The First Orde is an organization which works to protect the persons born with "The Gift", which allows them to re-write reality itself. The First Orde's job is finding and protecting these people from those who would want to abuse the powers and use them to enslave humanity. The people with The Gift however do not know about the power they poses, so it is virtually impossible to tell them apart from normal people. The only ones that can recognize the are "Masters", people with a tiny part of The Gift. The story revolves around Joshua Knightly who is a Master that can control paper and Kyle Silven, another master that can control shadows.
The story is devided in two parts: The Vanishing and The Vestige. Each of the parts are devided in seven and five chapters respectively.
Part 1: The Vanishing
The story begins as Joshua is intent on searching a building where the 18th birthday of Wendy Reenra, who is a Gifted he is protecting, is happening. After the ball takes place, and Wendy and Josh dance, he returns home, to the HQ of The First Orde where his love, Ariane and Kyle, his best friend, are waiting for him. After a series of events, Joshua discovers Ariane searching through files in his office. After having been asked what she was doing, Ariane reveals that she is working against The First Orde and stabs him. From that point onward, Kyle and Josha try to find her and understand what drove her to change side. Using the information that The First Orde is providing, they scout various locations, in vain. All the information however is false, for the Orde manipulating the Masters into finding the Gifted so that they could keep their powers for themselves. One day, The First Orde decides to get rid of all the Masters, so that they alone could know where the Gifted were. So Joshua and Kylee are forced to run from the place they had called home and save Wendy from her abductors of The First Orde. Together they try to find a way to end the powers which were causing the war. The answer is for Josh to "Vanish" and for ever be locked away in another dimension so that he could protect the knowledge of the Gift from humanity. He desperately fights against this fate, and searches for another way of ending the Gift's existence. But he is now being chased by both the First and Second Orde, who now have the power of the Gift, which they obtained by forcing the Gifted to do their bidding. Kyle and Josh fight back, trying to protect Wendy, who cannot correctly use her powers yet, but they are soon defeated. Seeing Kyle, who is now facing death, and Wendy, who faces an existence of imprisonment by the Orde, trying to fight and win an winnable fight, Josh decides to succumb to his fate, and commits the Vanishing. Resetting the world to the state it was before the events of the war began, he erases every trace of the Gift and himself from the world. He is destined to be forgotten by the world, and neither Kyle nor Wendy, who were in love now, would remember him.
Part 2: The Vestige.
Part two takes places 3 years after Joshua Vanished. In his dimension however, somethings changed. From the use of the Gift in the final act of the war, a creature was born, made of greed, pride and selfishness, who only wished to become stronger. He finds Josh and tells him to end his Vanishing and bring back the Gift so that he could have more power, and even gain a form in the real world. Joshua denies, and the creature, which claims itself to be named "Real", beats him up, trying to kill him. As Josh becomes weaker and weaker, his Vanishing starts to fall apart, and traces of the past which he had erased started to resurface. Wendy and Kyle, now married, begin to remember the events of the war between them and the Orde. Meanwhile, Josh finally decides to let go, and escapes the sealed realm, and searched for his best friend. Once he finds them, on the brink of death, he is helped by the two friends, who are now foully in possession of their old memories. When he exited the sealed realm, the Gift and the war that had broken out to rule the Gifted had returned to everyone who had been involved. A few months after Josh's return, he went and found the people from the newly restored First and Second Orde and explained the situation to them, and that they were not to use the Gift, no matter how desperate they were. The continued use of the Gift's powers however, were doing exactly what Real wanted. Real managed to obtain a form in real life, and went after Joshua, because his Vanishing and existence is in conflict with another's. he has to die or the world will end and he is going to end with it. Just when Joshua, Kyle and Wendy are about to die, a mysterious eight year old boy appears out of nowhere and helps them escape. He says his name is Heath, and he is the one who did the first Vanishing, and the one who created the Gift.
Tropes:
- Almighty Janitor: Joshua
- Apocalypse How: A class 6 example of omniversal scope is what will happen if Josh or Heath don't die. Also a class 6 example is the Vanishing, but much smaller in scale, limited to the person and the events he wants to erase.
