Henry Barthow
"Vermillion!"
By the time Henry yelled out she had already well taken off. Consternated, he turned towards the policewoman who was driving them around. "I hope not," he said, bunching up his shoulders in a pose of discomfort. "Take me back to my car. I'm good enough to drive, and it doesn't look like we can afford to act superfluent right now."
Her partner grimaced, perhaps at the prospect that Henry was telling them to deal with Noel and whatever else was cropping up at their place rather than the task of chauffeuring him, but a snapping motion from her hand drove off his petulance like a slap.
"Right, sir," he said. She nodded in concordance. "We'll take care of this here once you're up."
Henry could only offer a grunt in retort.
Henry ignored the tingling under his skin, stinging his mind and quantum gears like an accusation below the nolmacy of his affected human expression. The light of those small suns wasn't getting any weaker as he drove towards the site of the incident. And neither were the reactions out in the streets; he noticed people being awed as people were wont to, but as he drove he also saw more and more congregate to or from the direction he was going. He was too focused on the road to look at their faces, but the demon recognized the inclination of their movement, the equation guiding their movements like a herd: anxiety and doubt. The notion of security that they used like a shield, cracking.
Mr.Tar
It made Henry Barthow completely livid.
Sariel
Fortunately for the burden of his own thoughts, it didn't take long for him to arrive at the ground zero. Even here, where thinning streams of smoke rose, people were gathering. Drawn by what the demon could only assume was fatalist curiosity, coming close but avoiding actual contact with the disaster, at least right now. The enforcers watching the area didn't need to push anyone away - already they were placing themselves at a detached distance, observers, but not participants.
Henry stopped his car brusquely, exited, and barreled past the safety markers with a flash of his badge, making crumbling sounds with his steps towards the center.
He turned his gaze over the line of bodybags he walked by, and a medic zipping up the last over the charred expression of a young recruit whose name he didn't know but whose face he recognized; then turned it away, forward. The detective stopped walking. He beheld a pit of molten slag and debris, work and dedication and altruism buried under cement and broken steel.
Henry's gears screeched inside his mind at the unfairness of it all, and his body emulated the sound with a threatening, booming yell from his lungs as he kicked a piece of litter next to him.
It went rolling with a metallic clang that sent a shock up Henry's spine, a second before he fell to his knees.
"GhraaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!" He cried, clenching his fists and eyes from dull pain burning in his foot, and sharp frustration scratching his throat.
In the moment it took his outburst to quiet, a medic was running up to him with worry that wavered when she looked at him. Though Henry's face was red, his expression had become so subdued it might as well have been of stone. Cold and hard was the look that he gave her as she hesitantly asked if he was alright.
"I'm fine. Where are the rest of the cops?" Henry asked flatly. She shrank back a little.
"The 12th precinct detective, but - wait!"
He ignored her protest and walked past the enforcers, ever slightly dragging his left foot (he had a feeling it might have broken somewhere) to the car.
(WIP)
