Author's Note: Hey guys! I finished this a lot quicker than I thought I would and I'm just posting it now because I was playing Skyrim Online for the ps4. It's a pretty legit game. I hope you all enjoy the chapter and thank you so much for reading! The next one should be ready in two or three days :)

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After surveying my new surroundings, I turned towards the rest of my group. They were all looking around with smiles on their faces while pointing at the wildlife and stray plants that stuck out in the field of yellow grass. I dropped to one knee and grasped a fistful of the grass and was instantly surprised by its rubbery feeling. I pulled upwards on the grass and was equally surprised as it stretched all the way up to my knees. I pulled on it a little more before I felt it reach a breaking point in its tension. I instantly let it go and watched it snap back down to the ground.

“Cool.” I breathed out. I looked up to see the rest of the group looking curiously at the patch of yellow grass I’d been stretching and they began trying it out for themselves. Smiling, I slung my huge pack off my back and dropped it to the ground which resulted in my pack being bounced a couple of times before finally settling down.

‘It’s like a huge trampoline,’ I smiled to myself. I resisted the urge to start hopping around and plopped down on my knees next to my pack and almost got tossed back up by the bouncy grass. Rifling through my pack, I found what I was looking for and pulled out my machete.

‘Hello, sweetie, did you miss me?’

Before I could get around to an evil laugh, Jessica came and dropped down next to me. She must not have known the ground was as bouncy as it was because she popped right back up with a confused look on her face before settling down on the ground with two smaller bounces. I started laughing at the look on her face and her cheeks went slightly red.

It must have taken all her willpower not to smack me upside the head for laughing at her and by the time I’d calmed down, everyone else was sitting on the ground in a somewhat circular shape. “Alex, why do you have a machete?” Jessica asked me.

Kualin began talking before I could get around to answering. “A machete? What era do you live in? Savage…” He started shaking his head while reaching to the back of his jeans, pulled out a black handgun and started waving it around.

“Are you crazy? Put that thing up there are people here, man!” I quickly shouted at him while reflexively looking around.

Kualin gestured to the empty plains around us. “What people, fool? It’s just us now. And as long as that’s how it is…imma stay strapped.”

I nervously laughed. “Oh…sorry about that…you’re right. That was just instinctual I guess.” Kualin nodded and put the gun down in front of him on the ground.

“Don’t worry it’s on safety. I got this before I came here. I don’t know how many of you experienced that crazy shit a month ago, but I’ll never forget it.” It looked like he was reliving that night in his mind for a couple seconds before snapping out of it and giving us all a goofy grin. “Anyways, after I was marked, I knew there was no way I was coming in here without some heat and borrowed it from a guy I know.”

I looked at him in disbelief and the rest of the group seemed uncertain as well.

“Borrowed?” Kyra asked with skepticism written all over her face.

Kualin started laughing. “I mean, I won’t bore you with the details, but I walked up to a police officer, said ‘aye o.g., lemme hold the shawty duwop,’ and yoink. That’s all it was to it.”

I became even more perplexed at the slang he was using while Pixie spoke with a hint of worry in her voice. “Oh, no! How did you get away?”

Kualin looked up to the sky once more reminiscing about home and shrugged. “I ran. I parkour, so it’s just kind of what I do. Make some crazy jumps and see who gets paid enough to follow you long enough across the rooftops of New York City.”

I looked at him impressed and said, “That’s so wrong, but pretty cool. Seeing the situation we’re in, I’m just glad you did bring it.”

“How many bullets do you have for it?” Izzy asked Kualin.

“Fifteen.” He said, obviously not expecting the question but I understood where she was going with it.

Akito decided to elaborate for Izzy. “Unless you grabbed some ammo off that officer as well, then you only have fifteen bullets throughout this whole thing. Even if you had perfect aim, I doubt you could put down a whole group since we know absolutely nothing about the races we’re fighting.”

Kualin fell back onto the ground, bounced a little, and stayed silent for a few seconds before speaking. “I guess I just didn’t think that far ahead.”

Milik chose this moment to speak. “So what’re we going to use to like…defend ourselves?” All of the girls looked at a loss and I rummaged around in my pack. Finally finding what I was looking for, I pulled out the compact axe I’d bought.

“Well, Kualin has his gun for now and I’ve got my machete…” I looked over at Akito. “Uhhhh, no offense Akito, but you’re huge and Milik is like…skinnier than me…so I’m just going to give the axe to him and you can just…smash things. Cool?” Everyone started to laugh as I handed my axe over to Milik and Akito just shrugged his shoulders in acceptance.

The laughter soon died down and Jessica said, “Wait, but what about us.” She gestured to herself, Kyra, Izzy, and Pixie.

I nervously laughed, “Well, uh…I just kind of thought you all could hide behind Akito if we run into something while Kualin, Milik and I fight. Don’t worry! We’ll protect you!”

