His part to become more known was quite simple, but it also had a bunch of steps. He would first take advantage of the strengths of the rats and take over the sewers of the city, there were many rats to increase his army and also there were many criminal groups that were working underground to avoid detection.
His goal was the rats and not the criminals, as he wanted to be absolutely sure that his reach to the sewers wouldn't be cut off. otherwise he would have to go himself to the sewers and that didn't go well the first time, given that the sewer workers got a glimpse of him and named him the rat king or rat freak as they drank after their work hours.
It had been four days since his attack on those traffickers, and now it was friday night. He hadn't just let the days go by his usual routine, he had actually done some research beforehand.
The sewers as a whole was almost like a completely new city layout as it had accumulated a bunch of renovations and expansions over the years, both legal and illegal ones. The city of Seattle was a particular one even among the ones within the west coast that was riddled with parahuman events, the city had faced destruction twice since the parahumans came to be.
The first time it was in 2024 when the then fourth doombringer made itself known by attacking Seattle, the attack had come from below ground and the whole Bainbridge Island sunk beneath the water. The death toll was immense and the city came close to becoming a ghost town if it wasn't for most of the Vancouver citizens migrating to Seattle due to a coup by a local gang that took over the city.
The second one was shortly after, in early 2026 when those same Vancouver gangsters organized an attack on Seattle that also took the lives of many people but also led to the PMA expanding into Canada and erasing such small warlords from taking rulership of cities.
Overall the city sewers were remade after the doombringer, so there were sections of old sewers mixed among the new ones. Then many criminal groups decided to make themselves hideouts beneath the city and that was copied shortly after by all kinds of awakened people, the PMA in response did the same and also built their own private highways beneath the city to travel even faster between PMA buildings.
That's without factoring that the Doombringer made a new river that cuts the city in half. Luckily or not the space needle still stands, and it has been remodeled with thicker materials to withstand even nuclear bombs by now.
Henry had learnt from his previous mistake, these rats were a bunch of ferocious bastards and bloodshed was extremely easy to occur. For this he had been very meticulous on what he wanted to do and organized a month-long plan for what to do, it just so happened that it began on the same day he finished his work week.
His ground rules were simple, he did not want a massacre to be repeated and he was only going to scan his overall surroundings. No combat was to be expected and neither would he send hundreds of rats together, only ones or twos to map out everything.
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He decided to make his very own map since the online ones were very outdated and many of the modifications to the underground were not official ones, he was no artist so he was going to rely a lot on his rulers and measurements.
And thus he ordered his new rat scouts to explore the underground, it began simple enough and he focused on translating the newly explored tunnels onto paper. But obviously he hadn't planned that even if he could process all that the rats did and saw, he couldn't move his hands nearly as fast as he needed to make a map as detailed as he wanted.
Well, it was good to find his own limitations like this and not in a combat situation where not knowing his limitations would screw him over.
He ordered the rats to stop and drank a glass of cold water to calm the slight headache he was getting from trying to multitask so much. He was feeling a “power high” so he wanted to do more but he also knew that he was only one and he had a limit he couldn't overcome.
He decided to take it slow, and maybe not try to make an exact representation of the underground world. The map was for himself, and he didn't really need to know the exact measurements of every tunnel.
And thus his very precise map turned into squiggles and simple lines of trajectories real fast, this way he could keep up with multiple scouting rats and proceed faster. After all, he could always work on the details later, right?
He focused on this task, and minutes became hours. He wouldn't have noticed the passing of the day if he hadn't felt hunger pangs after midnight, so he ate a cold pizza he had in the fridge and went to bed.
Slowly each day he worked more on his sketch of the underground, he found a bunch of secret hideouts but he didn't determine whether they were habitants or what side of the law they were on. He did mark them in a different color pen in his ever growing mess of tape and paper he called a map, as to remember to check them out later.
His expected schedule of a month went by in a flash, his work colleagues were as nice as always and he noticed an increase in clients at the cafe so he was slightly more busy on weekdays.
What did bother him was how his image as a villain was dying down, mostly due to him not doing a thing but it still bothered him. So he was getting tempted to pull another crazy stunt like last time but he decided against that in the end, the last thing he wanted was for the law enforcers to target him as he was sure he was an actually easy target with how little he did to protect his identity.
So he was debating on what his plan of action should be, he knew he wanted to get rid of the many crime organizations such as the cannibal cults or the drug dealers that plagued the city. But should it really be him the one to do so? He had the locations with probably more precision than the PMA so just giving them the information was a very neat option and would take some weight off of his back.
The only things that somewhat drove him to become a villain would be the freedom to kill criminals and that he would feel better about how fucked up in the head he was, but other than that he wasn't keen on causing harm or damaging property.
But he really didn't want to be a hero, he didn't want to be shown off on tv like some sort of prize nor did he want his every move to be controlled in detail. He kind of liked being one behind the scenes and his power further helped him in that regard.
So, he was going to take advantage of his powers and kind of play both sides in the regards he found comfortable, that should be fine as long as he didn't do anything excessive.