Chapter 10: Confusion

Returning from the orphanage was a relief. The previous night felt like the longest night ever, with so much being revealed, yet I had more questions than ever. I tried to contact it multiple times throughout the walk back but it either ignored me completely or just told me to shut up. It was apparent I was annoyed, as Luke asked me, "What's wrong?"

"Huh," I replied as I was snapped out of my stupor.

"You face, you seemed annoyed, you want to stay with the girls don't you?" Luke teased me.

I looked at him and sighed in disappointment, "Honestly, the way you treat me is worrying. You always forget I'm like almost half your age."

Luke hit me on the back of my head, "Oi watch it."

I grinned at him and mused out loud, "Life is weird isn't it. A six year old and a sixteen year old are best friends."

Luke looked at me and grinned back, "Yeah, life is weird." He then stared weirdly into the distance and a sort of dismay overtook him, "It's hard isn't it though."

"What is?" I questioned.

"Life," he replied.

I thought to myself, You truly wouldn't know. In one life I died due to a drug overdose and now I'm a child restarting life. I looked at him and said simply, "Yeah it is."

"You know, when I was your age I was confused in my life," Luke ruefully said. "You know I went through three different houses and all of them returned me back. Why?"

I could see Luke becoming slightly emotional and his became glossy. He said with a shaky voice, "You know going to Rebecca's house just reminded me of those houses, you know? A bed to myself, quality food and loving parents. I want it..." He trailed off.

I wanted to break the silence with a joke but I caught myself before I could. I put a hand on his lower arm (as far as I could reach in this small body) and replied, "You have me though. If you went off to those houses you wouldn't have met me. You wouldn't have gotten with Rebecca and now you are one of the smartest people I know."

He looked down at me and he grinned, still with tears threatening to overflow, "Yeah, I know. I'll miss you, if someone adopts you. I will."

I reassured him, "Never, I would never leave you."

He stopped at looked at me resolutely, "Take the opportunity if it arises. You don't know how hard it is at my age." His words resounded with Sister Alice and an awkward silence fell.

"If it does happen, we will keep in contact. I promise," I swore.

Luke smiled and we continued to walk back to the orphanage.

We finally arrived back and entered in. The loud, familiar chatter filled our ears as we see some of the children run across the hallway, screaming, Sister Alice ran behind them, beet-red from exhaustion when spotted us. "Oh thank the heavens you're here Jasper. Can you help me with gathering the children?" She gasped out.

"Why do I have to do it?" I whined, "I'm a kid myself."

"Well apparently you have a knack of quickly gathering everyone," she replied as she bent over trying to gather her breath.

I rolled my eyes and nodded knowingly to Luke, "Meet you up in a bit. Don't know what's going to happen."

Luke nodded back and walked into the library, presumably helping the others with their school stuff.

I quickly rounded up the children and gathered them in front of Sister Alice. She thanked me and then let me go. Apparently some of them were going to be adopted or something, I didn't bother listening as I walked into the library, preoccupied with my thoughts.

I grabbed today's newspaper off the coffee table. Father noticed my interest for the daily affairs and always made sure to leave a newspaper out for me. I presumed he thought I wanted to learn more about the world, I was more focused on reading how the world's events were progressing, tracking all of the Marvel related events I could remember. Then after, I usually retreated to the attic, grabbed my notebook and noted down the events that was the most significant, sometimes even cutting the whole newspaper article if necessary.

As I was absorbed into reading the newspaper, someone tugged on my sleeve. I ignored the tugging initially, as Luke usually got to everyone but the person kept on tugging my shirt sleeve. I glanced annoyed at them. The person seemed frightened at my face and kinda seemed to blend into the shadows. I called out, "What's wrong?"

The person came back into view and I realized it was Lucy. My eyes widened, and I asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"

I could see Lucy tremble and stutter out, "Master said I... I need to help you." I looked at her and she snapped her head away in what seemed like fear. My brow furrowed as I wondered what happened to her.

I replied, "Let's go to a more private place. I don't want anyone to hear this."

I led her upstairs, yet what worried me was her reserved and scared attitude to me. I wracked through my brain trying to figure out what I did to make her fearful, I initially thought it was the entity that made her afraid but it hit me, it was my voice. I wondered what that power in my voice was. I thought my power dealt with the manipulation of fire or at least manipulating some black aura but my empowered voice indicated otherwise.

