the butterfly effect | l. garmadon

sixteen

  "I know you know who the Green Ninja is."

  Chen's swift pace came to a jolting halt at the words. It was dark, near evening, and the unusually cloudy summer sky felt as though it were pressing down against him. The street was empty but he felt as though he were being crowded, felt as though he were squeezed until he couldn't breathe.

  His eyes slowly turned towards the shadows.

  A man with a shock of white hair leant against the wall, cast by the dark shelter of the tall building complex he rested upon. He was rolling something in his pale fingers - a chess piece. An onyx pawn shaped like an oni.

  "What did you say?" Chen managed to ask.

  The man lifted his chin as he stared at the pawn in his fingertips. It fell to his palm and his fingers curled over it, concealing it from view. His hand dropped to his side, as though bored of inspecting it.

  "You know who the Green Ninja is," he repeated in his low, velvety drawl. A shiver ran up Chen's spine as the stranger's gaze slowly turned to his - yellow and sharp and manic, like the bite of a ferocious, fanged beast. "I saw you with him. I heard you say his name." The stranger leant towards him with a cold smile. "Lloyd."

  Chen's brows furrowed. The stranger felt tense and coiled, like a spring about to snap or a lion about to attack. It made him uneasy. "Okay. So?"

  The stranger's unusual eyes returned to his chess piece. "I don't like him. I know you don't like him, either, so-" he tossed the pawn to Chen's chest, and he scrambled to catch it "-how about we work together."

  It wasn't phrased as a question.

  Chen took a shaky step back. "Look, man, I don't know what kind of vendetta you have against him, but I don't want any part of it."

  The stranger laughed softly. "You seem illusioned into thinking you have a choice." His smile dropped. "It wasn't an offer."

  The hairs on the back of Chen's neck began to stand on end. His slow survival instincts had begun to yell at him to run, alarms ringing behind his eyes. Whoever this deranged guy was, he was dangerous. Dangerous enough into thinking he could take down the Green Ninja.

  "Fuck off, man." Chen turned to leave, only to stop when his sight was suddenly taken. He yelled in shock and then fear, hands outstretched into the darkness that had become his world.

  "I do not like repeating myself, Chen Daniels." The stranger's voice circled in his head. Chen felt the overwhelming urge to curl into a ball and cry in terror. "You will help me. It is only a simple task; I just need a single book."

  "Who- what are you-?!"

  "What I am is none of your concern," he said sharply. "But you may call me Simon."

  Chen clawed for something to ground himself to in this empty void but he felt nothing, not even the ground beneath him. It was an eerie sense of lightness and crushing weight, as though he were drifting in space without a suit.

  "My actions are being watched." A bunch of faces Chen didn't know the names of suddenly flashed before him. "So I must use my own pawns."