The guy in the suit muffled from behind his scarf, "Are you the pizza guy?"

"Yes, but I'm here for the guys next door," I automatically lied.

"Oh. Could I persuade you to lend me a few slices?"

"Ah, no sorry, company policy got to see Benjamin Franklin and a receipt."

He tilted his head, "I think he's dead."

"I meant money."

"Then why didn't you say so."

"I did."

"Kids," as if that explained everything.

He continued to mumble to himself and I decided it was probably best to leave. I didn't think he was going to let me go though.

"Yeah. I'm going to go now."

He dropped all pretenses, "Where are you really going though?"

I stopped, and sighed. If he wanted a fight, I'd give him one. I pulled out my sword.

"Whoa, whoa, there's no need to be hasty, I'm just wondering, yesh."

"Stop playing around, if you wanted to fight let's just get this over with. I don't have all day."

"For the record, I really was wondering, but if you insist."

He nodded his head as if he had agreed on something. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. I blinked…that was unexpected.

Time slowed down once more and I managed to deflect it. His head shifted slightly in surprise. Before bringing his gloved hand forward and thrust fireballs at me.

I rolled to the left. The flames exploded destroying part of the wall.

I felt a strange sense of wrongness. This was actually the first time I had seen someone do straight up magic. My head swam whenever I saw him conjure up fire in his gloved hands.

"You're lucky my friend wasn't here or you would've had to suffer through his bad puns about giving you a hard time."

"My life is a big joke, I think I could take it."

His arm rapidly moved at a professionally pitcher's pace as he fired the sunshine spheres of death. The way he moved you would think there wasn't any weight to his arm.

I blinked, and saw the shadows coil around him, the only light source here was the fire and the moonlight. Dodging another one, I noted how the flowers weren't burning but the rest of the castle was.

He rolled his arms. THen he stopped throwing fire at me and snapped his fingers. My instincts screamed at me and I dived behind the pillars. A massive explosion rocked the castle. Once the smoke cleared I noted a hole big enough for an eighteen wheeler to squeeze through.

"I don't think your friend wants you to bring down his castle."

"Oh, this isn't his castle, so its fine," Then waved his hand and I flew back and crashed against the wall.

'Air,' I thought.

He should be able to use the other two as well then, earth and water. If he really did know how move the earth, then he was good as gone. Since he had opened with that move it was likely he couldn't or was playing with him.

If it really had been me from my younger years I would've thought I was going to die, but now all I could think was it would be good training.

"It isn't his?" tuning back, I was surprised the castle was incredibly ancient, and he looked like the type to have friends who were surfing in green. Putting two and two together did not equal four in this case it seems.

"Nope, it was his brother's king's castle, though they're all dead now."

"What happened?"

"I'm not really a storyteller, " he said," but I'll do my best. Once a upon a time, a really, really long time ago, it might've been last Tuesday-"

"How is that-"

"-Of twenty decades, ago. Stop interrupting. "

I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender and we kind of half-heartedly continued fighting. He didn't really seem like a bad guy. I could usually tell when they weren't…okay, I was twelve and that was one time-maybe two-okay, maybe I didn't have the best instincts when it came to good people. Maybe. It did get better and he really did exude that aura of 'it's okay, have a cookie'. Plus, I wanted to know what happened.

"There was this kid with a knife who dropped down from aboveground somewhere and went on a rampage killing everyone. Since most of the residents were weaker than your average monster and more civilized most didn't stand much of a chance. He killed everybody even my friend's brother."

"My friend foolishly wanted to give his killer a chance at redemption because his brother had believed the killer would turn back, but in the end it didn't matter. My friend was all that was left. He confronted the killer the room before this one and killed him. With nothing left to do he wondered around for a bit, then decided to build a trans dimensional machine at some point and told me to keep the flowers alive and disappeared."

"Wait, that last bit took a weird turn."

He ignored me, "The moral of this story is when your friend asks you for a favour, make sure you get paid. Bullets aren't cheap."

"You could just buy a watering system and come and check in on it from time to time you know."

He stopped throwing fireballs. He stood there for a few minutes, contemplating my words and I noticed his hat had burst into flames. There was also a miniature cloud raining down on him trying in vain to put out the flames.

"What do you mean?"

I wasn't sure how long he had been down here, but I assumed he hadn't known about the recent advancements in technology, and gave a brief description of some of his options.

"I didn't know…"

He turned and was about to leave, when he stopped and seemed to think on something.

"Hey, kid?"

"Uhm, yeah?"

"You're the son of that sea dude, right?"

I sniffed myself discreetly to make sure I didn't smell like fish.

"Yeah?"

He pulled out something out of thin air and tossed it to me. My instincts took over and I dived for the pillar.

"Ah, yes knowledge is dangerous but it isn't that dangerous"

I peeked my head out and noted it was a book. I wondered if I could hire new instincts and if they had resumes because mine seemed to be lazing on the job.

I cautiously prodded it with the sword.

"Any day now kid."

I picked it up and glanced at the cover. It was written in Ancient Greek so I could semi-read it, and make out, "Atlantean Monkeys?"

He twitched, "Atlantean Magic."

Ah.

He muttered something unintelligible, and faced me, "usually sons of the sea guy have it hard when they visit his home because of family, and don't stay long or they get killed by his other son or his wife, so they rarely learn anything from him. This is an ancient book a," he tilted his head in what I assumed was confusion, "an acquaintance held dear, she allowed me to 'burrow' it."

In other words, he hadn't actually burrowed it.

"This book is from the time, the Original Atlantis was around, not the one your dad has at the bottom of the sea now."

I looked at him, "There's a difference?"

"Yeah, that one was manned by old magic people, but they got arrogant and one of them became an evil king and blah, blah, blah, those books are now rare."

I felt like he skipped something important but let it slide.

"So why are you giving it to me?"

"You," he coughed, "helped me from staying down here any longer than I would've wanted," he coughed, "and you seemed kind of weak," my eye twitched, "so this is me repaying a debt."

"Thanks."

"Mhm, you may now revel in my awesome."

I ignored him and asked him something I should've in the beginning, "What's your name?"

"Ah, its Glass Shingles."

"Uhm, Glass Shingles?"

"What, you don't like it."

"Its, very, peculiar."

"Hey, it's not weird! It took me twenty seconds to come up with it."

"…"

"Hey, don't look at me like that, names are hard to come with."

"…"

"So rude, its like you've never seen a skeleton in a suit before."

My eyes widened.

"You," he paused as if surprised, "didn't notice."

"It was dark," I defended myself.

"I was throwing fire at you ."

"Which I was trying to dodge."

"I don't have no skin."

"I thought you were really white."

"That's incredibly racist."

"No, it's not!"

"Yeah it is."

"I just thought you were shut in or something!"

"I have a suit."

"It could've meant you were a classy shut in!"

"Does it look like I was anti-social?"

"You had a scarf around your face and large 90s glasses."

He paused, "What year is it?"

"Its not the 1990s if that helps."

He sighed. I noted sense of darkness behind his sunglasses and not because he didn't have any eyes. Or brain. For a second I saw something and I was sure the same that had happened to the guys on the bus was happening here. I was looking into his past. Everything vanished and I bombarded with images so fast they blurred into a myriad of colours my mind couldn't accept and I blanked out for a second.

When I came to he was gone. I groaned and rolled over and found a note on my chest, "it was nice meeting you, try not to die."

"Err, you too," I said even though I knew he couldn't hear me. I shrugged it still turned out better than I had thought it would've. I looked at the tome in my hand.

Atlantis, huh?