Mission Interrupted
Chapter 2: Impaired and Human
Disclaimer: I do not own Huntik: Secrets and Seekers or Winx Club. They both belong to Rainbow.
The next morning, Lok woke up exhausted. His room smelt foreign and musty. It was odd. He had been travelling across Europe for weeks with Dante, Zhalia, Sophie and Cherit. While the travelling was exhilarating, waking up in an unfamiliar room every day was starting to tire him. The room was bathed with yellow warm light and he could hear the patter of feet around the house. There was chatter coming from downstairs and there was the clatter of dishes and cutlery as a late hasty breakfast was prepared. Lok forced himself up, cleaned up and made his way down. He was greeted by Cherit.
He took in the kitchen tableau. Zhalia sat in the corner of the living room brooding over last night's failure while Dante questioned Sophie for answers at the kitchen table. He could smell something sweet on the air. His stomach growled. He ducked into the kitchen. There was an orange-haired bespectacled man at the stove who looked like he had been up since the crack of dawn.
"Maidin mhaith, Lok," the orange-haired man said. He was Timmy, a Huntik Foundation researcher. There was a nerdy quality about him with his thick glasses. He watched a gaslight stove handling a pan and spatula.
Lok paused to understand the strange greeting. Then he realized the meaning and said, "'Morning, Timmy," Lok said. He smelt the air. "What is that?"
"Crêpes. I'm starting to get the hang of this French cooking."
"Cool." Lok looked at the several prepared plates of crêpes on the encounter. "I'll bring these to the table."
Lok balanced the plates on his arms and walked into the dining room area.
The sight of food galvanized the others into action. Sophie ran back to her room to fetch a jar of Italian Nutella and spread a thick layer of it across her crêpe. Lok pretended to be more mature by heaping berries on his crêpe but he stole her Nutella anyways. Dante, being an American, ate his with eggs and slices poitrine fumée, the closest thing to American bacon. Zhalia ate hers with lemon juice and powdered sugar, a cup of black tea and two slices of bacon. Cherit spread strawberry jam across a crêpe and rolled it into a thin stick.
Soon, they were all eating but the tense silence hung over them. Last night's events were troubling. Zhalia, Dante and Cherit had been found mysteriously asleep. It was unfathomable, considering how skilled Zhalia and Dante were. They had stayed up late last night trying to figure out what had happened until a sliver of the sun breached the horizon. It seemed that as soon as everyone had woken up, they had jumped back into talking about last night. Lok became easily tired of the repetitive subject.
Timmy joined the seekers at the table with his cup of coffee.
Sophie pouted for the fiftieth time. "I can't believe that they kept calling us 'kid.' A date with Lok of all people. There was absolutely nothing romantic about it."
"Well, there is only so much you can do about the past," Timmy said. "Just be happy that no one was hurt. It could have been worst, right?"
"Ugh! The gall of some people though! They thought I was on a date with him! I mean, really!" Sophie pointed at Lok indignantly.
"Sophie!" The blond seeker's face was red and then he sobered up slightly. "Hey! What's wrong with dating me?"
"Why are you so bothered by it? Lighten up a little. Not everything is supposed to be taken seriously," Dante teased.
Sophie crossed her arms and Dante laughed heartily.
"So, I guess the Organization has the amulet now?" Cherit said. He held a small teacup full of milk between his claws. His tail danced off the side of the table.
"It looks like it," Lok said.
"But before you saw them, they said that they didn't work for the Organization?"
"Yeah, but there had been a fight in the catacomb with the Suits. I saw the shadow of a something big but there were titans everywhere. I don't know who it was against though."
"That's troubling. As you said, that amulet drains magic, so what use is it to the Huntik Foundation?" Timmy asked.
"What I'm worried about is the titan inside it," Dante interjected between bites of toast. "Even if we have no spells, what does that mean for the user who summons the titan? Or the titan itself? Then there was the guy who was holding the green sword. I can't imagine what kind of man he is if his preferred weapon is a sword of that size."
"It was like it was straight from a video game," Lok added.
"I can look up the records in the archives," Timmy said. "I have some spare time before some old manuscripts come in from Rouen tonight. We can head for the library in an hour."
"No, we can't take away your time from your real job here!" Sophie said.
"I think Morgan le Fay and those stories about fairies and white circles can wait a few hours. I'm going to be here all month unless I get called out to somewhere else. You can help me though. How's your French?"
