For years, the perception of Cola Town was another forgettable place in Soda County, which would explain why nothing was made of the night dozens of jewels fell from the sky one spring evening, bombarding the town and its citizens alike. While the promise of a segment on the news station wouldn't be in their immediate futures, they would instead be met with mild property damage and forever changed lives.

In the ensuing three days, the people of Cola were put to work managing to undo most the effects the terrible Jewel Storm had on their properties. And while a few windows would go unrepaired and some unlucky citizens had to trade down their vehicles, enough was done for them to stoically return to their normal lives. Unfortunately, those directly struck by the Jewel Storms payload wouldn't have the luxury.

Their wounds, every single one of which bizarrely sat over their hearts, did not heal over, and instead deepened to resemble small craters that appeared to lead to empty black voids. The holes weren't painful, and did nothing to stop them from aiding in the rebuilding anyway they could. In fact, those on the forefront used their holes to good use, either used to carry nails, cigarettes, or small instruments or tools. But these small marks would be the least of the changes brought upon by these strange rocks, as all too many have learned beforehand.

Over the years of irregular jewel storms, it has been discovered these jewels grant to whomever they hit amazing new abilities. Reports along the lines of people from the deserts summoning snowstorms on a whim, and long dead skeletons reanimating to perform one's bidding seemed to litter the news on a weekly basis. There seemed to be no limit on the abilities these jewels were capable of bestowing. Many who gained these powers, dubbed Jewels by the mainstream press, chose to keep them silent and continued living their lives with whatever convenient perks their new abilities granted. Others were more willing to use them for their own gains, some noble, others less so. But, it was the dangerous minority whose decision to use their Jewels for grander scopes that would be the ones to shape the future in the way they desired.

And when one particular member of that dangerous minority tracked the falling Jewels to Cola town, he assembled a loyal squad and traveled there for the sole purpose of laying siege on its unsuspecting people. As a horde of uniformed men and women arrived at the town's outskirts and began their assault, so started the shortest night of the citizens' lives.

Those whose Jewels had already manifest stood at the forefront to bravely defend their friends and families. Whether it was sending sharp leaves flying at ludicrous speeds, digging through the earth to disrupt their movements, or conjuring up clouds of dust to sting the eyes, they were hell bent on doing all they could to protect their town from these monsters. While the invader's forces had numbers and experience on their side, the drive to protect their friends and family was enough these average folk to slow down their attack, and keep them at bay long enough for those without powers to flee.

But they would not flee. Their efforts were so valiant that even those who weren't graced from the Jewel Storm stood up to fight alongside them. Arming themselves with garden tools and larger kitchen utensils, they charged for the front line to join their neighbors. These invaders would not forget the day they decided to step into their town.

They were right in saying that, it would be impossible for anyone to forget this day. The one orchestrating the invaders was a badger named Rob Scarlatto, who couldn't help but smirk at their futile attempts to save themselves. Standing nice and far from the action, atop a hill and behind a truck, he let out a gleeful sigh as he put the next part of his attack into action. Raising both hands, he tapped his fingertips together, snickering as an enormous pink dome covered the entire town, surrounding the civilians and his agents alike. Those on Scarlatto's side collectively cheered in their impending victory, seeming to forget the fact that they were currently at war. But in a moment, the truth would come out. It was wasn't a battle, it was never supposed to be.

One of Scarlatto's agents, a zebra quietly standing aside and taking notes on what he was watching, took the barrier coming up as his queue and smiled. "Nowhere to run now" he muttered.

Slowly he stripped himself to the waist and marched bare-chested into the fray. He quickly grabbed the nearest person not wearing a uniform matching his, a teen hound dog wielding a shovel, and, in a move that surprised him and everyone around, hugged him. But that wasn't what dropped jaws to the floor. That came when the dog's face and body suddenly melted into the half-naked zebra's chest, and disappeared in less than a second. Using their distraction to his edge, the agent charged forward and absorbed another person. And another, and another. Those who tried to flee ran into the barrier and would only be caught by another agent and brought to the zebra. In under a minute, half the population disappeared without a trace.

Rob Scarlatto chuckled even louder at the developments. Things were going so smoothly. If all went well, they'd be done and on their way home by the top of the hour. Scarlatto wished he could start the celebrations early, but having to keep his fingers together to keep the barrier up deterred him.

