The door opened and Jason went inside with a box of pizza in his hand. It was dark and silent. It seemed the owner was still outside. Flipping the switch on, the bachelor’s apartment lightened up.

This place really needs a few things to spice it up.

Jason sat on the couch and dug in the flavorful deep dish pizza. A long time favorite of his in Toronto, although it originated from Chicago, Toronto’s version had a little kick in it different from the original. Enough to swooned the heart of this man and the thousands living in Toronto.

I really miss this.

While he enjoyed the food, the door opened once more.

“Jason!” Hakeem shouted.

The man in name turned his head to the door. Both his eyebrows arched as the wrinkle on his forehead was apparent. The sight he was seeing was rather surprising. The Hakeem who was supposed to be healthy as a horse now looked like a beat-up donkey. One of his eyes was swelling, a few bruises on his face, one corner of his lips was bleeding and his body wasn’t in a good condition considering how he looks.

Jason didn’t stop chewing the stringy cheese as he just stared at the sight of Hakeem. Rather than speechless, he was more like busy eating the pizza. He definitely has his priorities straight.

“You’re just going to sit there eating? Look at me,” Hakeem didn’t expect this friend of his to act so unresponsive.

“So,” Jason took another bite and then he continued, “who beat you up?”

“Beat up? I almost die man!” Hakeem said as if he just went through hell and escaped it through sheer luck.

“is it the mobster or something? Wait, do Toronto even had one?” he was asking the wrong question and Hakeem couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop playing around man. We’ve got a situation here,” Hakeem dragged his body to his bedroom.

Jason, on the other hand, was still laying on the couch while continuing to eat his pizza. The nonchalant man didn’t bother about the sound of anguish that came in an interval. Hakeem probably had trouble changing his clothes with those injuries riddling across his body.

The moment Hakeem came out of the room, Jason already finished up half of the whole pizza. Hakeem saw it and he just couldn’t put words into his current emotion.

“You ate half of it?” said Hakeem while pointing at himself.

“Dude, I’ve been missing out on this deep dish pizza for the last six months. Cut me some slack,” said Jason while justifying his action.

“The heck man, I’m all bang-up and shit and you're here…” Hakeem fell silent as he realized something. Something crucial.

“Heal me up,” said Hakeem. He just remembered the ability of this lounging man.

“Fork it up,” said Jason.

“What?”

“Healing isn’t free you know,” said Jason with a smirk.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“You’re charging your own friend? The heck is wrong with you man?” Hakeem was flustered and confused.

“Okay, okay. I’m just kidding,” said Jason as he reached out his hand to Hakeem.

Hakeem wanted to retort how kidding about that kind of thing was messed up but he repressed those words and just walked towards Jason’s hand. The moment Jason’s hand touched Hakeem, a light green glow engulfed Hakeem’s whole being. In just a few seconds, Hakeem was good as new.

“I really can get used to this,” said Hakeem as he stared at his own perfect hands, free from any wounds and bruises.

“Dude, you got to follow me down to the Port Lands. There’s…” Jason cut him off.

“Slow down,” said Jason.

“There’s no time for that. There’s freaking monster running around in Toronto city!” said Hakeem.

Jason was intrigued hearing about this, but he wasn’t that alarm considering it was in Port Lands. His home was far away from that place. He has an assumption in mind and it was probably the closest to the truth.

“Those freaking creatures from Kawartha Park have come down here man. We’re so screwed. We should have told the police or the military,” Hakeem was panicking.

The silent man knew that this sudden monster appearance had nothing to do with the invasion coming from the Kawartha nature reserve. Since the only explanation left was only one thing.

A random crack.

A similar situation back when he was in New Jersey. Jason took another pizza and munched it down.

“You’re eating again?” said Hakeem as he thought that this friend of his would take action.

“Calm down and explain from the top,” said Jason.

Hakeem realized he had no way of convincing Jason thus he just followed along Jason’s train of thought.

“It’s like this…” Hakeem explained from the beginning and Jason listened with open ears and also an open mouth.

