?I’m not from around here. I’m not a true citizen of Earth (though my passport says I am). When I was born, the first particle of air that made its way down my throat did not belong to Earth’s atmosphere. I come from a faraway galaxy called Quinnequium, where there are countless planets scattered all over it, all of them different in many ways. Quinnequium is the same as The Milky Way galaxy, except for one thing-based on your genes, and who is up in your family tree, you get a special power, one that only you and people like you can wield. For the short time I lived there, Quinnequium was a pretty nice place to live. Most of Quinnequium’s planets are inhabited, each planet given a certain type of people it can sustain. I lived on Indrani, one of the smaller planets in the galaxy named for its many high mountains and rocky terrain that was close to a smaller star. The entire make of the planet made it perfectly suited for people with abilities that had to do with air, like a specific Elemental (a person who specializes in manipulating water, earth, fire, or air), an air-based Morpho (people who could turn into animals or even inanimate objects), or an Aetu (sort of like a hybrid between a bird and a human. An angel, if you will). Because of the obvious differences between Quinnequium inhabitants and regular humans with no powers, it’s usually frowned upon to go and establish a life on Earth. However, lots of people travel the universe quietly and settle there because of its diverse environment and the fact that most breeds of Quinnequium people can live here. That means that anyone you know could be someone from Quinnequium descent. Your best friend could be a Morpho, or your favorite middle school teacher a fire Elemental. You yourself could be one of the many Immemori (person who doesn’t know that they have powers), your parents hiding the fact that you are special because they don’t want to get caught and brought back to Quinnequium, for whatever reason. The entire galaxy is controlled by these four top Elementals, named Estelle, Athana, Lanius, and Cyrus, who call themselves the Guardians. The Guardians reside in one of the biggest planets in Quinnequium towards the center, where our main sun is, named Ekaksha, which, out of all the planets in Quinnequium, is most like Earth. Ekaksha is where most of the political issues are dealt with, and the guys who lived there were extremely important. They could kick some serious butt, should the need arise. I lived on my small planet for seven years with my mother and father, along with my seventeen-year-old brother, Salem. I guess you could say we lived a fairly peaceful life-we all ate dinner together every night, Salem would sneak out some nights to hang out with his friends and would sometimes get caught, the sun rose in the East and set in the West, yada yada yada. I could say I loved my brother, but, to be honest, he always made me uncomfortable. He was constantly holed up in his room, searching furiously on the Internet for types of injustice done by our government, and he spent every night at dinner discussing how the Guardians had a “flawed view” on how Quinnequium worked, and that someone needed to change our ways. One night, my father had gotten fed up with Salem’s groaning and snapped at him, “You’re always saying that someone needs to change the way we live. Why don’t you stop complaining and change it yourself?” I will never forget the look on my brother’s face. He stared at my father as if he had been slapped. He then jumped out of his seat and raced up to his room. Later, I decided to tap on his door and see what my seven-year-old brain could come up with to fix the damage. When he answered his door, I was shocked at his appearance. Only ten minutes ago, he had looked the way he usually looked, with torn jeans and a t-shirt advertising his favorite band. But when he opened the door, he was wearing a skin-tight black long-sleeve shirt and clean jeans. Some sort of ink was smudged on his face in odd shapes, and on his back was his trademark leather knapsack. He looked down at me, and a huge range of emotions played across his face-sadness, anger, and even fear. But every emotion was suddenly squashed by grim determination as he pushed past me and clomped his way down the stairs. I tiptoed to the stairs and sat down on the top one, watching the drama unfold downstairs. My mom was sitting at the family computer, typing away, and my dad was on the couch reading the newspaper. Salem walked past them without them looking up, but as soon as he passed the doorway to the foyer, my father looked up. “Salem,” he said slowly, lowering the newspaper, “where are you going?” Salem turned around and gave a grim smile. “You told me a few minutes ago that if I wanted to change the world, I had to go out and do it. So,” he gestured to his backpack and his clothes, “I’m doing jus