Falling for a Superhero

Chapter TwentySix-Resemblance

"Do you remember four years ago when Sebastian 'saved' the barn?" he asked.

"Of course," I answered. "Everyone does."

That's why he was praised until even now. He saved all of those people. He even got a medal for it...

"He didn't really put out that entire fire," he confessed. I nearly choked on air.

"What?"

Did Sebastian lie? He was rewarded and praised for that fire. But...how could Kenneth say he didn't put it out? He was there! And people saw Sebastian that put it out...so then, how could Kenneth's words be the truth?

"Hear me out," he said. He removed his black cowboy hat and toyed with it in his hands. "He was working that shift with me that day and we were joking around and stuff—because it was our first job and we were working for a family friend—but then when we were wheeling in our last bale, there were these three guys in the back field.

When we dropped the bale of hay, we were still wondering who they were. I thought they could've been extra workers for Joe, but Sebastian wasn't so convinced. But of course he was stubborn and he started walking towards them. There was a blonde guy with long hair that covered his face, another guy with spiked hair, and then another one that had light brown hair was on the ground. The blonde and the spiked hair looked like they were about to fight--their clothes were already dirty and ripped as if they already had. They glared at each other instead of helping the guy on the ground whose face cried of uncontrolled pain.

So, like an idiot, your brother stepped to them and asked who they were. The spiked haired guy looked away from him and nearly growled. He started walking away, towards my direction, and I saw his face but stepped away from him. The blonde guy asked where they were and if this was our farm, and Sebastian answered accordingly, but I was focused on the guy on the ground. He looked to be our age and from what I could tell, there was something wrong with him. While the blonde guy and Sebastian talked, I was trying to help the boy on the ground, but...he wasn't saying anything, no matter how I tried, but he looked like he wanted to just stammer something and burst out into tears.

I looked back to his friend, to at least help him, but he was concluding his conversation with Sebastian. Suddenly, there was a flicker down the hill and it didn't take mass amounts of smoke to realize hay was burning near the barn. Immediately, Sebastian and the blonde started heading for the barn, and I turned to reach for the boy's hand to pull him up, but as soon as I did, my body was shocked with enough pain that was described in his face. I had enough energy to pull him up, but from there, I collapsed in pain and only felt slightly better when he let go so I could rest on the ground. But I still couldn't move. I felt physically and mentally exhausted for some reason and when I looked up at the guy, all I could hear was him apologizing and breaking down although the fatigue and pain in his structure depleted. I held up my hand for him to pull me up but he took a step back, apologized once more, and then when I started to hear Sebastian call for me, the image of the guy's face disappeared from my memory and I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was less than a field away from the enflamed barn and I saw Sebastian, alone throwing the last bucket of water over the barn's wall while a firefighter extinguished a bigger flame adjacent to Sebastian's. I was informed that Sebastian saved the barn and half the crop field alone, but I swore there was someone else. I had to talk to Sebastian, but he was in the hospital for the rest of the weekend. So when I eventually got to talk to him, he explained everything to me."

"And?"

"He didn't put out that entire fire. The other guy did. He placed everything Sebastian needed by him and he used it right as the chief barged in so he could get credit," he added. "The three guys were gone and we had no idea who they were or where they went after they set that fire."

I couldn't do anything but believe him. I had no choice. However, a light bulb went off.

"Immediately, Sebastian and the blonde started heading for the barn, and I turned to reach for the boy's hand to pull him up, but as soon as I did, my body was shocked with enough pain that was described in his face. I had enough energy to pull him up, but from there, I collapsed in pain and only felt slightly better when he let go so I could rest on the ground. But I still couldn't move. I felt physically and mentally exhausted for some reason and when I looked up at the guy, all I could hear was him apologizing and breaking down although the fatigue and pain in his structure depleted. I held up my hand for him to pull me up but he took a step back, apologized once more and then when I started to hear Sebastian call for me, the image of the guy's face disappeared from my memory and I blacked out."

There's only one person I knew that could inflict pain onto other people: the Proliator.

"I've known Kenneth for a while—not directly of course, you can ask your brother, but I hope that he and Kylie are—" I remembered the Proliator telling me.

It made sense. The Proliator knew Sebastian, Kenneth, and Kylie through the salvation of the barn. Maybe that's why he said he knew Kenneth, indirectly, because Kenneth couldn't remember him without Sebastian's descriptions. However, what did this have to do with Sebastian's altered personality?

"Eventually we thought the guys didn't even really exist, but then y'all moved to Manhattan," he added. "The first time Seb called me, it was about the Proliator guy and how his rumored changing-eyes reminded him of the guy from the barn, but he opted against it because of the whole European accent thing, and then he started to think he recognized people at school...and it just went downhill from there."

"He thinks Hayden, Dastan, and Nik were the ones at the barn four years ago?" I asked. He nodded. "That's not possible. Hayden said he hadn't known Dastan that long, Dastan wouldn't have the decency to act that way, and Nik...he just hates both of them to stand them in any way. It can't be them."

"Could it?" he asked with a shrug. "People change, Angela."

He couldn't be more right, but when he said that, it meant something else: There's a possibility that one of those guys knew Proliator—no. It left the possibility open for one of these guys to be the Proliator.

But I have no idea how this could be. The Proliator/friend of Proliator couldn't be Hayden or Dastan. If someone set someone else up for something as honorable as a hero, Sebastian couldn't hate them like he does if he truly did recognize them.

But maybe his recognition was a close relation to the Proliator. Hayden could've been the guy that left—that Sebastian probably never saw because he hid his face—and Dastan could be related to the boy Kenneth found that had the same characteristics of the modern-day Proliator.

The Proliator had a "colleague" and "family" at my school. That could easily be Hayden and Dastan, since they were "punching bags" for each other and Dastan resembled bipolar eye color.

I wanted to find out, but I knew it would get me in trouble.