"Well at least we got here earlier," Zack said catching his breath, "but my legs are killing me."
The three of us got to the bottom of the building and climbed into the SUV, back into the familiar completely voided vehicle with everything in Jet black with a vibe colder than Russia's winters. As soon as the doors were closed, Zack was out, he dozed off so quickly, lucky.
Sheila sat in the middle and shrugged Zack to her left whispering "oi get up!" but he didn't. His head leaned on the side of his door. Sheila looked at me and I shrugged. But as soon as the car started to drive, sure enough, all of us went lights out.
"Hey, c'mon wake up," an FBI agent patted my shoulder and my eyes winced.
"Huh?"
"C'mon kid we're here, you gotta go with the spaceman." I rubbed my eyes and then woke up Zack and Sheila.
"Oh, we're already here?" Zack yawned and stretched his arms out while getting out.
Sheila adjusted her glasses and then waved to the agent, "Can you get my bag, please? I want to chew a piece of gum and wipe down my glasses."
The agent handed Sheila her bag and she slightly bowed while saying "thanks".
The three of us started to follow the agent and I started to memorize the path to the elevator.
Walking into the lab we were asked to change into gym suits tailored by Quinn for us to train in. The suits were simple, all black with an American seal with 'MRF' labeled under it
"What does MRF stand for on the seal?" Zack asked.
Quinn looked off his phone and said, "Oh that's our agency's name, of which I decided: The MRF, Magic Research Facility."
"Ahhhh" all three of us acknowledged, and then he sent us to go change in a changing room/locker room.
The gym suit was simply designed, A short-sleeved shirt and shorts that are all black with silver linings down the sides of our bodies and arms and of course the MRF seal on our hearts.
Quinn also said something earlier like, 'It's wired with weightless sensors to check your vitals at all times,' So we wouldn't need to be scared of it.
Stepping into the gym Xeno was also in a similar gym suit but with gold linings instead of Silver. He had his spear out and he was spinning it around while waiting for us.
"Hello!" He enthusiastically said while twirling the spear in front of his head, "I'm so excited to start teaching you magic!" He stopped twirling his spear and firmly planted it on the ground. He let go of it and his spear stood perfectly still.
All three of us were stunned. Xeno looked back at his spear and said, "oh yeah my spear has been forged so that it is perfectly balanced so I can do that. ANYWAY! Have you read the papers I left you with about magic?"
Zack shrugged, "a little bit." while Sheila and I shook our heads no.
"Well I don't know what that rotating of your head means, but I'll assume that it means yes!"
"The opposite." Sheila plainly said.
"Can you just teach us magic now?" Zack begged.
"Alright, well there's three things to teach you about magic: Free form magic, spells and the inner workings on how magic works." He pulled up a hologram from the wall to use as his whiteboard, "let's go over general concepts first." He pulled out a holographic marker to start writing.
"So the reason I had you all parkour and run across rooftops was to train and increase your total magic energy or what most call magic power is your stamina." He started to write the words Stamina and MP for magic power and drew two arrows facing each other, "You get more magic power by doing constant training to increase your stamina. Does that make sense?"
"So basically if we do cardio or something every day, we'll get a bit more stamina and magic power?" Zack connected.
"Yeah pretty much, at least that's what the board says." I pointed at the board, "hell how does that board work anyway? It's a hologram but also Xeno. Do you know how to write English?"
"I do not know English, this hologram just auto-translates for me but I guess I could translate the languages on my own if I was wearing my helmet and gloves."
Zack's eyes gleamed with curiosity, "Wait wait wait what's the technology behind your helmet that it-"
"Can it nerd!" Sheila cut him off, "Can we just hear about magic!? Jesus Christ." she sighed, "go on…"
"Ahem," Xeno cleared his throat, "So to explain my actions once more, on the first day I met you when I casted that spell on you that caused you all to release fire, water, and lightning yeah?"
All of us nodded.
"So does that mean yes then? I'll just assume so," he turned back to the whiteboard, "What I casted onto you was an affinity spell that draws out eighty-five percent of your magic power in a special way to reveal what your magic affinity is."
