Heat Fury floated all alone in darkness. For days he stared into an empty abyss, counting from 1 to 86400. Whenever he hit that number, he took a deep breath. He was 5 counts away in this instance.
"Two…one."
A sea of black flames emerged from underneath him, tossing him around like strong ocean currents would. The flames did not harm him, and he allowed them to continue tossing him about. Something else started to push and pull him. Before now, he had never felt that force. His eyes forced themselves open, shining bright green in all the darkness. He saw black, glittering scales approach rapidly. Just when he blinked, he was staring into snake eyes larger than him.
"Do ya think if I smack him on the head he will wake up?"
"Ursus…don't be an idiot."
Heat's eyes opened once more. This time he was surrounded by friends in a hospital.
All three looked at each other.
"I…," the lady among them said, "think I'm going to call the doctor." Visibly stunned, she slowly walked out of the room.
"Heat Fury, back from the dead, eh" Ursus, the biggest of them said.
Supido, the final friend in the room, folded a magazine and stretched to smack Ursus' head.
Ursus chuckled. "Ouch."
"Welcome back," Supido said.
"Yeah, I'm back, so you guys can at least stop acting like I was dying."
Ursus and Supido glanced at each other.
Heat took the hint. "What?! From a snake bite?!"
"A snake bite from a snake that apparently, you have been awarded the honor of discovering," Supido said.
"Also, ya were out for almost a month. But hey, ya got all those letters!"
Heat stretched from his bed and managed to grab an envelope attached to flowers.
With a grin, he cleared his throat read out loud, "To Supido: I still can't get over your hair."
"Really dude?"
Ursus smacked Supido with the magazine.
Supido chuckled. "Why is that even in there?" he asked.
"They probably figured you came to visit Heat often."
"Oh hi, Aquila."
"Nice to see your eyes open again, Heat."
"What's with ladies and green eyes? He's a black guy with green eyes. If anything, that should be weird to ya."
"Would you rather I was a Caribbean with dreads who hated reggae?"
Ursus walked away from Heat's bed. "Please, do not bring up reggae—and I'm Zionite, not Caribbean! Never even been there."
"If I said black people were weird, would you three think that's racist? Cos you're all weird."
"Says the white guy with a Japanese name, who has no white friends."
Ursus had recovered from Heat's blow.
Heat chuckled and Aquila simply shook her head.
"No, Mr. Lupus, that would not be racist," the doctor said as he walked in. "in fact, I think all white people are weird." He turned to Heat. "Mr. Fury, you had been out for exactly-"
"27 days."
The doctor looked at the others, all of who shrugged in ignorance.
"Impressive," he said. "Well, guys, time to go home. I need to perform some checks on your friend, and then he needs to rest.
"Alrighty."
"See ya, man."
"Hurry up and get back to school, idiot. It's lonely at the top of the class."
"Braggart." Heat chuckled. "By the way, did you take care of them?"
"Your kid siblings? Yeah, just come home quickly so that I can move out."
Aquila's leg hit something heavy as she walked out of the room.
"Ouch! Ursus!" She punched him. "Who carries weights in their backpacks?!"
"Oops!" Ursus grabbed the bag with ease.
After performing some checks, the doctor told Heat he would discharge him in a week if no anomaly showed up.
A week passed by and nothing new happened, so Heat was discharged.
"Oi, Fury, catch."
Supido tossed a pair of clothes at Heat as he walked into his hospital room.
"What's going on?"
"It's a week—you're discharged."
"Whoa, really?!"
"Yah. Now make it quick so that I can drop you off. I'll be back."
Supido walked across the corridor to an office.
"Knock, knock."
"Mr. Lupus, actually knocking has a higher response rate."
Supido used his foot to push the door open and walked inside.
"I try to come into contact with as few things as possible in a hospital."
"Ahhh, mysophobia."
"Not really, it's much less severe than the fear of germs."
"Are you here to take Heat home?"
"Yup. I also wanted to ask something; how did he recover so flawlessly?"
"I'm sorry?"
"A teenager, coma, 27 days. Recovery isn't supposed to be instantaneous."
"Oh, that. True. But, somehow your friend is extremely resilient."
"I'll need a bit more explanation."
"The poison didn't just shut down his body, it repaired it."
"Like muscle building."
"Precisely. Break down to build up stronger. It worked flawlessly. The poison is out of his system, his body is back to normal and his brain has no severe damage."
"Interesting."