Part 1: Realization, POV: Sam

Magic is the term created by life to explain the phenomenon of being able to manipulate anything within their Universe. Magic is what allows life to create or destroy! Nine Teenagers must master and harness magic to protect not only their planet, but their whole universe.

[BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP]

My alarm goes off. Starting to stare out the window while rubbing my eyes. It's six in the morning and already pouring down on New York City. I do nothing but sit and stare at the rain. "I don't know why, but I feel super hot like I'm sick or something" I thought to myself, "Ah well time to check my temperature." I got out of bed and reached into a cabinet in the kitchen of my apartment to get the thermometer. "Ah, I'm back to normal temperature." I whispered to myself out loud. I looked at a clock "Oh shit! It's already 6:15. I'm gonna be late for the subway." sprinting to the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and grabbed my bag. Then I sprinted my way out the door down to the station. I took a seat on the crowded subways in the early morning. Staring out of the subway window I focused on just the whizzing of the subway. My body started to feel hot again like I was being lit on fire. Snapping out of my trance-like state I felt normal again…

Stepping out and walking out to my school, Manhattan Tech Preparatory High School, long name I know. I attended my classes but whenever I spaced out my body would start to feel like it was heating up like bursting into flames in my body which immediately snapped me back into reality. Finally it's break time in the day. I headed into one of our school's computer labs to do some homework. I logged onto one of the computers and then my friend called out,

"Hey Sam! How's your day been?"

That's Zack, he's one of my closest friends, he said that as he patted my back and sat beside me. Zack's a crazy smart dude being able to code whatever and he's able to pick up on a lot of patterns quickly. Though he has a slight self-esteem problem if he's not with friends.

"Good, my day's been good. You?"

"Ah I'm doing fine I guess, except my English teacher handed back my essay."

"Oh, what did you get on it?" The dirty blonde bespectacled teen asked me.

"Scored a fucking 18/20, She only took points off for this conclusion, though I don't see anything wrong with it."

"Yeah, you are basically just copying your first paragraph but with a few rewordings."

"Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Restate your ideas?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

"Alright it's fine I guess. My grade's still an A so I won't be mad… yet."

He pulls out his laptop and as he touches the keyboard, "AH!" He shrieks.

"Bro you good?" I asked him.

He scoffs, "I'm fine but this has been happening all morning now, every time I touch anything that conducts any electricity whatsoever I get a static shock. I've been trying to figure out what it is that's causing this."

"Haha funny, every time I space out and think about nothing and focus on nothing my body starts to heat immensely and starts to heat on fire." I chuckled too.

"What? you on drugs!?" Sheila says as she walks into the Computer Lab "Really weird sensations today huh?". Sheila is one of our classmates in Computer Science & English. She sometimes hangs out with us because she "pities us" to put in her words. Our peers would call her extremely pessimistic but I want to classify it as realistic. "I've been feeling sore myself or dizzy lately, whenever I space out I feel like I'm melting or I become a puddle. Feels like I'm on shrooms or a hallucinating drug." The gothic bespectacled brunette described. Sheila always calls it really dark brown hair but to most it would be black hair though.

"What do you mean dizzy?" I asked.

She raises an eyebrow, "Y'know the feeling of being dizzy: world seems like it's spinning really fast but it's you and you end up tumbling. I've fallen twice today and almost fell four or five times today."

"Yeah Yeah we get it, now what do you mean by feeling like a puddle- AH!" Zack asked before getting shocked again, "Shit I'm starting to lose count how many times that's happened today."

"... Alright anyway, what I mean when I say 'I feel like I'm melting or becoming a puddle' is that sensation of like water falling into a pool or something. That's what I would associate with this feeling-" Sheila rambled and then it happened. She got dizzy. Sheila started to waver and tumble. I got up from my seat and helped her stand still before she would fall again.

"Thanks," she muttered quietly.

I sarcastically commented, "You mind saying that loud enough for everyone in the class to hear?"

"Shut up!"

"Can you both pipe down for a second," Zack shouted to us before- "Ah!" He was shocked again. "Alright anyway, I've been taking notes on your guy's thoughts on this anomaly, I decided to google it but nothing significant came up."