Xeno drew a crappy stick figure, "So this is you, ignore my drawing inability," he drew an arrow pointing down, "When you're born. You are born with either the ability to use magic or you can't use magic. And if you're born with the ability to use magic, you have an affinity." He drew a big circle.
"Now this affinity could be anything, in your cases: fire, water, and lightning. But the affinity is the element or type of magic that you can most easily conjure because magic is raw, unhinged power." Xeno emphatically moved his arms. "So, the universe has the workaround by gifting people affinities. The affinities could be anything, for me it's wind. It could be some elements or more specific things like Metal… and even rarer the powerful ones like Time and Space."
"THERE'S TIME AND SPACE MAGIC!?" All three of us shouted.
"We'll get to that later." He finished drawing a flame, a lightning bolt, and a metal bar in the big circle of affinities, "it could be anything, now that doesn't mean you can only cast your affinities. I know people who used to do other kinds, but most used their affinities because again, it is the easiest to conjure."
"So basically you're gonna try to teach us individually different kinds of magic to optimize for us?" I tried to condense down an idea between his words.
"Yeah that's about right," he nodded, "that means yes right?" and we nodded back.
"Good, good. Moving on. Let's learn about spells!" He opened a new tab of the board and drew a near-perfect circle, "You must've seen me conjure one of these by now. To define a spell it's just magic broken down into a language to be easily replicated. Spells are usually used to teach novices in magic or to replicate complex steps."
"Basically we're learning spells first." Sheila snarkily commented.
"Correct! But you'll be learning my spells. There are many ways to conjure spells and there are some who would spend their whole lives translating spells between the kinds of languages. As you all know I conjure spells using circles, some use alphabets with texts or numbers or other patterns." Xeno started to draw triangles in his circle, "but I use spells with certain patterns."
"I'll teach all of you the hand movements necessary to make these patterns work and how to do everything, but let's go over the last concept before we start learning magic for real: free-form magic."
"Let me guess: Is it magic not made by any languages and it's free?" Sheila strung together. Zack and I stared at her, "what? It's not that hard. If he taught us a language-based one and the other thing's first word is free. It should be easy to decipher that."
"She's… about right. That's all I can teach you besides how it's used," he drew a big cloud bubble and just started drawing random symbols, "It's used to create moves out of emotions and built out of the motion of the flow or something like that. It's used mostly during battles to create quick spells without elaborate patterns. Do you all know this yet or do you have questions or need time to process this?"
"No we get it, let's just get to the magic already!" I cracked my knuckles eagerly.
"Alright then!" Xeno excitedly throws the holograms into the wall at a high speed, "We start immediately!"
We stood up and he taught us the proper standing form for a novice, just stand up with your back straight. He had us try to do spells first and most simply, opening the circle. He made us extend our arms out with our wrists connecting, fists kind of open to resemble tiger paws.
"Now just focus and imagine opening a circle in front of you. Calm your minds. Let your body guide the magic," Has Xeno taught someone magic before? Because this seems like this is something someone would say when-, "is what my masters had said to me when I started. I don't know how it flows better this way though." … nevermind.
Nothing was coming to us though so Xeno asked us to "close our eyes," so we did. He was kind of right though, I felt a rushing sense of energy flowing through my arms with a slight tingle. How you'd imagine blood flowing down your veins is my description of it.
I opened my eyes again and a small circle, orangish-red that wasn't larger than my two fists together, if at all. Soon enough the other two had their own circles but Sheila's was a gradient of sky blue to navy blue and Zack's was purplish.
"Now that is magic. C'mon move your fists carefully and try to add patterns into it, whatever you can make." Xeno's eyes gleamed.
Everyone hesitated slowly but soon we started to move our arms around in random directions and small patterns would appear in the circle: alternating triangles, sprawling lines, whatever. We played around with this for about a minute and then Xeno asked us to extend our arms fully out at a high speed and the spell would be cast.