I led her to the attic which stored my notes on the future and what I needed to do. I opened the attic door and let her in. I waited outside the door making sure no one saw me go in and entered myself.

Lucy looked around nervously, inspecting the old and mostly broken down furniture. As I walked to her, it spoke, Let me out.

First the contract, I demanded.

Let us do one better. Let's set up a domain, it suggested instead.

Domain? I questioned.

Yes domain, its a certain area dictated by both of us that I can freely move in if you are in this area, it explained.

Yeah that isn't going to happen, I argued

Look, you can set it up so that I can't do anything more than just walk around, I argued back.

I thought about it and questioned its motive, Isn't this an interrogation tactic? Where you progressively ask for more and more until your ultimate goal?

I know this sounds and feels bad, it reasoned, but right now we don't have a lot of time.

Time for what, I asked curiously.

All will be revealed be in time, it said simply.

No. I need to know if you want to be let out, I demanded.

Look, you need to believe, when I'm in the domain I swear I will reveal all that is relevant and I also swear that I will not do anything that will harm you or anyone.

I felt that sense of truth from him and I finally yielded, All right.

He directed me to go to Lucy. Lucy cringed away from me but it told me to place a shoulder on Lucy's shoulder, swearing that it was to only create the domain. As I placed my arm, a strange sensation flowed from my arm to her shoulder. Lucy seemed to tense up and her eyes became completely black. A strange black sphere expanded from Lucy's center until it filled the room completely.

I removed my hand and the first thing I notice was the black tinge of everything and the a strange silence. I asked out loud, "What is this?"

A strange, yet familiar voice called out behind me, "This is a domain."

I turned around fully expecting to fight but all I saw was a black, shiny orb. It was oddly similar to the white entity that introduced me to the world.

A chuckle emanated from the orb, "This is my usual form. I usually take the form that my host prefers me. Right now you have no clue what to interpret me as."

"So if I was to think you look like me right now, you would immediately reflect it," I asked.

But as I said it, it reflected my belief of it showing a mirror representation of me. I smiled at the possibilities that could open up to me. I closed my eyes and imagined Scarlett Johansson's interpretation of Black Widow and when I opened my eyes, it reflected it.

It adopted an annoyed expression and warned me, "You better not use me for diabolical purposes."

I laughed at the innuendo, releasing the tense atmosphere, and reassured it, "Don't worry. You annoy me too much anyway."

The entity changed its shape back into a sphere and said seriously, "We don't have much time to prepare."

"What do you mean, we have a few years before the first event happens," I argued back.

"Who cares about the silly story line, you know they are going to win anyway," it replied dismissively.

I adopted a confused expression as continued to argue, "We can reduce the suffering of them though."

I felt the entity smile, even though I couldn't see it, "Do you not remember when we discussed it many nights ago? Our power grows stronger with negativity. We feed on the opposition."

"Oh this again," I sighed in frustration, "I will become a hero and you won't change that."

It chuckled and mysteriously said, "What a fickle child, you're ideals will change. They always do."

"What do yo..." I tried to start but Lucy cut me off.

She asked with a bewildered expression, "What do you mean? What's going to happen?"

It addressed her, "The future will."

I shook my head in bemusement and prompted the conversation forward, "What did you want from me?"

"Power," it replied simply. "More specifically I'll teach you how to use my power. Things will happen unrelated to this universe and we need to combat it."

"Huh," I muttered dumbly.

"It might be easier if I illustrate it," It conceded.

The entity moved to the center of the room and a black tendril extended. The tendril expanded until it created a diagram of the Marvel Universe, complete with annotations. I admired it for a minute before it moved on, "We exist on this Earth," the corresponding Earth glowed, "and the introduction of you, screwed everything up."

"Huh, is that supposed to be an insult?" I jokingly asked still transfixed by the glowing map in front of me.

It dismissed that notion and continued, "You are not supposed to exist at all. Frankly, this is my first time that I personally came, never the less inhabit, a person from a completely different plane of existence. Please save your comments and responses till the end, I need to explain all this before we run out of time. Your existence, indicates a rift between many fictional worlds that should not exist. Let's just say it was a major coincidence that you came here anyway. However, this would mean that many other people and fictional characters could come to this world," at this I wanted to interrupt but a force held my mouth closed, "My usual duty, other than trying to kill my counterpart, is to try and fix these holes between the planes of existence. Actually, both me and my counterpart sometimes have to work together."

