Rhiannon

Part 1: The Call to Action

They came from another planet... creatures we had never seen before... they attacked Earth, not aiming for any particular part of our world... but all of it... and it was then that mankind faced a new predator... the aliens. As an attempt to defend our planet against such beings, the governments of this world came together and merged into one. Together we are strong...apart we are weak...that was the justification. Then came the New World Order...and their brand new ideas on how to run the planet...and how to defend it against the invaders. The new government built a school that orbited the moon, and trained special warriors to fight the beasts from space.

These warriors were no ordinary humans. Around the same time that the invasions began, certain children began to wake up with strange marks on their arms, each mark coming with a newfound ability that no ordinary human possessed. These children were recognized by the government as necessity for the army. It was decided that every child that woke up with such a mark and a power would be drafted at age eighteen into the intergalactic army without their consent, forced to attend the Academy floating beside the moon, and destined to defend the planet against the aliens.

My name is Rhiannon Stark, and I was marked at age ten with a pyrokinetic ability. I can manipulate, summon and control fire with my mind. As soon as I woke up with the red flame mark on my arm, I knew there was no escaping the Academy, which the world had come to know as Providence. It was at Providence that I truly found myself... a girl who was prepared to die at all costs for my planet...just because the government told me to.

I remember the day that my drafting became a reality. It started out like any normal day. It was the year 3015, my senior year of high school. I was standing next to my locker talking to my best friend, Phoebe, when I noticed the NWO agent standing across the hall, just outside one of the classrooms talking to my homeroom teacher.

The agent was wearing a suit, and sunglasses even though we were indoors. Both he and the teacher kept looking at me as if they were talking about me. Phoebe noticed the weird NWO agent, but instead of acknowledging him, she instead went off about this boy that I had a crush on in our class. No one else in the hallway seemed to care about the agent at all. No one at my school had any reason to care, except for me. My stomach churned. I had a feeling for why the agent was here, but I hoped that my feeling was wrong.

"Rhiannon, I'm sure that Neil isn't hooking up with Diana! I mean she's not even his type! Sure she's a cheerleader and all, but don't loose hope! You can totally take her on! You are way prettier than she is!" Phoebe reassured me. I turned my attention back to her in order to distract myself from the agent. Last weekend we saw Neil, the guy I liked, kissing one of the cheerleaders at a party. There hadn't been any news of him and the cheerleader officially going out, but since I had a crush on him, I was paranoid, and so Phoebe was reassuring me that Neil kissing her was just a party thing.

"Sure." I said half-heartedly. "I guess." I still wasn't convinced. I knew that I was no match for Diana. If she really wanted Neil there was no way in hell that I could stop her. She had all the qualities that a teenaged boy would desire: looks, status, and a lack of self-control. On the other hand, Neil barely knew that I existed. He was on the football team, and Diana was a cheerleader, so they made sense together. I was the least athletic person I knew, complete with average looks, and sub-par grades. The only thing that was special about me was the mark on my arm in the shape of a flame, and I knew that was nothing to be proud of. That mark was a curse, not a gift, and I made sure that as few people as possible knew of it. Only Phoebe and my family knew what kind of power the mark possessed, and I wanted to keep it that way. That mark was probably why an agent from the government was talking to my homeroom teacher. My heart began to race and my palms got all sweaty.

I pushed the thought of the agent away, and replaced it with the thought of Neil and Diana. Just thinking about them together made me want to puke with jealousy. My homeroom teacher went back into his classroom leaving the agent alone to stare at me. I saw him jot down a few notes on a small pad before hiding it in his coat. I took a deep breath, ignored the agent, and continued to listen to Phoebe try to convince me that I could take on a cheerleader for the most popular guy in school.