And... Part Three Of My Story (tafmsda)!

So my premier ran out. I apologize for editing this for this, but just saying, I'll be back up soon. Maybe. If not, you know where to find me.

So here we are again, the third installment in my story, The Adventures of the Francshire-Mordekin Superpowered Detective Agency. Share and Enjoy!

“So… What did you say you were, again?”

Mark and Sam were sitting on the sofa-shaped chunk of ice in Sam’s apartment. Sam was entirely fine, but the young wizard was entirely not familiar with this chilliness. For living in a mountain village, he was astoundingly well adapted for heat. His home town, and dimension, for that matter, was a rather warm one, compared to some others.

His dimension was an odd one, and his planet was even stranger. It largely consisted of things you would consider rare on Earth, with a striking nine-tenths of the planet being thick, overgrown forest. His people would not call themselves “close to nature,” and would be quick to laugh at anyone who did. No, they didn’t let the forest grow for respect of it or anything sacred. Rather, it was pure complacency, an absolute feeling of being completely well-off with the few scattered civilizations they had managed to put together.

The planet’s surface was striking, too, when seen from space. It was nearly a perfect sphere, about three-fourths the size of the Earth, with four extremely tall protruding mountains situated on one pole. Each of these mountains was home to a society, which was then split into two to three villages, and each village held many families and a unique culture.

The one thing that held each and every culture on the planet together was their fondness of magic.

They weren’t all sorcerers, by any stretch. They used magic for simple things, such as innocent time manipulation to finish the laundry sooner, or, in Mark’s grandfather’s case, to enchant a pair of trousers so as to be able to dance well. It was a relatively minor part of life in the villages, and most people did not think much of it.

However, some people were born with the ability to use magic in larger quantities at a time. The powers would manifest themselves with a burst of activity immediately after birth, and then go dormant, to be unlocked as the endowed being matured with time. In most of the cultures on the mountains, these wizards were required to go on a journey of some sort once they publicly showed their true potential, in order to teach them the ways of the outside worlds, and to control their powers. Mark Francshire had just unleashed his abilities in his village’s equivalent of a bank, and thus he was ushered out as quickly as possible.

Currently, he was dealing with his newly-found issue, brought on by the cold, by wearing both of his robes and a sweatshirt-and-pants combo Sam had dug out of his closet. He handed it over to him pretty quickly, assuming he wouldn’t need it again anytime in the foreseeable future.

“I said, I’m a wizard, Sam.”

“Yes… I’m sorry, but did you just say that you’re a wizard?”

“That’s quite right.”

“I see… A wizard?”

“You seem to be having some difficulty grasping the concept of wizardry. Quite ironic, for a kid who alone controls ice,” retorted Mark. Sam was trying very hard to gather a mental image of a wizard that he could actually place seamlessly into the real world. So far, he wasn’t having any luck with his attempts at conjuring one inside of his own head, and instead took to staring blankly at the one that was sitting in his living room.

He had no clever retorts to say back to the alleged wizard. He was still suffering from quite a bit of shock over the whole thing.

I don’t even have any proof that this guy is a wizard, thought Sam. I mean, sure, he did seem to appear out of nowhere and land on my car… But even simple magicians can do that, can’t they?

“Alright. If you’re a wizard… Do something magic. Anything involving magic.”

That’s a nice trap for him.

“Buh, what? Anything?” blurted Mark. “That’s such a… Wide range of opportunities.”

Oh come on. You had to make me feel bad about it, Mark. You just had to make me feel like I’m running a Salem witch-hunting trial.

“Yeah. Uh, anything.”

“If you say so…”

And just like that, his TV turned into a neat pile of clean towels. They were still warm, for now.

“Oh, uh, err. You just, err, you… Did you just turn my television into your laundry?”

“Well, alright. So you’re a wizard, and I utterly and completely believe you on that point. And you’re quite obviously still cold in here. I really should get around to keeping a spare room in here with normal furniture… I know that not everyone is as cold resistant as I am. In fact, I pretty much know that everybody is not as resistant as I am. I really have no clue how I got these powers in the first place, and that’s surprising, because I have a great memory…”

Sam was confused and rambling, and Mark knew well enough to realize it was hardly worth listening to him. He was shivering intensely, despite his many layers of clothing and the warm towels he was clinging to. He desperately needed to interrupt Sam, before he felt he would freeze to death.

