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.

The cop took a step back and slipped a little on the ice before catching himself
on his cruiser.

"Since when do you kick unarmed civilians in the back?"

"He -- he ran away. I had to catch him. I wanted to teach him not to run."

"By inspiring his trust in the evenhandedness of Toronto's Finest?" Hershie
could see the cooling tracks of the cruiser, skidding and weaving through the
projects. The kid had put up a good chase. Behind him, he heard the kid regain
his feet and start running. The cop started forward, but Hershie stopped him
with one finger, dead centre in the flak jacket.

"You can't let him get away!"

"I can catch him. Trust me. But first, we're going to wait for your backup to
arrive, and I'm going to file a report."

A _Sun_ reporter arrived before the backup unit. Hershie maintained stony
silence in the face of his questions, but he couldn't stop the man from
listening in on his conv