Chapter 2: Part 2: Bystander, POV: Sam

“Hahah, I guess the three of us really have powers!” Sheila cried out!

Xeno canceled the spell by getting out of the final stance and standing straight again. In the moment we had suddenly felt so incredibly tired or drained of stamina that we instantly dropped to the ground. Sheila had dropped down on her back, her hair sprawling across the ground and her legs curled. Zack had dropped down to both his knees and started breathing heavily. As for me, I had dropped down onto my knees sweating profusely.

 “So, was that enough reason to show that the trio has magic stored in their body?”  Xeno asked.

“Yes I think this is quite enough reasoning for now.” Quinn responded.

I looked up at them, “What’d you do to us!?” 

“Huh?” Xeno had to think about it, “I cast a spell on the three of you that brought out most of your magic energy to be visible, the backfire is that it would bring you to an extreme fatigue.” 

“Well yeah I can FEEL THAT!!” Sheila commented. 

Xeno shrugged, “no matter, I went through this process when I was learning myself.”

“WELL WHO SAID WE WANTED TO PARTAKE IN LEARNING MAGIC!?” Zack chimed in. He stood up barely, his slouch was unbelievable with one of his arms on his right knee to keep him up, “Look, you clearly don’t understand. We DON’T WANT to be wizards or whatever! Well I don’t know about the other two but I certainly don’t want to be pawns to you!” 

“Yeah, if we learn magic just cause, that’s pretty stupid in my opinion.” Sheila also got up, her right leg standing up and her left stretched out with both her arms clenching her legs.

So I guess it’s my turn to say something, I started to push myself to get up, “Why do we need to learn magic or whatever? Why were WE the ones given this power?”

Quinn looked up from his phone, “I might have an explanation as to why your powers exist, but if you don’t want to I can send you-”

“NO!” Xeno shouted, fanning his arms out blocking the doorway, “THEY MUST LEARN MAGIC! FOR THE SAFETY OF YOUR PLANET!”

“What’re you talking about?” The three of us asked while still sweating.

“A dark force, one that had ransacked my entire planet with no hesitation. We were conquered. I barely escaped with my life. They’re coming here now.” Xeno vaguely explained.

“How do you know? Please say in detail!” Quinn shouted while frantically opening his phone, visibly sweating around his face from confusion!

“I CAME HERE FROM AN ESCAPE POD! Listen, one of the biggest meteors you saw could’ve been my escape pod. I didn’t take an official ship here, I was stowed away!” Xeno defended his answer and started to draw his spear. 

“Can you take us to it?” Quinn hastily asked while typing notes and using the other hand to back away from Xeno, “And on the way, explain this ‘dark force’!”

“Hey! What about us!?” Sheila cried out.  

Quinn whispered to one of his agents which soon after quickly darted out of the room. We were quickly escorted to the office again. That same agent returned with papers. He set them in front of us, “what is this?” Zack & I inquired. 

“Contracts,” Quinn explained, “To make sure you won’t blab about what you saw. And if there’s a violation, we’ll come for you.”

The three of us reluctantly signed it. After that we were escorted once again but to the parking garage with the SUVs except Quinn wasn’t with us. Just a bunch of stone faced FBI agents who took us back to Battery Park. They kicked us out and drove off. It was night time now and past sunset. 

“Soooo… what now?” Sheila asked.

Zack responded, “I guess we're going home?”

“Yeah, let’s just go home because we’re not legally allowed to talk about- …the thing.” I said. We started walking to the closest subway station. Each of us separated and went home. 

The second I opened the door to my apartment my mom yelled from the kitchen across the doorway, “SAM!? WHERE WERE YOU? YOU’VE BEEN GONE ALL DAY! You never answered any of my calls and, oh my gosh, you look tired.”

“Yeah I am kinda tired, I stayed back at school to work on a Science project with Zack.” 

“Hmmm, I’ll believe you but next time pick up my calls. Please clean up and eat dinner.” 