"Amazing isn't it?" he asked to the leopard woman standing by him, who was looking through a pair of binoculars and writing notes of her own. Rather, a pair of binoculars were floating over her face as a pen freely wrote on a floating clipboard, all the while a walkie-talkie gently floated over her ear. Her actual hands were occupied typing on a computer motionlessly floating in front of her. "Do we have any buyers interested in anything we have today?"

Before she could answer, a loud cracking noise suddenly filled the air, drawing everyone's attention to the barrier. From his perch, Scarlatto looked to the town in confusion, and saw his barrier begin to crack. As the pink dome exploded in a loud bang, Scarlatto himself fell to the ground, a splitting headache rendering him momentarily incapable of standing.

"Cla-Claudia! What happened?" Scarlatto called, looking to his personal assistant as a trail of blood seeped out of his nose. The terrifying noise had jostled Claudia, who was now scrambling to pick up the equipment she had dropped in that moment. Turning to her boss, she pointed almost authoritatively to the town at the bottom of the hill.

"Put up another barrier, sir!" She commanded, floating her equipment back up and looking through the binoculars. "Hurry, I'll look for whoever did that, you try to contain them."

Scarlatto threw his fingertips together, summoning another barrier to take the place of the one just destroyed. It was destroyed again almost immediately, with Scarlatto recoiling in pain once more.

With the absorbing zebra having sucked in all the citizens in sight, it made the search for the barrier-breaker a lot easier. The agents spread out, scouring the town's perimeter whilst holding walkie-talkies near them at all times. Everything they saw was relayed back to Claudia. Every movement, every glint of light out of the corner of their eye.

One lucky agent, a rabbit, found his target, running for a bridge over a roaring river. "Outside of town!" So excited was he that he was shouting into his walkie-talkie, thinking of the reward he'd get for catching this runner, "He's crossing the bridge over the river!"

Claudia got the message and pointed her binoculars to the bridge, seeing the agent and a white body shining in the moonlight, no doubt the perpetrator. She grabbed Scarlatto and brought the binoculars to his face, showing him the same sight. "We need a barrier there!" she explained in a panic, "Our guy will get him, trap them both, now!" Scarlatto brought his shaking fingertips together and created a new barrier surrounding the bridge.

The fleeing creature smacked face-first into the barrier, falling to his back as a result. The agent who chased him to this prison approached him menacingly, his hand morphing into a large, heavy hook that he needed to support with his other hand. Under the moonlight, the rabbit saw that this runner was a brilliantly white reptile of sorts. A chameleon in fact.

"That was a nice trick back there," the rabbit said, raising his hooked hand and jumping towards him. "I've got a nice trick too! Get a load of this!"

With the impending hook attack aimed for the center of his head, the supine chameleon instinctively raised a hand to block it, grasping in it something shiny and round. The hook smashed into the metal ball in his hand and practically exploded upon contact, the chameleon's fingers wrapped around the ball taking the brunt of it. Both wailed in pain.

Gathering himself, the fleeing reptile weakly crawled to the pink wall, smashing the metal ball in his other hand against it. The sickening cracking sound repeated, and the barrier broke away before his eyes again. Slowly, he crawled on his good hand, trying to get across and get some distance between himself and the invaders.

But the hook rabbit was not so willing to let him flee. Jumping on the chameleon's back, he wrapped his good hand around his neck and started choking him, desperately trying to get his broken hand to operate his walkie-talkie. Their little scuffle didn't last long, and it ended with the reptile grabbing onto the guardrail to try to stand. The rabbit wrapped his legs around his target and squeezed with all of his might. Losing his strength, the chameleon fell to the bridge floor on all fours. Bizarre colors filled his line of sight and everything started to go dark, and had his metal balls not been touching the bridge directly, he would've definitely been captured as well.

But these metal balls saved him once again. Now that they were both pressed against the bridge, with the combined weight of two adults pushing them down, they were able to work their magic. Without any warning, the stone bridge crumbled beneath them and dropped them both into the cold river below. The current was powerful that night, and it carried them both away from the town in a flash, the rabbit's reinforcements arrived on the scene only to see the chameleon's moonlit body faded into the distance. Try as they might to catch up, both vanished into the night seconds afterward, leaving only a destroyed bridge as a record of their encounter.

Scarlatto grabbed his head and groaned, both in pain from the headache and in frustration that someone had a Jewel that could damage his seemingly perfect barriers. "Find him! Find him and bring him to me!" he shouted, shaking in fury. "Don't let him get away! I don't want a Jewel like that to exist in this world!"