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I walked into advisory with a sense of confusion and amazement. I sat down next to Titus, who had is hand beneath the desk, and kept trying to make a small flame that'd last for more than five seconds. Tanner didn't notice it when he walked in, and sat down across the table from us.

"Hey, Tanner." [Me]

"What?"

"Guess what I found out about."

"... Uhh... I don't know. Chemistry?"

"Nope."

"... You gonna tell me?"

"Well you already know about it, so..."

"Right, of course not. So you're gonna make me guess for it. Does it have to do with science?"

"Nope. Titus knows."

"Dude, do not bring me into this, I really need to focus." [Titus]

"... Wait, why would you need to focus on starring into space?" [Tanner]

"I don't know, but Marko knows." [Me]

"Well, Marko knows a lot of things."

"Dante does too."

"Well, not about anything at school."

"So do his triplets."

"... Wait, did you- no. No you didn't."

"Yeah, I do."

"You don't even know what I'm talking about."

"I wonder how many forms and variations there are on it? Five? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? A million? Maybe more?"

"You do know. Well, I congratulate you, but I'm not doing anything about it. Make sure you keep it-"

"So tell me, how does it work?"

"Like you said, there's multiple forms and variations-"

"I mean how do I access it."

"Everyone's wired differently-"

"But Ms. Ardenstal compared it to science. And while I prefer astronomy, and I'm still capable of doing physics and chemistry."

"... Okay, well you figured out that much. Before you can do anything you need to tap into an inactive part of your mind. I can't help, and even if I could, I wouldn't. Tell me when you get that far."

"Okay. How do I do that?"

"I don't know, meditate, focus, think, anything. It's different for different people."

"I did it by pretending I had." [Titus]

"... Yeah, or be like him and force yourself to believe you already have. I guess the plesibo effect works too." [Tanner]

"Okay, okay..."

I went quiet and got into a more comfortable position, thinking about magic. I tried clearing my head at first, but that proved unhelpful, so I tried think. I imagined my brain, and then imagined a point in it. I imagined the point moving, and felt a strange sense inside my skull when I did. I let the point move up and down the center of my brain, across the larger front of it, and down towards the back. None of it did anything until I moved the point out of my brain. I felt my tongue lock to the roof of my mouth and press so hard against it I felt like it was going to break. Pressure built up around my sinuses and I felt my nose close. My vision began to blur, and I realized my eyes were giving me double vision. I felt so close to blacking out when suddenly I was winded and looked around, seeing everything perfectly clearly as I regained my breath.

Looking around, I quickly noticed things changing. For starters, my skull felt weird, kind of like a head ache, but instead of pressure, it felt like relief. Second, my vision had improved. It's not that I had bad vision, but it's kind of noticeable when you can all of a sudden see the fingerprints on your paw pads and see the minor movements under your skin as your heart pumps blood through it. I could see the weird bumps in the plaster walls on the other side of the room, and when I saw the book Tanner was reading, I could just barely see the grain in the cellulose and the pixelation in the text.

I felt change inside my body as well, initially in my neck, hurt and pain, but it slowly spread and contained my lungs and heart, feeling rupture inside of them. As it spread to my finger tips and toes, the pain subsided into numbness and my mind felt like it was slowly melting. Eventually I felt completely numb to everything beyond sight, and then it all hit me, hard and fast. Suddenly my stomach lurched, my heart skipped a beat, my ears pricked, my fingers and toes locked, and some part of me felt... Like when someone says something unimaginably stupid or terrible, but the feeling was good, and proper. I felt complete.

"Jesus Christ I think I just..."

"Yeah, obviously. I mean, your face scrunched up like the room was filled with a noxious smell." [Tanner]

"... And you didn't care?"

"No, I knew what was happening. A similar thing happened to me when I tried, except it broke my hand. Luckily my brother's boyfriend was there to fix it. He's the one who told us."

"Oh... I don't think my hand's broken, so I guess it's more natural for me."