I replied as I was in the doorway to my room, “No thanks. I just want to sleep.” and then slammed the door.

So am I superhuman now? A fire literally CAME OUT OF MY BODY TODAY! What do I do with that information? I can’t tell anyone, I signed a contract. I should just sleep out this confusion. Millions of thoughts were firing in my head about everything I’ve learned today. I tried to sleep, but every time I tried I could only dream about flames or anything related to today. It’s hard to deal with this, so I got up to get my phone and keys to leave. “I need to talk to someone about this who DOES know… Zack..” I thought as I went down the stairs of the building. When I went to the doorway all I could say was “ah”. Zack was already there.

“You too?” he asked.

I sighed, “yeah. I can’t sleep.”

“Then let's go to central park, it's only about a block or two away. Y’know our usual hiding spot.”

“Yeah yeah up the tree.” And we left, into the cold December night of New York to Central Park. By now all the leaves had already fallen off so when we climbed up our usual tree near the gates, we weren’t hidden. 

“It’s hard to deal with this. Knowing that at any moment I can summon lightning from myself. That’s weird. Do I just try to forget I could do that? Do I walk away from all this?” Zack rambled.

“I don’t know man, I’m sorry I just don’t. The government WANTS us to forget about it, that’s all I know.” 

“True, speaking of. What do you think that ‘dark force’ is that Xeno mentioned to the other guy the weirdo with the phone uhh-”

“Quinn.”

“Yeah him, weird name right? Also he looked young to be a head of whatever was going on!”

“True, he looked early twenties at best!”

“Seriously, though, what do you think the ‘dark force’ is?”

“If I had to guess, likely another alien race like Xeno but much less friendly.”

“... so like right out of any alien movie or something?” Zack asked while opening his notebook.

“Yeah pretty much. You still carry that with you even at…” I looked at my watch, “2:41am?”

“Yes I do, you never know when you need to write something important down.”

“I guess so.” Zack and I just started casually chatting afterwards. Not even about the magic or whatever more or less about school until we got so tired the sun almost started rising.

“Hey uhhh, is that the sun?” I asked.

Zack sprung up, “oh shit that is!” 

“We should probably head out and get ready for school.”

“Fine,” I started to climb down the tree, “though we’ll get into school dead tired.”

He climbed down another way, “better than not showing up at all.”

“I don’t know about that.”

I just ran home to grab my school stuff and then sprinted to the subway. Nothing much from there, I just got to school. Though instead of going to my first class I went to look for Sheila instead. To ask her how she’s doing y'know. She was at her locker.

“You get any sleep?” I shouldn’t have asked that.

She had visibly noticeable eyebags when you got a good look at her face, “Does it look like I did?” She asked sarcastically.

I apologized, “Sorry I didn’t notice it walking up to you.”

She sighed, “It's fine, I’m just as tired as you.” and she showed me her handheld mirror that I also had eye bags.

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I know right.” 

All I could do was sigh from how tired I was, I normally never do all nighters. Today was a mess, I couldn’t remember what happened in school. I just kept passing in and out of consciousness. I’m pretty sure at Lunch I just slept in my classroom. At the end of the day I was dragging myself to go meet up with Zack and Sheila. I went to the front gate behind the pillars again because I thought they’d be there… and they were.

“Hey,” Zack yawned.

“Hi.”

“C’mon guys let's go to a coffee shop or something, I feel like I need six straight espresso shots to wake up.” Sheila suggested but then just started walking. 

I started to follow, “I guess we’re going to a Cafe then.”

Sheila took the three of us to a coffee shop I think about four of five blocks from school. It was cozy with a spruce build and mahogany finishes, it seemed real japanese with the wood and nature aesthetic vibes. She turned around to us and said, “This place specializes in Matcha but makes normal Coffee too so if you want-”

“No thanks, I’ll just grab us a table.” Zack walked off.

“Wha- ?” Sheila just asked…

but I responded immediately before she could finish, “Zack doesn’t drink any caffeine because he says it's too bitter for him.” 