Hakeem was training basketball with his old coach. He got together with the old coach for old time sake and fast forward after a training match, he met his old pals back in high school. While catching up, one of them spoke about a rumor regarding a particular abandoned warehouse in Port Lands. The rumor said that people driving near that place encountered unexplained things. Like huge shadows moving around and bumping into one of those things. Those who bumped into them by car told of how they heard something was being broken similar to a twig.

Yet that wasn’t the fun part as this friend of Jason had the balls of going there without any backup. For some reason, he felt rather confident in himself and didn’t want to rely on Jason. Jason applauded over his bravery but it was still stupid.

Hakeem told him of how he went inside the warehouse and got surrounded by a bunch of trees.

“Trees?” Jason said.

“Yup, f*cking monstrous trees,” Hakeem said.

He then continued of how these trees which have the face of a human on its bark beaten him down to the ground as he was literally being gang-banged by these moving devilish trees. Hakeem told of how he fought bravely swinging the iron mace while unleashing his attack skill, the light…

“Skip that, I don’t want to hear it,” Jason said, as he still didn’t have the mood of hearing other people’s abilities.

So, Hakeem narrated how he managed to fend them off for a few minutes but too bad for him, he couldn’t finish even one of them. Being attacked from all directions was like a nightmare for this man, as after his Iron Body ran out of juice, then came a world of pain.

He told of when Iron Body was disabled, those vines and rough tree branches hit the heck out of him. Thus led to his previously beaten state. If it wasn’t for him being so close to the entrance door, he wouldn’t have been able to escape out of there alive.

“You took a beating for quite a long time,” said Jason as he was rather impressed by the durability of this friend of his.

“Yeah, Iron Body increase my defense as well as my stre-” Jason again cut him off. He didn’t want to hear even one word of it.

“Stop,” he said.

Hakeem shut his mouth as he felt weird by the strange behavior of this man.

“So, they’re trees huh,” said Jason as his fingers brushed over his chin. He was deep in thought thinking about a plan.

He had two things in mind right now. One, the reason Hakeem managed to stay alive might be due to them being low level and two, he has an idea on how to deal with these overgrown weeds.

“I’ve got it,” said Jason as he stood up with a pizza in his hand.

“What?’

“We’re going shopping,” he said.

They went to a nearby supermarket and bought a bunch of stuff. The main thing they bought was alcohol. They went back to the apartment and sat in the living room.

“You sure about this?” Hakeem was skeptical about the plan.

“Of course. It definitely going to work,” said Jason.

“Have you ever made one before?” Hakeem asked.

“Nope, that’s why we have wetube,” said Jason.

Hakeem had a dumbfounded expression on his face as if he was saying, oh shit. He just hoped that the cops won’t suddenly knock on the door. It was rather stupid for a cop to suddenly knock on an innocent man’s house but when someone was paranoid, all kinds of impossible things kept on bugging them.

Jason typed on the keyboard on how to make your own molotov cocktail and voila the videos explaining how to do it was numerous. Out of the many, he picked the one where the wetuber was a pure Russian dude who looks like he knew what he was doing.

“Seriously man?” said Hakeem as it was rather racist of Jason of doing so. Yet Jason turned deaf to those complaints as he just followed along to the instructions.

“Don’t just stand there, help me out here,” said Jason.

In the end, Hakeem followed along to Jason’s plan. After roughly two hours, they had finished their jobs.

“Look at that, isn’t it beautiful,” said Jason as for some reason he was having fun doing this. In front of him laid thirty Molotov cocktails, ready for battle.

“Dude, you’re weird,” said Hakeem.

“Pack up, we’re going to burn some freaking trees,” said Jason.

Twenty bottles were carried by Jason while the other ten went to Hakeem. As they were readied for tonight’s battle, they opened up the door and both of them froze in place.

Three unexpected people were right in front of the door with a rather sour expression and one of them was on the verge of bursting their lid from a fit of full-blown anger.

“Mom?”