An Origin Story for Starmaster (Waking Up in a Brand New World)

ID: 14716

Waking Up in a Brand New World: An Origin Story for Starmaster

What the heck...

I've had that dream before. Flying high up in the sky. Realizing it isn’t possible, falling with arms and legs flailing, and BOOM. Striking the ground and as my mind has braced for the pain of impact,  suddenly my eyes pop open. Being forced awake with a gasp and the feeling of pure relief when I find myself snuggled up on the mattress, surrounded by warm blankets.

Today was the first time I don’t hit the ground. I wake up, snuggled with my face buried in my pillow but I'm not on my mattress. Instead, I'm floating two inches above it. My blanket is floating two inches above me.

I'll say it again. What the heck!

Lifting my arm up, the blanket shifts and rolls off me like a snake shedding its skin. If I hadn't been wearing my boxers, I'd be buck-ass naked in front of my college roommate. I sleep on the top bunk, so he'd get full-frontal view of my junk. I look around to see where he is and find him sitting at his desk, a faint haze of grey filling the room.

I roll my legs over the edge of the bedframe. I can't feel anything beneath me so I am cautious of my movement, afraid I will slip onto the floor. "Dude. What's going on?" My voice bounces back at me like I am trapped in the worlds tiniest closet.

"I'm so sorry, man," Quannel, or Quan for short, mouthed. Fortunately, a lifetime spent at loud parties taught me how to read lips, as I couldn't hear a word he said.

For a second time this morning, I dropped. Only a couple of inches this time, but I didn't expect it, so my body panicked as I hit the rails of the bedframe and launched myself to the ground. The cool tile felt good on my bare feet, but I immediately started coughing. The faint haze I noticed turned out to be smoke filling the room. I crouched down and brought my hand up to cover my mouth. The bunk bed was surrounded by a circle of ash and burnt blanket.

"I don't know what happened." Quan stared at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. His body was covered by a fine white ash and one of his college sweatshirts draped over his lap. "I know I didn't fall asleep with a lit blunt, man. I woke up torching like Burning Man."
“I was floating up there like a balloon,” I said through my coughs. My eyes fell on the one window of the room which gave us view of the quad outside our second-floor dorm room. If only it were open, the smoke could clear out before the fire alarms went off.
The crank began to turn and with several squeaking rotations, the window opened.
Quan whipped around at the sound. “What’s doing that?”
“I don’t know.” The window stopped moving.
“Don’t know what?” His face frozen, Quan whirled back around.
“What’s making the window move. I don’t know what’s doing it either.”
“Dude, who are you talking to? I haven’t said anything.” His palms, which had been resting on the shirt on his lap, turned up to me as he gave the universal gesture for WTF. A jet of red flame shot out from each, coming straight at me with a pyrotechnic roar.
My arms shot up, protecting my face when the sound suddenly disappeared from the room. Instinctively, I turned my head and closed my eyes when I saw the flames shooting out. After a couple of seconds of not feeling any flames against my flesh, I looked back. The flames curled away from me, as if striking an invisible barrier, leaving me untouched.
Behind the jets of fire, Quan had stood up and backed up to the wall. I could see he was trying to say something, but behind distortion of the heat, I couldn’t make out his words.
Alex, my god, what’s happening… I’m so sorry. How do I stop this?... I’m killing him…
I heard all three comments at once, muddled together like multiple people talking at once, but all in his voice, but it I didn’t HEAR it. I couldn’t hear anything, there was complete silence all around me, except for the drumming of my heart in my ears. Am I hearing Quan’s thoughts???
That would be impossible, but between flames shooting out of Quan’s hands and invisible force fields, what if the impossible had somehow become possible? Quan needed to know he was ok. I cupped my hands against my mouth and shouted. “I’m all right man!”
The words bounced back at me just as they would if I shouted in our tiny, dormitory shower. I locked eyes with Quan and thought forcibly, pushing my will out at him. Quan. I’m fine. Calm down.
Thank god. Quan’s voice echoed in my head. I could feel his concern. I don’t know how to stop it. I’m going to burn the whole place down.
I didn’t know what to tell him. We’d known each other for nearly a decade but this was new territory. Focus on calming down. Breath. Think about something else. Aren’t you supposed to have a test later today?
The flames spouted brighter and wider against the shield. I flinched and backed up a step. I guess he hadn’t studied.
Just breath. Think about…water. Nice wet, gentle, water. A memory sparked in the back of my mind. Remember a few weeks ago when we went to Lauderdale for spring break?
Yeah, that was awesome. All that sand. And Babes. Lots of babes. The flames dulled but didn’t go out.
Even when I thought directly into his head, Quan didn’t listen. Sure. But think about the ocean. You and I had never been to the ocean before. You could smell the salt-water in the air. We floated for what, half-an-hour before going back to the beach. The sensations were fresh in my mind. I never told him that I took a pee in the water because I didn’t want to go back to the shore, everything felt so good.
Gross, man. I was swimming right next to you! The flames died out. Quan had a look of disgust all over his face, nose crunched up and eyes all squinty as he looked at me.
The fire alarm began to bellow off the walls. The strange shield around me must have gone when Quan stopped flame-throwing. Between the noise, the silly look on his face, and my embarrassment, I broke out laughing. “Get over it, man. You know what this means?”
“What?” Quan wiped at his chest as if trying to wipe something away. “You planning out a golden shower this time?”
I laughed hard enough I spat and snorted. “No. Get over it.” I rolled my eyes at him. “We have powers, dude. Powers.”
It took hardly any time at all for a grin to break out on Quan’s face, nodding in agreement. “Yeah. We’re gonna be mother f-ing superheroes.”
A knock erupted from the connecting room. I looked toward the sound and found I knew it was the floor’s RA behind the door. My skin tingled just as it had when I got my acceptance letter for college or the night before prom. I pulled that memory back in quickly. Quan didn’t need to know everything that happened that night.
“Put some pants on, Captain Whatever,” I said to Quan before grabbing my robe from the hook on the wall. Smoke still hung in the air around us and there were scorch marks on the ceiling. “We’ve got some explaining to do first.”