Renewal

The beginning

This story is from another site where I first uploaded it, but I guess it's time to put it here as well. Hope you guys will like it and that the story gets as much love here as it did on the previous site. There will be some corrections (maybe some additional parts added as well), as I wrote this a long while ago. Thank you for all the love and have fun!

I don't own Huntik (good gods I wish I did...)

Dante was comfortably sitting in his favorite armchair in the living room: arm perched up on the armrest and his face leaned against his hand, staring right in front of himself. He was deep in thoughts when suddenly he heard a familiar voice from the big screen that was right in front of him.

"Hello, Dante" the familiar male voice greeted him cheerfully.

"Hey, Metz" Dante answered quickly while moving his amber eyes towards the big screen where his mentor appeared.

Although he was slightly startled by the sudden voice, he didn't let it show on his face. After all, Metz would be pretty disappointed if his promising prodigy would allow himself to be started this easily.

"Where's your team?" The older man asked as he looked around in the room and realized that his protégé was completely alone in the room.

There were no sounds of arguments which would indicate to Zhalia and Sophie, nor sounds of breaking and crashing which would give away Lok.

"They were supposed to be here 10 minutes ago" the amber-eyed man answered with a bit of annoyance in his voice.

He was used to his team being late sometimes, but he still didn't like that. It was a terrible habit for Lok and Sophie, but today Zhalia seemed to be pretty late as well. Not knowing where Zhalia was made Dante slightly worried, especially after all the stuff they went through in the past.

Just as he finished his sentence, he heard the familiar voices of his team coming from outside his house. With some relief he sighed and relaxed, now being assured that nothing has happened to his team and that they were simply late, as usual.

"Would you two stop it already!"

It was Zhalia who burst through the main door first, with Lok and Sophie following her and still arguing about something. As Dante looked at Zhalia he could clearly see that she was extremely annoyed by the teenagers arguing right behind her, which made him curious about the reason for their argument.

"It IS your fault!" Lok said in an angry way and gave Sophie a look that could have killed her in an instant if looks were able to kill.

"Oh, come on Lok. You know it's not my fault! If you would have studied properly, you would have passed the exam! And who knows, maybe you would have even gotten a good grade instead of barely making it!" Sophie snapped back at Lok and sat down in the armchair that was placed not far from the entrance door. At this accusation Lok seemed to take offense and pouted his lips, sitting down on the other side of the living room while his arms rested on his chest in protest.

"And by the way, you're only angry at me because you got caught" Sophie went on and made a rude noise.

"What's going on?" Dante finally managed to ask, his tone sounding surprised while he looked at Zhalia for help as she plainly stood still in the doorway.

"Oh, nothing special" Zhalia finally answered offhandedly and shrugged her shoulders vaguely. "They're just behaving like... well, you know, like children"

Metz didn't know what to say in this situation, so he simply cleared his throat to catch their attention. "Excuse me but, am I interrupting something important or can I go on?" he asked with some confusion but with a little smile on his lips.