  If you decide to leave right now, I won’t follow you, but believe me, I have a memory for faces, and I’m not gonna be happy if I find you doing anything like this again.”

They take off running before she gets the last syllable out. Sometimes it’s good to be a vigilante with a reputation, even if it’s just a local one.

Once they’re out of the way, she approaches the dog they were targeting slowly. She sort of remembers some stuff about handling wild dogs from training, but luckily this one looks pretty… unlikely to attack, mostly. There’s no tags she can see, though she guesses he could still be chipped.  But the way he looks – dirty, thin, and ungroomed – make it a pretty good guess that he’s a stray. “What’d those jerks do to you, huh?”

The dog whines and tries to back away, favoring its left paw heavily. Which is especially bad, because she doesn’t know where she can take a dog like this. A vet? She can’t afford to pay one. A pound? That just… feels like the wrong thing to do here. Which doesn’t leave her with a lot of options.

But there are a couple. Rikki grins lopsidedly at the dog and slowly edges forward to scoop him up. “Hey there,” she says in her best you’re such a good boy and I’m such an unthreatening human voice, “we’re gonna go meet someone who’s going to super-hate me for this.”

As expected, the Night Nurse is not a veterinarian.

As hoped, she examines the dog anyway, declares that nothing’s broken, and sends him off with Rikki with instructions to get him rested and well-fed.