Sheila grabbed her stainless steel water bottle and was opening it while she said, "Well that means we need to find something DEEP on the internet then," she looked into her water bottle and was taken back for a second, "Woah, that's pretty strange." And she immediately closed the bottle.

"What? What happened!?" Zack rapidly questioned.

Sheila snapped back, "Don't rush me four eyes!"

"You have glasses too…" He muttered quietly.

I asked "... Okay , So what happened?"

Sheila then explained, "My water started to randomly slosh around and look like waves crashing even though I was holding it still… Well I technically wasn't. I was going to drink some water but just moving my bottle up shouldn't cause crashing waves in the bottle." Zack started to take notes in a small hand notebook now with a pen, I assume he's stopped using electronics now.

"Bro I can't read that. That looks like Chicken Scratch." I told Zack.

"I can read it… kind of. Whatever it's fine, it's fine." He shrugged off.

I grabbed the bottle of water and was about to hand it back to Sheila but before that I said "Open the bottle again, see if the waves happen again."

"Fine I'll- AH!" She yelps when handed the bottle. She instantly dropped the bottle.

"What? What is it?" Zack asked from his desk chair.

"IT'S HOT LIKE HELL! THE BOTTLE IS REALLY HOT!" She cried out.

Zack and I were perplexed, "Sam did you do anything?" He asked.

"No I just held it for a few seconds, but I meant to grab it like a minute or so before I don't know." I uttered.

Zack touched the bottle with the eraser tip on the back of his pencil, the eraser mildly singed, "Yeah that's definitely hot." He takes it one step further and shifts the bottle away and he feels the ground of where it was.

"So?" Sheila asked while crouching down with her hands on her hips.

Zack shared his findings with us, "Yeah the ground is warm, almost hot, so Sam MUST'VE done it."

They both stared at me, so I shouted, "Hey I don't know what happened alright!"

Judging from their stern faces they didn't like that answer…

"Sam, Touch the wall over there." Zack blankly yet firmly said.

I did as he asked and walked over to a concrete brick wall and touched it, "See? Nothing!"

"Alright back off," Sheila pushed me aside and put her hand where mine was… turns out, "AHHHHH! That wall isn't warm this time it's SEARING!" She cried out.

Zack covered his ears from the scream and after it was over, "Open your hand and let me look at it," The hand was a bit red but no serious burns, "Rinse it under ice water to get the sting away but beyond that you're fine… And as for you Sam, open up your hand."

I did, he pushed his eraser into my palm and then took it out, "Sam how are you not feeling the immense heat, my eraser feels like it's about to light on fire."

I genuinely didn't feel a thing, so… "Nope!" I relaxed my hand and felt calm for a second, and then, [FFFwwwooooo] Flames ignited in my hand!

"WOAH!" Sheila yelped, Zack also leaped back. Zack grasped with his hands the desk standing behind him. Lightning started to flow out of the Desktop computer behind Zack and all of it channeling into his palms.

"HEY WHAT THE FUCK!" Zack yelled as he leaped from the desk, his palms still channeling electricity, his eyes glowing a bright blue. He yanked his hands quickly towards his torso to shake off the electricity. His eyes stopped glowing and he knelt down into a squat cradle?

"So Sam uhh, WHAT'RE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THE FIRE IN YOUR HANDS!?" Sheila yelled at me while tightly clenching the fire extinguisher aimed right at me.

"Ah, I forgot about it. Told ya I didn't feel anything." I said while trying to put out the flames by smothering them with the wall. I patted my hands on the flame, "See? There, It's gone. I'm surprised the smoke detectors didn't go off."

Sheila sighed with relief and put down the fire extinguisher. Then Zack said that "We need to meet up sometime to discuss this more, preferably somewhere private-"

[RING RING RING RING]

"Well that's the end of lunch," Sheila said while grabbing her bag, "must say, one of the most or may be the most entertaining yet frightening lunch period I've ever had." And she slowly walked out the door.

I picked up my bag and started and walked out of the computer lab. Zack was still patting his hands on his pants to make sure nothing was gonna happen before he left.

