“...Yeah I know, but it’s okay. For me, I found something that made me want to hold on. You just need to find it for yourself.” Lugo’s voice woke Tsugi from his slumber. He groaned and rubbed his tired eyes.
“Who are you talking to?” Tsugi sat up on the couch and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Well, hello to you too.” Lugo chuckled. “I was talking to Bel.”
Tsugi looked around, but he didn’t see anyone besides Lugo who was sitting next to him on the couch, staring at him in the dim candlelight. “I don’t see her.”
“That’s because he just left.”
“He? Bel’s a girl.” Tsugi stretched and yawned loudly.
“Oh sorry, I couldn’t tell. How old is she?”
“Eight.”
“How about Val? I’m guessing she’s a girl too, right?”
“Of course she’s a girl. For someone that hits on every girl he sees I’m surprised you didn’t notice her big breasts.” Tsugi shook his head. He was pretty sure Lugo was just trying to be annoying again, especially with that annoying grin on his face. “I think she’s in her early twenties or somewhere around there.” Tsugi waved his hand dismissively through the air. “I never asked, so I don’t know.”
“Hmm…” Lugo tapped his chin with his fingers and stared at the ground as if in deep thought. “...interesting.”
Tsugi looked at him, perplexed at his behavior, and annoyed by his never ending sarcasm. “When did we get back from the tree?”
“A few hours ago. You don’t remember?” Lugo gave him a puzzled look with his fingers lightly rubbing on his chin.
Tsugi scrunched his face, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember. When he gets really emotional, he seemed to block everything out lately and couldn’t remember too much. “No, I think I’m just so out of it.” He rubbed his face and groaned exhaustively.
“Hmm…interesting.” Lugo repeated and tapped his chin with his finger.
Tsugi rolled his eyes and stood up. Now he was positive Lugo’s just doing things to annoy him on purpose. “I’m going to bed. We’ve class tomorrow, you should get some sleep too.”
***
“You have the ability to make doors.” Jenene released her hands from Lugo’s back.
“Awe…” Lugo pouted. “That’s it?! That’s so lame. I was hoping for something more awesome like I can shoot lightning from my eyes or something.” He crossed his arms on his chest and kicked the dirt. “I already know I can make doors.”
“Okay, so tell me how you’ve been using your power.” Jenene placed her hands on her hips and tapped her feet impatiently as if he’s just insulted her.
“I don’t know, I just use it to escape, like through a wall or to go outside.”
She chuckled and shook her head disappointingly. “Awe sweetie, you are using it all wrong.” She grinned at the boys and placed her hands on the floor. The grass waved and wiggled as they grew taller and taller into the shape of a door before flying open. On the other side, strong winds blew through and loud, dangerous roars rang through the air. A blast of black flames came from the distance and an enormous white dragon flew straight toward the door. Before it could reach them, the door slammed shut and the grass turned to ash, falling onto the floor in front of them.
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“Well,” she sighs, “she destroyed my door.” She laughed, shaking her head. Both Tsugi and Lugo just stood there with their jaws dropped wide open. “You can open doors to anywhere you’ve been. As long as you’ve placed the door, you can open it from anywhere. Although, like what just happened, if it gets destroyed, you’ll have to physically go back and place it again. You can always create a short distance door with no issue, but with a long distance one like that, you’ll need to place one down.”
“Does that mean that Volgan and Fay can make doors too?” Tsugi blinked wildly at the pile of ash on the ground.
“No. I placed those doors for them. Once you place the door, you can put a password on it and those with the password can pass through.”
Tsugi slowly nodded, but he was still in awe that he just saw a dragon.
“Okay…” Lugo pursed his bottom lip and nodded slowly. “That was pretty cool. I take it back, I like my power.” He grinned gleefully.
“When you saw me teleport yesterday, that was a door that I opened.” Jenene reached her hand through the air and it disappeared, only to reappear next to Lugo and pat him on the head. “Let’s practice.” She pulled her hand back and the portal disappeared. “Tsugi darlin, you first.”
Tsugi was getting faster at mustering his energy to pull the daggers out. It wasn’t lightening fast like how he wanted yet, but he was slowly getting there.
