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  Without thinking, his arms flew around her tighter to use his body to protect her. Her hands clung to his t-shirt as she screamed. The glass did not fall near them thankfully. Out of the corner of his eye, JD could see Orlando rising to his feet with a dropped jaw.

  JD didn't quite understand why, but he found himself drawn to the fallen object. Logic screamed for him to turn and run, but his curiosity compelled him to find out more.

  It looked like it was on fire. He couldn't make out what this object was made from. Large and oblong, it was similar in shape to the crash position of a person jumping into a pool with a cannonball, knees tucked in close to his chest. But where did the fire end, and where did it begin? It didn't look like anything on it burned, and yet the object was engulfed in powerful flames. After a moment, the shape began to resemble something human. But there was no way a person could have survived that kind of a fall, let alone be on fire.

  Then it moved. A small twitch at first that turned into a larger, more sturdy motion, as a head and arms popped up out of its ball-like form. Cadence shrieked, and it took a moment for both of them to realize it was a person—more specifically, a man. Still on fire, he didn't react to this in the slightest, almost as though it meant nothing. He spread himself out to his full length and stretched grandly. Tall and muscular, he was an intimidating sight to behold. That was the most JD could make out about him though. Everything else was encased in blinding red flames.

  “Is he dead?” Cadence whispered.

  “He's moving, he can't be dead,” JD whispered back.

  “He's gotta be an alien,” Orlando said from behind them. The glass crunched underneath his feet as he walked closer to Cadence and JD and the fallen man.

  “He might be hurt,” JD said.

  “Or maybe he wants to kill us and take over our planet. We should run before he decides to zap us or something with a death ray,” Cadence said with a shaking voice.

  Orlando glanced at her and shook his head. “I think he would have killed us by now if he actually wanted to.” He paused and directed his attention to the strange man. “Do you speak English?”

  JD snorted. “What kind of stupid question is that? What aliens do you know who speak English? It's not like they have some kind of—”

  “Yes,” the man said. His voice was rich, deep and smooth. It was surprisingly pleasant to listen to. For some reason JD expected him to sound a lot less normal.

  “I must be overwhelming you,” the man continued. Instantly the flames disappeared, but the red glow remained. “Is this less frightening?”

  None of the three teens said a word. JD's voice was caught in his throat as five million different questions filled his head. Eventually, Orlando was able to nod as well as pick his jaw up off of the ground.

  “Good, I must still be too bright. You are still squinting,” the man said. And then the glow disappeared as well.

  “Wow, hot!” Cadence whispered, and JD watched as her eyes roamed over the man's muscular torso. Thankfully, he was clothed, wearing a simple pair of pants and an opened button-down that showed off a build that impressed even JD. The color of his body and his clothing were undecipherable, however, because he still only showed as various shades of red. The most JD could make out about his physical appearance was that he was only a few years older than them. He was barely a man.

  The stranger frowned. “I wasn't aware that I was putting off any heat.”

  “That's not what she meant,” JD mumbled as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He could always count on Cadence to drop all of her logic over some guy. A firm tug on her arm kept her from starting to wander towards the man. “I wouldn't get too close.”

  “What are you?” Orlando asked, getting straight to business.

  “To explain accurately at this point in time would be difficult, but for simplification I'll stick with the term you used.” The man pointed towards Orlando and JD with each of his index fingers. “Alien. My name is Alanmendiquixanimackle.”

  JD blinked a few times. He'd never be able to remember it, let alone pronounce it accurately. “Can we just shorten that to Alan?”

  The stranger nodded. “I do not mind if it is easier for you.”

  “Are you really an alien?” Cadence asked.

  “No, he just looks like a freak for the heck of it and fell from the sky in a mass of flames like it was nothing because he's extra special,” JD said and couldn't help but notice how close she was standing to him. His arm moved around her, taking this as one of the rare moments she actually wanted to be touched and protected.

  Alan continued to smile at the three teens as though he hadn't heard JD's commentary. “Yes, I'm from a planet that's five galaxies away actually.”

  “You speak excellent English for being such a distant traveler,” Orlando said, his voice dripped with sarcasm. JD had never had a class with him before, but if Orlando was this cynical about everything, it answered a lot of questions as to why the guy didn't have any friends.

  Alan gave Orlando a bow. “We have been studying your planet for a long time.”

  “Are you here to take our planet over and kill us or enslave us?” Cadence asked with a nervous sounding laugh. Her body trembled against JD, and her fingers held his shirt in a tight ball. He'd never seen her like this before.

  “No, my people do not have much interest in obtaining your planet or its resources,” he explained with the same soothing tone he'd been speaking in. If he hadn't been so calm, JD was almost positive one of them would have had a meltdown. Did Alan have some kind of ability to relax them? He couldn't help but wonder because there was nothing calm about an alien crashing through the local mall roof, on fire, and then claiming to come in peace.

  “So why are you here?” Orlando folded his arms in front of him. His blue eyes never once left the man, almost as though he were trying to intimidate their visitor, but JD doubted it would work.

