Quote:
Late one night, you find yourself in a fairly under populated area of town. You’ve been strangely alone for the past few moments when you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Only a few yards away you see a young woman with tear-stained cheeks and a long white gown. It is difficult to make out any more details; she seems to be running from something. She looks like she is screaming but makes no sound; even her footsteps seem to be silent. If you try to chase her, you will wind up in a dead end—alone, and suddenly, cold. It feels like something has slammed into you and turned your blood to ice, but there’s no one around. No matter what you do, the chill remains until morning—but the image of the woman’s fear-filled face may haunt your dreams for much longer.
((Not getting raffle tickets for these; just want to do them for completionism's sake))
((EDIT: 1/13/2026 - Finally edited in the solo response to the prompt.))
Tress had always been fascinated with ghost stories since she was a little girl. Tales of those with unfinished business beyond the grave intrigued her, especially when that unfinished business tended to involve revenge and particularly when that revenge was carried out by women who had been wronged by their lovers when they had been alive. She had always liked to imagine herself going after those villains and bringing them to justice to help the ghosts of their victims find peace and move on. So when, in the corner of her peripheral vision, Tress thought she saw movement that night, she turned to witness a woman with tear-stained cheeks running from something and immediately went after her.
Her screaming countenance caused Tress to grow deeply concerned for her despite the lack of sound emitted by her mouth or footsteps. A few minutes later, however, she ended up in a dead end and was suddenly enveloped by a bone-chilling coldness. She stumbled back as she felt like something slammed into her, attempting to catch herself and get her bearings, but the coldness felt as though it has seeped through her clothes and flesh, turning her blood to ice. The apparition of the screaming woman was nowhere to be found, nor was anyone else for that matter, so Tress eventually decided to attempt to find her way home from the under-populated area of Destiny City.
Though she gradually managed to navigate back to familiar territory with the aid of GPS on her phone, the ginger couldn't manage to get any warmer. She was able to finally make it home, dress down, and bury herself under the covers along with many layers of blankets, but the chill would not leave her. Still, after a while of keeping her eyes closed, she was able to drift into an uneasy sleep while the frigid temperature that had a hold of her followed her into her dreams. It was there that Tress saw the woman again; her mouth no longer open in a silent scream, but her face and features were plagued with fear.
"Hello," she tried to speak to the woman. "What's the matter? Why were you screaming and running?"
"Hello," the ghostly woman replied. "Someone I thought I loved and I were going to run away together," she explained. "My parents were against our marriage even when he proposed to me, so we were going to elope somewhere far away. But then he suggested we each get together some money to start our new life and the only money I had access to was that of my parents', so I took what I could from their safes and jewelry boxes and fled. When I met with my lover at our rendezvous point, he had nothing with him, so I knew something was wrong. I dropped what I had and ran, screaming, hoping he would take what I had and leave me alone, but he went after me instead," the woman relayed sadly. "He killed me and buried my body in the garden of the house near where you saw my ghost. I've been waiting for someone to find me, but since few people frequent that part of the city anymore, no one thinks to dig or even look there."
"I will find your body and put your soul to rest," Tress assured the woman. "But one more thing - who is the man who killed you?"
"He lives across the house with the garden where I was buried," the woman answered. "He stays there to watch the garden to make sure no one will ever uncover my body and incriminate him. He is currently living off the stolen wealth of my family who never thought to look for me because they thought I had run off and was determined never to be found."
"I will recover your body, make sure your family is aware of what happened to you so they can give you a proper funeral, and report that man to the proper authorities," Tress told the woman. "But before all of that...there's something else I have to do."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The next morning, Tress woke up not only no longer cold, but feeling quite refreshed and ready with a plan. She spent the majority of the day setting everything up and preparing for that evening. Once night came, she powered up into Forsterite and went to the site of the garden that the woman's corpse had been buried.
A man who had seen her there the night before was waiting for her. Tress was willing to bet he was the murderer who lived in the house across the street. He tried to remain hidden, lying in wait to ambush her, but since she was powered up and had been expecting him, she could hear and sense him easily. Waiting until the last moment for him to try to sneak up on her, she caught him off-guard and flipped him over onto his back, using his own weight against him as well as her multiplied strength due to being powered up. Then she began to drain his energy until he only had enough left to live. After all, if she had killed him, he wouldn't have been able to regret his deeds of the past or suffer for them.
She left the man unconscious before digging up the woman's remains in the garden and bringing them to the nearest police station with a typed and printed anonymous explanation. Since she had her glamour while powered up as Lieutenant Forsterite, she wasn't worried about being identified as her civilian self even by her fingerprints. She told the police to go back and check the site she had dug up the remains in as soon as possible and, because she had left the man there drained of energy and unconscious, they were able to find and arrest him before taking him in for questioning.
Tress followed up over the next few hours to make sure the woman's family was contacted and that the arrested man was justly found guilty for his crimes. Once she was satisfied that the woman had been avenged as much as could be managed without committing outright murder herself, Tress returned home and mentally congratulated herself on a job well done. After so many years, surely the dead woman's unfinished business had finally been resolved.