“Whoa!” Lugo exclaimed, pulling at his hair like he couldn’t believe what he just saw. “How in the world did you do that?! That was awesome!” He quickly grabbed Tsugi by the wrist and turned them to look at the design on the daggers. “I knew you had some kind of dark magic, because I keep seeing this dark energy around you, but I didn’t know you could do ‘this’ with it! How’d you do it?” Tsugi explained the process to him and he just seemed to be even more astonished. “So that explains why you could see spirits. But…if it’s dangerous for you to keep bringing out the weapons, why do you keep doing it?”
“Because this one isn’t from the other world. I’m not too sure either, but one day, I just felt this really strong pull and these just appeared, I didn’t open a door or anything. Ever since then, I’ve always been able to use these, and I’m also able to tweak them a little. Watch.” Tsugi smirked proudly and within a moment's notice, the blades were engulfed in a light blue hue. “Don’t touch it,” he warns, “but just move your hand close to it.”
“It’s cold!” Lugo quickly retreated his hands upon feeling the cold burning sensation.
Tsugi’s grin grew wider as he lifted his chin with pride. “And now watch this.” Tsugi touched the hilts together and the chains bound the daggers together.
“WHOA!” Lugo was so amazed, he felt like a little kid in a candy shop. Tsugi began to swing the weapon into a beautiful dance, mimicking Fay. Lugo gaped at him as he backed up to give him space. The art was breathtakingly beautiful, as if Tsugi is putting on the most amazing performance worthy of entertaining a king. “Can I try?”
“Uh…I don’t know if you can touch it. I tried giving it to Yamo before, and it disappeared, but you can try it if you want to.” Tsugi handed the chained weapon to Lugo. Just in case, he left a string of aura attached to it, to hopefully prevent it from dissipating.
“This is so COOL!” Lugo squealed giddily like an excited teenage girl who had fallen head over heels in love. “Okay, so how do I do this?”
“So, drop it and hold it here…” Tsugi explained to Lugo the basics and stood back to watch. Lugo started to swing the weapon, and started out fairly nicely. It spun and twirled, then it wrapped and wrapped, and pretty soon Lugo lost control and it wrapped tighter and tighter as the blade headed straight for him. Tsugi released the weapon and it dissipated right before it lodged into Lugo’s arm. “Phew!” Tsugi sighed loudly in relief and patted his chest as if to calm his racing heart. “That was scary.” He chuckled.
“That…was AWESOME!” Lugo jumped and whooped loudly. “Did you see that?! Did you see what I did! I’ve dealt with swords and other weapons, but that was my first time with a chained weapon. I thought I did pretty good!” He held his chin up proudly, which brought out a laughter from Tsugi. In his mind, that was very amateur and actually wasn’t that good, but he didn’t want to take that excitement from Lugo. What was wrong with him? When did he start caring about other people's happiness?
“Yes, that was very awesome.” Tsugi placed his hands on his waist and chuckled at Lugo who was still jumping from excitement. Perhaps the joy from Lugo is reaching him after all.
By the end of the day, Lugo was only able to make a door from the orphanage to the street. He thought his magic was useless and hadn’t used his magic in such a long time, so he was a bit rusty.
“Alright, that’s it for today darlins.”
“Thank you Jenene! See, this is so much more fun than those boring repetitive classes.” Lugo ran and jumped with joy toward the gates.
“Tsugi.” Jenene called after him. “Let me talk to you for a minute.”
“Lugo you go ahead! I’ll catch up!” Tsugi waved at him as he ran happily out the gates. Tsugi returned to Jenene with a bright smile still on his face and waited patiently.
Jenene stood there with her arms folded across her chest, and a big smile on her face, studying Tsugi for a long while. She leaned down to Tsugi and said softly, “don’t lose him darlin. He’s a keeper.”
“Did you go see Yamo yesterday too?” Tsugi’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “They all said the same thing to me yesterday.”
Jenene laughed amusedly and wiped a tear from her eye. “If everyone is telling you the same thing, then maybe you should listen.” She ruffled his hair and her bangles jingled loudly on top of his head. As she walked back toward the orphanage, she gave him another wave without even turning to look at him. “See you tomorrow, darlin.”