“—Hey, you want to go for a walk? Like outside somewhere?” Mark shoved in during a gap between Sam’s sentences. “I mean, you have a lovely house, and I’m not complaining, but…”

“Dude. Your face has been turning blue for the last hour. I’ve been waiting for you to ask, but I didn’t want to seem rude, like I was kicking you out. Let’s go, there’s a park nearby.”

The night was calm, and the sky was empty. The time was nearing eight, and the city began to murmur to itself like a schizophrenic man. Sam and Mark were standing at the park gates, Mark holding his two robes over an arm. Not much talk was happening between them, not because they had run out of things to talk about, but because it’s often a thing that new friends just do. Though the bond between them took a while to take root, it seemed almost natural to both of them now, and it was continuing to grow in the silence.

They sat on a bench near the central statue of the park, which celebrated an unnamed soldier, who happened to be riding on horseback while holding a bugle. Cast in copper, it had oxidizes to a pleasant green color, akin to that of the Statue of Liberty. Mark seemed fascinated by it, and Sam simply gazed out into the sky.

“Look at this! It’s made of metal, and it’s so intricate! You can see the man’s face as if he himself were turned into metal! Back in my world, we had nothing like this. Why, our coins are so crude, you can’t even tell where the guy’s nose starts and his ne—“

Mark was cut off by a scream. They turned to find a man in a dark suit holding onto the arm of a younger woman. In his other hand was a briefcase, made of dark, metallic material, that seemed to glow despite the darkness of the night. He opened the briefcase and, with a loud WHOP, utterly vanished with the girl.

Action was burst into at that moment. Sam sent out a wave of power that absorbed energy from the air, hoping to slow the mysterious man as he escaped, however he had escaped. Mark threw on one of his robes, dropped the other, and held out his arms. Around him grew a bubble of white light, inside of which seemed to be a different world entirely. His eyes were glowing, and his hood was floating above his head.

Inside of the bubble was the man, now shining a bright, incapacitating white color, and the woman he had stolen alongside him. The man, blinded by the conflicting separation of worlds ahead of him, was stunned.

“GET HIM!” yelled Mark. He too was frozen in position, maintaining the window into the formerly shadowed world. Sam lunged forward with purpose, struck his fist forward, and in front of him appeared a large fist made of ice. It reached forward and grabbed the man from the shadowed world, and retracted like a crane, pulling him and the woman back into the park.

Needless to say, the man was quickly encased in a thick layer of ice until the police arrived. Sam thawed out a place for the handcuffs, and made sure to grab his suitcase from him before he realized he was free again.

“You guys captured this man? We can’t thank you enough. Keep up the good work, you two. Say, have you considered being full-time superheroes? I think you could pull it off. Just… Don’t bother with the costumes. Pretty nice robes, though. I imagine they have a high thread count.

“Well, we’re off!" the officer continued. "You guys need any more villains hauled in, you know who to call.” The police van’s back doors closed and bolted together, locking the man in, and the van drove away.

“You know,” started Mark, “we never even found out the villain’s name. Wouldn’t that have been at least slightly helpful?”

“…You have a point,” admitted Sam. “Oh well. Let’s head back to my place. You can crash there for as long as you need.”

Later that night, Sam was asleep. Mark was pacing around the room, walking occasionally to a thawed out corner that was lined with one of his robes. He couldn’t sleep. What the policeman had said was repeating in his mind constantly.

“Full-time superheroes… You could pull it off.”

“Hey, Sam. Sam, wake up man.”

“Frrghsnarg, what is it?”

“You ever consider being a detective, man? You know, solving and fighting crimes with your powers?”

“Oh, of course it’s come to mind now and then… I’ve just never had a partner…” Sam snapped awake, sitting vertically in his bed. His eyes were wide open.

“Wait. Waaaaaait. I see what you’re… Would you really want to?”

“Sure, why not. I’ve always liked the idea of it back in my world.” Mark shrugged it off as innocently as he could.

“Dude, that sounds like a good idea to me. We’d make a great team. But… What would we call ourselves?”

“Huh. How about the Francshire-Mordekin Superpowered Detective Agency?”

“Sounds good to me. Let’s talk about it in the morning, my drowsiness is starting to come back. Goodnight, Mark.”

“Sure, cool. Night, Sam.”

So! What do you all thing? I don't like how BZP can't handle tabbing, but other than that the formatting worked pretty much as I wanted it. Woo!