James was a normal teen, going to Hills Valley Middle School for the first time. It was the 5th middle school he had been to in one year, and the 47th school in his lifetime. His dad worked as a train station ticket-seller, and was constantly transferred. James wished to stay somewhere permanently. As James stepped through the doors, he knew that this was the worst possible school he could go to.

As he looked down the hallway, every possible horror was waiting for him. There was toilet paper flying everywhere. There were kids who were 6' stuffing 4' kids in lockers. Miraculously, he managed to get through the school day without anything happening. As he walked home, he felt a tugging in his gut. He turned around, and saw a huge, meaty guy who was half as wide as he was tall. The guy was storming towards him.

"Hey you. You're the new kid, right?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"Well, I'm going to give you a crash course on how things run here. Emphasis on the word crash. The name's Joe, and I call the shots around here."
James gulped.
As Joe bolted toward James, instead of running, he stood his ground.
Joe pulled the first punch, and James, without thinking, ducked.
"YOU LITTLE TWERP!" roared Joe, "I'M GONNA MAKE SURE YOU NEVER STAND UP AGAIN!"
As Joe launched a flurry of punches and kicks, James maneuvered himself around the furious barrage of attacks with ease and almost subconsciously.
"How am I even doing this?"
As Joe continuously tried to pummel him, James dodged and weaved like the ocean.
James felt another tugging at his gut. Without thinking, James jumped straight up and somehow condensed clumps of air at his feet.
"Holy cow! I can walk on air!"
As Joe stood there screaming insults, James ran home.

The next day, when James walked through the doors of Hills Valley, Joe and his thugs were waiting for him.
"You disrespected me yesterday, and now, twerp, you pay with your life!"
Saying this, Joe and his thugs leapt onto James.
James felt another tugging in his gut, and he started sprinting. There was something different about this, though.
"Hold up. Is that electricity that's in my hand?"
He threw the ball of electricity behind him, and it caused a small explosion of smoke.
"Gotta go! Buh-bye!"

As James sat down in class, he started wondering why all these things were happening. At the same time, his science teacher was explaining how when two black holes collide, they explode, and send out an invisible ray of pure energy out into space. When James heard this, his ears perked up.

At home, he went to the official NASA website and looked for two black holes colliding. The last time two black holes collided was yesterday, around the same time James mysteriously received his powers. He checked the latitude and longitude of the energy ray, and sure enough, it ran right through where James was standing yesterday.

After school on the next day, he came to the train station his father was working at. He heard a train whistle, as usual. Strangely, he heard another train whistle, coming from the other direction. He realized that the trains were going to collide, and he jumped and made a ball of condensed air. As the trains hit him and the ball, a blinding white light appeared.

James found himself in a garden. He saw a story made of pictures drawn on a wall.
"Hey! That's me, that's my great-great-grandfather, and that's someone I don't know, and..."
"They all have my powers, and it comes once every 100 years!"
As he looked on, he saw the name of the powers he and his ancestors received.
The shifting tides.

All at once, the reality collapsed in on itself, and James was left standing between two stopped trains.
As he hopped onto the platform, everyone stared. Only James' father didn't witness the event.

When James got home, his father told him that the company let him stay here permanently because of the averted accident. As he talked, James thought about what he saw on the wall. About the shifting tides. He was glad that his tide finally found the shore.