"Why do I feel so tired?" I asked myself that as I was slowly dragging myself to my next class.

Throughout the rest of the day, I constantly kept feeling my hands in case it starts heating up again, I felt nothing. If anything I felt colder. Nothing much happened except I kept fearing for myself. Sheila was also in my last class, sometimes I would look over or stare even to see if anything was weird about her. She kept dozing off in class which wasn't normal activity for her.

At the end of class, I walked over and shook her awake, "Hey you good?" I asked her when her eyes opened.

"Uhhh, yeah I feel fine. Why the hell did you wake me up? And also don't touch me." Sheila reacted.

"Fine fine, well you kept dozing off and I wanted to know why?" I told her.

She made a face of curiosity, "I don't know actually, I just keep dozing off because I keep feeling wobbly and relaxed."

The teacher shouted from the other side of the class, "So you two gonna stay in here overnight or??? Cause, I'll be locking the door in a few moments."

"Heh?" I didn't process the teacher's thoughts fast enough…

Sheila pushed me aside and grabbed the hood of my maroon colored hoodie and pulled me out, "Sorry Sorry we'll get out of your hair."

I pushed her arm aside so I could stand up again, "What the hell was that for?"

"You didn't leave fast enough. BTW we need to meet up with Zack. You're his friend, where is he?"

"So just because I'm Zack's friend, I can accurately pinpoint his location?" I scoffed at her.

She laughed, "that's about right."

I sighed… "Front fences on his laptop sitting behind the left pillar waiting for me or his brother. If not at his apartment."

"See? Wasn't so hard now was it?" Sheila patted my head and said it in a demeaning way as if I was her cat or something. She started walking towards the front doors so I followed her, "Which pillar again?" She asked while we stood in the center of crowds of students leaving school.

"Will you move and stop blocking the path, it's that one." I pointed at the left one while dragging her along. We went around onto the grass around the left pillar and Zack was there standing, holding his laptop with his left hand from the bottom while typing with his right hand.

Zack closed his laptop after clicking a few times, "So, the two of you want to go anywhere to figure out what we discovered." He asked as we stepped past the pillars and outside of campus.

" sure, I don't know where to go though." I commented.

"Hey here's an idea, how about anywhere but over there!" She pointed and around a block and a half away was a tall-ish figure maybe around six feet dressed in almost all white/light-gray with a helmet that was all white besides the face which was black. On his back he carried either a spear or a sword but we couldn't see it in detail.

"Is he walking to us?" I scratched my head.

"Do you see anyone ELSE around us that he'd creep toward?" Zack said while he started to turn and ran away, "C'mon guys!"

"Good idea!" And we all started to book it away from the guy.

I looked back and he started to increase his walking speed, "Guys he's gaining speed, GO GO GO!" I pushed the two along from the back. We snaked around block after block to get away from the guy but he kept following us until we accidentally ran down a back alley…

"Shit its a dead end!" Sheila cried out… we ran into a fenced off area and even past the fence was a dead end.

We looked behind ourselves and there he stood, he slowly walked towards us. Sheila grabbed an empty crushed can on the ground and threw it at him. It did nothing.

"Yeah we're dead." She said monotonically.

The guy stood directly in front of us while we just stood at the end of the fence, he squatted down to easier match our height and he said, "Grror Kles Un Todo Fri Eqre."

"Heh?" I scoffed.

"Jle Or Tu Vo!" He spun a knob around his neck, "Ah I'm sorry is this better?"

"EHHHH!?" We all screamed.

"Please Please don't be alarmed, I beg of you" he tried to comfort us with his words, he even took off his helmet. He was just a guy with a black haired ponytail but had a long sliced scar on his nose, "Are the three of you wizards?"

"Wizards!?" We all screamed back.

He pulled out of a pocket a circular tablet that had cosine waves going haywire across the screen, "this device searches for people imbued with magic and you're the only ones who I've found thus far to possess magic. So I ask, are you wizards from another world or what's your situation? Have the Zankoku hurt you too? Oh I should introduce myself, the name I was given at birth is Xeno."

