Animas: The Phantom Light

Chapter Fifteen: War Of Antares

Professor Morus had told us not to practice with our weapons until our classes were in session and it wasn't too hard for me to do as he said because I was such a lazy ass. For Khadar, though, it was a challenge. Mostly because he seemed to be incapable of thinking about anything but practicing, specially ever since Professor Okon had made our companions go away. We had almost gotten the hang of how it all worked in our last class, though every time we tried to use it together and put some teamwork into it, it became messy and clumsy and just wrong. I had nearly lost a toe to Khadar's heavy axes, and since then we had taken it a lot easier.

The week of vacation had done us good though. We spent most of our evenings at the Red Granger even if we didn't eat anything, we just sat there talking about the stances and the chest. Then Khadar would usually disappear for a while to play with his three friends and Kae would go with Azara. I'd take the moment to catch up on some reading.

On our last day of vacation, we decided to go have a big meal at The Red Granger. I ordered a big plate of spaghetti like I did the first time we were there, Kae decided to follow my lead but Khadar went with his usual hamburger.

"You have an unhealthy obsession with that game," Said Kae after Khadar had been rambling about new characters he wanted to suggest to Makari. He even had been using the last pages of a notebook to make sketches and add in ideas for their abilities. All I could see were a bunch of scratched out options, and the abilities always followed the same pattern: Q, W, E and R.

"It's not an unhealthy obsession. I just think Makari might need someone to help him with it and, well," He smirked a bit, "If I give him enough help I might just become the co-creator of the game." He wiggled his eyebrows shamelessly, "That way I wouldn't have to rake the leaves outside the orphanage to barely scrape up enough money to buy the cards."

"Or maybe you should invest in healthy hobbies." Mumbled Kae like a naggy mom.

Khadar rolled his eyes,"Yeah, 'cause designing ugly dresses no one is gonna wear is gonna get you anywhere."

"Okay." I immediately interrupted when I saw Kae's face flare up in rage, "Let's not. Anyway, I wanted to ask you about the mysterious username. Who was it?" I asked Khadar, taking a sip of the juice trying to not drink it all before my meal arrived.

"What mysterious username?" Asked Kae, her eyes on Khadar,

"Thanks a lot, Daran," He murmured, "I got a gift with a username on a paper some days ago. I didn't tell you cause I know how stupid you get--"

"Is it the girl from the party?" Asked Kae eagerly,

"Have you even talked to this person?" I added,

"Well... I mean, we've been playing for most of these two weeks. We've also had really nice long conversations about a ton of subjects but they refuse to let me know who they are." He said, looking rather uncomfortable about the subject.

"What kind of things do you talk about?" Asked Kae,

"Mostly game related and sometimes subjects about life. You know, the whole 'what's the meaning of life' and stuff. Though we did also talk about vampires once." He shrugged, occupying himself with the salt and pepper.

"The meaning of life?" Asked Kae, snorting a bit, "Since when are you so deep and intelligent, Plato? And how come you hadn't told me about this mysterious person?" Kae naggingly crossed her arms at him, "I tell you everything!"

"I didn't want you to make it sound stupid. Besides, I can already tell you think this is some cheesy love story. It's not. It's just me and some person from the orphanage that share an interest."