Henry woke up earlier than usual, before it was even seven in the morning, but he couldn't even think of going back to sleep. the realization of his acts came crashing down onto his mind like a tsunami, the horror and gruesomeness of that attack was way more than what he had expected.
he didn't get up from bed and stared at the ceiling in the not quite darkness of his room as some daylight started to creep into his room, but he felt like absolute shit. his hands trembled despite him not feeling cold and his stomach tossed and turned just by thinking of what happened in that building.
he was the culprit, he had ordered the rats to attack the traffickers and they only acted on his orders. he couldnt put any excuse nor could he blame anyone else for what he could only say was a reenactment of a scene of a horror movie, he was the one to blame and the one that would go completely unpunished.
He got up from bed and went straight to the bathroom, he gagged but his stomach had nothing in it from the night before. He then held firmly onto the sink and watched the reflection of the mirror.
He was the same, only slightly paler but nothing that showed him as a murderer. He stared at his reflection and decided that he would not do anything today, he grabbed his phone with trembling fingers and called his boss.
the tone rang as the wait became slowly more unbearable to him, until his boss answered her phone with a slightly groggy voice.
“Henry? Why are you calling at this hour?”
he swallowed saliva, but found his throat dry as he had forgotten on what he was going to say
“uh, I don't feel good today. i puked a while ago so i wont be going today”
“oh, well i hope you get well soon Henry. dont worry about your hours, and focus on your recovery”
“thanks, you too” he then cut the call, before wondering “you too?!”.
After cringing at his social skills he went to his living room and sat on the couch, and as he wanted to take his mind off from the events of the night before he chose to turn on the tv.
he had left the tv on a news channel, and now they were reporting on the attack of last night claiming it to be the rise of a new supervillain. Well, that clearly wouldn't take his mind out of last night so he changed the channel to some cartoons and he just stared at the screen letting the visual noise wash over him.
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he ended up falling asleep at some point and now it was around four in the afternoon, and his stomach demanded attention now that he had calmed down. he stood up and found that all his blood rushed to his head so he had so sit down again for a second, he should start doing cardio now that he was the city’s “new supervillain” even if he could have done everything from the comfort of his bed.
He went to the kitchen and since he didn't feel like making anything he just made a bowl of cereal and chocolate milk, truly a champion’s lunch.
he ate in silence, with the tv now turned off as he had a growing headache. and after more than half a day he reached for his power once more, as he needed to assess the situation of the rats.
turned out the rats were acting as usual, not a single shred of guild across the whole expanse of his connection to them. He then remembered why he didn't particularly like rats, he found them to be dirty and now that fell to even more than just exterior traits.
he delved onto the connection with the rat he had placed on Madeleine’s house, the girl he rescued last night and his favorite client back on his work at the coffee shop. he knew that he was stalking her and he felt guilty of that, but he couldn't stop himself from thinking of her and that also saved her last night.
She was in her bedroom, listening to music by the window. The rat he had watched her had been caught by the pesky cat so he could only see her from a different building, damn that orange menace.
many times he had been tempted to talk to her when she ordered her vanilla latte after her classes, when he handed her her receipt and change because she always paid forty cents over the price. but he held back, he knew he didn't deserve her and she deserved better. so he held back to just watching her smile with her friends, only talking with her to take her order and giving her ticket and nothing more.
last night he had gone beyond what he had set down, he had overheard her talk about a party so he sent a rat to follow her. Then he saw her leaving the building drunk with a guy and not any one of her friends, so he sent a rat to follow the car she got in.
when he saw that she was taken onto that building with armed people he had acted impulsively, doing what he did. that he was attacking human traffickers had gone to the back of his mind and his only thought was to get rid of them for messing with his daily life.
he was truly messed up, but he couldn't trust any psychologist not to sell him to the PMA as awakeners were obligated to register and he had avoided doing so. he felt that the description that the news anchors gave him fitted him perfectly “a villain messed up in the head”, but he could only move forward without looking back.
Now that he was in, he would go all in. He had done something out of selfishness so he would keep going to redeem that. There were many gangs and crime organizations in Seattle after the 20’s attack of the Doombringer, an event that had brought the city close to being abandoned and changed the names of many districts as the land itself had been reformed by the battle itself.
Now he would have to get rid of them, one at a time and use that to build up his image as The Rat King. Why was he doing this? mostly because it made him feel not that flawed to be a crazy villain instead of a crazy civilian, as if he became a villain it allowed him a certain degree of crazy.