After a few seconds, I think the three of us started thinking clearly again, I said aloud to him, "Hello, uh… Xeno," I extended my hand out, I'll admit I was shaking a little.

"Why put your arm out?" He asked.

"It's a common way to exchange greetings, connecting arms and shaking them." Zack said while grabbing mine and shaking it as an example.

"Ohhh I see?" Xeno questioned but he shook my hand anyway.

"So, are you three wizards? Look rather young if so." Xeno pointed out.

Sheila snapped back at him "Hey we're sixteen!"

"Hey hey Sheila calm down," Zack told her off, "Sorry sir we are no wizards. Hell most of Earth's populace don't know if wizards exist… if they even do."

Xeno scoffed, "By of course they exist, my tracker proved thus so! If they don't exist on this planet, then how come my magic tracker works?"

Zack was taken aback, he had no answer for a second so I jumped in… "What exactly IS magic, if you know it's here?"

Xeno stood back up and put his arms on his hips and proudly exclaimed, "Magic is THE source of life being able to manipulate! Magic is an all encompassing energy that supports freedom of wills!"

"Uhhh… huh, that's neat but what exactly IS magic, scientifically speaking..?"

"Magic is the power that courses through us with the ability to. It also flows through the area allowing us to manipulate things such as," Xeno stopped talking and put his hands out in a wave. He fluttered and tutted his hands around for a second and a circle appeared out of a white shimmering glow, from then on anytime he would move his hands. Another intricate pattern would come across the circle and at the end he formed a kaleidoscope looking image.

"See this, this is the standard way of forming a spell, though I used my easiest spell which is…" He spun the circle and it disappeared and gusts of wind blew right through the alley, "wind."

"What the fuck was that!?" Sheila whispered into our ears.

I turned back and whispered to her, "Just shut it and follow along."

"So?" Xeno asked, "Are you three wizards?"

"No we aren't, we have never seen anything like this before and doubt we could do anything like you could." Zack firmly told him.

"Well that's too bad… wait, I could train you though! I could train you in the basics of magic, to fight at least!" Xeno went from depressed to an optimistic thought.

Sheila had no more "Yeah… no thanks." And she immediately grabbed Zack and I from our hoods and dashed outta the alley past Xeno. After we got out of the alley, the three of us started running anywhere but there.

"Wait! WAIT!" We could hear the guy yelling for us.

"Okay, where to now?" I asked.

Sheila snapped back, "Don't care, just anywhere but there." Did she copy me? Oh wait I never said that aloud.

"Who gives a shit, let's just get on the subway and go to the other side of Manhattan for all I care." Zack mumbled. We ended up swerving around backstreets once again as Xeno kept on chasing us. We eventually made our way to Battery Park on the south side of Manhattan, famous for the view of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty… WAIT A MINUTE I'M NOT A DAMN TOURIST GUIDE I MIGHT BE RUNNING FOR MY LIFE RIGHT NOW!

We ran to the other end of the park and we saw the Hudson bay, "shit." Zack said plainly, "we should NOT have gone this way."

"REALLY!??? YOU THINK SO!?" Sheila sarcastically buckled at him.

Zack lashed back, "WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? THINK CONSCIOUSLY AND CONCISELY WHEN I'M SPRINTING AWAY FROM A WEAPON WIELDING CREEP!?"

"Oh yeah sure that'd help." Sheila said even more sarcastically but way calmer.

In about fifteen seconds Xeno jumped out of the bushes, "Wait I told the three of you to wait."

"Look, we're not interested in your-"

[CHH CHH CHH CHH]

Before I could finish my sentence, six huge black SUVs with blacked out windows parked right along the big park roads and tons of FBI lookin' agents rolled out and held out their guns.

A few agents made way for a clearing and through came out a shorter blonde younger looking guy. He wore an orange visor and a huge oversized lab coat for his height, clenching his phone in his left hand while typing notes on his phone, at least that's what I think he's doing. "Stand down, the four of you! And I'm not asking! I'm ordering."

"What kind of tomfoolery is this? Are you all this world's Garrison?" Xeno frantically asked them, while the three of us panicked and just put our arms up.

