Michael Thorn

At first glance, Thorn is quite unassuming. Standing at an average height of Five-foot-seven-inches, he's taller than some and shorter than others. Brown hair in a mixture with his blue eyes, always kept clean and cut short to the back of his neck, a double crown parted to the left of his forehead, revealing his slowly receeding hairline, though it is not yet greying, not yet being that old. He follows a seeming tradition of black is best, most of his wardrobe is solid black material, usually short sleeved black shirts with black slacks. Five pairs of suits, black coat and trousers combined with a grey undershirt and bright red tie round it out with an ankle length trenchcoat which he wears during the colder weather or whenever he feels like it. Both serve to obsecure his armament just as well, though he has been known to wear his badge on a necklace of sorts or attached to the collar of his jacket. Rarely, during especially hot days, he does away with the extra layer, leaving his gun and badge in the open for all to see. The stare of his eyes tells nothing about his emotions, and his body language betrays very little, a habit from the force. While a useful trick for interrogations, it leaves some feeling like they are recieving a cold shoulder.

While technically skilled in his line of work, he has no false assumptions about his prowess, either in a mental excerise or a physical test. He's a down to earth sort of person, who is always concentrating or worrying for the now rather than the future. That isn't to say that he has complete disregard for what may or may not happen as a direct result of his actions, more that he cares about leaving tasks assigned, either by another or by himself fully completed before he moves on to something else. Multitasking is a skill that must be learned as they say, and Thorn certainly had to learn the hard way. He's an astute, very logical thinker, and sometimes lacks a sense of humour, given his mood on the day. Even despite this, he is a very friendly person, even if wary of another. A small smile, a soft gaze, even if he is eyeing another up as a possible threat to his safety or the safety of others. He doesn't seem to mind working alone in the field, and in fact seems to work better that way, though he loves a good sounding board when working on a problem. Sometimes it seems as if he lacks a temper at all, seeming almost at all times to be calm and collected, though he weeps silently for the stupidity of mankind when even best friends seem to be chomping at the bit to kill each other and deny all involvement, even with all the evidence stacked against them.

Thorn is a classic example of normal guy who does an abnormal job, and continues, somehow, to maintain a normal lifestyle around it, even when living alone. Methodical and dedicated to his studies, even when in highschool, despite all other distractions brought during his life during the period. Born and rasied in inner city Chicago, life had it's own set of dangers, perhaps sometimes even worse of that in rural towns where the average life was stereotypically framed as being hard work, dangerous and all for little reward, thanks to the big corporations who squeezed the life out of everything they could get their hands on for just a few extra cents of profit. Or at least, that was what his mother had said.

Always a rambler, Thorn had been born alone to single mother, Patrica Thorn, after her husband had divorced and walked out halfway through pregancy, thanks mainly due to the fact that she had attempted to hide the fact from him. Whether or not she had been unfaithful as he had thought when he left her for good is a secret to which the answer she took to her grave when she died of natural causes in Thorn's twenties. And whether or not he believed any of her retoric was something he was proud to have hidden, even if all the way to her grave.

Fresh out of school, he enlisted for national service, and passed all the trials, mental excerises and physical exams with average marks, but in the end was turned down in part thanks to a lack of positions available. Declining to move across the entire country to take a non-combat position that would barely pay his bills instead of a position he desired, a fair enough reason. As an act of kindness though, the recruiter passed him onto a drinking buddy, a friend in the Chicago Police Force, who after a handful of brief meetings decided he was at least worth the recommendation.

Thorn quickly found himself in the academy. An undistinguished stay, though certainly not an uninformative one, and soon he was an officer in the police service, dealing with drunken brawls, inter-group violence and the general disrespect and acts that he had thought left behind him in highschool. As a reactionary position, he was able to prevent crime, at least in some small way, but his mind required, or rather hungered for a more active role. It wasn't until three years that he finally had the chance to earn his Detective stripes. It was perhaps the one task he was ever recorded as excelling at. And since then, he has served as an effective member of the Chicago Police Department, for the past ten years.

Which brings us to the present day, and who knows that it could hold. I'm not a fortune teller, so here is where it ends.

A normal day in the big city. Perhaps, if hammering rainstorm was normal here. The past few weeks had been overly sunny, happy and hot, and perhaps they were overdue for the heavens to open upon them and soak everything they could reach in cold, wet misery in liquid form, unavoidable and a damper on one's mood. Perhaps it might have been considered karma, though that was something he had never considered to be real. Every person, man, woman of child were probably cursing their luck for such a storm, bolt of lightning dancing off the ground and high into the sky, wondering what they had done to provoke the weather gods into such a fury as to ruin their day completely and utterly without mercy.

Perhaps his first thought had been incorrect, considering here he was, inside the warm cabin of his unmarked cruiser, rainwater pelting off the glass and roof, thudding off the metal hull and rolling to the ground, the sound loud enough to mute the running noise of its engine and make the radio unit mounted above the cup holder difficult to hear. One holder was full, not with cup but with his own personal, waterproofed radio, off for now considering he had the more powerful vehicle radio with which to listen in on, currently silent. Perhaps no one wanted to talk for fear of angering the higher powers of weather even more than they already had.

The main road, lit every thirty metres or so with tall, bright yellow street lights. Old and overdue for replacement, known to break down almost every other day it seemed. But the road was just too busy, all the time there was never a spare moment to replace them without causing traffic carnage, so instead they remained, lift cradle trucks mounting up across the footpath in order to effect their repairs, causing as minimal disruption to traffic as possible, though for all the good it did them considering the rubberneck in everyone around it seemed was to slow down and stare. One car ahead of him was one such case, a black sedan, old and beaten up, dents and scratches here and there. Perhaps if he'd followed them as long as he had on a road that didn't see traffic, he might have suspected he'd been the subject of every driver's worst nightmare, being followed by the police.

But the radio had brought him out of that moment of thought, and wiped the smile from his face. The communication was crisp and smooth, everything he expected from the vehicle radio. His personal was crackly, sometimes hard to understand. "All sector three units, a nine-one-one call reporting pedestrian struck by motor vehicle. Driver claims the victim ran from an alley while chased by another suspect. Units required for traffic and crowd control. Ambulance is en route, respond code three" Oh how the woman on the other end of the line in Central Dispatch loved to ruin his day. Another life lost.

Buttons on his dash, as well as two on his steering wheel, uninteresting to him before had now become important and to his attention. His left hand, off the wheel thumbed two on switches in quick succession. The otherwise normal dark navy blue sedan shone to life. Red and blue lights flashing in strobe underneath the grill, while a gumball machine flashed red and white on his dash. The top of his rear window exchanged patterns of red and blue lights bouncing from one side to the other in a rapid-fire sequence, passing each other on the way. And the sound of the rain gave way to the roar of his siren, quick blast of the airhorn giving the driver ahead of him the fright of his life, indicator flashing almost at once as he hastened to clear the path of the now revealed emergency vehicle. Wail of the siren inside the cab mixing with his engine as his foot pressed to the floor, the personal data terminal showing the route he needed to take to the scene, left hand reaching up for the speaker piece of the car radio, button down as he spoke.

"Central, Uniform-Able-Seven, en route code three to the scene." Maybe the loud noise of siren and engine would make Central's teeth grate all day in return for the bad news. He didn't mind the sound so much...