After breakfast, Timmy led Sophie and Lok to the Foundation library through the Paris Métro. The library was in Versailles. Normally, the Huntik Team would have stayed in the Casterwill mansion in Paris were it not for the fact that it was located in a commune completely far away from their current objective. Timmy led them through the Gardens of Versailles as a scenic detour. The library was located several blocks away from the Palace of Versailles. They set about to looking up records about the church immediately.
"So, Timmy, how did the Foundation find you?" Lok asked paging through a book. While he did understand a little bit of French, for he had studied it while in Venice, it was too difficult to decipher properly.
Timmy was hunched over city records. "I found the Huntik Foundation, actually. I was looking into something and I found that joining you helped advance my personal research."
Lok nodded. This was a first for the blond. "So what were looking into at the time?"
"Fairies."
"Really…? That's kind of…."
"Lok, you summon monsters out of pieces of jewellery. Let me also add that you are still underage in many countries and that travel the world with a shady-looking man who always wears a trench coat and a woman who is clearly not your mother."
"Point, Timmy." Lok paused. "Is it really that weird?"
"I'm just saying it's a little suspect. Plus, aren't you Irish? Don't you believe in the sidhe?"
"Yes, but my mom told me about them to scare me into being good."
"Did it work…?"
"…yeah—oh, shut up, Timmy," Lok said. Over the week, he had developed a friendship with the carrot-haired man. While he was not starved for male companionship, there was only so much could talk about to Cherit and Dante was more of a mentor than a friend to him.
Timmy smiled triumphantly and it irritated Lok immensely. "Find anything about the church yet?" Timmy asked.
"No. I can't concentrate." Lok rubbed his eyes. "The letters are jumping at me already. I'm getting a headache. God, they had tiny handwriting back then."
"Giving up already?" Sophie carried a stack of thick tomes in her arms. She placed them on the table beside the two. She looked at Lok's open book.
"No, it's just I can't understand it."
"Lok, we studied French and English in Venice," she said matter-of-factly. "You're Italian is perfect. It's not that different from French. It should not be that hard."
"Well, I'm sorry, Sophie. I'm not perfect like you. They didn't have modern French spelling back then." Lok raised his arms up to surrender and got up. He strode down an aisle. "I'm going out to get some fresh air. It's too stuffy in here."
Sophie rolled his eyes at his boyish impatience. There was an undeniable snobbish air about her. "Fine. I'll probably be the one who finds the answer anyways."
"See if I care, Sophie!" Lok said finally. It was full of acid. One could hear the irritation in his voice.
Sophie winced and shook her head in disbelief. "Boys!"
Sophie slammed the first book atop her tall stack on the table with a great thump. She opened to a page she had bookmarked and began to read in earnest. Moments passed quietly. She was uncomfortable to be alone with Timmy. She could not deny the fact that she found his super geekiness cute in a way, but only from afar because the orange-haired man was clearly older than her. He looked to be at least twenty-five.
At the moment, he observed her with a clinical gaze. A chill rode up her spine.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"You could have been nicer about that."
"About what?"
"Sophie, I know that you're young and all, but you can't push away people like that because you can. Not everything is a competition. No one is going to like you if you do that," Timmy said softly. "I'm sure you think you're an adult, but you're not. You're still a teenager."
"I'm not pretending to be anything!" she said indignantly.
"Then is yelling at me necessary?"
She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.
"I don't doubt your great intellect. It takes a lot to be a seeker and it might come naturally to you, but that is not the case for everyone."
"What are you getting at?"
"Lok. He said that the words are jumping at him when he was reading. What do you think that means?"
"Is he dyslexic?"
Timmy adjusted his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "What do you mean, 'Is he dyslexic?'? Sophie, you don't know? I figured this out in less than a week and you still don't know after spending most of your schooling with him?"
Sophie shrank in her seat and shrugged her shoulders. She started to become unnerved by Timmy. "I really don't know. He's good at puzzles and crosswords but…"
"Geez, you remind me of me when I was a kid. Don't you ever wonder why he has an Irish passport yet his Gaelic sucks horribly?"
"I didn't know…I don't speak Gaelic."