The Short dude wearing the labcoat spoke to his agents and we heard him say, ¨Block the news from seeing this by any means necessary, contain them and let's return them to headquarters.

By now Xeno has put his hand at the top of his hilt resting on his back near his right shoulder, "Please don't attempt to fight now." He said.

"We don't want to, we want the four of you to come with us. We've traced an astronomical anomaly linked with y'all." The orange visor adorning man said. Xeno put down his hand from the hilt and nodded.

An FBI agent flanked away from the pack went behind the three of us and pushed us along, two more agents grabbed Xeno from each arm and dragged him with them. The agents threw him into the backseat of an SUV and handcuffed him to a bar in one of them, "What's the meaning of this?" He exalted.

"Sorry, but we're taking precautions because you're labeled as a threat." The lab coat wearing man said while not even looking Xeno in the eye, still typing on his phone. The three of us were thrown into a different SUV in the backside and we were handcuffed as well. The SUV had the windows on the inside blacked out as well except the ones for the driver up front and whoever's in the passenger seat.

Zack sat on the left side of the car, Sheila in the middle and I was on the right.

"Great this is a great day, not only have I discovered you two may have superpowers, THEN got chased around by a crazy possible alien. NOW I've been taken in by the FBI… this sounds right out of a light novel." Sheila whispered to us.

"Hah! That it does, it does sound like the start of a light novel." I commented.

Zack looked towards us, "well you may have powers too, you made the water in your thermos react."

"Wow, so cool." Sheila said sarcastically.

"Hey! Shut it." The Driver told us while the agent in the passenger seat and the one in the 3rd row seat stared at us. We were silent for the rest of the car ride. I don't know how far we went but I know we went on one of the bridges, I know a bridge so specific considering there are twenty-one of them.

When the car packed I asked Sheila, "where are we?"

"I don't know, likely Brooklyn though, the bridge I saw out the window LOOKED like Brooklyn Bridge but I don't know." She replied.

"How do you NOT know?" Zack asked.

"Hey don't ask me, I may be a New Yorker but that doesn't mean I've been down every street, every borough, every city, every bridge." She actually has a point, I've never been to Queens and a few other boroughs.

The door opened and it was that Scientist, "Out." He plainly said. We stepped into a corporate building with just a standard concrete exterior. All the windows were blacked out and as we stepped inside, it seemed like a regular office building except everyone working were either high ranked members of the NYPD or FBI agents. We were brought into an elevator in the back rooms along with Xeno who was weirdly silent. The scientist and three FBI agents crowded in with us. The orange visor adorning man put down his phone for once and removed the visors. He opened up a plate of metal from the elevator revealing a retinal scanner. It scanned his left eye and he started typing again on his phone. In a few seconds he inserted the phone into a hole under the retinal scanner and it beeped green, I guess that means it worked. The elevator started descending.

Once the elevator had opened, the vibe changed massively. We were now in what seemed to be a long extensive corridor full of white with just massive glass panes peering into empty rooms or rooms with experiments running. We all walked to a room seven doors down on the right side of the corridor. The scientist unlocked the door with a simple key instead of anything complicated this time. It was a dark brown Hickory wooded office, it was complete with four big leather chairs all could spin… but the desk at the center was full of papers. The orange visor adorned man sat down at the chair behind the desk while his agents pulled up the other four chairs for us to all sit in.

The agents then stepped back and stood near the wall, finally people started talking again, "Before we begin, everything is currently being recorded." The scientist told us, "So, names."

"Shouldn't we know your name first?" Sheila sarcastically commented as she raised both her arms to point at him.

"I suppose that's fair, My name is Quinn and I am in charge of this government 'project' per say."

"Your last name?" I asked

"Don't have one."

"Sir Sirs can we get to the point please? And release us from these movement minimizing devices!" Xeno exclaimed.

"Fine," Quinn waved to his agents and they came to uncuff us, "Oh and they're called handcuffs by the way." He waited a bit, "OKAY now, does anybody want ANYTHING else?"

I sarcastically said "I would like a Chocolate milk."