  Alan reached into a pants pocket and pulled out a small shining orb. It glowed and radiated with a similar red light to what Alan had projected earlier—if not more potent. It was beautiful, so much so in fact that JD couldn't help but reach out his hand to touch it.

  “Wow,” he said breathlessly. Now it was Cadence's turn to be the voice of reason. She smacked his hand, and he instantly coiled it back against him. “Ow, not cool. What'd you do that for?”

  “Cause you shouldn't touch it,” she said. She glanced over at Alan and bit her lower lip worried as to how he would react. “What if it kills you?”

  “Or gives me sweet super powers.” It made sense to him, and having super powers was not something he would miss out on just because she had no spine. JD batted at her hands a little and moved in to touch the shining object again.

  “It could be radioactive or whatever it's called,” she added.

  “Hello, that's how you get super powers.”

  “And cancer,” Orlando replied casually. “By all means, touch it so we can see what happens.”

  JD looked from the shining orb to Alan and sighed. “What is it? What's it do?”

  “It doesn't give special abilities or cancer,” Alan said and motioned for all of them to move closer to get a better look. “I suppose you could compare this to a more sophisticated version of your portable DVD player. Only it's more powerful and more compact. This movie, I guess you could call it that, will explain things a lot better than I can.

  “The information may not make sense right away. In fact, you might not realize you've even seen anything until some time later, or I should say, you might not realize how much you've seen. We're not quite sure what it does to human brains from your planet, but they assured me that since you are chosen, you'll be fine.”

  Orlando and Cadence took hesitant steps forward to peer down at the ball of light. That hadn't sounded reassuring or convincing to JD. However, he stared inside the orb out of pure curiosity alone. He wondered if they felt the same way.

  The more focused his eyes became, the more he could see
beyond the mass of red and burning brightness. In this orb, JD saw puppy- and kitty-like animals playing with small children.

  “Altura,” a voice narrated in his mind as different images continued to flash before his eyes. Instead of cute animals and children, he saw large glass cities that sparkled in the sunshine like precious gems. “A planet similar to Earth, and only slightly larger in size, is home to 9,000,265,563 individuals. Alturans are similar to Earth humans in body shape and mass. The differences in genetics are slight.

  “The planet’s nations are divided into tribes. Each one sports its own animal and color, much like the nations of Earth. Also much like the countries of Earth, the tribes of Altura ally and war with one another. Two nations of Blue and Green have declared war on the peaceful Yellow and Purple. This war has expanded off of Altura and out into the depths of the universe. The next location for their battle is Earth. Other countries, including the nation of Red, have put it upon themselves to stop this expansion.”

  The voice stopped, and the light dimmed until the ball was nothing more than a dead, black shell.

  “That was...” Cadence started.

  “Informative?” Orlando supplied for her.

  “Amazing,” JD stated and nodded at her. This was almost like a dream come true for him. He'd been waiting for so long for something interesting to happen.

  She shook her head at them both. “Disturbing.”

  Orlando scratched his chin. “You've definitely got my interest piqued, Alan. But I gotta ask, why us? Why involve us in this?”

  JD wanted to ask if any of it was real. For all he knew, they could have been randomly chosen for some kind of obscure and demented reality television show.

  Alan let out a hearty laugh. “Two good questions. You're smart and observant. There is something about your youth that makes you much better candidates for help than any military-trained adult. You're smart enough to know when to ask and have enough faith to know how to trust.”

  “Okay,” JD said with a shrug and glanced at Cadence. “I can buy that. But how are we supposed to help you? It's not like we can do anything super cool. We're just kids.”

  “You can do a lot more than you think. You were chosen because each of you has something locked inside, ready to be exposed. I'm here to release this inner power, that is, if you'll let me. It's something all humans have. That's why the tribes chose Earth as their next battlefield.” He gave them a sweet and innocent smile. If he was trying to charm them, it was working. At least it did on JD. His charm was hard to resist.

  “Confused...” he said.

  Alan faced JD for a moment. “There's a lot your science is just now beginning to unravel. Like I said, we've been studying your planet for a long time. You can be among the first to have what your species won't discover for another fifty to one hundred years.”

  “And that's what exactly?” Orlando asked skeptically. He kept his arms folded in front of him and tapped his fingers on his arm.

  The alien pointed at JD. “Super powers.”

  “I knew it!” JD shouted and began to dance around in a circle. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”

  “Shut up. Do you want everyone to look over here and see him? I don't think we want to deal with that kind of a freak out,” Orlando snapped at him.

  Alan laughed as he watched them. “Don't worry. They can't see me. Only those chosen by the Red can. To anyone who's passing by, it looks like you three are having a rather interesting and animated, if not strange, conversation. My entrance will simply be described as this building falling apart. You were chosen by us for many different reasons. Your youthfulness, your knowledge, and your willingness to take risks are a few of them. After all, you did come to see if I needed help instead of running away.”

  JD had to soak all of this information in. He had a lot to understand, and Alan wasn't even done explaining things. Super powers? He would have never thought any of this was even possible. Hoped and dreamed about, sure, but it didn't feel real. This was all supposed to be fantasy.