“... I guess so,” Sheila then whispers into my ear, “So is Zack just a pussy about bitter shit or??” 

“Yeah pretty much” I slid right around Sheila, “dibs ordering first.”  

I turned around to order from the barista, “Matcha latte with a milk foam, small please.” I could feel Sheila behind me cursing me and saying “Damn you Sam!” From behind me. I smirked a bit. After I ordered then she did, then we both walked over to the area where the drinks came out. My drink came out first and I looked around for Zack, it seems he went upstairs. I walked upstairs and found Zack placed our backpacks on three seats. He was seated against a long table connected to a wall with a glass pane facing the streets. My backpack was placed on the right side with Sheila in between Zack and I. I moved the backpack to the table and sat where it was. 

“Hey.”

“Whatcha get?” 

“Matcha latte and milk foam.”

Sheila placed a small tray in between this, “Hey, I got a grande caramel macchiato with a chocolate croissant thank you so much for asking.”

“... well I was gonna ask anyway,” Zack commented and then looked back into his laptop.

“What’re ya working on?” I asked him.

“Chemistry homework.”

Sheila with her mouth a bit full of her croissant, “Hey can you send those answers to me, you have Gerwit yes?” 

Zack Sighed, “Yes I have Gerwit for Chem.”

She swallowed and took a sip of her coffee, “good! So, can you send that to me?” 

He let out an even longer sigh, “ughhhh fine.” 

And then I saw something… I had to point it out to them, “Whoa Whoa guys look!” I pointed towards it. Huge crowds of people sweeped the street running away to the right side of the cafe.

“What the fuck is going on!?” Zack exclaimed looking off of his laptop. Even everyone in the cafe started to look and started to panic. 

Naturally being curious teenagers, we decided to- “C’MON WE HAVE TO SEE WHAT’S UP!” Thanks Sheila.

We packed up extremely quickly and dashed down the stairs. Suddenly…

[FWOOOOOO! FWOOO! CRASH!]

The ground started to shake, “What the hell is outside?” Zack asked.

“Well we’ll see when we go outside!” I shouted at them.

We had to push and wade through the crowds trying to leave. Once we got outside, the three of us stood near the sides of the buildings and ran the other way from everyone else. A few other people in the crowd were running to see what was up but it was much less than the crowd leaving the area.

After we ran for two or so blocks, Zack looked up at the sky, “What the fuck is that!?” 

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Sheila’s knees shook and I dropped my matcha latte. Infront and above us was a huge oval shaped spaceship, it easily was about half a block’s size. 

“What the hell!? Was this the dark force Xeno mentioned?” I asked the other two.

“HELL IF I KNOW!” Sheila shouted. 

As we shouted, six black SUVs raced right by us and stopped right under the ship.

“Was that?” I spoke in broken questions, “Was that… yeahh.”

“Yeahh I think so,” I guess Sheila was also speaking in broken sentences. 

The cars opened up and many FBI agents leaped out. Quinn came out last in the third SUV. Finally in the last SUV a different man came out, he had a pin with a United States seal. Holding a briefcase instead of a phone or a gun. 

“Hey!” Zack whispered to us, “That's an American Ambassador!”

“Are they going to try to consult and talk with whoever’s in that!?” Sheila asked.

“I mean likely, they probably brought an ambassador. But my question is: Where is Xeno?” 

Zack looked around, “he’s probably hiding somewhere, kept as a last trump card just in case maybe.”

The other crowds started to follow up with us and stare. We all stared at the ship. Soon the center of the bottom of the ship shedded some smoke and a small circular platform started to descend. Soon four more platforms just like that descended as well. Once the platforms at eye-level. We got a glimpse of aliens. They wore black and purple suits, three aliens per platform. Each of them had a spear on their backs. One on the first platform was dressed differently in a more detailed tailored uniform with a brighter purple radiating with glimmer. 

The ambassador slowly walked up with two FBI agents at his side, “Uhhh Hello,” the Ambassador started to speak, “I am Simon Stakara. I am a United States Ambassador and you have stepped onto the soil of the United States of America.”

