Detachment 41, 10-8

Detachment 41 of the Ontario Peace Patrol is ready for duty.

Consisting of only five drivers and a handful of support personnel, Detachment 41 is a small and undesirable posting for officers of the Ontario Peace Patrol. Commanded by Sgt. Major Sawyer, Detachment 41 patrols a backwoods section of the 401 corridor of no real significance.

Sgt. Major Sawyer, 40; a veteran of the Detroit-Windsor War, is believed to have once enjoyed a much more prestigious position within the OPP. What transpired to see him shuffled off to the boonies, his men don't know, but they respect him nonetheless, if for no other reason than he's their top pursuit man.

Sergeant Spirit, 38; Sawyer's second in command, is a tough and loyal officer, and is closest to Sawyer of all of them, in age, skill, and attitude. Because of this, she sometimes serves as a bridge between Detachment 41 and their commander, being perhaps a bit more understanding than Sawyer at times is.

Constable Jacob, 26; he fills the role of unit sharpshooter, having a record number of ranged kills. His kills are high enough, in fact, that he has been offered transfers to other, better units. Thus far he has chosen to remain with 41, although how long the young sniper will stay is a question that weighs heavily on Sawyer.

Constable Red, 30; Detachment 41's resident daredevil. A skilled driver, he could likely take his commander's place as top pursuit man, if only he took fewer unnecessary risks. Red has caused nearly as much damage to his own vehicle as those of the renegades he runs down.

Constable Echo, 18; still called 'Cadet' by the rest of her unit, is fresh out of the Ontario Peace Academy. A native of the GTA, Echo is no stranger to violence, but is still adjusting to life outside the city.

Detachment 41 is poorly funded and rarely receives support. The veterans of the unit, Sawyer and Spirit, barely bother maintaining the appearance of their vehicles anymore, only repainting the trademark gold stripe of office a couple times a year. Their Junos are older machines, equipped with turbochargers, while the rest of the unit runs plain V6s.

Detachment 41, Part One

My gang for Dark Future, or at least my first one, is going to be Detachment 41, a branch of the Ontario Peace Patrol sanc-op. (Well I say sanc-op, but it's basically a government organization.)

Detachment 41 is a small branch of the OPP, tasked with patrolling a long stretch of rural highways along the 401 corridor. Not a glamorous assignment. They receive little in the way of support or funding, and live in perpetual unease for the day Superintendent Lee might come for an inspection.

In my Dark Future, Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart runs Ontario (Upper Canada, to be precise). I tried to find out what his favourite car is, but he's more of a motorcycle guy. Even so, whenever a car and Neil Peart are mentioned together, it tends to be a roadster. I love roadsters too, and the colour scheme I  already had in mind - the official colours of Ontario, green and gold-  reminded me of a certain Hot Wheels car: the Rrroadster.

Last year the Rrroadster was sold in green/yellow and silver green. This year in blue and orange. I wasn't expecting to be able to find any green ones, but happily did. Here they are before work.

According to the packaging, the Rrroadster was created in 2013 in El Segundo California, and sports a 5.0L supercharged V8 spitting out 1100hp. Well. That all has to go.

The fiction wasn't all that had to go. The numbers had to go, and that left big dull scuffs, so I decided to scuff the rest of the cars up, take their shine off, kick them around a bit. The gold stripe was added with a sharpie and masking tape.

Flash picks out the bare metal. I tried to beat up each car a little differently, to give them some character. Maybe that one sideswiped someone recently, maybe the other rams people a lot, maybe the driver of the other spills a lot of gas.

I'm very pleased with the stripe, and the overall look. And the fact that I even found all three of these cars on my first day looking. I didn't get the tape down perfect in every spot, as you can see, but it came out so well that now I'm thinking about completely repainting these cars. The gold looks so good, and while I like the beat up look, the green looks kind of awful, by comparison. I also want to try and add some weathering effects. Ontario may not turn into a dusty wasteland in Dark Future, but I think some roadsalt stains would be a very Canadian touch.

Now that the paint's been changed, let's look at some replacement fiction for this car that never could have been made in Dark Future.

Most of the vehicles driven by the Ontario Peace Patrol are locally produced within the Protectorate of Upper Canada, and are based on a vehicle acquired by Lord Protector Peart's agents during the Detroit-Windsor war.

The Juno, once lovingly hand crafted by a small team of Canadian artists working for the specialty car manufacturer Beacon-Mitchell, became the basis of the OPP's highway enforcement following the war. Originally built in small numbers during Canada's economic ascendancy during the '70s, the Juno was a powerful sport roadster, more at home on the track than the road.

After things fell apart, Beacon-Mitchell stopped producing cars, dwindling to little more than a repair shop. Located in Windsor and under constant threat from the south, the small company agreed to relocate to Toronto during the Detroit-Windsor war.

With much of their specialty equipment and materials impossible to replace, Beacon-Mitchell now produces a much cheaper version of the Juno for use by Protectorate forces. Typically cheap, built light so that smaller engines can do more with the car, the Juno serves as the workhorse of the Ontario Peace Patrol. Most are fitted for pursuit duty with the VP6, a Beacon-Mitchell-made 2.4L V6 engine. A small handful have turbocharges as well, and there are even rarer Junos that have been hand-tuned by Lord Protector Peart's chief mechanic himself; a Serbian-born genius named Zivo.

Even in their original configuration, the Juno never would have been any use in Canada of old, with its long, harsh winters and icy, snow-buried highways. But as the environment as become harsher and warmer, and snow and ice scarce, the Juno has become a symbol of Lord Protector Peart's power.

The Junos of Detachment 41 are driven by Constables Jacob, the unit's sharpshooter; Red, the resident daredevil; and Echo, an OPP rookie and newest addition to the unit.