“Thanks, Jake. You’re my best friend!” Nick said softly, as he let go of his pal.
“Don’t mention it. We’ll go into the gym at my house and see how strong you are, okay?” Jacob suggested, just as his cell phone let out a loud beep. “Oh, nuts. My mom just texted me. I need to go home and have dinner. Just come over to my house in the morning, okay?”
“Thanks, dude. Here, take the pearl with you.” Nick sighed.
“The pearl is still grey-colored, so we can’t use it for anything right now. Just enjoy your muscle and strength! Just be careful, okay? Don’t break anything or hurt anybody!” Jacob instructed his muscular friend before he walked out the door. “Remember, you’re much stronger now than… Umm…”
Jacob thought for a moment. His memory of what Nick used to look like, before the pearl had changed him, began to fade since the pearl began to alter reality and made it so it seemed completely normal for Nick to be so big, strong, and muscular.
“I’m much stronger than… what?” Nick asked.
“Umm… I’m drawing a blank.” Jacob replied. “You have always been the strongest, dude! I have always known you as a very muscular kid! So, don’t worry!”
Jacob crossed the street and walked back to his house while Nick strolled back inside and ran up the stairs. He would have a nice dinner with his parents before working out in the small home gym and finally going to bed that night.
The following morning, Jacob heard a loud knocking on the front door, right after the family had enjoyed a healthy breakfast in the kitchen. When Jacob opened the front door, he was greeted by a young, muscular boy who was wearing shorts, sneakers, and a tank top. His shoulders were incredibly wide, and his arms were thick with muscle, and his legs were as large as tree trunks.
“Hey… I hope I’m not too early?” Nick asked shyly.
“No, of course not, buddy! Come on in!” Jacob smiled, letting the big boy in. “Let’s get downstairs and see how strong you are these days!”
The two boys went into the basement where the family had set up a small home gym, decked out with dumbbells, various machines, and a treadmill. Jacob led his friend to the free weights and Nick immediately reached for the heaviest dumbbells, which weighed one-hundred pounds each.
“Aww, dude. These are much too light for me!” Nick grinned, as he started doing arm curls with the big, heavy weights. “I don’t feel anything at all! These weights are LIGHT!”
“Well, no wonder! Look how big your arms have become, dude! They’re bulging with muscle everywhere!” Jacob grinned, as he reached out with his arm and poked one of Nick’s big, solid biceps. “Let’s see how fast you can run on the treadmill!”
Nick stepped on the treadmill and Jacob pushed a few buttons on the large, digital display. The large, rubber band on the treadmill started moving, forcing Nick to walk. As Jacob increased the speed, it forced Nick to walk faster and faster, until Nick finally ended up running.
Jacob increased the speed to 4 miles per hour, and Nick just kept on going. After a minute or so, he increased the speed again, but the pace was still too easy for Nick. Finally, he put the treadmill on the maximum speed possible, which was 12 miles per hour, as Nick just kept on taking it in stride.
After several minutes, Jacob just lowered the speed again, until he stopped the treadmill altogether.
“Man, I know I can run a LOT faster than this!” Nick stated, as he hopped off the machine. “That was too slow for me!”
“Dude! This treadmill can’t go any faster than that! Which means, that you can run even faster than 12 miles per hour for sure!” Jacob stated, as Nick moved to the side of the machine. He was barely sweating from the short run on the treadmill.
“Nice! Can we go outside and play? I wanna see how high I can jump!” Nick asked him.
Once the boys ran up the stairs and out the back door, they got out to the large backyard where Jacob often liked to kick the soccer ball against the long, 6-foot-tall wooden fence.
“Here, kick the ball back to me… Gently!” Jacob instructed his pal, who backed off a bit so he could kick the ball to his friend across the large, grassy field.
Jacob and Nick exchanged kicks back and forth, which went well for just a few minutes, until Nick kicked the ball too hard, sending the black-and-white soccer ball soaring over the tall fence and deep into the neighbor’s expansive yard. Luckily, there were two girls playing in the backyard as well. The two girls were about Jacob’s age.
“Umm… Hello? Alyssa? I’m sorry, but my friend accidentally kicked my soccer ball over the fence. Can you get it for me, please?” Jacob spoke while glancing through the one-inch spaces between the wooden boards which made up the tall, 6-foot fence.
“Jake! You’re disrupting our trampoline jumping practice! But I see the ball. You’re lucky it didn’t land in the swimming pool!” Alyssa replied annoyingly, as she went to go get the ball.