"Well, I know, because I spend most of my time reading Gaelic texts when I'm not reading French or English. His speaks Gaelic like a small child yet his Italian is topnotch. I asked him about it. His mother sent him to Italy to complete his education because Italian only has twenty-six grammar rules while English or French have several hundred ever-changing ones. Think about it, Sophie. You may have lost your parents in a fire, but Lok lost just as much as you did by moving away from his family to a country that is not his own."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologise to me; apologise to him. You need to understand that he is a person with feelings too. It's not easy for a boy who has lost so much and has so much trouble from the get-go to be snubbed by a girl like you. I was like that once."
Sophie looked at her book dejectedly. She had lost her fire to find an answer. "I think I'll go out for a bit, yeah…."
"You go do that. I'll stay cooped up here abandoned to my books looking for an answer while you enjoy the sunlight. I swear that I am getting whiter and whiter the more I stay in. I'm like a freakin' vampire or something," he said to himself.
"Just don't get any sparkling skin," Sophie said.
"Eww, teen romance."
Sophie stepped outside. The library was hidden among the many offices surrounding the Palace. She looked right and looked left. She had no idea where to go. She could no longer study after what she had discussed with Timmy. Her shoulders were drooped.
She felt out of place in the streets crowded by tourists and government functionaries. She ducked into a nearby internet café. She was not sure that she was going to be useful today. She had lost her fire and needed a coffee to revitalise her spirit. The little café was a madhouse as dozens of tourists circulated. Sophie shook her head at the madness and was about leave with her coffee. She looked over the computers wondering if she could squeeze a few minutes, not that she had anything pressing to do on a social networking site, but it would be better than diving into the madness of Versailles.
She looked over the heads and stopped. She bit her lip dubiously. She was more than admittedly scared. "Hey." She poked Lok over his shoulder. He was looking at his email. For the most part, it was non-sensical. She recognised his mother's name though. Then she realised that he must have been trying to compose an email in Irish.
He looked up to her. "Yeah?"
She could tell in his posture that he was slightly irritated. "I'm sorry about earlier," she said.
He raised one eyebrow and promptly ignored her. He returned to his email. "Whatever."
She bit her lower lip. "No, really, I was being too mean, and you didn't deserve that."
"Why this all of a sudden, Sophie?" Lok turned in his seat to face her. "You never apologize."
"I just have a hard time talking to people. I grew up alone and I just don't know how to act. I'm really sorry."
"Okay…apology accepted, I guess."
"'I guess?' Lok, I'm sorry! I didn't know that you were dyslexic." Sophie hand flew to her mouth immediately. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm really sorry."
"I'm not retarded, Sophie."
"I didn't say that!" Sophie shouted. "Look. I'm just sorry! I do stupid things, too, alright? I don't think that this makes any less of a good seeker or anything like that. I'm just too stupid to realize that other people have problems too. I give up!" Sophie turned to exit the coffee shop before Lok could respond. She made her back to the library. Instead of returning to the study table where Timmy was, she turned to the left to sit at the foot of a staircase.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm. She would have appreciated to have a mother to tell her how to deal with boys. She doubted that Zhalia could help her. Hell would freeze over before Zhalia gave her advice on boys. Sophie sat there for a good half of an hour wallowing in self-pity. It was on particular days like this that she remembered that she was still a child inside.
She heard the library door open and looked. It was Lok. She could not read his face. She almost attempted to apologize again but decided against it.
"You're crying," he said.
"Yeah…."
"Why? Is it because of earlier?"
She kept silent. She did not want to make an enemy of him. She already felt horrible about the fact that she had never noticed him sitting behind her in most of their classes before.
He sat beside her an arm's length away. "Does it bother you that much?" he asked.
"Doesn't it for you?"
He shrugged. "I was born with it. What can I do? Mom let me stay in Italy because Dad still owned an apartment in Venice and she saw that I had an easier time here than in Ireland." Lok looked at his watch. "We should probably get back to the books. Timmy is going to wonder what happened to us."
Sophie nodded. She watched him disappear into the depths of the library. She could not deny the fact that she felt snubbed by the fact that he refused to go into the depth about his problems (for she never realized that he had any problems at all). She had forgotten that he was human with weaknesses despite being a quick-learning seeker. She could not continue to be ignorant of these facts. Sophie stood up and followed after him. She promised herself to be more observant of the people around her.
Just to clarify, this isn't a crossover where the Specialists happen to be Earthlings. The Winx Club and Huntik canons will collide. Forgive me if my Huntik knowledge is more than inadequate. I marathoned it during the summer but there is only so much I can work with.
