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Hershie decided he needed to patrol a little to clear his head. He scooped trash and syringes from Grenadier Pond. He flew silently through High Park, ears cocked for any muggings.
Nothing.
He patrolled the Gardner Expressway next and used his heat vision to melt some black ice.
Feeling useless, he headed for home.
He was most of the way up Yonge Street when he heard the siren. A cop car, driving fast, down Jarvis. He sighed his father's sigh and rolled east, heading into Regent Park, locating the dopplering siren. He touched down lightly on top of one of the ugly, squat tenements, and skipped from roof to roof, until he spotted the cop. He was beefy, with the traditional moustache and the flak vest that they all wore on downtown patrol. He was leaning against the hood of his cruiser, panting, his breath clouding around him.
A kid rolled on the ground, clutching his groin, gasping for breath. His infrared signature throbbed painfully between his legs. Clearly, he'd been kicked in the nuts.
The cop leaned into his cruiser and lowered the volume on his radio, then, without warning, kicked the kid in the small of the back. The kid rolled on the ice, thrashing painfully.
Before Hershie knew what he was doing, he was hovering over the ice, between the cop and the kid. The cateyes embedded in the emblem on his chest glowed in the streetlamps. The cop's eyes widened so that Hershie could see the whites around his pupils
Hershie stared. "What do you think you're doing?" he said, after a measured silence.