Jessica looked like she was about to speak, but Izzy cut her off. “As great as that sounds…” I thought I could feel the venom in her voice. “We want to be able to protect ourselves.”

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To not piss her off, I replied as quickly as possible. “Well, I have this idea…it’s dumb really, but maybe it’ll solve that problem…” Feeling that something was off, I quickly stood up and looked around. Seeing what I didn’t want to, I picked my machete and pack up off the ground.

“Guys, come on hurry.” Everyone jumped to their feet and picked up their packs.

Kualin’s hand was reached behind him on what I assumed to be the handle of his gun. “What is it?” He spoke with a tinge of fear in his voice.

I replied quickly. “Where’d all the animals go? I was planning to follow them to a water source.”

The land around us had become bizarrely empty and we were all tensed up because of it.

“Over there! I see the head of that one with the long neck!” Milik was pointing in some direction to our left and we quickly began jogging after the strange animals.

Traversing the terrain wasn’t terribly difficult. There were small holes in the ground every now and then, but unless the tip of a foot went directly into them, then it was difficult to trip over anything besides our own feet. We ran after them for about fifteen minutes. The special buoyancy of the grass allowed us all to exhaust less energy and quickly gain ground on the animals. We stopped after reaching the top of our fifth hill, but what I saw was difficult to explain.

There wasn’t just a herd of those long necked animals moving in this direction; they all were. Long legs, short legs, big bodies, small bodies, horns, no horns, etc; All the animals we could see were moving toward what I could just barely make out from this distance as a river with purple sunlight shimmering off of its surface. The river was wide and moved at a slow speed. It stretched as far as I could see on both sides of me and behind it lay a great forest stretching miles and miles away from us until it disappeared into the horizon. This was saying something, considering we were now on a pretty big hill.

I stopped running after the animals and turned back to my friends who were only a few yards behind me. Izzy was at the back, but I figured that was only because of her height since I didn’t see her breathing hard at all. In fact, no one was really breathing all that hard and I didn’t know if it was the buoyancy of the grass helping or if everyone in my group was just really fit.

Either way, once everyone got close enough to see the river, I pointed at it and said, “As long as we travel along the river, assuming whatever lives on this planet needs water, we’ll find civilization and figure out what to do next from there. Get some information on where we are and how big this place really is. Sound good?” Everyone nodded at my suggestion and I began walking over towards the river.

“Alex…” I turned and started walking backwards and saw that Izzy had called out to me from the back of the group.

“What’s up?” I asked

“You said earlier you had an idea...about how we can protect ourselves.” She gestured to the rest of the girls in the group.

I sighed, slightly embarrassed. “It’s not just protection for the girls. It’s protection for all of us.” I paused for a moment and looked behind me to make sure I wouldn’t trip while walking backwards any time soon.

“It’s meditating.” I told everyone. They all looked at me crazily for a few seconds.

“It’s like getting in touch with yourself or something like that, you know? Now that we know we have these powers…what’s stopping us from using them? It’s the fact that we haven’t found them yet…at least that’s my guess.” I finished.

Everyone was nodding at what I’d said so I kept on explaining. “So if we look inside of ourselves, then maybe we’ll find something. If those numbers we got earlier are anything to go by, it shouldn’t be difficult for us to at least…awaken.”

“Awaken?” Kyra asked.

“We all had that dream, right?” I asked. “With the completely white space except for the black stuff scattered throughout it…and the voice in our heads. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re talking about right after the last tower landed…” Kualin nodded and replied in the affirmative while everyone else nodded their heads.

“Well, I don’t know if you all talked with that voice about anything other than being marked, but it said something to me about an awakening.” I was talking quicker as I got into it. “The voice said that I may not be so weak once I make it to my awakening. Remember the burning pain right as we stepped inside the tower? What if the tower was triggering our awakening? That could’ve been our bodies changing to accommodate our new powers! We just have to find them!” I exclaimed.

“But Alex, that’s all just conjecture…” Pixie said to me.

“Conjecture?” I smiled. “Well of course it is! There’s no other way we can draw conclusions about things! The alien in the projection made it pretty clear that we won’t be getting all the information once we made our groups.”

Pixie looked down at the ground probably to think about everything I’d said.

“So how’s this whole meditation thing supposed to work? I just close my eyes and hum or something?” Milik asked me.

“I mean, from what I’ve read they just kind of sit down in a certain position and shit just happens. I’m not very well versed in all the mechanics of it other than that we’re supposed to clear our mind and focus on taking in natural energy…” Everyone was looking at me in disbelief.

“Well, it’s just something to try! We can take turns trying later. I’ll even go first at the expense of looking like an idiot in front of you all.” I said to them all.

“If you need to know about the position, I think I know what it’s supposed to look like. I walk through Tampa all the time and see people meditating…” Izzy said all of a sudden.

I nodded to her and my group fell into a comfortable silence as we trekked the last bit of land to the river.