Badge

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A badge is a common term for a mask tacitly approved by the police. At the time of the First Wave, there was no oficial recognition of supernormal abilities, and the City Council joined many other official bodies in denying their existence. In practice, therefore, a badge was a mask who decided to fight crime, and whose activities the police officers recognised well enough not to pursue them. To many low low ranking cops, both uniformed officers and detectives, it seemed that allowing these people a free hand could only be beneficial to the city as a whole. This was only even an ad hoc arrangement, with no official standing, but it meant that if criminals turned up in front of the police station bound and gagged, unless there was some sign of excessive violence, any investigation into who had brought them there would quickly stall or lose its evidence.

The term 'badge' was originally coined humorously, referring to the masks' complete lack of any kind of identifying documents. It later became more literal, with the special research departments Hope One, Two, and Three issuing literal badges to the people they nominated to become protectors of the city.

Since the passing of the SARI Act, the city has instituted an effective zero tolerance policy on supernormals. In that time, the enforcement branches tried to redefine 'badge' to refer to their own troops, defending the city from rogue masks. However this was mostly unsuccessful, and they are more commonly known as sandflies. The term 'badge' is mostly unused, except self-referentially by the least mentally stable members of the so-called Next Wave.