"... moving on, I contained the four of you because I had detected a possible link between you and an anomaly as of recent in space. Recently, many many asteroids and meteoroids of tiny scale, of course not enough to destroy Earth."

"Ohh I heard about that on the news sites this morning!" Zack called out.

Quinn just ignored him, "Yes… anyway, my team has been researching the minerals inside and there are some never before seen so much so that my team has been scheduled to win a few Nobel prizes for the discoveries of new elements. I am also scheduled to win a Nobel prize because of this," behind him a hologram of a machine appeared, "this machine here I invented to detect when meteoroids would land or any new elements are possible or any new energies. This time around noon, my machine went absolutely haywire higher than we've ever known. AND we are even more shocked to find it was in Manhattan."

"Get to the point please?" Sheila shrugged.

"Hmph fine," Quinn continued, "TLDR is that I went to go get confirmation from NYC's mayor to do research and apprehend whatever the source was. I had my entire field team ride with me just to find not four meteors, but four LIVING beings absolutely brimming with a never before seen energy on Earth."

"Could you mean Magic sir?" Xeno asked.

"Ma- what? MAGIC!?" Quinn shouted, "What do you mean by magic? This isn't an eight-year-old's birthday party. I don't want to see card tricks."

"I assure you they aren't card tricks, I don't know what those are!" Xeno enthusiastically pointed out, "no this is magic!" He stood up and did his circle thing again except this time agents immediately drew out guns and slowly watched him. He weaved his hands again and in a few seconds a gust of wind blew right in the room knocking many of the papers on Quinn's desk over, "That is magic sir. I'm convinced these three possess it too."

"Alright, how did you get it?" Quinn asked.

Xeno unmasked himself. "Simple. I'm not FROM this planet, I stowed away and escaped with an escape pod down onto this planet's surface."

"A humanoid from outer space!? Prove it." Quinn typed into his phone.

Xeno pulled a knife from his pocket and slit his wrist. He bled out green blood and the wound stitched itself back in ten seconds, "is that good enough?"

"ABSOLUTELY!" Quinn typed even MORE into his phone, "wait how did you know our blood color wasn't neon green?"

"I saw a man bleeding on the street earlier." Classic New York.

"Okay so, you're an alien and you searched for these kids because they might possess 'magic' " Quinn made those sarcastic fingers move up and down with his index and middle finger when he said magic.

"Yes I believe so, I can prove it if you take me to an empty room." Xeno stood up.

Quinn looked around for us and then looked at his agents, "So be it."

We were then moved to an empty white room. Xeno moved the three of us around to form a triangle with him in the center of the triangle. He started to move his hands around again but arms length not forearms length, the circle that formed above his hands were huge now. He brought the circle down and it encompassed the four of us perfectly.

"What does this do exactly?" Quinn asked Xeno.

"Hmm, it's an ancient spell ritual made by other civilizations' elders. The point of this Spell, "he enunciated spell, "is to reveal a person's affinity to magic, if they do possess magic in their body, it would reveal their elemental affinity as well."

"Holy shit! Other alien civilizations that are capable of space travel, and while I type this, explain elemental affinity too!"

"I didn't pay attention well in school but the gist is the element that you're strong with, like for me I'm wind." Xeno kept hand tutting to add details into the circle as he talked.

"Fascinating, keep going, I have no more questions as of right now." Quinn finished for now and he backed away while recording this.

After another twenty seconds of Xeno hand tutting, he finally put his arms up in the air "okay done, are you all ready to witness a spectacle." Everyone in the room nodded. He forcefully slammed his arms to the ground. The circle dispersed and suddenly-

"WOAHH!!" The three of us shouted.

"HAHA WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!? I'M SO SCARED I CAN'T HELP BUT LAUGH!" Sheila's eyes out of nowhere glowed a light blue and her limbs seemed to have water fading out from her. "Woah Sam look at you hahah!"

"WHAT!??" MY ARMS ARE ON FIRE! And yet I don't feel any pain.

"Your eyes are orange too!" Zack pointed out, he was coated in purple lightning fading it out of his body like Sheila and his eyes were also purple.

Sheila then cried out, "Hahah, I guess the three of us really have powers!"