A diagram flashed up in front of me, it was titled rank with God on top, a blanked out space and then other powerful beings below before ending at humans. It continued the explanation, "In that blank space, its where we exist. We are one level less powerful than the almighty God, because we are essentially the beliefs, ideals and thoughts of any living thing or any god. You might be wondering, if that makes you as powerful as this and simply no. If you held my full power, your body would disintegrating at a molecular level right not, but obviously as you are not, it means you only have a fraction of my power. Your body acts as a gateway, maybe more of like a conduit to continue our primary duty of preventing the mass collapse of every single world."

My head reeled in at that grand scheme that seemed to all revolve around me. How could I do something as grand as this? It let me ponder before finishing up its explanation, "Look, my power is split between many people across many worlds, but you are the only one, in this universe, the Marvel Universe, that holds my power. Currently, all my other hosts are frantically working to repair the rifts and the only weak link is you. My counterpart is currently searching for a host but from what it seems it seems a bit confused. What we need to do is work and train your body to correctly harness my power so we can work on these rifts."

With this concluding statement, I could move my mouth and talk. Millions of questions immediately raced to come out my mouth but none of them seemed to fit the magnitude of the task the entity told me I had to do. The first question that did come up legibly was, "Does that mean I will rarely be in this world?"

It chuckled, "No, if you came here, you have a purpose. It means the other Earths will resolve and continue moving, but this Earth deemed you to be important. It seems like you will play a large role here but when duty calls you will have to fix some problems elsewhere."

A sense relief filled my mind as I slowly processed the information. It sensed my intention and seemed to move into a higher gear, "Look we do not have much time to waste I promise, and actually promise this time, to answer most of your questions. Right now we need to make you stronger vessel, frankly you are pitiful right now. We need to establish a routine, a training routine. It seems you were smart enough to not waste your time last year, and you are somewhat smart. Now we need to train your mind and soul."

"Mind and soul?" I questioned, "What about the body?"

"The body will come naturally, but the mind and soul will be what bring out my power properly. We do not have much time left today but come tonight we will start," it said with a sense or urgency, "right now just get yourself to the end of day and come here without raising any suspicion."

With that the domain seemed to collapse and the color of the objects seemed to come back. Lucy seemed to be as confused as me but just accepted. Without saying anything she left the attic and as I raced out to say something, she seemed to disappear.

I was confused.

In my excitement I forgot the almost diabolical intentions of the entity. It wanted my body and what prevented it make up some fantastical story. However much I thought this, I couldn't shake the feeling what it said was true. As I pondered what it said, I noticed a dull orange coming from the windows. I exclaimed, "What in the world, what time is it?"

I raced downstairs into the library and checked the time, it was nearing dinner. Luke seemed exhausted as he helped the last few people. He spotted me and waved me over. He scolded me, "Where the hell were you? You know I can't do this by myself."

"Sorry," I said pitifully, "I was caught up on reading a book." Luke grinned at this. He knew how absorbed I could get. He instead reasoned, "Come on man, next time you gotta be here. I can barely help everyone."

I jested back, "You just did."

And he snarkily commented, "Yeah, because I'm the best."

I raised my eyebrow at this and said, "So look like I don't need to help you, I guess," and at this I turned my back to him.

Luke reached out and grabbed my shoulder, turning me around, "No man, you know how much I need you." His eyes seemed to plead.

"Alright then," I conceded in mock defeat.

We spent another hour just finishing up with everyone and it was dinner time by that time. We moved to the dining hall and ate. Luke discussed with others the happenings of the world and general high school drama whereas, I sat and pondered. I wanted to reject this almost fantastical idea but I wanted it to be real. It could mean I would be a superhero with my own lore and world.

With that I smiled excitedly, drawing the confused looks of many, and quickly scarfed down my food.

I made up my mind, I was going to attic once more and see what this training would be.

A/N: So... its been a while. School has been brutal for me and I barely had any time to write this one out especially with the virus and everything. The next few months will be even worse and I won't be able to write anything but fear not by the end of the year I will dedicate a lot more time. I also started a new story but fear not I will update both fairly regularly when I get the time.

So currently I'm at crossroads, I know the general tone of this story will be more darker (I have a plan) but with this lore, I feel it will make the story lighter, so I was wondering should I make my character weaker at the beginning or should I go balls to the wall and make him overpowered from the start? No matter what the story will become dark but its up to you guys what type of character you want to see. Leave some reviews on what you want I'll see what I can do. Stay safe and healthy.