The Poleman

"It was over there! A human presence!" A guy was holding onto a girl that had half-transformed into a bumblebee, pointing in a cardinal direction.

"You wanna just do what you normally do?" She responded, yelling so he could here her against the blasting wind.

"Yeah! Drop me!" The bumblebee girl dropped the man over the location they scouted out, sending the man plummeting towards the Earth.

While falling, the mans skin seemed to harden, his skin became black, and his eyes white jewels. As he landed, a net of cracks formed and an explosion of dirt arose as an obsidian demon crashed into the Earth.

He held out his hands in a battle stance and inched forward through the carcasses of plant abominations. "Hurry! t-minus 30 seconds until daybreak!" The bumblebee yelled, a cold sweat forming on his onyx brow. He sped up, charging through the piles of dead horrors. Something moved in his peripheral, and he whipped his head around. 

A boy with curly brown hair lay panting amidst the graveyard of nightmarish creatures, as soon as the onyx golem approached him, he suddenly tensed and launched himself backward, pulling a pole out of what seemed to be thin air behind him.

"Calm down! I'm a Magepunk!" The onyx golem yelled. As soon as Sine heard the man say Resonator, his body dropped to the ground and he started heaving again. The man picked him up and launched himself into the air as light scattered itself onto the solemn environment. The bumblebee grabbed the onyx-hand as it turned back into human, and she looked down only for a moment.

The holes that covered the terrain had come alive, like a breathing forest. All of the abominations that had piled up had disappeared, and the huge crack in the ground the onyx golem left had disappeared.

 "That... was too close! Kael you could've died!" The bumblebee spat, her voice angered. "You should have just used force to get him! What if he wasn't in his right mind and still attacked or ran away?"

"He was in his right mind." Kael said. "In fact, I don't know if I could've taken him by force without hurting him. Even while he was utterly exhausted."

She stopped speaking and glared at the wheezing boy, it looks like his shut-eyes were in pain as his brow was furrowed and his attention only on his breathing.

She pushed her lips out. "Huh."

**

Sine's eyes barely opened. Normally, he would awaken with a startle, but his strength had been seeped and he was tired. He threw his head to the side to look to his right.

He lied in a patient room, people were lined together with a small counter separating each one. 

'Do these people not know about sterilization and germs? Ew."

"Excuse me?" A nurse said, Sine turned his head the other way to see a nurse with blond hair looking at him with a confused look. "Did you say something just now?"

"Mmmm... no?" Sine responded.

"Well it's good that you're awake, Tia and Kael are waiting to interrogate you. Can you move?" Sine looked down to see him cleaned, with most of his limbs covered in bandages from the battle scars he obtained from the fearsome battle he had... however long ago.

"No." He replied, and it was the truth. Sort of. He could move if he really wanted to.

"I'll have them come to you then." She said with a smile, before turning around and walking into the corridor where a devilish voice could be heard. "TIA KAEL GET YOUR ASSES IN HERE!" 

'Uhhhh...'

A tall, muscular man walked into the hospital room, his black hair fluffy, and his brown eyes dead. His jawline looked like it could kill someone as well. 

The other one was a cute petite girl, blond hair on one side and black hair on the other, her eyes were beaming suns and her attire was bright.

"Ah, he's awake!" The man let out a hearty laugh, not really showing it on his face.

"Let's get straight to business. Why were you out in the Pride zone? Do you have a license? Who are you?" She spat, her voice angered by having to work overtime.

You see, Sine couldn't really tell them the truth. He didn't know how they would respond, if they would see him as a valuable resource and compensate him for his knowledge, or a heretic and kill him here and there. 

Honestly, he's barely met three Magepunks in his life. So he doesn't know much about them.

He bit his lip and looked at the duo. "My name is Sine... and I am..." Sine started to think of the best lie he could think of. "The..." He couldn't think of anything. Of all the words he could think of, only one could escape his mouth. 

"Leader of a scavenging unit!" He yelled, remembering exactly who he was and what he was.

"Hmmm..." Kael stared at him. "How old are you?"

"15." Sine stared back.

"Little young don't you think?" Tia chimed in.

Sine pulled out his scavenging unit card from his torn pants that said he had free reign to travel in the Sinlands. He obtained this from numerous encounters with death and extreme knowledge of well... everything.

In short, Sine is a genius.

"Impressive, to become a scavenging unit leader at such a young age... some might think it's forged..." Tia said.

"Enough, don't slander the boy that is disrespectful." Kael barked at Tia who sighed.

"Sorry, I'm looking too far into this. That's my bad." She bowed before speaking again. "We brought you to the capital of the Pride and Greed zones, Luther. If you have any questions come to the Magepunk academy we're professors there, they'll let you in if you just show them your card. Of course, if you want to apply..."

"No thank you, I'm not attending school." He put his hand up in a pose of declination. "I may seek your guidance soon though, so thank you very much."

"For sure, just give us a holler if you need anything, seeyah!" Kael yelled while walking out of the room with lines of wounded.

'So... what do I do now? Am I a Magepunk? How do I even check?'

Sine had an idea. A pretty simple one too.

**

Half a day passed and most of his wounds already closed, so Sine was already back and moving. Using a banking system that consisted of tomes that recorded the amount he had, he paid for the hospital fee and went on his way. He explored the capital, because he had never been there before.

Massive flying airships powered by steam soared through the air, buildings were lined with stone and copper, and machines echoed through the air. 

It was a time of invention and innovation.

He had been walking through dispersed crowds of people when he finally found what he had been looking for. A library. 

He entered it and searched for any books that had the key terms, 'Magepunk' and 'Newbie'.

After an unexpectedly short amount of time, he found a section solely based on Magepunks and brushed his hand across the spines of them. There was no dust on them, and they were in relatively bad shape, probably after the amount of reading people have done on them.

Sine's fingers stopped on a book called, 'So you just became a Magepunk?' Hoping it wasn't a novel, he opened it up and scanned through the pages. Luckily, it looked pretty informative. He sat down at a nearby table, people stared at his torn clothes but quickly went back to reading their books, uninterested.

The starting of the book started like this:

 "There are three ways to become a Magepunk. The first is to connect with a Aether Engine, or a soul weapon found by chance. The second way is to be born with it by heritage, and form your own Aether Engine. The third way is for it to be passed down by somebody."

'Okay, this is pretty common knowledge. How basic is this?'

"There are multiple ways to tell if you have become a Magepunk."

'Oh here we go.'

"The most common way is when you have fused with a weapon, you automatically know how to summon it, and it can be summoned through various ways, such as pulling it out of thin air, a body part, and so on. This enables you to be able to absorb Aether or soul essence from monsters, making your engine stronger and granting you abilities that come with your Aether Engine."

'So wait, was I a Magepunk when I was, that little? Ah this hunk of garbage doesn't know what it's talking about.'

Sine tossed the book back where he found it and shoved his hands into his pockets before walking out of the library.