The Magician's Apprentice

Raccoons and Portals

For the strangest reason, I didn't feel inclined to inform Stephen of my new task given to me by the head of The Avengers. It almost felt like a personal mission, and something told me that he wouldn't approve. Needless to say, I decided to begin my task tonight.

That night I settled in my room and pretended to get ready for bed. Once when I assumed that it was safe (I honestly didn't know when "safe" necessarily was) I relaxed my body and casted my mind out in search for an Infinity Stone. I tried to remember to remember how many Stephen showed me. The image of four different-colored stones tickled my mind. I'll just have to see if there's more, I thought to myself uncertainly.

Fifth Infinity Stone, I told myself. Easy. You can do it. Just clear your mind.

But as I instructed myself this, I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that a fold in my sheet was pressing into my back. As I tried to ignore this, I began to experience an itching on my left foot. The longer I struggled to focus, the more discomforts I was discovering.

Something's not right, I thought, frustrated. Maybe I'm taking the wrong approach...

This time, instead of trying to find an Infinity Stone, I decided to search for people who knew of its existence. The next time I tried it, I could feel my telepathic form shifting uncertainly in my body, but I still couldn't fully activate my telepathy.

Either the Stone's really far away, I thought to myself in frustrated exhaustion, or I'm already losing my mojo...

Finally, after around an hour, I almost gave up. Notice the word almost. I was starting to drift off to an uneasy sleep, when I decided, Might as well give it another go...

Apparently what I was doing wrong was that I was trying too hard, because just as I fell asleep, my telepathic form slid out of my body and drifted away. This was different from my Astral Form, because instead of choosing where to go, I was involuntarily rushing what looked and felt like the speed of light in pitch blackness.

For what felt like hours, I had a strange sensation similar to when Heimdall allowed Stephen and I to Asgard. I must be traveling to somewhere really far away, I thought. Well, not physically, anyway.

Finally a tiny pinprick of light formed in the distance, and I rocketed towards it. Slowly, it went from the size to a grain of glitter, to the size of a quarter. Then it became the size of my hand. Then it grew to around the size of a laptop screen, and began to change shape. It turned square, and when I finally reached it and halted.

Why am I seeing a glowing white square? I thought in confusion. Was it a gateway of sorts? If so, why was it so small? Did I do something wrong?

Suddenly images began to flicker in the rectangular square, but they were grainy and poor-quality like from a television from the 70s, and I began to hear voices.

"I...m...oot."

"Yeah...of course...that."

The image became slightly clearer, and I saw what looked like a tangle of wires and spare parts. It looked like something that I would find in Peter Parker's room. The image suddenly shook and adjusted, as if someone moved a camera—right into the face of a raccoon.

It wasn't looking at me as it said crossly in a New York accent, "Hey, Quill, would you hand me that—"

But the raccoon was interrupted with a tiny voice squeaking, "I am Groot."

The raccoon's attention ventured further from me, he exclaimed in exasperation, "For the fifth time, Groot, I don't need that stupid candy wrapper!"