One year ago…

  It was another sleepless night full of nothing but turning over in bed and thinking of nothing good. Then there was a tap on my window. Then another, and another, until I realized I probably shouldn't ignore it anymore. I threw myself out of bed and opened the window, only to be greeted with a rock to my face.

  "Jesus, Rayleigh! I was starting to think you might actually be asleep." Called a voice from the dark.

  "Silvi?! The hell are you doing here? It's like 3 am." I whisper-shouted.

  "Time is just a social construct. I'm here for the usual."

  "First of all, no? And if you haven't noticed, it's way too cloudy for stargazing tonight."

  Silvi's eyes sparked yellow as she jumped up to my second-floor window. "Clouds are also a social construct." She claimed, reaching out a hand.

  I rolled my eyes, then grabbed a blanket from my bed and took her hand. She leaped onto the roof of my house, taking me with her. Silvi clasped her hands together to create an orb of thousands of tiny shining sparks. It crackled as she expanded it, aligning each one in a specific place. Then, WHOOSH, she launched it high above and blew it out so the sparks recreated the starry night sky. For minutes, we just sat gazing as I meticulously examined the arrangement of the constellations.

  "Not bad; you really have gotten better." I yawned. "But you want to make sure the tail of Ursa Minor is due north; yours has drifted quite a bit to the west."

  "Ugh, you're such a stellar perfectionist," Silvi scoffed, "At least it's in line with Merak and Dubhe this time."

  "Yep, the one benefit of insomnia is getting to be real acquainted with the night sky."

  "That's not the only one; you've also got to be acquainted with me." She insisted.

  "You're so full of yourself. But I guess it's been nice to have someone to talk to up here."

  "Speaking of talking, let's get at it. I wanna know more about you, like… When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

  "I didn't want to grow up."

  "You don't want to grow up now. When you were little, you must have had a dream."

  "Fine… It's pretty stupid, but I wanted to be a superhero."

  "That's not stupid. Every kid wants to be a superhero. They're awesome!"

  "Even you?" I asked. She gave a guilty smile and nodded. "Well, it's not stupid for you. You've got a real shot at it. I was crazy for thinking it was even an option for me."

  "Thanks, but my power's not nearly strong enough. I might be just as crazy as you for believing."

  "What do you mean? You are The Spark! You have the power to set things in motion. I know you could really make it. In fact, I want you to promise me that you'll at least try to be a hero … For both of our dreams." I encouraged

  "Nah, no thanks."

  "What?!"

  "Being a hero was my dream years ago. They're still cool, don't get me wrong, but recently I've found an even greater calling." Silvi claimed.

  "Oh? And that is?" I wondered.

  "I'm going to be an astronomer or an astronaut! Now that we know the universe is full of alien life, somebody's got to get Earth ready to take it on. I want to be one of the first to travel to the cosmos."

  "Wow. You know that does make me feel less stupid in my dream." I teased.

  "Hmp, I get it. You only act so supportive when you're living vicariously through me." She accused. "Well, I have a request for you then. Promise me that you will become a hero! For your own dream."

  One year later, I sat in the same place on my roof, gazing at the real stars. Wondering, does this count? The more I thought about it, the harder it seemed to find an answer. However, sitting on the roof counting the stars did not prove to be helpful. Not when I had somewhere else I needed to be tonight. I got off the roof, slipped back in through my window, and got suited up. Sneaking out, I hopped my way through the city while staying hidden in the dark. Shadow Brook seemed quiet tonight, good, seeing as I wasn't going on patrol. I made my way up to the tallest building near the north edge of town, then launched myself towards the mountains with a 0g power hop. Once I floated out above the dense forest, I gradually increased gravity to fall towards the tree line. Jumping between them, I followed an invisible path until I arrived at a clearing with seemingly nothing but freshly grown grass and plants with a small hill in the center.

  Good, still undiscovered, I thought as I inspected the clearing. I was about to head in when I noticed the bed of flowers at the foot of the hill appeared to have been recently walked on. Crap, was it actually right? I readied my gauntlet for attack and slowly approached. As I did, it became apparent that the hill was actually a camouflaged, half-buried, saucer-shaped spaceship. The path of trampled flowers led right to the hidden door. I cautiously opened it, preparing to meet the unknown owner of the U.F.O. When I stepped in, all the lights automatically clicked on, and there, sitting at the central control panel of the main deck was… A small calico cat, curled up in the captain's chair like she owned the ship.

  "Mirai?" I breathed a sigh of relief. She sat up a greeted me with a meow. "It's been a while, buddy, but when did you learn how to open and close the ship's door?"

  I ran around checking all the side rooms and closets for anyone else, but the search came up empty. See? I'm just being overly paranoid. I pulled down my hood and face mask, then turned my goggles to normal glasses. Now time to get to work.