- Beneath the Mask: All of the people in the Masquerade are not supposed to get to attached to the people they're protecting. Joshua breaks this rule constantly and he cares for them deeply, even though he has to hide it. He even has a photo album of all of the people he's protected
- Blood from the Mouth: Joshua when he was stabbed by Ariane
- Coming of Age: Wendy
- Dances and Balls: A recurring theme.
- Joshua invites Wendy to dance while protecting her
- Dance of Romance: Joshua and Ariane dance together the first time they meet
- Emotions Versus Stoicism: Josh is Stoic, Kyle is Enthusiastic; Wendy is also an Enthusiast.
- Fate Worse than Death: Vanishing. You're basically cut off from the rest of the world for ever.
- Go Back to the Source: To finally put an end to the reality rewriting powers, Josh and Kyle, after having been betrayed by The First Orde, travel to the source to destroy the powers forever.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Joshua Ret-Gonned himself to erase the reality rewriting abilities.
- He's Back!: Joshua, after escaping the sealed dimension.
- Lady and Knight: Josh is this to every lady, though the story focuses on Wendy mostly.
- Lethal Chef: Joshua is revealed to be this in Alternate Stories, in contrast with Kyle who is a Supreme Chef.
- Lethal Harmless Powers: If a person has a lame power, you can bet they fond a smart way of using it lethally
- Love-Interest Traitor: Ariane yo Joshua
- Made of Evil: Real is made of greed, selfishness and anger of the people who were Gifted, a sort of Superpowered Evil Side.
- The Masquerade: The First Orde and The Second Orde, which opposes the first one.
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Literally. Joshua was in love with a woman who was also part of his same masquerade, so this was OK, until he discovered that she was actually working for the ''other'' Masquerade and she had to kill him to uphold her end of the Masquerade.
- Mutual Masquerade: Joshua and Ariane were working in the same Masquerade. Sort of.
- Noble Male, Roguish Male: Joshua and Kyle respectively.
- No Ontological Inertia: The reality rewriting powers. They are active as long as the caster lives, once he/she dies whatever they changed goes back to being exactly as it was before, no mater how big or important the change has been.
- Can be Averted in two ways:
- One can pass onto another person the responsibility of keeping the re-writed reality intact, so basically if someone knows what the change has been, they can keep it that way.
- One choses to "Vanish", which means the person acquires a sort of immortality, but are destined never to make contact with other people and if they do, they would immediately forget about them.
- Can be Averted in two ways:
- Not Quite Dead: Joshua, who was found and saved by Kyle.
- Oh, Crap!: Real, explaining the the Vanishing doesn't make a person completely immortal:
- Trademark Favorite Food: In Alternate Stories candy is heath's favorite food. Josh's favourite food is bread.
- True Blue Femininity: Nearly all of Wendy's clothing is light blue.
- Reality Warper: Some people can do this.
- Ret-Gone: Vanishing
- The Reveal: Rheiss was ordering the kidnapings, not Martin, and it was his fault Martin was ill
- Ariane is the secret agent working for The Second Orde
- Heath is the one who made the Gift
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Josh retains the memories of how the events were in origin, being the one who caused the change. Heath also has the original memories.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere/The Underworld: More like sealed dimension, which is where the Vanished people go. You can technically escape, but it would mean ending your Vanishing and reset the world as it was when you left it.
- Screw Destiny: Mayor theme of the story. Josh tells everyone that they should fight fate and make their own path. Which makes him a Hypocrite, because his destiny is to vanish, and he does.
- Someone Has to Die: Either Heath or Joshua, otherwise the world will disappear. Josh however doesn't know this, and thinks that heis the only one that has to die. Heath ends up sacrificing himself.
- Supreme Chef: Kyle is this.
- Unwitting Pawn: The First Orde higher ups are actually trying to keep the power for themselves and using the Masters to find the reality rewriters.
- Wham Episode: Hey, what's Ariane doing in Josh's office? Oh, Wait, what?! Did Ariane just knife Joshua?!
- Hey, what's that thing the higher ups said? Wait, what?! You are actually trying to keep the power away from the other Masquerade, so you can keep it for yourselves?!
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Either you have reality rewriting powers that allow you to become basically Gods or you have this.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: the location in which the story takes place is never revealed.
- You and What Army?: Rick mocks Joshua for coming alone to fight his army, asking him this. Josh then proceeds to create his own army, made of paper, which turns out to be a Curb-Stomp Battle for Rick.
