To the Sunset

Narrator: Sèance

One Month Later...

I was trying to be normal. I figured that with Edict, Symbiosis, Swagger, and Scanner. I couldn’t even put my finger on it. But there was something there. Something real. Something different. And. I didn’t stay with them. I didn’t want to. I could’ve, but I didn’t want to. Maybe there was…some way of being I still wanted to explore. 

They’d done their end of the deal, gave me a lot of shit that I wanted. Food, Money, Tickets on the nearest train West. Supplies, stuff I couldn’t get back from the Sheriff’s office or the train when I ran from it back in Nestlegrass. Nice set of cooking supplies. Chains for my costume. It was a costume now, officially. Not just some stuff I’d been planning to wear on the day-to-day wherever I went. I wasn’t planning on just wearing the same things no matter what. Clothes, that’s another thing they gave me. As I said, I was working with being normal. Trying it out.

So, I kept my ghosts down, and didn't use my power. Wore some of Scanner’s old clothes. Enough so I’d look…normal. Still didn’t ‘wash my hair’ or ‘take a shower’ whatever that meant. 

I found my way into another small town, and acted like I was any other girl on the street. I went through a restaurant the wrong way. Apparently you’re supposed to go around with your car? And then if you’re walking you go in from another side? I almost got mad, but I didn’t. I just walked away. I found another food place and got in a line behind a couple of people. There was a counter, and the fella behind asked me what I wanted. I answered ‘food’ which was apparently not normal. He pointed me to a set of signs above him. I could read the basic stuff but it took me a while and I flailed for a bit. Then an older man behind me suggested, “If you don’t know what you want, get the #1. It’s the classic.”

I didn’t really know what that meant but I nodded along, and I gave the counterman 5 dollars when he asked. I messed up, gave him $20 and so he had to give me a bunch of money back.

But I got my food. It was good.

I’d had burgers before but they were mostly out of the trash and they’re way better when they're hot. Especially these roadside ones. It was very filling. I’d realized that spending three days eating Edict’s cooking had made the stuff I scavenged seem far less appetizing in comparison. The burger was even better than hers though.

People still looked at me weird, but they didn’t do anything about it. It was a little place, surrounded by the woods and the road. Not too far I couldn’t step out if I ever needed to. I did, eventually. But I lingered in the quiet restaurant for a little while.

Down the road was an actual town, still a small one. Podunk, you might say. Sign said Kelper, Utah. As I was up in the wooded hills, looking down at the town there was a set of lights to one side. It was very pretty. Giant Metal machines. Lights, moving colors. It was very pretty. It was also loud, but I wondered if that might distract the ghosts rather than aggravate them. Over the loudspeakers a voice announced that it was the County Carnival and that we were all welcome to celebrate. Not really meant for me. I didn’t even live in this county. But I stepped in anyway.

There were so many people there I felt overwhelmed so I didn’t stay long but I watched the lights from the woods all night. The next day I decided to go back and see if I could get in at a less busy time. I did alright, but I still stuck to the shadows and didn’t dare approach the enormous, bustling Ferris Wheel -that’s what the sign said- at the center.

Like I said, I’m trying to be normal. So when people started running and screaming, as fire erupted from one of the many stalls of the carnival, As a villain-no doubt attacked the town, I thought about Séance. About Gwynedd. About what I’d do. Strike out with my chains, fight tooth and nail. But that’s not what I did. I decided to do what a normal person would do. I decided to run.

Turned out the Carnival situation wasn’t that much of a threat. It was a small fire, caused by an accident. No Villains. The Fire Department got called out and there wasn't anything Séance could do with her power even if I wanted to. Truth was, I didn't want to either way. I did not, in fact, do anything about it. Was that normal?

There was a tiny inkling in my head to maybe ask someone, the fellow normal people I was trying so hard to blend in with, but then. Well two things. First, It would kind of give away the whole me not being normal thing. Normal people didn;t ask what was normal. They knew, from experience. The other half was that it would mean talking to people. 

“I hate people.” I muttered to myself as I considered the options. I was pacing in the woods overlooking the Carnival site. After the whole fire situation, they’d closed the fair for the day. But, they kept the lights on, promising they’d ‘come back tomorrow.’ That left today to break in.

Of course, everyone left and the whole burned area was cordoned off. Other than that the rest of it was there and no one had bothered to turn out the lights. It was still…pretty. They call abandoned places ‘ghost towns’ sometimes. When I was there, it really was a ghost town. Phantoms playing with the guns at the shooting gallery and intangibly wading through the popcorn machines. I made one of them corporeal and he pulled down one of the big prize plushies from the top of the aforementioned shooting gallery. The kind of thing I saw some of the other girls grabbing onto as they ran away from the fire. 

