Chapter one

Sean's eyes flickered open and he cast furtive glances around the room before his memories of the previous night returned. He and his two friends, Sam and Kevin, had driven to California for a night of video games and late night pizza with their mutual long distance friend Jason who lived in LA. Sean's eyes landed on Sam and Kevin asleep on the floor and movement underneath his head told him where Jason was. Wait… Sean sat bolt upright, he had fallen asleep with his head on Jason's lap! A crippling headache erupted into life at the sudden movement and Sean was having trouble deciding what hurt worse, the mariachi band behind his eyes or his wounded pride at having fallen asleep in another man's lap. Of course it being the 21st century, no one would find anything wrong with this. However, this was a group of his best friends we are talking about. If any of them saw this, they would never let him live it down.

He studied his impromptu pillow first, making sure the man was still asleep and that his eyes were shut. Jason had swept back Brown hair and a matching scraggly beard. Combined with the fact that he was wearing a plaid shirt, his appearance reminded Sean of a lumberjack, complete with bulging arm muscles.

Sean squinted studying Jason as he slept, even poking him gently a few times to make sure he wasn't faking. After he was satisfied Sean then turned his gaze on Kevin studying him as well.

Kevin had short black hair and a boyish face making him look much younger than the three other boys. He wore a grey t-shirt and was neither skin and bones nor well muscled, falling somewhere in the middle between fit and out of shape.

Kevin's open mouth managed to convince Sean fairly quickly that he was still asleep, no-one would purposefully drool on themselves…..would they? He flicked his eyes over to Sam, who was looking back at him, Sean's breath caught in his throat as the two boys maintained eye contact. Finally Sam yawned and asked. "Why do you look like you secretly ordered breakfast without waking the rest of us up?"

Sean paused at the question confused, forgetting his earlier crisis and his aching head. Sam noticed the look on his face and sat up aghast, he had long blonde hair that fell down his back in a ponytail and a slightly pudgy frame. He adjusted his trademark hole-ridden red shirt and said accusing. "You did, didn't you?!"

Sean adjusted his own shirt, purple, over his large overweight upper body. "I did not!" The raised voices roused the other two who looked around bleary eyed. "What's going on?" Kevin asked.

Sam pointed at Sean. "He ordered food without waking anyone up!" Suddenly both Jason and Kevin were wide awake. "You better not have." Jason glared daggers at the side of Sean's head as he said this. "I didn't! I just woke up!" Kevin smirked at Sean's desperate cry. "Mm-hmm a likely story." Sean rolled his eyes and stood up, all four boys wore athletic shorts and he checked the ones he was wearing for his wallet and car keys.

"Well now that everyone is awake, why don't we settle this by just going and actually getting food?" Sean asked.

"You would say that." Jason jibed but he was already on his feet, tucking his own wallet into his shorts. In fact at the suggestion of food both Kevin and Sam had also jumped to their feet.

They jostled each other, crowding the entryway as they shoved feet into shoes and argued loudly about where they wanted to eat. They still hadn't come to a decision by the time Jason pulled the door open to leave, and so the conversation continued to rise in volume as they practically fell through the door in a rush to get to the car.

"What is that?" Kevin pulled the group up short, pointing towards the street.

"Bro… That's awesome! Is there a renaissance fair going on right now?" Sean cried excitedly.

"Wait here, I got this!" Jason called as he dashed back inside the house. A few minutes later he stumbled back out a load of swords and other medieval weapons clutched in his arms.

"Hell yeah! Nice save Jason, we can probably buy costumes at the fair to go with these." Sam cheered.

The commotion and distribution of weapons eventually caught the attention of the thing in the street. A large lumbering green-gray body slowly turned towards them and blood red eyes locked onto the small group. They were all now praising Jason, who was brandishing a battle ax. A long tongue ran over the fangs protruding up from its lower jaw and bulging muscles stretched the length of its body, they bunched up awkwardly as it made its way towards the group. It was almost as though these were its first steps, like a baby unsure of itself but slowly it seemed to gain confidence.

Oblivious of the monstrosity making its way towards them, the four boys were now waving their phones around berating each other for not plugging them in.

"How are we going to find out where the fair is with no phones?" Sam cried.

"Why are you looking at me? I plugged my phone in. It's not my fault the wall outlet didn't work!" Sean retorted.

"Excuse me? I'll have you know every outlet in my house works just fine." Jason said with a slightly offended look.

"RRRRAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHH"

Sean turned around, his eyes going wide at the sight before him. The green-gray mass of muscles was now covering the distance between it and the four dumbfounded friends at an incredible speed. As it drew closer it seemed to grow in size until it stood roughly eight feet tall, towering over the humans in front of it.