  It was Friday night, or maybe Saturday morning at that point, almost a week since the spirit train incident, and I still hadn't made it out here to fully repair and recharge my suit. In my defense, I was quite busy. Between school starting, having to babysit my little siblings, and trying to track down Crooked Cassidy, I didn't have time to sneak off to here. I was going to wait until Saturday afternoon, but the band-aid fix I did on my gauntlet was starting to fail, and my spare "batteries " were running out. Also… there may have been one more reason I decided to go on that night. The day before, I had a dream where I saw someone come to the ship and leave something behind for me. I tried to brush it off as nothing, but I kept stressing about it and felt I needed to prove it was only a dream. So there I was, doing repairs in the middle of the woods late Friday night after a full day of school and four hours of playing tuba at a football game. (At least I got to hang out with Melody, so it wasn't that bad.)

  "It's fine, I'm really not even tired, anyway." I yawned, petting Mirai. "Look away, I gotta get changed." I took off my costume, putting it on the repair table, and got changed into comfortable work clothes.

  The first thing I did was drain the suit of the purple liquid powering it. (Now might be a good time to explain how my gear works.) One of the first things I found out about the U.F.O. is that it's powered by these weird battery things full of a glowing purplish liquid. There was a label on it, but it was an alien writing. I ran some tests on it and found that whatever it was, it was made of an element not found on Earth, so I started calling it quintessence. Also, it's not just a power source; it seems to work similarly to electricity in general. Only quintessence is way more effective and can naturally recharge itself. I emptied my suit's supply into the large battery container it came from and connected it back to the ship. For the life of me, I can't figure out where it's drawing power from when it recharges. It can't just be creating energy from nothing, that'd break all sorts of laws of physics. Although I still don't understand how the gravity field generators work according to those laws either, so maybe I'm thinking about it too much.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Next, I had to fix the gauntlet Cassidy stabbed. I took off the busted-up outer shell to replace the damaged "wiring". Luckily, she just missed the G field emitter I took straight from the ship, only cutting some of the tubes of quintessence going to and from it. None of the alien tech used wires like we do; instead, they have tiny tubes filled with quintessence that carry a current. Aside from their computer systems, which I was nowhere near understanding, the alien tech is relatively simple in practice. I might not know why exactly it all works, but after months of tinkering with it, I have a pretty solid understanding of how it works. Still, it took hundreds of hours of trial and error to take just some of what that spaceship could do and put it into a suit. And only around half of that was learning how to sew.

  I turned on my favorite playlist and locked in on fixing my gear. While I was at it, I decided to try implementing some upgrades I've been testing. It took me back to when I first found the U.F.O. Now, I'd like to say my first thought upon discovering it wasn't, "What if I used this to become a superhero?" But… It's not like I could have told anyone. I didn't have any trust in the heroes or the government right after what just happened. Besides, after a bit of investigating, I found out it was probably harmless. None of the tech or language resembled anything Onicidean (the alien species that tried to conquer Earth in 2012). Where the ship came from and why was still a mystery, but one that could wait until I ensured the city was safe. Once I can rest knowing entitled kids can live without fear of being taken, I can uncover the secret of the backyard U.F.O. … Or maybe bury it forever.

  I was so deep into my work that I didn't realize how much time had elapsed until the sunlight crept over the mountain.

  "Damn, Mirai, why didn't you tell me it was morning?" I asked. "Man, I gotta get going back soon before anyone tries to check on me." I slapped on the in-progress modification and suited up. Mirai jumped at my feet as I went to leave. "What's wrong, girl? Got something to show me?" She darted around me, then ran into the living chamber. "Hey, I already checked, there's nothing useful there." I tried to grab her, but she crawled under the bed. I got down and reached my hand under to get Mirai, but what I felt was something else. It felt like some kind of book. Confused, I pulled it out and found it was a standard notebook, same kind you could find on any back-to-school shopping trip, with a heavy envelope taped to the back. This definitely was not here before. Flipping through the book, all the writing was in the same kind of symbols found elsewhere in the ship.

  "How? How is this here? They didn't- It wasn't real." I stammered. Hesitantly, I took the envelope off. It obviously wasn't containing paper, but something coarse and particulate. It was sealed with green wax stamped with a symbol that I was certain I hadn't seen before, yet it filled me with a sense of déjà vu. It must just be a weird coincidence. I carefully broke the seal and poured the contents of the envelope onto the floor. It was sand. I wanted to think that it wasn't normal sand. But the sand itself was ordinary. I did, however, find something in the pile: a miniature hourglass.

  "This is… so random." I sighed, "Mirai, come on. Time to go home, you weirdo."

  I took the stuff and hopped back home just as the sun fully rose. As I was crawling through my bedroom window, I heard a knock at my door.

  "Rayleigh, are you in there?" My father called.