  “I understand if this makes you afraid. We aren't going to overwhelm you. Right now, the most we want is for you to learn about the powers you were born with and have had locked away your whole lives. After that, we can talk about the bigger picture. If you're not interested, then you walk away with something extra that sets you further apart from the rest of the world. If you are interested, then you get to help a cause that's quite possibly the most important thing you will do with your lives.”

  “That doesn't sound like a bad deal. So I mean, we don't even have to do this if we don't want to?” JD said.

  “Exactly.”

  “All right, show us how we can use these 'powers' then,” Orlando said.

  “Glad you asked,” Alan nodded at the three of them. “When you looked into the Wimosiphyer, that was what unlocked your powers. It not only imprinted the information you need to know into your brain, but it also released a chemical that opens up the ability to use the powers you have. What they are, I don't know, but I'm just as eager to find them out.”

  “So then we will...just experience them?” Cadence asked. Alan nodded at her with a huge grin, breaking out of his mature and elderly-like persona.

  “What if I hurt someone or myself?”

  “I will be watching you.”

  A blush spread over Cadence's face, and JD couldn't help but admire it on her chocolate-colored skin. And then he clenched his fists in anger. Why was she blushing? Then her hand let go of his shirt.

  “Okay. Good to know. And then?”

  “I'll contact you again when you're all ready.”

  Orlando sighed and shook his head. “I don't know. I guess we don't have much choice since you already did it without our permission. I'm done here. I'll catch you later if something happens.” He gave them all a salute and left.

  JD snorted. “What crawled up his shorts and died? This is awesome!”

  Chapter Three

  Super powers. Orlando wasn't sure how he felt about having them now, let alone since birth. The whole situation was too surreal for him. Aliens crashing to Earth and wanting his help for some kind of grand mission? That kind of thing wasn't something he'd ever wanted, nor was it something he ever thought possible.

  Sure, he'd wondered about life from other planets, but he didn't expect to ever make contact with it. Nor did he imagine this other life to be so similar to him. Alan had looked just like them to the point where he wouldn't have believed the man came from another planet if he hadn't witnessed his descent onto Earth. As much as he wanted to remain skeptical about the whole situation, he couldn't. In his gut, it felt too right.

  Growing up, Orlando was constantly told about how different he was from everyone else. His parents had said he always would be and to just accept it because it was part of life. Had they known all along what was inside of him? What was inside of all of them? He made sure to add it to the long list of all of the things to quiz them on whenever they decided to grace their home again, which could very well be never.

  He drove back to his mansion. Everyone called it The Library because of how massive and old it looked. His father had designed it himself, and it was built the year Orlando was born. He'd never known any other home. He didn't want to be ungrateful, but he wished they hadn't made such a spectacle out of their wealth. It made things awkward with his peers.

  “Orly?” He heard Lyssa, his older sister and stand-in guardian, call from the den the second he stepped into the house.

  “Yeah?” He was ready. The whole drive home he had been planning his conversation with her carefully. She stepped into the room and blocked the doorway so he couldn't escape.

  “Don't 'yeah' me,” she started, and so did the lecture. “I got a call from your school while I was at work telling me you sent a kid to the hospital.”

  “It wasn't that bad. It was just a concussion. He gets them all the time on the football field, and you don't see anyone throwing a spazz about that,” he rolled hi
s eyes.

  “That's a little different.”

  “But only a little different.”

  “They want to expel you.”

  “So I transfer. Big deal. It's not the end of the world. There are a lot of great schools in the area that will gladly take me because they want the big fat alumni check.” He shrugged.

  “Sounds like you've been plotting this for a while,” she folded her arms in front of her. “What if I say you aren't allowed to transfer and work out a deal with them?”

  Orlando sighed as he removed his shoes and hung up his black leather jacket. “I didn't do it on purpose. They just...they got to me. Do you know what they said about mom? About you? I wasn't going to sit back and let them get away with it.”

  She took a step towards him and moved a few strands of his dyed black hair away from his eyes. “You're better than this, and you know you're—”

  “Different, yes, I remember.” You have no idea, he wanted to say, but he wasn't about to tell her about his encounter with the alien from the sky. “I can take care of myself, Lyssa. You don't need to worry about me. I know what I'm doing, and I'm improvising with my mistakes. Trust me, I've learned my lesson, but I'm not dwelling on it. I'm taking it as a nice blessing in disguise.”

  “I don't want to trust you, but I do. I'm going to have to punish you though. It wouldn't be right for me not to, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do that just yet, outside of taking away the car and grounding you for the weekend—or a month.”

  He didn't go out anyway. “I'm guessing grounding means no TV, or video games?”

  “And lots of manual labor. I'm giving the lawn boys a break for the weekend.”

  The last thing Orlando resembled was a green thumb. By Sunday the lawn would be dead, as would every flower in their garden.

  “Lyssa,” he started and gave her the weakest, most pathetic looking face he could muster up. “Are you sure you want to do that? You know I can't exactly mow the lawn. Do you remember what happened last time? I'll do the dishes by hand. I'll wash the floor with a toothbrush, but don't make me do the lawn.”