Chapter 1: Thunder

Location: Earth, upper atmosphere.

Date: March 8th, 2008

Nearly a day had passed since the temple had been awakened, and life was seemingly back to normal...the earthquake was passed off as nothing but a minorly newsworthy blurb on the evening news. "Nothing special" said the various anchors and reporters.

The "heat sources" had indeed made it into outer space, and had somehow managed to cool down and seemingly disappear from radar completely. The military and scientists had no way f tracking them.

Just as suddenly as they had reached outer space, a day later they all came streaming down towards the planet again, shooting like meteors heading on a collision course with the planet.

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"Sir, it looks like those unidentified heat sources from yesterday are returning to Earth...they're falling from the atmosphere as we speak." said a control officer.

"What?! Where are they heading...the people need to be warned." said the commander.

"There's no time, sir. They've almost reached the surface...they should impact withing 60 seconds. I'll get data on all the crash sites right away." he said.

"Good, we'll need teams dispatched to each site fairly quickly to ensure that no one gets a hold of them, whatever they are, and causes us unnecessary problems." said the commander

"Uh, sir. You might want to check this out." said the Control Officer. "It appears that each of them actually split in two while still in the upper atmosphere...there are now twenty objects falling, and they're just a few thousand feet above the surface!"

"Good granny, what's next?" the Commander said.

Suddenly the ground shook beneath them, apparently one of them had struck near enough to them to have a shockwave strong enough to be felt.

"Get teams on it NOW!" bellowed the commander.
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Location: Tampa, Florida. United States

Drake Trager was just walking home from school, it had been a good day, but he was glad it was over. He'd had this feeling all day long nagging at his mind. The feeling that something big and important was about to happen, but he had no idea what.

Drake had just turned into the vacant park near his neighborhood when he heard a screaming noise in the air above him. He looked up and saw an intensely bright fireball streaming down and it was heading for the middle of the park itself. He tried to run away, but couldn't make himself move. He stood there, rooted on the spot and watched the fireball crash right into the fountain, sending up piles of rubble and steam and making a small crater. The shockwave spread to him almost immediately, and he was thrown to the ground.

"-the hell?!" he exclaimed

After a few seconds, he got up and peered down into the crater, trying to see what it was, but saw nothing. Then, out of the dirt shone a bright golden light. It shone directly upward, almost like a signal beacon, but then stopped. Right in mid-air in the middle of where the light had been, what looked like a crystal was just floating there. it hung there for a second, and then shot towards Drake and landed at his feet, glistening in the sunlight.

"What is going on here?!" he said "Was this the feeling I was having?" he asked himself as he bent down and apprehensively picked up the crystal.

The moment it touched his skin, he felt an intense jolt of electricity surge through his body and he was again knocked to the ground. Once he was coherent enough to think, he looked down at the crystal in his hand. The thing had left a mark on his hand in the shape of a lightning bolt, but it looked too ornate to possibly be a coincidental scar or bruise. After about 10 seconds, the mark seemed to melt away into his skin, and it looked perfectly normal again.

Drake got up and started walking back home, pocketing the crystal and picking up speed. He figured ti best not to stick around because the cops might show up and he didn't even want to think about what might happen.

He arrived at home and found nothing out of place...his parents and sister seemed utterly unaffected.

"Did they really NOT feel that?" he asked himself.

He grabbed a couple cookies from the container in the kitchen and rushed up to his room to "Do his homework." He closed his room door and locked it, then proceeded to put his stuff on his bed and sit down at his desk. He took the crystal out and looked at it again...no shock this time, it looked like any ordinary crystal that fell from space should...very conspicuous. It was a goldish yellow color and on the inside, it looked to have a few internal cracks in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"What is it with this thing and lightning bolts?" he asked himself. "It almost looks like that mark was carved inside it with a laser or something..." he said as he mimicked the motions of carving. As he was motioning, a little -CRACK- sounded near his fingertip, and he felt a burn on his finger. He waited a second, and tried it again...-CRACK- -CRACK- a little spark appeared at his fingertip and disappeared just as fast as it had appeared.

"No way!" he exclaimed. "Did this thing give me like...some sorta electric powers or something?"

"Drake!" a voice from downstairs sounded. "Are you ok in there?"

"Yeah, mom, I'm fine!" he said back

"What was that, were you yelling something?" she asked

"No. Well, yes...I got a paper cut, but it's fine. I cleaned it off and bandaged it up already." he said

"Well, ok then. Dinner'll be ready in an hour. See you then!" she said

"Phew...That was close." he said, reaching for a band-aid. "I definitely need to tinker with this thing... this could be nice, very nice indeed. " he said with a huge smile on his face.


End Chapter 1