The garage door opened and a white Nissan emerged, climbing a steep driveway from subterranean parking. As the car came to the top and turned onto 5th st, yellow headlights cut through the darkness.

There were neither words spoken by the passengers nor the sounds of an engine coming from the electric car, only a soft rumble of the road beneath them. Ken put his elbow on the ledge of the window and held his chin in his hand, watching the houses full of peacefully sleeping families pass by. Disappearing behind him before too quickly to really absorb their presence. Penelope squinted at the road ahead as she pulled into the normally bustling downtown area.

"Hey," she asked quietly. "Just making sure. Do you remember what I said about the pills?"

"Um," Ken replied. "Yeah, they should help heal any, um," he searched the sky for several long moments. Penelope looked at him from the side of her eye until he finished his sentence. "...brain trauma."

"Yes, but I meant about how often you should take them." She returned her focus to the road as they reached the edge of town.

"I don't remember you saying anything about that. But it's on the bottle, right?"

"Yes. Three a day, one with each meal until they're gone. And Dr. Shih-Bo's number is on the bottle too if you need it."

"Thank you."

They returned to silence again as they passed the Sunblast statue, a dark silhouette against the sky. Small lights illuminated the base, though, and Ken squinted to see dark stains on the concrete, turning his head to follow them as they drove.

"Have you heard from your parents? They're probably worried."

Ken remembered that he had felt his phone buzz but couldn't recall if he had checked it. He shifted so he could reach into his back pocket and pulled out his phone, then squinted at the screen.

"Yes. My dad texted me."

"What'd he say?"

"He wants me to come home, he says he needs to apologize."

The buildings thinned out as they traveled further into the night. Penelope blinked in confusion. "Apologize?"

"Well, yes, f-for, for h-hitting me."

"What? When did he hit you?" Penumbra asked with alarm.

"Um...didn't you say you saw?" Ken mumbled, fiddling with his phone.

"At the statue? That was your father that attacked you?" Penelope connected, gripping the steering wheel hard.

Ken was silent. He had thought they had talked about this.

"Let me get this straight," she said, gaining pitch in her voice. "Your own father hit you hard enough to knock you out. He saw you knocked out on the street, bleeding all over, then ran away when I threatened him. You could have been dead. I thought you were dead. I was terrified and I didn't even know you. And he just went home. Now that you've been gone for hours, who knows where, with who knows who, he wants to apologize."

"It's better than not wanting to apologize."

"At the very least he should be asking if you're ok."

Ken swallowed so loudly that Penelope could hear it. Another silent minute passed. "And now I'm going back to him."

"I know. I understand that family can be a little complicated. But what he did was cruel," Penelope explained. "I don't think you should stay with him."

"What choice do I have."

"What we talked about."

Ken scanned the horizon and put his phone back in his back pocket. "Switching sides you mean."

"I don't mean to pressure you, but if you get a good scholarship package, you could get free room and board at BHO Academy," Penelope suggested softly.

"My family would hate me."

"And how do they feel about you now?"

Ken turned to her and raised his eyebrows. Wow. That was bold. But he wasn't about to say anything that would start a fight with the woman who had just helped him so much and now had the power to kick him out of the car. It was the middle of the night in the countryside, and if he listened closely, he could hear yipping coyotes in the distance.

"If you became a powerful enough villain," she continued, "or even just aligned yourself with someone revered, they might even just fear you. You could make your own father run screaming with a glance."

"Tempting," Flug said, only half-joking. "But if I do this, I would never want them to know. They would kill me. Maybe I could run the scenes of a villainous company from behind a curtain, and someone more charismatic could be the face." That would take half the fun out if it, though.

"You could. Or, you know a lot of villains have secret identities. Make up a name, wear a mask, a cool one. Then your new persona is famous, and you can leave little Kenny behind."

As the car rounded the top of a hill the ocean came into view. Vast, deep, dark, and sprawled out ahead of them infinitely. Gulls circled overhead, crying in a variety of different pitches. Ken thought about their larynxs and why each of them sounded different, and if a gull's voice could be changed by altering the thickness of their vocal cords. Surely. He could probably do the same with a human. The white birds sailed freely on the breeze.

"One of these days I am going to thank you properly for this," he promised the driver as they turned, ocean and birds now at their side.

They kept driving through the country toward the Hart house, shushing waves frothing over the sand. As the light pollution from the city faded away the stars shone brighter. Ken could get used to the darkness.


The white Nissan pulled up in front of Ken's family's house, and Penelope turned it off. "Stay safe, Ken," she told the teenager in earnest. "I hope things work out for you. Maybe I'll see you in the villainy world some day."

Ken smiled and opened the door and stepped out, then turned around and bent halfway so they could see each other across the car. "If you do, you won't know it."

With that, he smiled and closed the door. He walked up to his house and that was the last Penumbra saw of Ken Hart.

Years later in 2019 Penumbra is still living in downtown Atreno City. She often walks past the statue and checks for the dark stains on the base. They've faded so much that you wouldn't even see them if you didn't know where to look, or what they meant. Every time she passes it she spares a thought for the boy she found unconscious there.

And every time she wishes she knew what became of him.