Archive Mutants & Masterminds: The Unlikely Prophets - Fists and Phantoms: Sharatur/Norman

[Necronaut]

Sharatur's words scratched at something in the back of The Necronaut's mind. Something old. Something he didn't want scratched. Delivering messages over the phone was one thing. But he didn't want to be here for this. This wasn't any of his business.

He was trapped. He had to stand in and be the narrator over this probably-soon-to-be-tearful breach of the veil. He opened his mouth to repeat Mr. De Vasch's words to his daughter but he just couldn't. The thing at the back of his mind stirred slightly and he almost staggered under the weight of it.

Norman wanted to run, to be anywhere but where this was happening. He found himself glaring at the specter, angry at him for needing his help here and now, and angrier at himself for being angry about it. Why couldn't the ghost just speak for himself? He ground his teeth together and forced himself to begin.

"He said..."

He fell silent again. Getting out of this was worth the risk of embarrassing himself with a failed wild hunch. He took the scrap of steering yoke from his coat, hustled forward and hooked it roughly in the crook of Mr. De Vasch's immaterial elbow. Then he pulled. He didn't pull in any particular direction. Just 'closer'. He felt the nether-stuff of his client's arm catch and hauled him in, like helping someone step over a short fence.

The ghost of Alexander De Vasch was wrenched from the netherworld into the world-proper. He quickly coalesced from a vaguely humanoid miasma of swirling nether-stuff into a more identifiable, if still unearthly, form.

"It'll be better coming from him."

Without another word The Necronaut trotted toward the trees at the edge of the cemetery.

[Charlotte]

"Amazing."

Alexander De Vasch looked over his hands, and then looked at Sharatur. "Shary, my little snowflake. You look gorgeous. You remind me of your mother. I'm so sorry I didn't make more of the time that we had." Alexander looks sorrowful, and yet relaxed, as if a weight was being put down.

------

Not far away, another ghost appeared, this one a well-built guy with darting, paranoid eyes, visible only to Norman.

He coughed. "Listen, uh. You're the Necronaut, right? Well, I got unfinished business, and I'm not sure how to, you know, let it all go. I was one of the Magistrate's hire-a-thugs... the kind of guys he'd bring in for jobs too dirty for the Knights. I did some bad stuff. I don't - when I leave this place I don't want it to be someplace hot, you know? So I figured I'd help you out..."

The ghost withdrew a small metal cigarette case from his jacket. "In the middle of a firefight, it got hit with a bullet." He indicates the dent that it took. "Stopped it from entering my heart. Maybe it'll help you out too."

[Necronaut]

The Necronaut straightened himself up as the dead man addressed him. The conversation behind him was quickly, indeed eagerly, forgotten.

"I think it's a good sign that you're concerned, anyway." He focused on the object, intrigued by what seemed to him to be an unusual weight it carried.

"I'm sure this will help." He added, only somewhat confident. "Help me anyway. As for you... do you know where any of the people you, um, worked with are now? I might be able to track them down, give them some peace."

He paused to look around at the nearby graves, "What's your name? And, how did you die yourself if you don't mind my asking?"

[Charlotte]

"Well, it stopped the one bullet. Didn't do much for the other twenty-two."

He coughed. "I'm sure it'll work better for you. Any ways, my name's Samuel Whinoski. Half the people I worked with are gone. Probably a few of them in the cemetery, but I don't talk to them that much. Most of the rest are probably still working for the Magistrate, doing dirty work."

[Necronaut]

"I see. My condolences."

The Necronaut frowned beneath his mask. He shifted his stance slightly to view the artifact from a different angle. Yes, there was definitely something to it. It 'knew' it was more than just the ghost of a cigarette case, and the Necronaut knew that it knew it. He reached out for it with a grateful nod.

"I guess what I meant was not actually the people you worked with but the people you worked on. If there is anyone who isn't in the cemetery, but maybe should have been, you know. 'Too late to apologize' is apparently later than most people think."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur stared at her father in shock and awe, paralyzed. She dimly realized that despite everything that had happened in the last few hours, she still hadn't really believed that Norman had truly spoken to her father. That it was all some clever, cruel charlatan's trick. But there he was, standing before her. Her father, she would know him anywhere. The way he rolled his shoulders, that slightly embarrassed, apologetic quirk to his smile that she had grown to hate so much. It could be an illusion. A hologram! I had read something a while back about their managing to create actual holograms. That would even explain the strange, transparent flick--

Oh, just shut the fuck up.

