"Once upon a time, there were seventeen well-known planets in this universe, and-

  "SEVENTEEN?!" Exclaimed Alfonso.

Jinkyll lowered his head and sighed. Before he could even open his mouth, Christian's voice piped in, which was also filled with disbelief and sudden curiosity.

  "I thought there were nine!" Another voice, which sounded rather impatient, spoke immediately after him.

  "No, dummy, because Pluto doesn't count. There's actually seven plane-"

  "Girl, shut up, and get your facts right; there are EIGHT planets, not seven! No wonder you're in the science class with all the dumb kids-"

  "ENOUGH!" Jinkyll's voice roared and thundered throughout the entire stone temple; his sharp command echoed almost endlessly throughout the seconds of sudden silence between the seven teenagers. One the seven laid eyes on Jinkyll with a straight gaze, Jinkyll smirked and nodded.

  "There, much better. Now, back to what I was saying before. Once upon a time, there were seventeen known planets in this one, unique universe..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Yet it was clear to see that in one of the most populous planets, which was Earth, most of the people did not know that; better said, nobody knew, until six, young innocent kids were born and thrown into one destiny none of them ever imagined having. Before you ask about who those six young kids are or why they matter, let me tell you a little bit about the past...

  There always existed seventeen planets; the eight planets we all know best are considered the "original collection of the universe," and, as you know, no living human or creature dwells in them, except Earth. Pluto is considered to you Earthlings an outcast, just like we do. However, they are not the only balls of gas and rock that exist. Have you taken a look around this place? Do you notice anything...distinguishing?" Jinkyll queried.

  Edwin immediately spoke out, rising from his seat confidentially.

  "Yes; the night sky looks different- extremely beautiful- but different than any I have ever seen," he pointed out. Murmurs of agreement sprouted from behind, along with other distinguishing aspects of this place.

  "The grass is... different. It's shiny, gorgeous, and a lighter shade of green, a shade I don't seem to recall encountering until now," Serena piped in.

   "The trees are shaped differently; they are all crooked and huge, and it kind of freaks me out. I nearly had a heart attack just from looking at one of them!" Exclaimed Christian.

  Jinkyll nodded. "Everything you all are saying is exactly correct; you might have also noticed the explosions occurring outside just a couple moments ago, right? They were most definitely not what you guys may have called ordinary, because those weren't just explosions."

  Everyone was already on the edge of their seats, or if they weren't sitting on a seat, they looked as if they were about to leap on top of Jinkyll and shake the words out of him. None of them said anything; all they did was to remain sitting with a conspcious expression of suspense.

  After a moment of silent tension hovering between the high schoolers and the old man, Christian spoke out with a voice that was barely audible.

  "Then what were they?"

  Jinkyll took a deep breath; he closed his eye for a solid second as he gripped tightly on his rod. He opened his eyes and began to speak once more, but in a bolder tone.

  "You see my rod? This tall, wooden stick holds the power to do anything in my command; levitate, destroy, open portals, summon, conjure, teleport, combat, forcefield, you name it. Once I give the command, the rod turns translucent, and so does the object, but only if it is a specific command, a-"

  "How does this explain what the explosions were? Or the past? And how is this, by any chance, important?" Aroa skeptically asked crossing her arms; boredom and skepticism were vividly written on her face.

  Jinkyll sighed in an exasperated manner. "Don't interrupt me young lady, or you will miss the point of this gathering today. I promise I'll get to that."

  Jinkyll didn't speak again until Aroa sighed and nodded her head obediently.

  "Right, as I was saying, my rod is very powerful and can do just about anything, which is the main reason why I always have my rod with me, in case any trouble pops out of the blue-- like tonight. I don't know if any of you saw, but a invading troop from a neighboring planet was heading straight towards this temple in a mission to rob some books and gems from a galore upstairs."

  "You mean, the two rooms on the floor above the entrance? I've been inside those rooms in hopes of finding something that could bring me back home, like a portal or possibly a spell; this mysterious place sure looked like it held some secrets and, possibly, some magic. I couldn't find anything, though..." Gabriella's last words were mumbled quietly in shame. Jinkyll, however, only laughed at the young girl.

  "Indeed, young adventurer. This place holds many mystical features and secrets you guys would have never imagined encountering for yourselves; those gems that you saw, dear Gabriella, were the very gems that troop was heading after. This is precisely why-" Jinkyll said as he shoved his rod up front so everyone could see, "-I left with my trusty rod to battle them, and hence, the continuous blasts and flashing of white light that seemed to have made your hearts leap out of your throat," He said in utter amusement.

  Murmurs of confusion and question sparked after his final sentence, each question or prediction said with more doubt or worry. Amid the mixture of buzzing and hypothesizing, Gabby cleared her throat and rose her voice above the rest, causing the commotion to drop to a sudden stop.