Sheila's spat out a geyser of water, Zack's sent an electrifying beam toward the wall, and mine created flames around me where I stood.
Xeno started clapping, "Well done!" He spun his spear around and created a strong gust of wind blowing back all of our magic, "Now I want you all to start to follow my hand movements and I'll teach all of the basic motions to create the basic patterns in my language." He then turned to the corner of a wall and shouted, "You get all of that!?"
A speaker on the roof lit up a small red light and out it spoke, "of course I did." it was Quinn, "I'm recording every session not only to hold your guy's legal end of the bargain and use as blackmail but also so I can take measurements and recordings of your motions to match you with suits I'll be personally tailoring and towards weaponry I've designed for each of you."
"Dibs a Katana." I rambled on the instant.
I heard Sheila mumble under her breath, "fucking Weeb."
"Shut up Sheila, you also read Manga!"
"Okay fine but I don't yell it out to people!"
Then the both of us heard Zack mumble, "fuckin' nerds."
Sheila and I shouted in unison, "YOU'RE THE NERDIEST ONE HERE!"
Each of us started to throw insults for a bit until…
[WACK]
Xeno nailed us on the back of our heads with the blunt end of his spear, "Calm down, what's the need to insult each other?"
"Well for starters, it's funny," I opened my hand and started to count the reasons down my fingers, "also because Sheila started it and then there's-"
"Yeah, no one cares." Sheila cut me off, "Can we just learn spells now? These are hella cool."
"Of course they are," Quinn spoke on the intercom again, "it's the first evidence of humans born on our planet with superhuman abilities."
Xeno tried to pull us back by first mumbling, "Right, yes of course." and he announced to us, "Now just follow my hand movements." He opened another circle so we did the same. Xeno closed his right fist so we imitated and he sprawled out his fist extending out his fingers… We did the same, "This is one of the most simple movements, it sets up a foundation so that the spell will come out of where your circle is aimed, not in the direction you casted the spell."
Xeno curved his hand around in a clockwise motion from his own perspective bringing his three fingers down, "this ensures we have the right element tuned in for our affinity."
"How is it tuned in for us exactly?" Zack inquired.
"I… do not know. I've never made a spell officially, just free-form magic during combat. I was never granted the rank to attempt making spells," his eyes seemed to stare and space out from teaching us.
"Are you good?" I asked.
"Huh? Xeno snapped back to reality, "Oh sorry let's add one more and then cast our spells, this one is one of my favorites." Xeno slightly opened his left fist but had formed his fingers into a claw-like shape. He then started to rotate his left forearm three times to create a vortex-looking shape into his magic circle, "And that's it."
Xeno waited for a minute for us to finish replicating his movements, "Good, Good. Now we cast!" He extended out both of his arms quickly and we did the same.
Fire, Water, and Lightning vortexes shot out of our magic circles and Xeno's casted a wind vortex which was much stronger than ours, strong enough that it quelled all three of ours combined, "That's what having more magic power looks like. Being able to fully overpower your opponents, you'll be able to do that if you get even more magic power from stamina training… Alright, let's practice a few more spells."
We kept on practicing spells and trying to remember the movements to create spells for hours, we were dead tired. Zack checked his watch and exclaimed, "IT'S NINE PM ALREADY!? We've been doing this for almost three and a half hours!?"
"Yeah approximately that long, oh and I've been to high school before and know what you're thinking." Quinn spoke on the intercom and started to impersonate us, "Ohh it's late I have homework to do. I'm swamped with after-school stuff. I need to prepare for College… yeah whatever just make sure you're… alive in school and I can take care of your grades to fabricate your successes. Anyway go home, eat a good meal to build more muscle and rest up for the next day of work!"
The three of us stumbled our way back to the locker rooms and changed back into our normal clothes to go home. On our way back in the SUV all of us were trying to fact-check and remember the movements made. Zack was taking notes in his little flipbook drawing stencils of the movements.