The better dressed alien stepped up and adjusted a knob on his neck, after a bit… it spoke English, “hello! I am from the Zankoku Empire! We have come to offer you a deal.” The alien shouted enthusiastically while walking slowly around the Ambassador with his arms reaching out. 

“Uhhh, what empire?” The Ambassador looked dumbfounded.

“The Zankoku Empire!” The alien put his arms towards his hip, “Our empire has come to ask you to offer up your planet of Earth to become part of the Zankoku Empire!” 

“To join our planet as a member of your empire?” The Ambassador just kept silent for a bit.

“YES! Y’see, our empire has scanned many cheap minerals on your planet, enough to be chosen as the next planet to join our Empire! Our gracious Commander of this frontier, Commander Mael, has decided to go for a diplomatic route.”

“And what is the normal route? And Earth has never discovered aliens, We are hesitant to immediately join a huge inter-planetary Empire.” The Ambassador told him back.

The alien sighed, “First of all, our Empire spans this WHOLE GALAXY AND THEN SOME! And furthermore, it’s a shame that your planet hasn’t opted to join the Zankoku Empire.” The Alien quickly drew a gun out of his holster and shot both the Ambassador AND the two men alongside him. 

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?” I screamed in my mind. My legs felt frozen in sheer fear to even consider running away. All I could do was watch and I assumed the same of Zack and Sheila.

All the FBI agents drew their guns and took aim. The Zankoku soldiers drew their spears and pointed them towards everyone. Quinn stood still behind his men and took notes on his phone. Everyone was at a stand still. 

Until one FBI agent shouted, “AHHHHH!” likely out of fear and pulled the trigger shooting the leader of the Zankoku in front of his face. 

The bullet just flew off casually, “I told you all, cheap minerals but quantitative.” The leader aimed and before he took a shot, a strong gust of wind took him off balance.

“That has to be Xeno right?” Sheila, Zack and I turned around to see him dashing like a bright flashing light with a rotating orange circle behind him as he kept weaving more and more into the circle. 

Xeno leaped over the FBI agents and drew out his spear, “I knew you would come here next. Diplomatic route my ass! This was just to test how this planet would react. Either way you would wipe the planet of its people and the leftovers become slaves!” 

“How could you accuse us of such a-” The guy drew his gun at a speed I could barely see, “Yeah we kill millions!” And fired to no avail. Xeno reflected the bullet by creating this mysterious orange circle with fewer patterns and details than the one from yesterday, balancing not only the bullet but all the soldiers off their feet. Without hesitation Xeno jumped over to the soldiers and slashed the torso of three on the street as the other twelve or so soldiers got up. The leader shouted “Get the refugee, apprehend him!” 

“Yes Sergeant!” All the troops said while running with their spears towards Xeno. 

Three soldiers attempted to flank him but as they thrust their spears. Xeno blocked with his spear behind his back and spun it disarming all three soldiers and he spliced the necks of the three. He dashed away and started to hand tut and yet another orange circle appeared and he was slowly moving his hands more and adding more patterns into the circle, this time the circle was humongous, easily twice as big as the last one. The diameter was taller than Xeno and he used it as a shield. Not long after, he threw out his hands and the circle vanished, soon a tornado whooshed into existence under the spaceship which caught two of the soldiers in its current. 

“HE CAN DO THAT!?” Sheila yelled while Xeno leaped into the current of the tornado and stabbed the two. 

The Sergeant and the soldiers shot their spear guns at Xeno, I could hear him saying “haha foolish,” as he deflected every bolt. The spears didn’t shoot bullets but rather matters of energy or magic? I’m not sure what it is.

I grabbed Zack by the shoulder and asked, “Do you think we should help?” 

Zack pushed me off and whispered, “later. We’ll talk about it later.”