I couldn’t keep it too long, it was too heavy. Too cumbersome, and I couldn’t keep it in my bag. I’d at least keep it for a couple hours though. That was fun. 

After having my fill looking at the lights I figured I should wander around town a bit. I mean, normal people didn’t just sit down on their own all the time. And this way a day where I was trying to test out being normal.

I don’t know if I succeeded. I didn’t really talk to anyone. That was a big thing. Everyone talked to everyone, all the time. Even with their little whatsits. Eh- uhh. Phones. Yeah that’s what Scanner said. Everyone was so close with their houses- sat one next to another next to another next to another. That’s like…completely the opposite of what I want. What I wanted? Mmmmm. Not sure yet. 

Not a complete waste though, I ended up keeping the plushie! It ended up meaning I had to keep one of the ghosts corporeal so he could carry it, but I wanted to get a bit more casual training with my power anyway. He held the bag, I held the plushie. It didn’t seem too bad to me.

The ghost who’d gotten me the plushie had kind eyes. He didn’t have any visible markings, his death hadn’t been violent. I’d guess some kind of sickness, based on how gaunt he looked. Either way, it was a decent day in town. But I was done being normal.

Two Months Later...

I was getting faster. Louisiana to Colorado was a pretty far distance but I hadn’t exactly been rushing yet. I never wanted to head back east or south. Back home. Back there. I hadn;t really given a shit otherwise. Wasn’t too precise about it. Now, I was practically always making progress and always fast. I didn’t tend to walk places very much. I almost always took a train or bus, and it wasn’t too hard to get tickets now that I actually had money. Highways weren’t my style.

It was another lone and dusty road, we were in the Sierra Nevadas now. On the way somewhere I’d grabbed a map. I hadn’t been too good at remembering where I’d been but I could trace a vague line. I remembered where I started of course. Then Nestlegrass, Colorado pretty vividly. Kelper. The next stop on the train was Greenville, Oregon. I wanted to keep track better. 

I still didn’t like people though. I avoided interaction wherever I could and I still hopped a couple of freight trains rather than take legal buses. Less talking to people that way. Besides, I was already a criminal. 

That was another part. I had to move on quicker than normal. Edict had warned me that if I wanted to keep on the road I wouldn’t want to stick around long enough for any heroes to pick up on my presence and try to capture me again.

I like the quiet. I like the wind, and the wild. I don’t think anything will ever change that no matter where I go or who I become. There’s a special kind of peace. Which is also why I hate when it’s interrupted.

The path of the freight rail line crossed a river gorge, and as it did it dipped below a car-way. Both were built on the same bridge infrastructure. The cars on top, the fright on bottom. I had pried one of the freight car doors open for a view, and was hastily trying to re-shut it before anyone would see. Then the screeching of the metal door disappeared under a louder, more drawn out screeching sound.

I heard something lurch, and then I saw, peeking out from the train, as a tire screeched and then a couple bricks fell from the side and into the river below.

 I felt it, radiating from the bridge above me. It felt like heat, but it wasn’t heat. It wasn’t even a physical sensation - more like the feeling I got when I stepped through the body of an incorporeal ghost. That feeling was colder though, this was hot. burning, unrelenting, getting stronger second by second as if a radioactive bomb had detonated. It felt like I was in a trance.

Then I snapped back to reality, I damn near jumped out of the train. Maybe 150 feet in front of me a convertible car was hanging off of the bridge and knocked some of the brick dividing wall away. Two wheels were teetering off the side and it was at a diagonal angle. One side pitched further down than the other. It was unstable. Shit.

The train wasn’t stopping and the good news was that the car wouldn’t hit me. Then it shuddered again, and it fell. The car almost dove off the side and I could see three screaming people in it.  One, an older man with thin hair in the driver’s seat, scared out of his mind. Another a similar fat woman in the shotgun seat shellshocked. Third, a kid in the back. He was the one radiating. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. One of his arms twisted towards the bridge while the other aimed at the steering wheel. Extending from both of his hands, bright glowing red lines of energy were sticking into the material. 

The Car was only barely connected to the bridge anymore. The open-air cabin was tilted downward, vertical. The only thing keeping the entire vehicle from falling was the force of the kid’s supernatural lines. The kid’s power was holding decently tight, but he seemed like he was losing grip more on the car than on the bridge. If he let go it would fall and slip. The other two, who I assumed were his parents, were still panicking. 

