I wonder what I should do when I get home. while he was having that thought he bumped into two of his neighbors who mentioned that the weather was nice. Asked him how he was, and if he was coming back from training. He answered those questions with a smile, a nod and a small joke here and there before he continued to head home. After forty-five minutes of walking, he finally made it home. His home had two floors. The ground floor had a rge bathroom, a medium-sized kitchen, and a front room which had a double gss door that opened up to a rge backyard. Then on the first floor, it had His dad's study, a small bathroom, four bedrooms, and a small room that they used for storage. He pushes the bck steel gate open and takes two steps before he closes the gate by pushing it with no care and then continues to walk. *Cng Cng Cng* Was the noise that could be heard as he headed up the stone pathway, slotted his key into the door, and opened it. "I'm home," he says as he closes the door behind him before he takes off his trainers. He stood there for a couple of seconds expecting to get some sort of response. If not from his mom then from Henna but he didn't get any response at all. "I wonder if she's out" -he walks into the kitchen and opens up the fridge- I better not let my guard down too much," he thinks to himself as he scans the fridge for his juice. After three seconds he finds half a carton of some orange juice and pulls it out and closes the fridge. He takes the carton with him, heads into the front room, throws his bag on the beige sofa, and looks outside at the back garden while he takes a couple of sips of orange juice. After his sixth sip, he stops and shivers from the coldness of the orange juice and puts the cap back on it. The orange was more tangier to him as it was a different brand than he would normally drink but he didn't mind it too much.

  As he is turning around he suddenly sees a dagger shooting towards him, so he bends back quickly like a straw about to be used in a gss. Which leads to the dagger passing him and impaling the single tree in his back garden. He then straightens up to see a female wearing a mask, a bck t-shirt, and light blue cotton pants throwing another dagger at him. This time he drops to the floor to avoid it. She then throws one more at him aiming for his head but he uses the right sleeve of his hoodie to block it. It hits the sleeve but instead of it piercing his arm. It makes a metal knk before it deflects off and nds on the floor in front of him. The woman then charges him so he gets to his feet as quickly as possible after picking up the dagger in front of him, and blocks the strong kick with his right arm. She then fires off three more kicks toward him. *Whoosh whoosh whoosh* The woman's kicks were fast but powerful and precise. They were definitely able to do some damage to anyone who hadn't trained themselves. But Lincoln just dodged the first one and blocked the other two. She then threw a couple of punches. *Thamp Thamp Thamp* Were the sounds being fired off as her punches connected.

  It's got to be her. I better take this in the back garden just in case we accidentally break something. He thinks to himself. He then moves backward towards the garden with the women still attacking him. Once they were both outside, he was ready to go on the offensive. As she was going for another punch with her right hand, he stopped the momentum of the punch with his left hand. *Baap* His hand stung a little from the impact of the punch but he couldn't react to the pain he felt. He then gets a strong grip on her humerus with both hands and lifts his attacker into the air. She was in the air for a second or so before Lincoln smmed her onto the grass. *Thud* He then pins her down by sitting on top of her. Lincoln pnned to drive the dagger he picked up from before into her head, but he stopped at the very st moment and pressed the tip of the dagger against the center of his attacker's mask. "I." He takes a small breath. "Win," he says slightly out of breath.

  "Do you really think so?" The woman asks while aiming a gun at his head. Where did she pull that from? No actually how was she able to pull it against me? I was pretty sure I left no opening for her to do so how did she do it? Lincoln thought to himself while he stared at the gun, trying to think of a way to avoid the shot if she did decide to fire it but no ideas were coming to mind.

  "T-That's cheating," Lincoln says in response to her question.

  "And how many times have you been told that you should always expect your opponents to not py fair? Now, do you wanna admit that you lost or do you want to get shot?" The woman asks with her finger touching the trigger of the gun ready to fire. He couldn't tell if the gun was real or not but if it was then he had lost. Even if he was right and this dy was Henna then the chances of it being a fake were high. How high? Forty-two percent which was high enough for him. He was about to make his next move but then he remembered all the times where Henna had injured him severely in the past while training. What should I do? Should I risk it and call the person's bluff? But if it's not her and she pulls the trigger then I'm dead. Lincoln thought to himself. He knew that he had to give up but a part of him didn't want to admit defeat.

  The next thing he heard was the woman saying "Too slow," and her finger slowly started to put pressure on the trigger. Lincoln closed his eyes and braced himself for death but instead of feeling a sharp pain. He hears, *scccsh scccsh scccsh*, and feels some liquid hitting his face. Out of shock, he opens his eyes to see droplets of water leaving the end of the gun and hitting the floor. "What? Did you think I was gonna blow your brains out?" Henna asks after giggling for a couple of seconds.

  "It wouldn't be the first time that you have done something extreme," Lincoln says in an annoyed tone now knowing it was Henna. Seeing him so shocked, makes her ugh and spray him some more. "Stop spraying me."

  "Then get off." Once Henna says that Lincoln gets off her, sits on the grass beside her, and uses the front of his hoodie to dry his face. "Tch tch tch." She slowly sits up and rubs her back. "For someone who just came out of hospital, you didn't do too bad."

  "Thanks. I guess," he replies before he stands up and goes and retrieves the dagger that was lodged in the tree.

  "Well, how do you find the hoodie?" She asks while she takes off the mask to reveal her sweaty face underneath it.

  "It's not bad. It keeps me warm and even though it has a thin sheet of metal in it, it doesn't restrict my movements too much," Lincoln responds.