The vast well of bitterness and resentment that rose up within her as she faced her dead father surprised her. She thought she had long ago come to terms with her father's estrangement. Apparently not. "So it took dying to finally get you to talk to me again" she heard herself say sourly.

She winced, seeing the pain her words caused her father. "Oh Daddy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." And she realized it was even true for the most part. It had taken her years, but she had finally understood that his estrangement was his response to what he viewed as her betrayal for following her passion for geology more than halfway across the continent. His daughter had been all he had left. It was stupid, sure. Immature, short-sighted, even a little vicious. And it had directly caused what he had been so afraid would happen--the total loss of his little girl.

And then he had died.

The anger drained away, leaving sadness at all those years forever lost. And yes, a little guilt. She could have tried harder, after all. She could be stubborn, determined, even unstoppable if she wanted something badly enough. Seeing her father made her realize that he should have been one of those things. She didn't regret her decision to move to the Grand Canyon and join the museum, but she should have tried harder, forced him to understand why. And to understand that he would always be her Daddy.

She wondered if he could tell, if he could see her thoughts on her face. She hoped so. She didn't know how to tell him. How to put it into words. And then she did. "Daddy, I need help. Something very strange has happened to me." Her voice ended in a whisper. "I'm really really scared."

She then gave her father a much more encapsulated version of what had happened to her, with less emphasis on her new abilities and more on how she felt about having her whole life uprooted and utterly destroyed, and now being on the run from the Order. The short version still took nearly ten minutes.

"I don't know what to do."

[Charlotte]

"Ah, them. Yeah. Well, there's a few next of kin, I guess, but... no, what I think I gotta do, Necronaut, is balance the scales, you know? Do something good for someone, for a change."

* * *

Alexander De Vasch listened to his daughter, hanging on every word. When he spoke, it was carefully.

"I'd say 'stick with Norman,' since he helped you this far. I get the feeling we may have asked too much of him for him to do on his own. This graveyard's going to be closed up, Sharatur. The Druid's decided that dead people need to be mulched instead of remembered and they're going to start with us. And the way the... the place I'm in, works, is that it's the most like you world where your world's a place trying to connect with ours. And we need that connection to resolve unfinished business... like me saying how sorry I am, to my daughter, for letting so little come between us. Without it, it'll be that much harder to go wherever we go next.

"But the Order... they're dangerous enemies to have. Norman, to his credit... and probably to his regret... didn't hesitate to protect us. And he'll have all the help from us we can give him. One of us gave him the plane, and the mask, and the gun... I think Sam over there is giving him something as well. But it'll still be dangerous for him. He'll be in the Order's crosshairs. I wouldn't blame you in the slightest if you weren't a part of that, if you decided to keep you head down and out of the Order's way.

"Whatever you do, Sharatur, you'll have a proud papa. And your mother... she's moved on, but I know she'd be proud of you too."

[Necronaut]

The Necronaut grasped the object gingerly. It was there and not at the same time for a split second. He spun it between his fingers and it coalesced into a pitted, tarnished but solid and real version of its previously ethereal self. Also notable was the presence of a massive bullet shaped dent. It had a very prominent aura of nether-stuff swirling around it as well. He hefted it thoughtfully and dropped it into his breast pocket. There was definitely a comforting weight to the thing.

"Thank you Mr. Whinoski. I will let you know if it comes in handy."

He paused to rap on it with his knuckles.

"I have a feeling it will."

He ground his teeth and took a deep breath. He didn't like to push people, least of all people with such obvious troubles as being dead. Nevertheless he felt that Sam, for all his good intentions, was stonewalling him a bit. So he spelled it out.

"Now, listen, I understand that your primary concern has to be whatever it takes for you to let go and I will help you however I can. But it would really help me if you could tell me where the remains of The Order's victims end up around here. I'm guessing that sort of treatment makes it difficult for people to move on. If there are souls stuck out in the woods or at the bottom of a lake somewhere I need to know about it."

[Charlotte]

... in Issue #1: A Gathering Storm