She and her friend Amy were jumping on the large trampoline, which was stationed in the far corner of the backyard.
“A trampoline? Gosh, I wish you had a trampoline over here! It would be cool to be able to jump so high!” Nick uttered.
“Dude! You don’t NEED a trampoline! You’re strong enough to jump super high as it is!” Jacob answered. “You just need to practice!”
“Yeah, but I can’t seem to jump high enough for my taste!” Nick groaned, as he walked over to a patch of grass. He grunted loudly as he leaped straight into the air. He soared a good 6 feet into the air, before landing right back on the ground.
“You realize you’re able to jump much higher than all the other kids in school, right?” Jacob noted.
Nick made a few more attempts, going up to 10 feet high. Finally, he had reached the height of the roof of the house, but not after a few practice jumps.
“I’d like to be able to jump over buildings! That would be so cool! But that would take weeks for me to be able to jump that high and that far!” Nick sighed.
“No, It won’t take weeks! You could probably gain the strength to jump that high right now! Today!” Jacob suggested. “Just use the pearl!”
“What do you mean by that? I have to jump on the pearl?” Nick wondered out loud.
“NO, you dummy!” Jacob giggled. “You use the pearl to make a wish. You wish for the ability to jump over buildings! They are thousands of feet tall. Like… A mile-high into the air!”
“Aww… Can you help me with that? How do I make that wish? What do I say?”
Jacob ran into his bedroom and retrieved the Pearl of Potential. Once he came back down and entered the backyard, he handed the object to Nick.
“Hey, look! Your pearl is all clear again! Not grey, like it was last night!” Nick noticed, as he carefully held the pearl in his hands. “So, now what do I do?”
Jacob thought for a minute until he knew how to respond.
“Okay, just repeat after me, Nick: ‘I wish I had the ability to leap over tall buildings, up to a mile in height and up to a mile in distance, without the use of any equipment besides my own legs and feet!’”
Nick just looked down and stared intensely at the pearl, which he held in his hands.
“Umm… I wish I had the ability to leap over tall buildings, up to a mile in height and up to a mile in distance, without the use of any equipment besides my own legs and feet!” Nick repeated slowly, with his glaze fixed on the clear, round pearl in his hands.
The pearl glowed a bright, white light, which engulfed only Nick’s legs this time around.
“Uhhmmmmm….” Nick closed his eyes and let out a soft moan as his legs became even stronger, while they were glowing from the light which was emitted from the pearl. After a few moments, the light dimmed, and the clear pearl had turned a soft grey color once more.
“Uhh… Did it work?” Nick wondered, after he opened his eyes and looked down, not really seeing anything different about him. “I still look the same… I think!”
“Well… Wait a minute… stand up straight, will you?” Jacob suggested.
Nick straightened out and looked him straight in the eye. Jacob saw that Nick was right at his eye-level now. But reality began to shift, and it was just another fact of life now. Nick has always been a big kid, who was now, at age 8, the same height as 10-year-old Jacob.
“Umm… You’ve always been big for your age, so this is nothing new. You’ll be taller than me, soon. I’m used to this, anyway. Give me the pearl back, so you can jump around a bit!” Jacob ordered. “You look more like a big ten-year-old dude than an eight-year-old muscle kid.”
Nick handed him the pearl, which Jacob dropped in his backpack. Nick then stepped back a bit, taking a deep breath before he leaped into the sky.
“WHAAAH!” Nick screamed as he soared straight into the air, ascending so high into the sky that Jacob couldn’t even see him anymore! Then, Nick’s body came falling, feet-first, landing hard on the grass with his ultra-powerful, pumped-up legs. “YES! I can do this! AWESOME! I can get around like this!”
Nick leaped into the air again, landing on the roof of the house. Then, he jumped to the neighbor’s house, returning shortly with Jacob’s soccer ball in his hands.
“I found your ball; it was way on the other side of their property. They were still looking for it as I leaped across their yard!” Nick giggled. “Your neighbors have a huge place! They must be rich!”
“Awesome! Thanks for getting my soccer ball, bro!” Jacob smiled. “And yes, the man next door works for some rich oil tycoon or something. Their mansion is massive and so is their yard. I was afraid they would never find my soccer ball over there. Now that you can run fast and you can leap over buildings, you’re one step closer to becoming a real-life superhero! What do you think that, huh?”
“I think we need to train your muscles some more. Where can we find something big or heavy for you to lift? Hmm…” Jacob wondered.
His question would be answered soon enough, for Nick’s powers and strength would be called upon shortly, when…
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