"Thank god it's the weekend!" Sheila told us as she was getting out of the car, "I'm gonna pass out till tomorrow night with how tired I am!" She stretched her arms out, "alright goodnight nerds," and threw up a peace sign as she walked into the lobby of her apartment complex.
I got dropped off after her and I crashed onto my bed. I dozed off…
[Knock Knock Knock]
"Who's knocking?" my inner conscience thought. My eyes barely peeled open and I looked around, the knocking sound wasn't coming from my door… "oh no-" I lazily got up and walked to my window. My body was sore all over from an abnormal amount of exercise yesterday.
Pulling up my blinds and of course, it was Xeno, "Hello There!"
"General Kenobi," I mumbled under my breath, "Ahem, Good morning… Why are you here at," I turned around to look at my clock, "at 9:17 am?"
"I waited three exact Earthen Hours to wake you first, we need to start our morning exercises by waking up the other two!" Xeno enthusiastically announced. This time wasn't in his regular suit but in normal people's clothes, A black peacoat with dark gray trousers with a brown leather satchel draped over him.
"Where are your spear and other stuff at?" I asked.
He opened his satchel and started digging through it, "Well I keep all my clothes in a locker back at the labs but," He took out a small sleek cylinder, "But I always have my spear on me!"
[SHING]
Xeno's spear sprawled out and unfolded from the cylinder, "See? Now let's get going." He retracted his spear.
"Ugh give me a second," and I shut my blinds. I grab a coat just in case it gets cold, quickly brush my teeth and run down out the front door, and go around to Xeno.
I shout up the fire escape, "I'M DOWN HERE!" Xeno sees me and then he leaps all the way down the fire escape to me.
"Good, let's get started by running down the streets to wake up Zack and Sheila then we run to the MRF labs and practice even more spells, by the way, you should bring the papers I wrote with you. Did you do that?"
"Uhhh I…" I ran into my building, went up the stairs, and into my apartment. Bursting into my room, I grabbed the booklet off of my desk, and sprinted back down to Xeno, "totally brought them with me. Huff huff," I 100% said cleanly without panting from exhaustion.
"Good good," Xeno grabbed the papers and stuffed them in his satchel, "Try and keep up!"
Xeno pushed me aside, "I'll see you at Zack's abode!" and ran into the streets, blending into the crowd so it was hard for me to find him.
"Hey-OI!" I cried out before standing up and started dashing. I weaved through the crowds of people and sometimes hopped over cars and fences to find Xeno. At some point, I gave up looking for him and started taking back alleys and shortcuts I found out from going to Zack's place for about a decade.
I got to Zack's building and buzzed his apartment doorbell at the front, "Will here." I heard from the buzzer.
"Hey Will, is Zack awake?" I asked.
"Uh no…," The buzzer was still but I could hear footsteps and then a faint but ever-so-powerful, "WAKE UP JACKASS!" in the background.
The footsteps got louder and then, "Yeah Zack's awake now and I'm sending him down." and the buzzer turned off.
The Twins never change…
I played on my phone for a bit then I heard, "How did you get here first?" Xeno asked.
"I know a few shortcuts, I've been here hundreds of times." I smugly said.
"Yaawn, Why am I supposed to be out here this early?" Zack yawned with messy hair while chewing some gum. He was in a light brown long parkas coat unbuttoned.
"Early morning training of course. Your unsavory looks don't matter to me, we must be training!"
"I thought training starts at three?" Zack pointed at the clock in his lobby showing 9:29 am, "why now?"
"Well, Mr. Quinn was kind enough to tell me about the breaks of two days from your education called 'Weekends'. Now let us go get the third."
Our training went on to us trying to follow Xeno to Sheila's then waking her up to go early morning training. But instead of normally going to the labs, we climbed up Sheila's fire escape to free run from Sheila's rooftop.
After a tiring hour, we finally made it to the labs. We changed into the same gym suits from yesterday and now Xeno is going to teach us about, "Free form magic! The basic concept is just to move with your body and feel the magic coursing through you. This form is much more natural and if you do it right, magic should move with your body not against it. This magic is normally used simultaneously with a martial art or to be used on a weapon, for example…" he demonstrated some of the basic forms that he normally uses.
