Jack came to on his hands and knees, his fingers clutching fallen leaves and dirt. He gasped like a drowning man breaking the surface and rolled over onto his back.

Looking up to the sky, he prayed that everything he had just experienced was a nightmare, that he had tripped and knocked himself out on a root. A nasty concussion would be far preferable to the world-shattering events of the past few minutes.

After collecting himself, Jack stood up and looked down into a very real crater. Accepting his new reality with a sigh, he turned around and started running away.

For the first time in his life, he tried to physically run from his problems and he was going all out. Not that he spent much time in a full sprint, but Jack realized that he would never have been able to move this fast even back when he had a high school body.

Jack skidded to a stop and looked down at his shirtless self. It didn't look any different than it had when he had dressed earlier. He was still slightly overweight, but he could feel that something had changed.

For one thing, he was not even a little out of breath after sprinting half a mile. Also, as he began to focus on his physical body, he felt more in tune with it than he ever had before. It was as if his body and mind had always been out of sync with each other and now they were suddenly aligned.

He could feel an energy flowing through him that he had never felt before.

He could also feel a similar energy moving through the world around him. It was everywhere, and it moved through everything, living and nonliving.

Closing his eyes and focusing on sensing the energy, Jack noticed that some of it was flowing into him and staying there.

He turned his attention within himself and observed that his body's energy was slowly spinning like a tornado, drawing the external energy in and holding it there. When it would reach the center of the funnel, the energy seemed to change to match his own, taking on a quality that was not present in the world around him.

Jack opened his eyes and looked down the path. It was about another half a mile back to the entrance. He decided to test himself on the way back.

He opened a stopwatch app on his phone, and started the timer as he began to sprint.

Jack was running as fast as his legs would carry him and hoping that no one else was there to see him running like a deer. Barely any time passed before he was rounding the final bend and sprinting towards his car.

He realized at the last second, that he didn't have enough room to stop. His only choice was to run through the car or jump over it, so he took the latter option. He leapt over the car like a hurdler and observed that he would likely have been able to clear another.

He landed and skidded to a stop in the dirt, looking at his phone and saw that barely a minute had passed. Just an hour earlier this day, he was struggling to jog a couple miles. Now, he could outrun Olympic athletes on a whim.

He had to have gone insane. Jack texted a 911 to his closest friends and asked them to meet him at his house. He broke several traffic laws on the short drive back and waited outside for them to arrive.

The first to pull in to the driveway, was his friend Matt. He was a short, half-Asian man that looked a bit like Sean Penn, with a big nose and casually squinty eyes. Matt stepped out of his car quickly, looking concerned.

"You look healthy. So what's with the Bat Signal?" Matt asked.

"Let's just wait for the other homie. I’d rather not do this shit twice."

Matt looked like he wanted to argue, but after a moment of studying Jack's face, he decided against it.

While they waited, Jack once again observed the strange energy in himself and the environment. He sensed that it was moving through Matt as well. However, unlike with his, Matt's energy was completely stagnant, and the external energy just passed through him like wind through a screen door.

Jack also noticed that there was something different about the energy that belonged to his friend. It was darker than his own, and it had a nebulous and slippery quality.

A couple of minutes later, Arthur arrived in a hurry. He was a tall, blonde haired man with an honest, boyish face.

"What happened? Are you okay?" he asked with genuine concern.

"Well physically, I’m fucking awesome. But I might have a slight case of the crazies. I was kind of hoping you could offer some perspective on that." Jack finally said.

He explained everything he had just experienced, without leaving out any details. Arthur looked increasingly worried, while Matt quickly moved from concern to amused skepticism.

"So a big blue alien fell out of the sky, tried to take your body, and somehow gave you superpowers?" Matt summarized while clearly trying not to burst out laughing.

"I don't know if I would say superpowers, but yes. That is the gist of it" Jack answered blandly.

"Why tell us this? Why tell anyone this?" Matt asked, unable to hold back his mirth any longer.

"I was hoping you could just convince me that I'd gone crazy" Jack explained. "At least then, I could go get my head shrunk and move on with my life."

"Did you hit your head?" Arthur asked looking to see if there were any cartoonish lumps.

"I'm not sure what happened before I came to. All I know is that when I woke up, I could do this." Jack jumped over Matt's car flat footed, and landed on the other side softly. Matt and Arthur were stunned, their eyes wide with surprise. "That isn’t something I could do when I woke up this morning."

"This isn't possible" Matt sounded certain. "Maybe there is something in the air. Do you think we all got dosed? We should jar this shit and save it for concerts."

"You have not lost your minds" a deep, booming voice seemed to come from every direction at once. They all looked around, startled.

"I know that voice" Jack said wearily. He would never forget those rumbling tones.

"You have merely been introduced to a much larger universe" the voice seemed to come from behind them this time and they all spun around as one, coming to face the front yard.