In that time of chatting Xeno has already killed off two more soldiers and started to hand tut yet another glowing orange circle.This time instead of throwing his hands out to make the circle vanish and do… something, Xeno pierced his spear through the glowing orange circle. Visible winds started to circle around his spear and he aimed his spears at the troops. Winds started to form the ends of spears and it fired, causing cracks in the armor of all of the Zankoku troops.

The Sergeant shouted, “New Orders: Death Penalty!” And then he shot out as many spear bolts as possible, most missing Xeno and hitting the buildings in the background.

[CRASH BOOM BOOM]

“Holy shit! Let’s FUCKING MOVE!” Zack pushed us aside from the crashing debris and we moved around the debris. 

Sheila nonchalantly just squatted flat feet and legs fully folded but still not sitting on the debris, “What?” She shrugs to us, “I want to finish watching this, go home if you want.”

I just shrugged and sat beside her, Zack groaned and begrudgingly stood behind the both of us and watched. Xeno had kept blocking and deflecting the spear bolts with another spell being casted. This time a smaller circle about the size of a hand-held shield. Zankoku troops had combined their spear shots into one big shot. It landed onto the spell circle and the spell shattered, knocking Xeno back into a mass of debris. 

Xeno’s helmet started to fall apart and crack. Blood started to drip down his face, he groaned and used his Spear as a cane to get back up. The Zankoku didn’t wait for him with honor to get up, they continued to lay fire at him. Xeno didn’t get back up and instead started to cast a big spell circle that blocked his body at an angle when he lay horizontally. 

Xeno rotated the spell behind him, he grabbed his spear and shouted a battle cry, “AHHHHHH DOUUUU!” and casted the spell forcing a huge wind through his body launching him far forward right into the force. Xeno thrusted and spun his spear around, disarming the rest of the men. This time he made magic but he didn’t make a circle and now the winds took on a blue-ish hue to it and he rotated the winds around his spear. 

The Zankoku Sergeant got up from the ground and cried, “GAHHHHH!” to grab Xeno but he was kicked back. Xeno’s spear has a quick rotating ball of wind coated the tip and he spun his spear around the Zankoku force, then he muttered, “finishing spell: Gale’s Fury!” 

And he launched the spear into the sky releasing six blue spear ends. One to thrash and splice the leftover Zankoku troops. The other five spear ends soared into the five platform openings of the ship, destroying the Alien ship from the inside. Some of the engines on the left end exploded and the ship listed down towards the ground.

Xeno stared up into the sky and said, “Showtime’s over!” And leaped away.

“Yeah we should probably get outta here,” I thought as I leaped up and grabbed Sheila. We all jumped off the mass of debris as the ship dropped to the ground. The Force of the ship propelled us far. I quickly used my backpack to break my fall.

When the dust cleared I heard Sheila cry out, “Everyone good!?” 

“I’m good.” I said while touching and rubbing the bruises and scrapes on all my limbs. 

I saw Zack under a traffic pole and a bike rack, “A LITTLE HELP PLEASE! I MIGHT HAVE A BROKEN RIB OR TWO!” He shouted to us.

I pulled off the bikes while Sheila tried to push away the Traffic pole. Zack pushed himself away from the debris and tried to get back but stumbled- “Woah!” He fell but he gripped the traffic pole. He felt around his ribcage for a bit, “I should be fine… I think.”

“Y’all good?” I asked while still rubbing a bruise on the outside of my right leg on my shin. 

“No not really consider THAT-” Sheila pointed at the alien ship, “ALMOST CRASHED ONTO OUR HEADS!” 

The other crowds have started to get up on their own too and are checking around.

“Should we circle the ship?” Zack asked.

I raised my left eyebrow, “why?”

“To find Xeno.” He simply explained.

Sheila pointed towards the dust, “but we should probably clear it up with them.” Many SUVs and Ambulances stormed through the dust and had guns up with many paramedics filing out with stretchers.

“Are you hurt boy?” A paramedic asked Zack, and then he went over to look at me and Sheila, “These two have minor injuries better take a look!” He shouted to other paramedics. One of the other paramedics rushed over to Sheila and I while the first one took a more serious look at Zack.