He had us try it but it mustered nothing, "None of us have martial arts experience so we don't know how we would move our bodies for it." Zack pointed out.
"Hmmm true," Xeno shouted to the ceiling, "Can we do anything about that?"
The red light went on, "Is Quinn here all day or something?" I thought, "Yes we can, I have some connections to some great martial artists. I already analyzed their physique and builds, Zack will be learning a different fighting style from the other two, both of the styles are Chinese though. For now just keep rolling with spells and building up their muscle."
For the next few hours we did regular strength training and muscle building, lifting weights and all that stuff. After that we did free running to build stamina and ended it off with spells.
For the next two weeks most of our training was like this. We were building muscle actively while training magic to be more proficient with it. After the first week Quinn brought in two of his colleagues who were going to train us martial arts. One taught Sheila and I Wing Chun, a Chinese martial art from southern China. And for Zack, he was going to learn Tai Chi and a bit of boxing, polar opposites. Our asses were getting handed to us, but we made good progress in a good routine until a wrench was thrown into our schedule…
Quinn brought us to his office right after free running and said, "I wanted to keep this info from you until I knew they were ready."
"What do you mean by they exactly?" I questioned him.
Sheila then added, "Yeah they sounds ominous in this context."
"Well, when I use them I mean it as people," He swayed to grip back on his table and stared down, "After our observations, we can safely say," he paused for a bit, "You're not the only one." He grinned.
Sheila, Zack and I were stunned. We weren't the only ones on Earth who could manifest magic.
"We've discovered six more individuals with similar effects of magic in their bodies, like you three. Of course we haven't told them this extreme secretive mutation in their bodies. My men are trying their best to get into contact with them. Though we want the three of you to show them what magic is like if they agree to come. Four of them haven't gotten back to us yet, but two have shown up." Quinn explained.
"Wait wait hold on, why can't Xeno explain it to them? He actually lives and breathes this stuff, we've known about it for fourteen days!" Zack rationalized.
Then Quinn followed up with a reasonable-ish argument, "To be frank, they're your age. All nine of the subjects are adolescents. If they hear from other teenagers they might agree, if they hear it from a man who looks like he's in his late twenties. They may not."
"Can't we think about this more and plan this better?" I asked.
[Bing!]
Quinn turned his monitor around, "Uh no, they've gotten into the elevator." He showed us his monitor.
"Your impulsivity is a problem," Sheila pointed out, "Whatever, we'll do it. Though I'll do the talking. I doubt these monkeys can't explain shit."
"You gotta choose one Sheila. Are we nerds or are we dumb?" I pointed it out to her.
She shrugged, "I use what's effective at the time."
"Well get going, they're about to exit the elevator." Quinn was signaling his hands like he was shooing some flies.
"Aren't you gonna help explain? You're supposed to be a responsible agent or something?" Sheila accused him.
"I will," Quinn opened a back door from his office to the labs, "I just need to get some toys to show them." And he disappeared.
"Yeah we should get going too," Zack said while opening the door.
"Wait, we don't know where they are," I walked to Quinn's computer and checked the security cameras, "They're in one of the break rooms right now." Sheila and I stepped out and Zack shut the door on his way out.
We opened up into the break rooms and yeah, Quinn was right. They looked our age, fifteen or sixteen years old. One of them was a tall-ish–maybe five foot ten or five foot eleven– desi-guy dressed in all black with a chain necklace with long black hair draping down half of his face, he looked perplexed seeing us.
The other was a girl with dyed hair from brown to a bottom gradient of a vibrant reddish pink, they were wearing overalls with a tye-dye undershirt with rainbow socks.
"Uhhh Hi? I didn't expect a buncha teens to open the door. I expected like y'know more guards like him," she pointed at the FBI agent standing in the back next to a vending machine, "I should probably introduce myself, Hi I'm Sage." she extended her hand.
