Things had been weird for Henry Lately. Hell things had been weird for everyone lately. Henry hadn't been super enthused with the way the country was going to begin with, but the Coronavirus had made it even worse. Still, he didn't want to get sick so he had followed CDC guidelines. Then, just as the State was set to reopen, the cops got caught killing someone on camera and mass protests happened all across the country. Henry wasn't going to let that stop him from living his life though. Illinois had just opened back up and he needed groceries. Of course, living in Downtown Chicago like he was, this probably wasn't the best of times to be going out and stocking up on food, but he couldn't imagine anyone would deliver with massive protests happening.
Currently he was walking home from the Target, shopping bags full of Ramen and other low cost goods that could last him awhile. As he headed to the Blue Line to try and make it back home, he noticed that the entrance to the L platform had been blocked off by cones and a notice had been taped to the stairs. The Trains were being suspended due to the curfew that had been emplaced on the City. "Wait, how am I supposed to get back home then?" He asked no one in particular.
"I guess I'm walking." He shrugged. He headed off Northwest in the direction of Division Street and his Apartment near the Polonia Triangle Area. Henry was a second generation Polish Immigrant. His Dad had come over in the 70's to escape Soviet Oppression in Poland during the Cold War and he had lived in Chicago all his life. His dad had since moved to a more affluent area in the Suburbs, but Henry had lived in the Apartment above the Polish Deli that his family owned on Division Street since. He still worked part time at the Deli downstairs while he tried to get a job that could work with his Masters of History. Of course even though his Dad's Deli had since franchised into a chain of stores, the Old Man Still insisted that Henry try and make his own way in life with as little assistance from him as was practicable. Hence the bulk buy of Ramen. Henry supposed he could have just bought stuff from the Deli downstairs, but even with his Employee Discount imported brands from Europe were a bit too pricey for him, not when everything had just been shut down for months and he'd mostly been living off his savings and occasional help from his Dad.
As he walked, he noticed certain streets blocked off, some bridges had been raised too, forcing him to detour through some less than affluent neighborhoods. It was here that he began to notice signs of the Protests. A few people with signs at first, the groups of people, then a whole mass of people, chanting and protesting and waving signs. Henry tried to move through the crowd towards a bridge he knew would take him closer to his apartment and that if he could cross it, he would be able to go a few blocks further north and east and take a shortcut that would get him home quicker before the cops showed to break things up as they usually did. Unfortunately as he moved and tried to finagle his way through the crowd, he saw that a police barricade had been set up in front of the bridge and several uniformed officers were blocking his way home.
Most of the protesters here were peaceful, but there were a few who seemed to be trying to verbally spar with the police all while what had to be 16 year old girl filmed the entire thing from the sidewalk with her phone. The cops didn't seem to be responding to the clear agitators attempts to rile them up. Henry had heard online that some of the protests were being astroturfed to shit by instigators for political reasons, but hadn't seen it first hand until now. It took 15 minutes for everything to suddenly turn nasty. One of the Agitators had gotten right up in one of the cops faces and was inches away from the Officer. That's when he got pepper spray in the face. He went down and the police handcuffed him with zip ties and dragged him behind the barricade. That riled up the rest of the protestors and soon enough riot armored police backup arrived. Tear gas was fired into the crowd and through the chaos, Henry could see one of the Riot armed police aiming a weapon at the teenage girl who was filming everything on her camera. The Police had been using rubber bullets to disperse protesters for a couple days now, but Less Lethal didn't mean Non Lethal, Rubber bullets were meant to incapacitate by breaking bones and causing internal hemmoraging, and if she got hit in the head she could die. For no reason too, as far as Henry was concerned, the Girl hadn't done anything wrong. He started to move as the Riot Cop brought his gun up, but he knew he would be late and the Teenage Girl with the Camera was going to get shot in the head with a rubber bullet. He bit out a prayer to any diety that was watching to let him make it in time. He reached the Teenager just as the crack of gunfire sounded. He shoved her out of the path of the Rubber bullet only to tank it in the back of his head.
Normally even a Rubber Bullet to the base of the Skull would be pretty lethal, but as it turned out, there was indeed a God watching. In what remained of the Celestial Realm of Yu Shan, Lytek, the God of Exaltation had been looking for an excuse to introduce the Spark of Exaltation into the modern world. Long after Creation had been destroyed and a new world risen to take its place, one based not on the Magic of Creation but on scientific principals as the Gods were no longer trusted to shepard things. The Games of Divinity had been too addictive in the end, and new gods had swept in to declare the new world off limits. As if the new World based on science and logic would be any less erratic with the humans involved. He now had his chance, for if the Chaos in the Modern World did not prove the New Gods were full of hot air, what would? He cast about for a suitable host for an Exaltation and was guided by a desperate prayer, a prayer not to make the supplicant rich, nor to heal the supplicant's maladies as was so often the case these days, but to ensure that the supplicant made it in time to stop a corrupt system from injuring or killing a child. Lytek smiled, if that wasn't worthy of Exaltation, nothing was. He sent a golden shard down to the Supplicant. This Shard had rather more energy than was usual, having been sat idle for so long. Lytek thought perhaps that was a sign, perhaps this time, things would work out for the best.
Meanwhile on Earth, Henry felt the hard rubber jacketed steel hit the base of his skull. He thought it would be the end of him, but it wasn't. Somehow he had survived. He opened his eyes to see that he was wreathed in Golden Armor that had stopped the Bullet. The Armor didn't feel like it was solid at all, more ethereal, even though it had clearly saved him from getting killed by a less than lethal round. He stood up as it seemed like everyone had stopped, both the Police and Protestors had stopped what they were doing to gape at the glowing, golden armored man. Seeing that attention was on him, Henry tried to de-escalate the situation.
He turned to the Riot Police. "You shouldn't be firing directly at protestors, you could kill someone like that, and that girl couldn't have been more than 16. You're police, you're supposed to be better than the criminals, not thugs in uniform who will fire into a crowd at the slightest provocation!" He Shouted, desperately trying to get the Police to listen. Somehow, whether it was his plea or the golden Aura surrounding him, the Police listened, and began to stand down.
Henry turned to the Agitators in the Protest crowd, "You shouldn't be agitating at a peaceful protest! That only gives the police incentive to escalate! If you have any sense of respect for this cause at all, you'll go home and let these people demonstrate in peace. It's a right Guaranteed by the Constitution for fucks sake!" He growled. The Agitators somehow either got the message or were retreating to fight another day, as they slunk back through the crowd of regular protestors.
As the situation calmed and the protest continued peacably, without police violence or agitation, Henry began feeling a little tired, like he had just run a marathon. The crowd parted for him, Protestors and Cops both. He headed home for the evening exhausted. He arrived at his apartment 30 minutes later, feeling like he had just gone 5 Rounds in the Octagon and desperately needing to sleep. As he entered his apartment, the last words he mumbled to himself before collapsing into bed were, "Goddamned cops shooting people, goddamned agitators turning peaceful protests into riots. We're supposed to be better than this."
He had no idea that the video of him stopping a protest escalating into a riot, complete with police crackdown would be on youtube by the time he got home. . .