"No, it just means your hand's not a big part of your better abilities. I mean, Marko's better with time fluxuation and understandings. You know waht's interesting? All our theories of time are wrong. Except two, and it kind of annoys Marko. See, everything we do is set in stone, if I go back and try to change an event, it's already been changed, so me going back in time fulfills that. But, there's an infinite number of universes, and if you focus on a single event in the similar universes, say World War II, then you'd find that some universes had it, and others didn't. And that those that didn't, didn't necassarily end up too different than ours. So, we have choice, but our choices have already been chosen, and we're just fulfilling them."

"... Well that's weird."

"Yeah, I know. It's funny, it kinda bugs Marko. I mean, we all have free will, but what we'll do with it is already laid out and set in stone."

"Huh. So, what're you good with?"

"Me? Oh, I don't know. Crippilation is easy enough."

"Crippilation?"

"Yeah, it's where you contort things like your hand and focus your thoughts and intent through that, causing a change. Watch." He held out his hand, and contorted his fingers in such a way it made sense why it's called crippilation. Within a second of him doing this, a small point of bright light appeared in the palm of his hand.

"Woah!" [Titus]

"Yeah, it just hurts sometimes." Tanner straightened out his fingers and the point vanished, obliterating into nothingness.

"Oh. So it's not a good idea to consider this?" [Me]

"No, and you can rule out just about anything with extensive hand gestures and movements."

"Yup, there goes blue magic." We both raised an eyebrow at Titus. "Blue magic is-"

"I know." [Tanner]

"Oh come on, it was funny!"

"You know, I think Kyle would slap you for making that joke."

"Who's Kyle?" [Me]

"His whore of a brother." [Titus]

"You take that back!" Tanner's voice quivered as he spoke, and I noticed the other kids in the class had gone quiet at Titus' insult.

"I'm only saying what's true." [Titus]

"But it's not!"

"Hey, I know you feel otherwise, but..."

"Shut up! You know damn well that it's not true!"

"Could I get an explanation as to what we're talking about?" [Me]

"Only if he shuts up!" [Tanner]

"Fine, I'll be quiet." [Titus]

"Good. ... Kyle is my brother, he used to work at... not exactly the most friendly of places, and made a decent living doing it, and due to weird bullshit with the insurance company, it wasn't enough. We managed to sort it out, he stopped working there, and life got a lot better. Especially for me."

"... Wait, how do your parents fit into this? I mean-" [Me]

"They died. There was a car crash about ten years back, and... my brother's about fifteen years older than me, so..."

"Oh. I... I'm sorry."

"Don't be. We pulled through, and now we're on top, and we've both got boyfriends, and... yeah."

"See, I'd be less judgmental about this is if Seth weren't my uncle." [Titus]

"Y-yeah my brother's boyfriend is Titus' uncle, so there's that." [Tanner]

"... Well there's one more bullshit connection in this town." [Me]

"Heh, yeah. ... You... You don't hate me- as much as Ted, anyways, right?"

"No, you seem like a nice kid, and the stuff you've gone through, it kinda makes sense. I mean, when did your brother stop working as... that."

"Late freshman year. Late as in after Ted got pulled from school due to my bullying. God... Seeing his face now, it just... I was such an ass. I wish I could say it was just someone to take my anger out on, but I teased my brother even worse. And now Marko's being a jerk to me, and..."

"Wait, Marko's bullying you? Aren't you dating?"

"Well he isn't bullying me, but... he's kinda gotten mean. Nothing big, and I love him, so it's worth it."

"... Wait, what's worth it?"

"N-nothing."

"Oh where to begin? The piercings, the bruises, the blatant lack of self moral?" [Titus]

"Wait, he's abusive?" [Me]

"No! God no!"

"Yes, god yes. He's been a total ass to you. I'm just waiting for the moment when he really takes it out on you." [Titus]

"Oh my god, has he gone through some trauma as well?! What happened to people being simple, and there being distinct enemies?!" [Me]

"Oh, simple. We started talking about ourselves, and we're people, we're teenagers, we worship trauma and angst like an unforgiving god that's angry at us for worshipping it."

"... Fair enough. So is his trauma simple, or-"

"Yeah, his parents didn't like him being gay, simple as that. No, what's sad is that he's realizing that there's someone who'll always love him and be there for him, and instead of loving them back, he's abusing them and hurting them." [Titus]

"... He loves me. I know he does." [Tanner]

"If so, it's not very evident." [Titus]