Sheila awkwardly shuffled over and shook her hand, "Heyy, I'm Sheila, that pasty one over there is Zack and the dumb one over there is Sam."
"HEY!?" I shouted.
"Not now Sam, so uh… who's the other guy?" We all stared at the other guy.
Sage bumped his shoulder and whispered through her teeth,"Hey Adam introduce yourself, you're making this awkward."
He brushed his hair to the side exposing his whole face, "Hi I'm Adam, don't mind the look and hair. I'm a B-boy so I wear this kind of stuff."
"Ah so you breakdance thats really- Wait that's not the point right now." Sheila went off track for a bit,"What exactly did the agents tell you about yourselves."
"Uhh well," Sage thought about it for a second… or maybe a bit longer than a second.
"They basically told us that there was something wrong with us and that no conventional doctor would be able to show us and instead we needed to come to a special military clinic." Adam told us.
"Ahhh," the three of us sighed, "Well what you have is basically… a mutation of sorts." Zack tried to let them down easy.
"You're not sick. You have something else wrong with you. Your body has unlocked a dormant mutation." Sheila said over Zack.
"Wait, mutation? Am I a turtle now or somethin'?" Haha nice reference Sage!
"No you're not a turtle, but basically what happens is y'all can now do stuff like this," I tried to do free form magic… it didn't work, "I said, y'all can do stuff like THIS!"
"Yeah that's not gonna happen Sam," Sheila scoffed, "You can do this!" And she opened a magic circle.
"WOAHHHH WHAT THE HELL!?" Both of them shrieked and were stunned.
"Haha yeah, both of you have the ability to do this," Sheila canceled the circle, "We learn from an Alien who doesn't look like a movie alien he just looks like a regular white guy but that's not super important. What's super important is that his name's Xeno and he taught us to do stuff like this so hopefully he can teach you guys too!" she went on a rant.
"Side note: if you choose not to, we will legally have to keep your mouths shut about this." Zack pointed out.
"I-" Adam started to say, "I don't know what to say about this, where is the guy you're talking about?"
"Right here!" Quinn burst open through the doors carrying three large cases. One on his back and one in each of his hands, Xeno followed suit.
Sheila pointed at the two of them without looking at them, "Oh yeah uh there's Xeno the guy teaching us magic and that's Quinn who's the leader behind this whole operation."
"What's with the cases?" I asked.
"They're here. The fruits of your training. Your weapons." Quinn timed out each phrase to build suspense. He unclipped the cases and opened them up. Shiny and sparkling brand new weaponry: an Odachi about a meter and half in length with a red and black hilt and guard. A large battle axe with purple and black grip and finally, a black whip with a dark blue handle.
"Woahhh!" Adam and Sage said before us… well the three of us were more stunned than amazed.
"Yeah that's right. The two of you back there can obtain stuff like these. Xeno, please explain to them what we do here." Quinn instructed him.
Xeno bowed and brought the other two into the next room.
"I had weaponsmith friends from Japan and Germany to give me a hand with the forging of this Odachi," He grabbed the sword from the case with one hand on the hilt and one on the blade and then handed it to me.
"The hell is an 'Odachi?" Zack pestered Quinn.
I commented, "It's basically a katana but larger."
"Do you know this from an Anime Sam?" Sheila started to pester ME now.
"... yes" I nearly silently muttered.
"Hah! Called it!" Sheila shouted while holding both her arms up like she won a battle and claimed victory.
"... right, I also have a sheath for it and make sure you properly wipe this down after each use. Now the axe," Quinn carefully grabbed the long hilt with both hands and turned it with the blade upwards and handed it to Zack like a torch.
"This is so sweet," he grinned.
"From watching your practices, you have a swing with the most force out of the three of you so an axe would be fitting. And last but not least," Quinn grabbed the whip and cracked it slightly and grinned.
"This is yours, water is loose just like this weapon but when used right, it could be the most terrifying," Quinn stated, "That and you're most likely to keep these two under control but also sometimes cause the most mischief… just like water, vital but also dangerous."
