[b][center]Henry: First Night[/center][/b]

With walls on three of his four sides, Henry coldly realized he'd have no where to run if things went south tonight. Fog clung the outside of his lenses like misty cobwebs. Looking up at the apartment buildings that towered towards the night sky, he saw one of the few lights in a window finally snuff out. It was late. The latest he'd ever done something like this. 

"First time I've ever done something like this," he mumbled.

If someone were to accidentally pass by this alleyway, he had no doubts as to how suspicious he would look. Here Henry was, crouched adjacent to a dumpster. Wearing a costume. He was wrapped in overlapping strips of beige canvas and silk that wound around his head, face, and neck. The rags, coupled with a pair of allegedly fog-proof swimming goggles over his eyes, gave him a sort of Tusken raider vibe. 

It was the best he could do on leftover summer lawnmowing money. Maybe if one of his aunts sent him an atrociously-late birthday card, he could splurge on better eyewear. The fog and perspiration wouldn't be a huge problem, but the hard plastic rims were digging into Henry's cheeks. Thankfully, he could at least see. A pair of old glasses and some work with a hot glue gun afforded him improvised prescription swimwear for a night of amateur crime-fighting. 

He took a deep breath, and skulked to the alleyway's opening. This street was empty, sans for a few parked vehicles, so he ventured with confidence to the sidewalk. A quick glance to the right confirmed his target. [i]Malone's Game Shop[/i], sign in utilitarian black impact, was half of a first floor in an apartment rise. It looked like a nice set-up, Henry begrudged. Everything was clean, modern, and didn't have that look of a highly-trafficked hobby-shop. It wasn't as [i]authentic[/i] as what Henry was accustomed to. Probably spoke to the Mission Hills clientele. 

So, you'd never have guessed that they'd just been robbed a few nights prior. 

Henry figured there was something poetic to that. The first night of his caped crime-fighting career would be bringing justice to a comic book store. Serial theft was hitting most Esperanza neighborhoods this past year. It was often petty, with minimal casualty, and without seeming regard for the type of establishment. Whatever thugs were smashing windows and lifting diamond necklaces seemed equally-prone to pick the lock to the back door of a comic store and make off with mint-condition volumes of [i]The Uncanny X-Men[/i]. 

Pulling down a band of cloth at his wrist, Henry glanced at his watch. Just past 1am. Why did he pick his first night out to be a [i]school night[/i]? Eliza Montgomery High School was barely a welcome sight after a [i]full[/i] night of sleep. Maybe he should head home.

[i]'And make this a total waste of my time?'[/i] Henry thought. [i]'Have to at least test things.'[/i] 

Henry took another deep breath. This time, as he exhaled, he held his arms out, fingertips extended. Eyes closed underneath the goggles, he activated his power. His consciousness extended to the radius of the block. Flecks of color filled in an imaginary map in his mind's eye. He saw floors and walls, surfaces that extended from fire escapes to kitchen counters and then into circuitous systems of vents and pipes that pumped life into the complexes. He could sense the rise and fall of sleeping chests and the waggle of rat tails as the rodents moved in unseen highways underneath floorboards. In short, he was seeing dust. 

Particulate matter. It was pretty gross when you got down to the technical side of it. Even the most immaculately-cleaned houses would accumulate enough debris for him to get a detailed floor plan. Henry had experimented before with mites and fleas, in order to more easily track moving bodies, but he couldn't sense them until they were dead and inevitably fell off of their hosts. But he [i]could[/i] rely on other things. Dandruff, dried out pollen (weather permitting), and even the spittle from a particular breathy sleeper let him get a sense for the bodies that occupied dust-laden mental topography.

An empty van in the radius of his power caught Henry's attention after several more seconds. Smoke was harder to get a sense of, because it didn't cling to anything for long. But the telltale cone of swirling particulate, its ebb and flow in time to long drags, let Henry know that a group of people were smoking in the back of that van. Large square shapes were next to them. Boxes. And as Henry carefully let a whorl of dust sweep over the floor of the van's interior, he could make out the shape of a crowbar. Several more shapes were telltale outlines of handguns. Shit, he hadn't seen those on first glance. For petty, idiot lifters, these guys kept their firearms clean.

"That sort of complicates things," Henry admitted. 

He backed up into the alley, spooked. As he did, only paying attention to the map in his head, Henry body-checked a trash can that was right behind him. It clattered to the ground with a loud metallic crash, spilling its contents to the concrete. Plastic bottles thrummed noisily against one another. Henry could sense movement at the disturbance in the floors above his hideaway. Even worse, he felt the particulate around the van's engine vibrate. The vehicle was soon in motion, slowly backing away from the comic shop and towards the alleyway that Henry was tucked away in. 

"Oh no. Oh, shit."