One foot came forward in an awkward lunge as it arrived in front of the boys and its hand shot out towards Sean. Sean's eyes widened to their limits as he stood frozen in terror, Jason however had noticed that the blood red eyes hadn't left his friend. Before the monstrous looking thing had arrived in front of them Jason's hand had already shot out, and now his fist landed high on Sean's cheek. The pain beneath his eye caused Sean to yelp and stumble backward, narrowly avoiding the grasping fingers. A nail caught briefly in his shirt pulling him forward slightly as the hand closed around empty air.

The pain in his face and the sudden lurching motions back and forth disoriented Sean and caused him to panic. His friends watched dumbfounded by his stupidity as Sean, off balance as he was, attempted to swing the sword he was holding like a baseball bat. Kevin ducked as the sword came back over Sean's shoulder, narrowly avoiding losing an eye. The sword swung forward and collided with the still outstretched green-grey hand just behind the thumb joint. Lacking Sean's weight behind it and any proper technique meant to cut an opponent, it could be considered a miracle that the sword broke through the tough hide. In fact, somehow it did more than just break through, it bit deep into the joint becoming lodged between the bones there.

The monster, as the four of them were all now fairly certain it was a monster, pulled its hand towards itself in response to the pain. Sean, who held the stuck sword's hilt in a death grip, was pulled after it, and for a moment he seemed to float in mid-air. Then gravity reasserted itself and the hilt was wrenched from his grasp, his overweight body falling hard to the pavement below.

Kevin and Sam jumped forward grabbing at Sean and helping him to his feet, Jason had dashed between them and the monster and was currently doing his best to distract it.

"Okay!" Jason shouted. "I'm going to take out its right leg, when it goes down, you three rush in and try to hit something important."

Jason had recently been released from an active service military career and was thus handling this situation much better than his friends. Sean was also surprised to notice that he seemed to handle his battle axe with some amount of skill. His sword had been knocked loose and was recovered by Kevin who handed it back to him now, albeit rather reluctantly.

"Just don't do anything stu-"

"Now!"

Kevin's voice was cut off as Jason called out behind him, his voice was followed by a horrific roar and the monster falling to one knee. Overweight as he was, Sean should have easily been overtaken by both Sam and Kevin in the charge. However, Sean's war cry, which sounded more like a terrified scream, and his mad dash forward once again left his friends staring after him. Jason turned his head around in time to register the fact that Sean was heading right for him, eyes closed and sword held straight out in front of him.

With mere seconds to react, Jason dropped to the ground, which caused Sean to trip over him. The point of the sword hit the monster dead center in its chest, however it failed to so much as even draw blood. Fortunately, Sean, eyes still shut tight, came careening after it mid fall and managed to somehow have the swords pommel driven directly into his sternum, hard. The weight of his body behind the fall drove the air from his lungs and left him an awkward lump on the ground by Jason.

Jason seeing his friend land beside him, looked up, the monster seemed to be leaning towards them in an awkward grapple. Knowing he couldn't help Sean in time Jason rolled away to safety, but he regained his feet quickly outside the monster's reach. He was determined to charge back in and free his friend however, the monster didn't seem to react to Sean at all and simply toppled over on top of him. After a moment's study Jason saw the blade's point protruding from the monster's back, it appeared that Sean crashing into the pommel had somehow applied enough force to drive it into the creature's heart. Although he assumed the monster's fall forward was responsible for the sword point sticking out from its back, he didn't think his friend had managed to completely run the tough skinned creature all the way through.

After roughly an hour of pushing, pulling, yanking and a generous amount of cursing Kevin, Sam, and Jason managed to free Sean from under the monster's body. Extracting the sword from its chest cavity elicited another healthy round of curses from all four but now they stood on the grass discussing what to do. That is, everyone but Sean was discussing what to do, he turned to Jason and said accusingly.

"You hit me!"

"What?"

"Just before the fight! You hit me!"

"Well, sorry I'm amazing under pressure and saved your life."

Sean swung his hand up in an open handed slap and before it hit loudly declared.

"Now we're even!"

But, his slap was blocked by Jason and a return slap landed squarely on Sean's cheek. The sound of Jason's palm landing echoed out across the neighborhood, but that's not what held the groups attention. The slap seemed to have knocked 40 pounds off of Sean, his clothes had grown loose and his face less round. Sean looked down at himself stunned, his body felt lighter and stronger. He looked around at the stunned faces of his friends.

"What happened!?"

Sam stepped closer.

"I'm not sure, unless Jason is the ultimate fitness trainer, I'd say killing the monster did this to you."

The other three turned to watch Sam contemplating the situation when another loud slap rang through the clearing. Feeling lighter and faster Sean had once again gone in for his slap, and had once again, failed.