All of us were happy beyond belief and before we left Quinn left us with a note and he said that, "Xeno left this note for how to move to bring in a part of your spell to save it."
"What do you mean by 'save it?" Sheila asked, "Like Ctrl S stuff?"
"Sort of," Quinn pulled up a hologram and a holographic marker, "The way that Xeno described it was the action to save a spell at any moment and call it to you to instantly cast it at that moment. It's really helpful in combat, he said." During that explanation Quinn drew a crude stick figure drawing of someone doing the movements and he turned it into a looping gif.
"Start practicing with your weaponry everyday and soon, your own combat suits will be fully tailored by yours truly… if it weren't for government sciency stuff that's kind of classified, I probably would've gone into fashion. Heh I know right, millenials and their changing passions or something… get to practicing before you all have to hear my rant more and more." At least Quinn is self aware of his problem.
The three of us put the weapons back into the cases and went to the gyms to practice. In our gym practicing we could see through a window to the other gym and I see Sage and Adam going through the same magic explanation that we had just a couple of weeks ago.
"It's neat that we're not the only ones huh?" Sheila queeried, "I personally think it's cool cause now the whole world doesn't depend on just the three of us."
"I guess you caught me staring haha," I laughed off, "Yeah it's cool though, I hope they train quickly and get to our level without a constant lag to us."
"Well I'm more worried about the other four." Zack snuck up behind us, "Quinn told us that there were others and a total of nine individuals including us-"
I cut him off, "and they only have a grasp on five of them."
"Right, don't cut me off again."
"Not gonna happen, I've been doing this for years~!" I grinned.
Zack got pissed and he swung my axe at me, suddenly lightning startled to crackle on the blade as he swung. I closed my eyes and swung with my Odachi to block him.
"Woah." Sheila said, "That's hot haha!" she joked around so I opened my eyes.
My sword was coated in fire, "Ah-haha I did it! I can do free form magic!"
Sheila pointed out that, "I think it's easier for us to use free form when used together with our weapons."
"I'm more impressed by the fact that with fire and lightning clashing, our weapons took zero damage." Zack lined his right hand down the blade of his axe.
The red light on the camera turned on, Oh Quinn was watching us, "Oh during my rant it seems I forgot an important thing to tell you: This metal is from what's left of Xeno's ship here. Your weapons have the alloy compounds to literally withstand the voids of space and its terrifying contents, it should be pretty durable and from my research, pretty light too. The material of the ship when we collected it had some sheets thinner than our own spaceships and that the durability was higher than for regular weaponry as well as… pahh I ranted again. I'll work on this problem."
"... well that's cool as hell." I exclaimed.
"It makes us feel a bit more connected to Xeno I guess," Sheila lined her whip, "wait a second, mine's a whip that's made out of rope, not metal."
"You're wrong I made it by thinly stretching out tons of metal wires and braiding them together!" Quinn stated really quickly before shutting off the microphone.
"Uhp nevermind! I guess mine is also made of metal."
We kept practicing and practicing using videos we found on the internet or books that Quinn left for us. He told us he would find more martial arts teachers to teach us weaponry combat. After our training was done and we cleaned up, Sage and Adam caught up with us. "Heya! What schools do all three of you go to?"
"We all attend the same school, Manhattan Tech Prep." I told her, "And I'm not dumb I can assure you." I whispered to her.
"We'll see about that. Adam, you wanna say anything?" Sage enthusiastically bounced around and chatted with us, "I'm so excited to work with you. My powers by the way are light!"
"Light?" The three of our heads tilted to the left.
"Yeah hers is light and mine is darkness." Adam swayed his hair.
"What does light and darkness even mean?" I asked, "Like how do you manipulate it like the other types?"
"Light and Darkness are the cores of energy magic. It splits magic into two halves of Creation and Destruction." Xeno snuck up behind the five of us and stated, "It seems on your planet, the light is seen as good but everywhere else I've been, light represents destruction and darkness for creation."
"Thanks for tellin' me norms!" Sage smiled.
"The fuck you mean norms!?" I exclaimed.