A couple people had moved to crowd around the edge, pulling on the bridge’s side of the rope to try and hoist the car back. Despite the glowing appearance of the ropes, they didn’t appear to harm the people holding them. The crowd was gaining, slowly. The car was slowing. Eventually it might be balanced enough for the family to find safety?

But that was still unsure. It seemed like any moment if the kid’s power or the wheel’s grip let up that the car’d tumble. I blinked.

What would a normal person do? 

Nothing. They were on a train, separated from the road. They’d pass by in a matter of seconds There was nothing they could do. 

I hated people. I wanted to be alone, but these ghosts would never let me. If I did nothing. They’d probably be safe. There were a lot of onlookers helping and together they were strong. Plus the kid had a power. Before my eyes, the parents were already getting themselves together and started to clamber up the line to safety. They’d probably be fine without me. Probably.

Or the weight would shift, and the car would fall, and the parent wouldn’t be able to hold onto him anymore. Or someone pulling the car would hold out, or the kid’s power would fail somehow. I was close enough that I could see his face. Straining, sweating, scared and tense in every muscle. Did I want to see that face again, ghostly body broken from the fall and the river’s tide?

That’s when I decided, just like I had with Swagger. 

I whipped out my chains and made a ghost corporeal so I could jump off the moving train and they’d catch me. Congratulations, no more messed up foot this time. Then, I set them to get my chains on top of the bridge and do a miniature version of the maneuver the people were doing with the car to get me up. Also a success. 

Traffic on the bridge had all but stopped as people ran out of their cars to help. About eight cars stopped in total, and everyone I could see was either grabbing onto the supernatural rope, or clambering over the side of the bridge to offer hands and shout at the imperiled strangers. The sound was a cacophony, but it quieted a tinge as I jumped onto the road. The car’s weight shifted as my sudden appearance on top of the bridge shocked a couple of people who were carrying the line. Shit.

“No,” I yelled “Keep holding on. I’m gonna help.” My words were sloppy with panic, but enough of them still believed me. There were about ten people holding on. The supernatural line was branching into multiple webs, and growing into the concrete of the road like glowing roots on an otherworldly vine. I could tell even exerting a frankly feeble amount of strength on it that the weight of the car was incredible.

I put my hands on the line to help, and a hit sensation spread through wherever I touched it. It felt like holding a flame, but without the burning or pain. About the same time I put my hands on the line the father climbed it to safety and immediately grabbed on and added his strength to the pull. 

I did the same, tenfold. Making the entire supernatural line corporeal, and commanded my ghosts to hold it with me.

“Tug!” I yelled, trying to evoke Edict’s powered speech.

They answered. There weren’t a lot, there weren’t any graveyards or ancient battle sites in the area, though I did get an old-timey miner who I suspected was a victim of boring the tunnel in the mountain that the road and train now led to. I still got a solid ten of the phantoms, doubling the number of people holding onto the car. We hefted, and the car began to actually reverse direction, rather than simply falling slower.

I yelled again, pulling at my reserves to see if I could keep tugging any more ghosts out of the ether. I did. They did. 3,7, 10 more. It was a lot of ghosts. Not more than I’d ever had. Not even more than I had at the average graveyard. But I was using my power and I could tell. I sweat harder, my muscles ached, I felt a headache start to erupt. Didn’t matter.

With all our strength pulling at the car I could still feel the weight of gravity on the other side pulling it down. I was running out of hope to save the hunk of metal and I couldn’t push myself with my power forever. Luckily I had another idea.

I said to the ghosts, “Two of you, Get my chains.” I made the chains corporeal. “Get them to the folks in the car! Shackle 'em to the kid and the mom.”

After a brief second, the ghost nodded. Picking up the shackles at the end of my chains and then bringing them down over the side of the bridge.Most of the chains were only a couple feet long. But I’d gotten some longer gear. Four of them were about 15 feet long, each. I usually kept them coiled around my arms in my costume. The ghosts had them now.

Strange thing about ghosts. They could walk through walls but not really fly in the traditional sense,supernaturally float places and just pass through ceilings. Or I could summon them high up, like how they were with me on the bridge and not down in the gorge. These two ghosts had to precariously climb down, using the corporeal chains. One of them handcuffed the kid and he screamed, but he didn’t let go. He held tighter. I didn’t really know what to say to him.The other one, the mom, got handcuffed as well but was too focused on climbing to notice.

I motioned the ghosts up to the second chain, the one holding the mom. 

“Bring her up!” I ordered them. As ever, they obeyed.

They held the chain and pulled it up, jimmying her weight until they were close enough. I pushed through the already-corporeal chain to make one of the ghosts holding it corporeal. Just the arms he was using to tug at it. So that he could extend a hand and help the frantic woman up. He had a cowboy hat on, and even if he had a stark, ghostly face there was something trustable about him that I liked.