  "See I told you. I put four more of those in your wardrobe just in case anything happens," she says as she slowly stands up, while quietly continuing to make noises of pain from the sm and heads back inside. She then sits down slowly and turns on the TV.

  "Still I can't believe that it will stop a bullet," Lincoln says as he also enters back inside.

  "Hmmm. I mean If you don't believe that the lugrium will stop a bullet, we could test it if you want," she says as she picks up the remote for the TV.

  "No thanks. I think I want to continue living but whenever I feel like dying. I'll give you a shout. Anyway, how has mom been since I've been gone?" Lincoln asks in a worried tone.

  "Don't worry" -she starts flicking through the channels- "she's okay. She hasn't figured out that you were in a fighting tournament." As soon as Henna said that, Lincoln let out a big sigh of relief and said.

  "Good." From Henna's response, he knew that she still hadn't told mom about what actually happened to dad yet and he wanted to bring it up but at the same time. He knew that it wasn't the time to have that discussion with Henna, so he just grabbed his bag and started to head out of the front room.

  "Oh yeah." She stops on the movie channel and throws the remote down. "Is there anything in particur you want to eat?" Henna asks.

  "Something edible and isn't going to have me call the fire brigade again," Lincoln responds as he heads upstairs. When he was at the top of the stairs, he walked down the hallway and passed both Henna's room and the small spare bedroom, before he reached his dad's study. He gnces at the door and lets out a small sigh before he continues to walk down the hallway, turns left, and stands in front of the door to his mom's and dad's room. "I'm back," he says as he opens the door to the sound of his mother's favorite TV show pying on the TV, and the scent of chocote chip cookies now hitting his nose.

  "Your home!" Izabelle shouts. After that, she springs out of bed like a jack in a box and runs across the room to hug him. "I'm gd you're home," She says as she hugs him for dear life. Her light blue eyes glowed as she rubbed her wrinkled face into Lincoln's chest like a pet trying to rub its scent onto its owner. Compared to him she was quite short so he towered over her but when it came to her hair, it came straight down to her shoulders and was damaged from when she used to dye her hair all the time.

  "Come on mom, you don't have to hug me so tightly. I wasn't gone that long," Lincoln says as he hugs her back.

  "I know, I know." She sniffs the front of his hoodie hard. "I'm just gd you're safe," Izabelle says as she continues to squeeze him. They both didn't say anything. They just hugged each other for a good two minutes or so. Even though Lincoln was already ready to end the hug he knew she wasn't so he prolonged it for her. "I'm sorry," she says in a weak voice. She then lets go of him and sits on her bed, with only her wrinkly feet hanging off the edge.

  "It's fine you don't have to apologies," Lincoln says before he goes and grabs the pstic fold-up chair that was in the corner of the room, opens it and sits on it before they speak to each other. A couple of things they spoke about was his mother asking about Brodie. How she was doing, and if she liked the cookies she made her. He told her that she loved the cookies, even though that was a lie as he ate all of them. But that wasn't the only thing he lied about. Most of the things he mentioned were things that didn't happen.

  "Okay, okay." She coughs. "Now I know you're lying," Izabelle says.

  "I'm telling the truth. Lucky Brodie was there 'cause I would have been in trouble," Lincoln says. Should I ask her about dad? He thinks to himself. He knew asking could be risky and may seem strange to her but he had to know if Henna had made any progress on her recovery. After a couple more seconds they both had calmed down from a joke he told and had stopped ughing, so he thought he would ask now. "Have you heard from dad at all?" As soon as he asked Izabelle that question her facial expression went from calm to serious.

  "No, no. I mean... Not really" -she rubs the back of her hands- "I mean I did speak to him a week ago or so. But. I don't know. H-He seemed kind of odd. I don't know." She pauses. "It felt like someone else was texting. Pretending to be him and wanting to end the conversation as soon as possible," Izabelle says like she was in a trance while she stared at the TV.

  "I think it's you overthinking things again," Lincoln says in a confident tone to try and convince her that she was being too cautious.

  "Maybe, maybe. Why do you ask anyway?" Izabelle asks in a more serious tone than normal. Hearing her sound like that for the first in a long time did scare him but he had to pretend that he wasn't affected by her question or tone.

  Did she figure something out? No, no she's probably just asking. He thought to himself. "No particur reason, I was just wondering-" Before Lincoln could finish his sentence they could both smell something burning.

  "For goodness sake." She sighs. "I better go and help her before she burns down the kitchen," Izabelle says before she gets up and heads downstairs. Lincoln was also going to leave but then he saw Izabelle's phone peeking out from under her covers. He stares at her phone for a couple of seconds before he picks it up, as he is curious about the conversation between her and Henna, pretending to be their dad. He swipes up on her phone, enters her six-digit pass code, goes onto her messages, clicks on dads number, and scrolls up until he gets to May the fifth. The messages they had sent each other were pretty normal. It was just asking the everyday questions. Like them talking about Grand design and old fashion flirting which there was a lot of. He would scroll past that as fast as possible as it would make him wince, and cringe too much if saw a lot of it. As he reached the bottom of their messages he saw the st conversation they had which was on the eighteenth of September.

  It takes Lincoln a few seconds to read it all before he chucks her phone back on her bed, slightly upset with Henna. The reason why he was upset was that she said that she was going to be able to come home on the twenty-second. Seeing that message he thinks. Why would you say something like that? He then gets up, leaves his mom's room, and heads to his room. His room was pretty clean and organized. It had a couple of posters of games, a gaming computer, a desk, a medium-sized wardrobe, and his king-size bed. "I don't get it," he says out loud while he stares at his white ceiling.