"Where… Am I?" Axel asked

Everywhere he looked was white as far as the eye could see. There were white tables, white chairs, as well as the walls and floors of the room. Even the clothes he was wearing were white. The only that did not appear to be white was the huge door that he had come tumbling through earlier.

As he marveled at the weird setting he was surprised to see an old man with long white hair and a beard sitting across from him at a long table.

The old man was picking up flash cards and examining them and then placing them back down.

"I have waited a long time for our meeting, but at the same time no time at all" The old man said.

"Is this… A dream or is this real?" Axel asked

"This is a dream and it is also very real" The old man said "The link between fantasy and reality is perception. Find that link and you will find the light"

"Wait… What?"

"AXXXXXEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"Cried Ms. Bené.

Axel anxiously jumped up in his seat standing at attention as his teacher slammed her ruler onto his desk.

"AHAHAHA" the class roared as his teacher began scolding him.

He had fallen asleep in history…. Again, and he was sure to get detention this time.

"Sorry Ms. Bené" he said apologetically.

"Apology not accepted I'll see you in detention today Axel" She said seemingly satisfied.

"That is…unless you can tell me what the island we live on was originally called in the Ad standard time".

"Umm was it Canada?" Axel asked.

The class bellowed in laughter once again. History was never his subject. Then again nothing was really his subject.

Ms. Bené shook her head in shame.

"Axel has no powers! And he's from the badlands! Why is he allowed to go here!" One student asked another

"I heard one day a man on a motorbike showed up and donated 100,000 Ethereum to the school so that he could get in!"

"Is that true?"

"Reggie!" Ms Bene yelled "would you like to tell us or did you think that during Axel's sleep study I wouldn't notice you fiddling with your latest craze?"

BOOOOMM!

An explosion of smoke came from Reggie's desk covering his dreadlocks in dark soot. As the blowtorch coming out of his mechanical hand subsided he dusted off the remaining debris off of his desk.

EEERRREEERRRZUURRMM!!

His giant bionic arm creaked and reformed into its normal form.

"This Island as far back as record has it was originally called Okinawa. Originally before the great shift of 2030 it was a city in Japan that now, along with most of the rest of the world have perished. All that is left is us here Shifter's the dormant sleeping power of the universe! Of course…some of us have greater sleeping power than others… but that's another story" Reggie said shrugging his shoulders.

The class roared with laughter, Reggie was being sarcastic as always, but Axel couldn't help but be torn when he saw his teacher laugh as well.

"If only they could see what I see" Axel thought. "Then they wouldn;t be laughing"

"Oh and where do you think you're going Lance?" Ms. Bené asked a student who had gotten out of his seat.

And there he was, the real dormant power of the universe, Lance Nazuka. He was the kind of person the girls would faint over as soon as his name was called in class. He had long and lavish green hair with hazel eyes, a rare eye color to appear in Shifters. He was tall and slender, at least 3 inches taller than Axel, and was in tip top shape despite his apparent slim look. Few had heard him speak and fewer had seen him smile, the only thing known about him other than his popularity among female students is that he was clearly the most powerful person at the school and the most intellectually gifted.

He said nothing to Ms. Bené and just pointed to the clock without even turning to face her,

11:59

"Class ends at 12 Lance there's still one minute le" Without even a passing glance, Lance continued on walking out of the classroom as Ms. Bené bickered. As he exited the doorway, for a second Lance gave a disapproving glance to Axel, almost as if his eyes were yelling the words "Loser".

There was also something else in Lance's eyes Axel saw, something he was almost familiar with, but from that short moment he couldn't tell what it was.

Ding-Ding! Ran the bell.

And in that exact second Lance Nazuka had disappeared from sight.

"Alright class for homework…." Ms. Bené went on as Axel zoned out.

"Hehe nice…." Axel thought looking up at the clock "4 hours of class to go..."

He slumped his head in shame as he gathered his things and headed towards his next class.

"Don't even think about ditching detention young man!" Ms. Bené said as he exited the

Class. "I've already notified my husband he said he going make sure you are wide awake after his

class!" She added.

Axel's head sunk lower leaning so far into his chest he could barely open his mouth. He

walked amongst the dozens of other students alone in his dark thoughts, thinking of what else the day had in store for him.

What…. What was that?" Axel thought as he walked down his school hallway. He was slowly making his way towards the gym locker room, holding one hand on his head, dazed from the flashes of his daydream.

Axel was an outsider in the halls of his academy. The school was called S.C.S or "Shifter Community School". It lay to the Mideast in a town called Lakewood. It was a small private school erected from a group of parents that wanted their kids to get into the SPA. Many of the other schools either did not prepare one for the S.P.A exam, or were so hell torn they became pits of chaos that only produced more criminals to pillage the war torn badlands.

Axel cracked open the door to the locker room to find, much to his dismay, that it was fully populated. He could see multiple students changing around his locker, laughing and being entertained by Regis's enthusiastic hand gestures. Through the crack of the door, his eyes briefly met with Lance again, receiving that same look of antipathy he had experienced earlier. Seeing the populated locker room he shut the door, letting out a sigh.

"Damnit" Axel thought apprehensively, "I got here too late, I should have been changed already!"

He decided to head towards the cafeteria until things had quieted down.

"Did you see that loser pass out!?" A voice laughed.

Thud!

Axel grabbed his chest as his heart began to beat louder and louder. He raised his hands to his face, finding himself unable to control their sporadic shaking. A gut wrenching anxiety slowly took him over as he heard a malevolent voice echoing from around the corner.

"I know right I shot like 4 spitballs at his forehead I thought I gave em a concussion or something!" Laughed another.

Axel stood around the corner paralyzed as the two voices approached. Like a Manichean placed in the center of a mall he stood petrified in the hallway amid the flow of passing students.

"Man why does that punk still even go here?"(Voice 1)

"I don't know but he has detention right?" "Let's catch him outside after school! He won't be able to get away this time!" (Voice 2)

Axel's face began to soak in sweat as the thought of being captured by the two silhouettes became vivid in his imagination.

"No", thought Axel, "That direction is definitely not a good idea".

As the large shadow of his predators creeped in, he hastily made for the door. Barging into the locker room, he jumped out of his clothes and began shuffling through his locker in a frenzy.

"Woah Ax you good bro?" asked Reggie as Axel knocked over his gym bag scattering his clothes across the floor.

Axel ignored Reggie as he frantically grabbed the last of his possessions. As he finished changing into his gym clothes, Axel hastily spun around towards his stalkers anticipating doom. To his surprise, he found only the awkward stares and puzzled expressions of his classmates. Letting out a sigh of relief he made his way to the exit that led outside.

"You could've at least acted like you gave a damn!" Reggie yelled as Axel opened the door to the practice field.

"Man, and people say I'm insensitive!" Reggie said to his surrounding classmates.

WHAM!

Axel opened the door to find himself pinned up against the wall behind the bleachers. Looking up at him were the heinous owners of the two belligerent voices.

The first was a muscular teenager with a rotten expression... His huge rugged hands wrapped around the collar of Axel's gym sweatshirt as he pinned him against the wall. It seemed he had predicted Axel's reaction and had ran around to the other side of the locker room to anticipate him.

The boy's rotten expression was warped into a coy smile as he pinned Axel against the concrete wall.

"Long time no see, buddy" he said sadistically.