“What’s the problem?” She asked, “I don’t see anything.” The paramedic asked on her initial look.

Sheila and I were confused, “What do you mean by that?” She asked, “my cuts and bruises are right here-” And she pointed to perfectly clear skin, “... eh? But they were just here!?” 

I looked at my scrape on my right leg… nothing.

“Sorry sir and ma’am but when I look at both of your open skin spots, there’s nothing. Both of you look clean.” The female paramedic said.

The male paramedic who was looking at Zack too also said, “he seems fine. The boy claims spots of bleeding and such on his back when I did a minor inspection, nothing. All three of you seem to be fine unless you want to come to the hospital with us and get an X-ray.”

“How much would it cost?” I reluctantly asked.

The male paramedic sighed, “frankly, a lot.”

“No thanks.” Sheila said on the spot, “we’re fine!” and then pushed me away.

Zack spent more time with the paramedics reporting what he saw, we didn’t do that… because he’s doing that. When he finished he jogged over to us, “So did you rat out about Xeno?” I asked.

“Why would I?” He looked confused. 

Sheila scratched her neck, “because you spent more time explaining to the paramedics what happened? We thought you would mention him cause he’s kinda y’know… one of the oppositional forces in this instance.” She went off.

“No, I spent all of my time describing the alien ship… that’s now crashed into a few skyscrapers. And then they said they had to go and help all the other people caught in this mess.” 

Suddenly a strong gust of wind ran through the city, the three of us just stared into the direction of where it came from. 

“You think that was Xeno?” I asked.

“Who called for me?” 

Xeno appeared behind the three of us and jumpscared the three of us, “WAH!” And we fell to the ground. He was cloaked in a dark beige trench coat with a mask, glasses and a fedora… kinda like a classic spy movie person in hiding that’s trying to blend in but tries too hard that people can tell he’s hiding from something. 

“What are you doing here?” Zack exclaimed at him while rubbing the back of his head.

And Sheila stared in disgust, “And what are you wearing…?”

“This is about the only way I can travel through the masses of this planet, of course I’m still being watched. I don’t know where exactly from but I can tell it's happening.” He explained, “So, are you three willing to learn magic from me? I can show you how to fight like that.” 

That hit the three of us like a rocket launcher. I don’t know about the other two but it's likely that we’re not super willing to just give up our lives for combat like that… at least for me. I was content with my life to some extent but with this? I don’t know.  

In my head all I could think was, “I don’t want to die like that, I don’t want to die like that, I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE THAT!” over and over and over and over. I would quite literally be a human experiment. It feels like hitting a restart button on a game. 

Then, Zack said in a shaky voice, “No Thanks! We’re not willing to throw our lives away…” his legs beckoned. 

“Yeah I’m good too!” Sheila groaned and backed away…

And now it was just me. Xeno was staring me dead in my eyes for my response.

“... Uh I think I’ll pass. It's not worth it to throw my life away like that!” And he sighed. 

But before Xeno could say anything, the NYPD cried out, “ Oi get out of the way!” They were using Steel fencing to create a perimeter around the crash accident. They pushed the four of us outside of the fencing and locked us out. 

All Xeno said was “Please.” 

“We already said no!” Zack told him off, “Hell go train ACTUAL soldiers not a trio of angsty teens.” 

“I wish I could teach them, but they do not possess magic in their bodies. Only the three of you.” He tried to explain calmly, but Sheila did not care.

“That’s cool… but I don't care. I’m gonna go home and try to forget this ever happened.” And she just picked up her backpack and left. I don’t know what's going on in her mind, but right now it can’t be good. 

Zack tapped the back of my shoulder then he nodded toward the direction of the closest subway station, “Ah, gotcha” I signaled by nodding back. 

“Goodbye Xeno,” I said while picking up my backpack, “The three of us aren’t gonn try and throw our lives away with a curse.” 

I heard Xeno mumble while we started to walk away, “it’s not a curse… it’s a blessing.”

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