She was up. Now it was just the kid dangling on. I had the ghosts tug at his hand, but because of the way his power was connecting himself, the car, and the bridge the car was starting to fall out of his grip. The car disastrously faltered back and dropped another inch. 

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t quite panicking but I had done what I could do. At the very least if anything and everything else failed that handcuff was connected to his wrists I could make myself corporeal, my ghosts would catch me, and hopefully that’d be enough counterweight so that I wouldn’t topple over, following the kid over the side. Shit, hopefully. Hopefully was doing a lot of work in that sentence.

My mind was still racing as one of the living adults, the dad, yelled down to the kid. “We’ve got your mom. Let go of the car, alright! It’s too heavy! It’s not more important than you are, please Daniel!” 

Daniel. Normal name. Daniel faltered at his dad’s words.

“Yeah! Daniel, come on. It’s going to be ok Daniel!” came a chorus of the people holding the line. 

I kind of sighed and smiled. “Daniel, it’ll be alright!” Something was weird about the way my voice came out. Maybe it was the amount of ghosts around. Maybe it was the stress. But it came out…different. Supernatural and echoing.

The kid was almost in awe. And then he closed his eyes and closed the fist whose line connected to the steering wheel. The line evaporated. The car fell but his other line, the one keeping him connected to the bridge, stayed intact. As the weight suddenly came off the rope all ten alive of us, and maybe a dozen dead, got flung backward as Daniel got tugged all the way up to safety. Plus an extra three feet onto the asphalt. He was sputtering. He ended with his back to the floor, arms sputtering, limbs splayed. Eyes raised to the sun, huffing out breaths of air. I knew that feeling. I looked at him, and I think I smiled.

A second later the car hit the floor at the bottom of the canyon with a disgusting, horrifying, ear-screeching crunch. The crowd cringed. Worst of all was Daniel’s dad who ran to crouch around the kid, holding and hugging him along with his mom. As the peace settled, the people looked at me. The train was gone, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Who the hell are you?” said one of the strangers. A neat looking man in a now-ruffled suit.

“I’m Séance” I said. 

They were stunned for a second. I let go of some of the ghosts and they drifted off, no need to keep up that stress now. I had the cowboy ghost undo the chains that connected to the arms of Daniel and his mom. They were safe now, no need for that. He walked them back onto my costume.

People started bombarding me with questions. I didn’t really know what to say. A couple of them got out…phones and flashed me with bright lights. Agh! Didn’t like that! Fucking people. I took a couple steps toward Daniel.

“Hey. It’s gonna be alright.” was all I managed. What was I saying? If he went through anything like what I went through…I kneeled down. His crying mother looked up to me confused. I looked to Daniel. Just a young kid. Frizzed black hair, and what looked like a sports jersey. He looked up to me with wide eyes. Scared? Relieved? Exhausted?

“I’m sorry. But it’s gonna be alright. Ok? It’s gonna be alright.” I let out. He took a breath.

His mom started asking me a question and I dashed away, through the crowd. I made a ghost corporeal and shoved a couple of people out of the way. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So I ran down the highway, headed West.

I found a shitty, cheap motel later. One that wouldn’t ask questions about my identity and that would take cash. Edict’s supply was dwindling but I still had enough that I was pretty sure I could keep getting tickets and motels for at least another…Uh what would that be. 40 days…Uhh. Month. Yeah that’s the word. I watched the television, not really understanding it. But then I saw something about Daniel’s story.

There he was, and then in front of him a hero. It wasn’t Breeze, but it was someone like her. Official. Important. A brown skinned, dark eyed girl with straight black hair pushed back under a green mask with three spikes protruding from it. Two on each of her temples, and one on her forehead. The rest of her costume was green two, with a yellow electricity motif. Occasional white tubes throughout.

She spoke in an official-sounding voice. “I assure you the child and his family are completely safe, along with all passers-by. On behalf of the family, who wish to remain anonymous, I will say that yes. This was a parahuman incident. And yes, the child has been-” she paused, “has made the decision to join the Wards program and is pursuing an education at Hyperion High in Halcyon City, here in Washington State. Rest assured-”

She continued but I didn’t listen. 

Hyperion High. I didn’t know how to get any information about it. I wonder if any of my ghosts knew? I was too tired now.

But Washington. Washington, wait a second. I checked my map. Halcyon City, Washington. There it is!

A little twit of irony. I smiled. I liked that. It was almost the complete opposite end of the country from where I started. Opened up onto a different coastline. All I had to do was keep going west.