  "I thought I saw some white light shooting out of a shadowy object you seemed to be holding. Jinkyll, you said your rod had the power to combat and battle, correct? Were those explosions and the flashing of white...your rod?" She asked with an unfortunate voice crack.

  Jinkyll only nodded and smiled widely. "You are exactly right, dear adventurer. Each time I order my rod to cause an impact against an object or a person, a bolt of white light flashes from it and causes a thunderous sound to release, or as you all percieved it as, an explosion of thunder and white light!"

  It was now Serena's turn to speak to Jinkyll. "But, that never happened here before! In fact, that's impossible! How is white light able to blast out of a tall, wooden rod? How can a rod even hold that much power? And how in all of Earth could there be a section where the night sky and grass are completely different colors and shades? It doesn't make sense!" Serena blurted out; it was clear to see she wasn't on board with the old man's reasoning.

  "Yeah, and the trees? It looks as if we were living a fantasy, in a completely different world, for Earth's sake," Aroa added in. Gabby just rolled her eyes, while Alfonso and Edwin exchanged perplexed glances.

  Jinkyll chuckled, examining the expressions of the group of high schoolers sitting before him; he knew this is where things would start to get tangled up in a web once revealing the answer to one of their top questions. He took a deep breath and looked at everyone, but his gaze was mainly directed at Serena, who seemed to be the most dumbfounded.

  "That's the thing, my dears. You're NOT in planet Earth anymore; I have summoned you all tonight with my rod to my planet, the Jungle Of Glist!" Jinkyll said with a loud, cheery voice as he extended his arms towards the sky. When he saw that no one has responded, he added, "for a special, yet very critical meeting that cannot and will not be wasted."

 
  He looked at everyone, expecting an outburst, or at least some loud gasping. In the contrary, everyone simply sat still, wearing a petrified look on their faces; no one talked, no one whispered, no one rolled their eyes in disbelief! It was just Jinkyll, his rod, the seven teenagers, and his old friend, silence

  Yet, he was patient enough to wait.

  ...

  And wait.

  ...

  Soon enough, a small, puffy brown owl with flashing yellow eyes flapped it's way into the temple and perched itself on a topiary.

 
  Nobody reacted yet.

   It stared intensely at one of the high schoolers, yet she didn't seem to notice.

  The unblinking owl kept staring anyways.

  ...

  Hoot. Hoot.

  
  "WHAT?!"

   
   Serena's high pitched shriek pierced the air, destroying everything that was left of silence and startling everyone who hasn't responded during the vacant time interval.

  Even the owl flew away..

  "You can't be serious! This can't be real! It just can't!" Serena continued to cry out desperately. "How can this be possible? There has never been a planet called the Jungle Of Glist; there has never been a rod so powerful enough to do anything such as battle against some unknown invader!"

  "Serena..." Christian started off, but Serena kept fretting about. This time, however, she started hyperventilate.

  "We've been tricked! This is all an illusion; a dream; some sort of deception!"

  "Serena!"

  "Rods blasting white light or that can summon kids like us out of our beds during the night never existed or happened before, and it still doesn't! I-"

  "Serena!"

  Serena stopped fretting and whirled her head around to face Christian. Moments of silence filled the small gap between the two teens for quite a while before Christian began to speak again.

  "Serena, calm down for a moment; let's just hear what Jinkyll has to say to us. You DID want to know why we're here or what this place even is, right?"

  "But Christian, how could this be another planet?! There has always been ONE, and ONLY one planet with life inside, and that's ours! What if this is some sort of robot, or mutant, or maybe just an illusion? And we all know powers and magic doesn't exist!" Serena stubbornly retorted.

  "I don't know about that, Serena. Remember what happened in the gym?" Alfonso queried, Serena's shoulders sagged a little bit.

  "Y-Yes, b-but-"

  "What did happen during PE?" Aroa queried. Raelynn and Gabriella also had rather curious expressions at Alfonso's question.

  Alfonso began to briefly explain the event of his "teleportation" between different parts of the bleachers and Serena's "floating" scenario. Aroa, Raelynn, and Gabriella exchanged terrified looks between one another, their faces seeming to scream out the same sentence Serena had screaming in her head ever since Wednesday afternoon occurred: What's going on?

  The thought of floating in the air again frightened her terribly; it sent down a chill down her spine that made her shiver with fear. She knew very wel that  none of this was normal, but she couldn't help but doubt that elements of the supernatural and the superhuman world even existed. Serena was always stuck in the real world, not in fairy tales or fantasies like fairy princesses, or rainbow unicorns; it just didn't fit in her mind.

  Besides, does teleportation, flotation in the middle of the air, or the power to be overpowered truly exist?