Sage walked from behind me to the front, "I mean that as in you all have regular elements in fiction to manipulate!"
"You do too!" Zack pointed out.
"Ours is rarer… I think that's what Sage meant." Adam reasoned.
Sheila Zack and I turned to Xeno and interrogated, "IS IT!?"
He sighed, "yes it is. Though it's about how you use it, not the powers that you have. Remember that for as long as you can draw breath." Xeno looked at Sage and Adam, "Go get a night's rest, the two of you, we start training tomorrow." When he told them that we started walking away and going up the elevators.
"Soo… when do'ya think the Aliens gonna come?" Sheila asked to break the silence.
"WOAH WHAT!?" Zack and I were surprised she asked that.
"What?" She reasoned that, "the whole reason we're even here to train and spend time practicing magic is to fight aliens."
"Well when they come, I hope we'll be ready." I responded.
The three of us parted ways and when I got back into my room I opened my curtains, the first snow of the winter started, right in time for the start of winter break. I texted into our group chat, "waa it's snowing😆"
"That it is." Zack said while sending a video he captured the snow.
"Oooohh Pretty," Sheila replied to Zack's video, "we also need to add two more numbers to this."
"Dibs not getting their numbers." Zack typed in an instant.
"I'll do it." I responded.
"Thx Thx Sam✌️" Sheila replied, "Alr gn."
"Night"
And then I said "Goodnight👋"
Suddenly we got an ominous text within our group chat, "Yeah no sleeping isn't happening tonight. They're here." Chills ran down my spine and then another message, "I'm linking you coordinates. Meet on the rooftop of said coordinates. I have your combat suits and we'll meet you there." and then Quinn linked a location.
Zack pestered, "How fast????????"
"ASAP. I predict we have twenty or so minutes. GET GOING!"
We had no time to even consider the options, so I grabbed my dark green snow peacoat and ran to the coordinates. I saw a helicopter floating atop the building with lights shining down the roofs and thought, "Yeah that's probably it". Bursting up the doors to the rooftop I saw Zack, and Sheila was following suit.
"Where are they?" I asked.
Zack didn't say a word, he just shrugged while he was staring up at the sky.
"How much time do we have?" Sheila checked her phone.
I checked my phone, "From what Quinn said, around five minutes."
"Do not fear, we're here." Xeno said while leaping from fire escapes. He was carrying the cases with our weapons and he unclipped them.
Up the stairs we saw Quinn running up with three bags of clothing with different symbols on each. One with fire, one with lightning and the last with water, "These are your combat suits as well as masks to cover up your face, they're built out of seventy-five percent thinly stretched alloy from space so it's durable and light." He spat out all of that extremely quickly, "Get down into the bathrooms and change really quickly.
We each grabbed the bag corresponding to our magic's color and we changed in the bathrooms on the highest floor of the building. The suits were simple, black with silver linings and nothing else. When I got back up, Sheila and Zack were already warming up with their weapons. I grabbed mine and attached it to my suit at the hilts on my belt.
"Everyone cast a simple spell!" Quinn shouted at us. We all created simple magic circles, Sheila shot hers out way before us and she started having blue waves crash across her suit. We watched until it was finished and then Zack and I shot ours. Soon the suits started to change, mine into red and his into purple. Flames ignited on my suit whilst lightning surged out on his, "It's harmless, trust me!" Quinn declared as he saw the elements surging.
Sheila walked over to the ledge of the rooftop and stared down. Zack and I were perplexed so we followed.
"I bet we look really fucking cool right now." Sheila muttered.
"How would you know?" Zack questioned.
Sheila pointed across the street, "Well first of all I see it in the reflection of the building across from us, but I can also just feel it, literally."
"Heh yeah, Sheila's right. We do look pretty cool, but what's important right now is that we win." I said while clipping on my mask.
Both of them nodded and clipped their masks.
"Are we ready to go?" Xeno called out to us.
We nodded at him.
"Hahhh, now I know that means yes!" he leapt down the fire escape and we followed.