There, towering over them wearing slick white armor over a tight dark blue jumpsuit, stood Zachias, proudly looking down on them. His light blue arms were crossed over his chest plate.

"Run!" Arthur shouted while springing at the giant, preparing to tackle him.

Matt took a single step back while Jack clenched his jaw and glared into his metallic silver eyes.

Zachias stayed still as a statue and Arthur flew right through his midsection as if he were a hologram. Arthur landed face first and rolled across the ground behind Zachias and sprung to his feet looking confused.

"Guys, allow me to introduce you to the thing that tried to eat me earlier today" Jack said angrily.

Zachias looked offended and answered the accusation. "I believe that eat might be a little misleading. You make me sound like a monster."

“You sure have the voice of a monster ya big, blue asshole” Jack shot back.

"What is happening here?" Matt asked, sounding panicked. Jack turned to his left and saw that Matt's knees were bent and he was ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

"He is not really here" Jack explained. "I saw that body die earlier."

"Correct" Zachias agreed. "What you see is a mental projection, a disembodied consciousness trapped in the vessel of your friend."

Jack's eyebrows rose. "You are still inside me?" he asked concerned.

"Of course" Zachias answered. "My Inheritance belongs to you now. Where else would I be?"

"Wait" Matt demanded, starting to calm down. "First things first, who are you? Where did you come from?"

Zachias looked like he wanted to chew up and swallow the little human who dared to question him, but after a moment of thought, he decided to speak to him.

"That is not important right now. Your world is about to change. You have much to do if you wish to survive."

"What did you do to me?" Jack finally asked. "Why am I so much stronger than I was?"

Zachias studied Jack for a moment before answering. "All I did was attune your mind with your qi. You should have always been this strong. I don't think I have ever seen someone so naturally misaligned with their own energy."

"Qi? Is that the floating stuff I have been sensing since I woke up?" Jack had so many questions, he didn't know where to start. Zachias sighed and looked to the heavens.

"To think that I was defeated by such an ignorant, pathetic savage. I have never been so humiliated in my long life." He looked down at the three humans before him and considered his new circumstances.

"Fine, I will tell you what you need to know. First, qi is the name we use to refer to the energy of the world. It is fundamental matter. Every living thing has their own qi that is unique to them. The energy that you have sensed flowing through the rest of the world like wind is called ambient qi.

“It is neutral, meaning that it has no aspect. It can be found anywhere in the Universe where matter exists. If you focus on your own body, you should sense that yours is moving in a vortex, yes?" Zachias stopped and looked at Jack questioningly and Jack narrowed his eyes and nodded.

"That was my doing. If you keep your qi spinning like a whirlpool, it will draw in and collect ambient qi. The more qi you have, the more powerful your body will be. However, it will be an agonizingly slow process unless you take time to focus and consciously spin your qi faster."

Jack took in this load of information with a healthy skepticism. He would never take Zachias at his word after everything he had experienced today.

The three friends stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the huge blue skinned projection before them. Arthur was at a total loss for words.

Matt, however, was starting to find his tongue again. After accepting that what Jack had told them was real, he quickly began to operate within this new reality. Matt had always been the most critical thinker of the three.

"What did you mean when you said that our world is about to change?" Matt demanded.

Zachias again looked less than pleased that a small human dared to speak to him in such a manner.

"I will not be the last to come to this world. I may not even be the first" the blue giant responded. "Your seclusion in this corner of the Universe is coming to an end. Soon enough, the factions will arrive to add your little world to their empires."

"The internet says the aliens are already among us?" Jack jested. "Even if what you say is true, and I do mean if, what could the three of us do to stop it?"

Jack expected this to upset Zachias, but he chuckled haughtily instead.

"Stop it? You?" Zachias laughed at the thought. "Of course there is nothing that you could do to stop it. However, if you start training and preparing now, you have a chance, however small, of surviving."

"Sounds like a lot of work to me" Jack stated sardonically.

"More than you could possibly imagine" Zachias confirmed. "But if you want a place for yourself or those you care about in the world to come, you will have to carve it there yourselves."

None of them had anything snarky to say about this. Jack looked first to Matt and saw that he was taking this seriously. He turned to Arthur and saw determination on his friend's face.

"What do you think?" Jack asked his friends.

Matt spoke up first. He had always been the smart one. "I mean, if he was telling us to kill people, I would say we should tell him to fuck off. But if he wants to give me superpowers, I suppose I could make a little room on my schedule."

Arthur nodded and added his two cents. "If he is lying, I don't really see how he would benefit. If he is telling the truth though, and we ignore him..."

Jack understood how he felt. If there was even a small chance that there was any truth to what Zachias was saying, then they would indeed do whatever they had to do to ensure their loved ones' safety.

"Fine" Jack finally said. "What do we need to do?"