  Serena almost wanted to shake her head no, but what Alfonso was about to say was, sadly, true: if superhuman fiction tales or elements of the supernatural didn't exist, then what did occur? Surely there is another name for such experiences or sensations?

  A wave of rushing ideas kept batting back and forth inside her head; it was unclear what side she was on anymore: reality or superhuman, reality or super-

  "I understand, Serena, your difficulty to admit things as they are, as it is also hard to accept the concept of ideas you've always believed to be not credible or non-existent. But I trust you, as well as everyone else, to be able to take in what I have to say and use it for your own good."

  Serena blinked; she just realized she had her eyes wide open in terror for who knows how long before Jinkyll snapped her back to reality. Everyone else also seemed eventually stop talking and faced the wise old man.

  "This planet is only one of the many planets I yearn to talk and feed you all information about, but because of the urgency of things and the critical conditions going on, I will give you all a brief synopsis of them."

  "What critical condition?" Raelynn asked in bewilderment.

  Jinkyll, however, just ignored her question.

  "This planet is called "Glist." It is a fairly humid subtropical planet with a long forest that looks like the border of this planet if you watch from above. But anyway, this planet is home to everything you know and must know, if not already, about powers, magic, and the legendary team of superheroes who were born in Earth, the Miniscular Revolution. We practice the powers, we learn about powers and the history of our ancestors who used powers and magic before, and we expand our knowledge on them. There are many neighboring planets who detest our benefits and want to destroy   or conquer the planet for good, such as the intruder from the Planet of Glyn, or the cruel vikings that presently dwell in the Malignant Empire. There are other planets, such as Dynotopia, which is a planet much similar to Earth, but with a larger focus on self defense and controlling powers, and Elementopia, the tiny planet where all the elements, ingredients, and the rest of the history that is still unknown to us is found. As if right now, Elementopia, along with two other planets which will remain unnamed for now, are in a huge risk of being conquered or, possibly, destroyed by a tribe raiding the nearby planet, Dynatopia, and there is no one there to save them or to prevent the tribe from causing more harm, which means the citizens of those planets are also facing terrible obstacles."

  The crew of seven gasped in horror as they took in the news. Christian, however, had a rather perplexed look, which made him seem more confused than the rest.

  "Wait, can't you go over there to save those planets and destroy the tribe with the power of your rod?" He inquired.

  Jinkyll frowned and shook his head with utter despair.

  "I'm afraid not even I have enough power to teleport to those planets and help the people avoid the cruelty of the tribe; they are the farthest planets from this one, and my rod will only allow me to teleport to the nearby ones. Besides, if the tribe does end up making it's way to the Planet of Glist, I must be here to protect who I can."

  The teenagers looked at each other and back at Jinkyll with a look of distress and sorrow for the suffering inhabitants that have to undergo such anxiety and stress over the malicious tribe.

  "That's terrible!" Exclaimed Serena with a hand on her heart.

  "She's right; Jinkyll, there has to be a way to save all of them? Maybe there's a way to get them all inside Earth?" Alfonso said with a hopeful gaze. Raelynn groaned and rolled her eyes.

  "Idiot, I don't think there will be enough space for EVERYONE coming from more than TWO whole planets to take refuge in Earth; it'll explode for sure! Besides, how, if he can't even teleport to one of those planets?"

The sound of a throat clearing was heard, despite all the fretting that was going on. Everyone abruptly hushed themselves and turned around to face Edwin.

  "This is all sad and all, but I just couldn't help but think... why do we need to know this, and why do you think this is important for us to know?"

  Jinkyll looks at Edwin with a blank gaze; he puts his rod down and locks his hands and places it gently on his lap.

  "That, my friend is why you, along with the rest of the crew, need to stop interrupting me and give me the chance, before this night ends, to unveil the most significant groups of young heroes of all time; the Miniscular Revolution."

  Hey, guys! Did you like this chapter? Sorry if this isn't good or as interesting as it should be; I am trying to improve in writing these genres and conversations involving mystery and such concepts, so at first glance it may look or sound like trash, but if you all just kindly give me tips to improve this chapter and the rest to come, I will gladly practice and revise/edit this chapter and more that may need close examining.

  Either way, thank you for having the patience and the time to stick around and read this chapter. As you all found out, in this book, there are SEVENTEEN known planets that have existed for who knows how long, but no one in Earth except those ancient group of heroes ( the Miniscular Revolution ;D ) knew about it.

  Jinkyll also reveals the power of his rod, in which Serena does not take in easily. Do you believe what he says so far? Or is this all just some big web of lies?

  We are getting close to revealing the purpose of the book's title, as the rest of the 'important stuff' that Jinkyll has yet to share to the crew.

  As you leave today, think about this:

  Why do you think these seven have been called up? What makes the meeting so important? What MIGHT make the meeting important?

  Comment your answers, and remember to vote and smile! :D