Here's chapter two of The Magic of Chocolate. of course, comments and edits are welcome...

Okay, I have now taken some (but not all, yet, I'll get to them all sometime) of the edits and edited this chapter. So I'll now post the newer and hopefully better chapter two.

Two <^> The Drop of a Pen

The most important city in the United States of America was named Conscilia, in Texas. It was on the west side of the aforementioned city that a tall, one-room, soundproof tower sat in the shade of two huge trees. The tower was called Gray-side, for reasons known only to the man who built it. It had raised tunnels on two sides so that you couldn’t go from one side of the tower to the other side without taking at least an hour-long drive. And at the heart of each tunnel was a door. At the date spoken of, each door opened, one right after the other, and two men entered from opposite sides.

The first man was young, and he wore a black suit. The second was older, and had more casual clothes on. They looked opposite in every way, the first with short dark hair and blue eyes, the latter with long gray hair, and brown eyes.

However, different though they looked, they walked identically. Their arms hung at their sides, and they stood with their heads in the air, never losing eye contact. They made sure that they weren’t walking too casually, which would put them off guard, but they didn’t walk too stiffly so that the other couldn’t tell that they weren’t comfortable.

When they reached each other, they each held out a hand—their left—and shook. They gripped for only a few seconds, because neither liked the feel of the others hand. They gave it the exact amount of time, so that they didn’t have to grasp for long, but neither thought the other didn’t trust him. Everything was done perfectly.

After they let go, there was a moment of silence. It was—to use a much overused saying—so quiet that you could have heard a pin drop, which is almost what happened.

Finally the older man spoke. “Do you have the money?” he asked.

The younger nodded, and pulled another stack of bills—this one much greater than the last, which he had used to buy the chocolate—from his pocket. He held it in his hand, but didn’t hand it over yet.

The older man also nodded and pulled out a small box from his pocket. He cracked it open so that the younger could see what was inside.

Finally, the younger gave one more nod, and he traded the money for the box. As soon as he had the box, the younger turned to walk away. But the elder stayed still and pulled a pen out of a jeans pocket. He dropped it.

The younger watched it fall, and just before it hit the ground, both he and the older man jumped.

As the pen hit the ground, pulsing blue waves flew through the air a centimeter above the ground. The older man had jumped so he would land on top of the pen, where he wouldn’t get hit. But the younger jumped higher… he jumped all the way up to the top of the tower, hundreds of feet above him, and as he started to fall….

He watched the waves hit the walls of the tower. As they hit, they exploded. A ring of fire surrounded the inside of the tower. But luckily, the tower was not burned. Slowly, as the younger man fell, the flames subsided. He could see the older man glaring at him angrily, but the younger made sure he landed as far away from the elder as he could.

He landed on the ground, muttered “goodbye” to the other man, and stepped out his door. He locked it behind him and drove his vehicle away, back through the other side of the tunnel.

As he drove, the younger man felt inside his pocket. Earlier that day, it had been filled with money. Now it just had a small box. The contents were worth it… but he wished that he had never had to get a hold of them. He wished this hadn’t happened. And he wished that the older man hadn’t tried to kill him, so he wouldn’t have had to buy the chocolate. But he had to admit… it did taste good.

Thanks again for reading!