Almost professionally

You realize you should have undressed first after you get just a few steps… because your clothes disintegrate… again.

“Oh, by the way…” your guest speaks up in your head: You're legal. I looked it up while you were sleeping: This jurisdiction has an indecent exposure law, not a nudity law.”

As you walk out of the house - switching to a low speed to avoid shattering the door as you open and close it - you frown and double check, “what's the difference?”

“Lewd behavior,” the dragon on your hand answers, “with a nudity law, simply being exposed is a crime. With an indecent exposure law, it requires more - sticking fingers in yourself, shoving your chest in someone's face, cat calling, wolf whistling, etcetera. Just walking around naked isn't enough.”

You nod as you lightly jog at maybe five miles an hour to the police station… or rather, five hundred as far as everyone else is concerned. You focus on your face and make the standard minor adjustments so you don't look quite like your civilian self as you go. It's a couple miles, but you need to exercise anyway, and a car or bus wouldn't exactly be faster. You get there in about half an hour of your time… which you know because your magic watch advanced by about eighteen seconds.

You take a bit to catch your breath - without leaving fast time - as you look around the police station. It's a simple two-story concrete office building with an attached garage, a section that doesn't have windows, a general parking lot, and a fenced impound yard. Also signs… “Parking tickets,” “Holding,” “Bail,” “Reports,” …ah, there's the one: “Hero Patrols.” You follow the signs around to a small office with a separate entrance. You go through the double doors - with no security - into a limited front desk area: A square room maybe twenty feet on a side, with the outside door, an inside door, several chairs, cameras and speakers in the corners, and bankers’ glass between the room and a receptionist in police blues in an adjacent room. He looks up as you approach, staring, and speaks up as you take a breath, “Hero patrol? I haven't seen you before.” He pauses, and adds “THAT is your uniform?”

You sigh, “Speedster. I don't have any clothes that survive moving at speed.” You don't quite get why the fact that he's not meeting your eyes is warming up your middle.

He just licks his lips, his eyes not leaving your heaving chest, “right… so… first time?”

“Yes,” you confirm, “what do you need?”

The man takes a slow breath behind the bankers glass, and grabs a clipboard and pen, which he es through a little secure -through box under the window, “Fill this out…” he pauses, still staring, “...umm, how big… err… how fast are you?”

“Several hundred MPH normally,” you shrug, and get warmer as his eyes follow your bouncing boobs, "Thousands if I press.”

“Umm…” he considers, “...hold a minute…” he reluctantly pulls his eyes from your chest and focuses on his computer for a bit as he types.

You take the time to fill out the form: The paper basically boils down to “I'm doing this of my own free will, I understand and accept the risks, and I'll be a good person.” It's a lot wordier than that, but that's the gist of it. You sign it with your hero name - The Streak - and hand it back through the little bankers box.

The man frowns as he accepts it, “Okay, so… our cameras aren't rated for that kind of speed,” he licks his lips, “but that doesn't mean you can't patrol. The old methods are still valid for cases like this. Here…” he es back another form, a highlighter, a blank book, an envelope, a steel box, and two maps of the city and surrounding area, “Here. Write down your intended patrol path and plan. Seal it up in the envelope and that back - it goes in a safe and stays there unless there's a problem. Meanwhile, you take the logbook, follow your plan, and note down everything, turning it in at the end of the night. We'll keep doing it the old way until we can get a speed harness in.”

“What do I need to write down?” You frown.

“Everything. Times, what you saw, what you did, and such.” The officer shrugs.

“It's an activity log,” your ring adds, “You log when you reach the planned points on your route, what you see there - people, animals, activities, oddities - and if you interfere with anything, include the what and why. It's an old compromise solution for the trust problem.”

Switching to hundred speed to have a private conversation, you consider, “Trust problem?”

“Okay, so…” the dragon considers, “...the classic should do. Consider two scenarios: First, suppose a hero finds a man raping a woman in an alley. The hero kills the monster and simply leaves. The woman, just wanting to forget the whole ordeal - and the guy being dead - doesn't report it. A day later, someone finds the corpse, and reports it to the police.”

“Seems… well, not good, but acceptable,” you shrug.

“Yes…” the teacher agrees, “...now consider a second scenario. A ‘hero’ with a nasty racist streak finds a guy of a race he hates in an alley, and kills him. A day later, someone finds the corpse, and reports it to the police.”

“That's evil, the guy needs to be hunted down,” you answer easily.

“Indeed,” your body guest agrees, “now tell me: How do the police know which scenario produced the corpse if rain washes away all the forensic evidence?”

That brings you up short, “They can't, and that's the point.”

“Correct,” the ancient entity on your finger agrees, “the log book is the old way of handling it. The plan - sealed - means you won't be getting ambushed… but it can be compared to the log if needed: Makes it hard to say you were never anywhere near there when it's on file that you planned to that way. The logbook means you at least have an attestation of what you did… that will persist long enough for any investigations that care. It's far from perfect, but it's a mostly-functional compromise. Body cameras have a different set of problems, but mostly work better.”

“What's wrong with body cameras?” You wonder.

“They record too much, too perfectly,” comes the immediate answer, “and break people's expectations of privacy. Consider the case of an interrupted rape: The video goes into evidence for the trial… which makes it public record in many places, for years after the trial is over to the appeals and parole processes - the same as any other court documents.” He pauses, “Oh, and there's also complaints about peeping, as a lot of heroes do their patrols up high, so the cameras look through windows where people aren't expecting to need curtains. The reviewer at the end if the night generally has standing orders to delete such things, but the reviewer still sees them, and if it happens to be something that needs to be saved, well… the needs of the courts take priority.”

You nod, and slip down to normal speed to plan a ten mile route….