  "One second, I'm changing!" I yelled, pulling down my face mask.

  "Oh, good, you're back. Where'd you go off to this morning?" He asked while I frantically threw my suit under my bed.

  I opened the door and answered, "Just went on a run, gotta stay in shape for - ah, track. Anyway, what did you want?"

  "I wanted to ask if you could make breakfast for everyone this morning. I have to head into work early again. But if you wanted to stay fit, you shouldn't have quit cross country."

  "I didn't quit, I just figured I'd be too busy for it this fall." I tried to change the subject, "So, you've been working a lot more hours lately. How are lawyery things going?"

  "Not great." He walked in and sat on my bed. "Things have been crazy since the Spirit Train incident."

  Well, that backfired. "How so? The villain's still on the loose. Your job is to prosecute her, not catch her, right?"

  "She's not the one we're worried about right now. The Japanese company that owned the Spirit Train wants to sue the Night Hopper for property damage."

  "Good luck trying to get them to show up for court." I laughed.

  "That's what I said. But after repeated explaining that he's not a hero or associated with any official organization, they said Shadow Brook's division of the N.H.A. better catch the criminal soon or they'll sue them for not sending someone in time to save their train."

  "If you ask me, they should be thanking Nigh Hopper. If Mako got kidnapped, that'd be even worse for business than losing one train." I argued.

  "That's true, but I think they also blame him for Mako quitting. Apparently, after the kid got a taste of saving people that night, he thought he could be doing more with his power. So he quit the train life and went to Driftfield Academy to become a hero." My dad explained. "I bet if they could, they'd sue the hopper for that too."

  "Good for him, sounds like he's following his dream." I smiled.

  "Well, it sucks for the company and anyone who wanted a cheaper, faster way of travel than flying."

  "There are other travel-type titles out there. Let him be a kid for a while."

  "Regardless, the whole thing has gotten the Night Hopper in hot water, and quite frankly, I think he deserves it. Why'd he have to go throw a train in the ocean?"

  "It probably was an accident. They might just be trying to do some good out there."

  "It doesn't matter what he's trying to do; if he can't control his title, then he shouldn't be anonymously playing hero! There are laws to keep them accountable, and he doesn't give a damn about any of them. Legally, that'd make him a villain."

  I wanted to say something like, sometimes those laws get in the way of doing what's right, plus they're not effective, but arguing with my dad about the law never ends well, so I said, "Or her. For all we know, there could be a man, woman, or something else under their mask."

  "Something else? Like what, a robot?"

  "No, not likely, but anything is possible, you know?" That's another thing I don't want to get into with him. "Anyway, good luck with your case. I'll get to making breakfast."

  "Thanks, Ray." He said, patting me on the back, "I know I've been asking a lot from you lately, but I appreciate you being so reliable."

  "Welcome, Richard." I didn't feel particularly appreciated, but at least he was trying.

  After begrudgingly cooking a platter of pancakes for everyone, I returned to my room and splattered on my bed. My body was exhausted from being up for so long, but the thought of sleeping made me feel sick. So, I took out the notebook and hourglass I found. I clutched the glass in my hand and held it out the window. My hand began to loosen; however, I pulled it back before it fell. Examining the hourglass closely, I noticed a small hole going through the top. I found some thin brown string and made it into a pendant I wore under my shirt. Then I studied the notebook. Still wasn't able to read any of it, but I guessed that it was a journal left by my extra-terrestrial friend. The question was, why? Then I got a thought I just fully put together: Did I leave someone stranded on Earth by stealing parts of their ship? Facing that question rattled me. What if they connect it back to Night Hopper and come after me? I had so many questions and worries. I was never one to write in a journal before, but looking at that alien's entries made me think I could be helpful. So I turned to the first blank page and added my own.

  September 7th, 2052

  I've been Night Hopper for around a month now. So far, I've saved two children from being kidnapped, but I'm no closer to finding who's behind it. To make matters worse, the alien I've been ignoring might be back. If you get this journal back and are reading this, I want you to know, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I hope you can understand why I needed this. I don't know if that makes it right, but I'm trying my best to fix my home, if you would even know what that feels like. Maybe I'm stupid for thinking I could make a difference, and this is all going to end up blowing up in my face. But when I saw your ship fall from the stars, I felt like the universe was calling me for something. It's awesome, right? But it was wrong. Like this duty was supposed to go to someone else. Of course, that was all just in my head, or maybe my heart? Regardless, I knew I would be my choice if I were going to go through with this double life. It hasn't been easy- making my gear, learning how to fight, going out every night, standing up to lowly crooks and super villains alike. But it's all going to be worth it once I complete my mission and expose the knight for the monster that he is. I know that's what I want! So why am I so afraid of feeling that it may have never been my choice at all?

  -Rayleigh Robinson