someone to photograph. The sounds of grunting and loud thumping drew Dan's wandering feet to the gym and he stuck his head inside the door to see what was going on.
The red foam mats were out and a frowning Coach Martin as overseeing the wrestling team's practice. Aside from them the large room was completely empty.
Dan grimaced sympathetically. The wrestling team shouldn't mind if he snapped a few photos of them; it would be the most attention they'd gotten all year. Lambda Academy had an excellent football team, but their wrestling team was composed of only half a dozen boys now and had never been very successful.
Among the small group Dan recognized Ethan Knowles, an auburn-haired casual friend and fellow Junior, Dustin Evans, an aggressive tenth grader, and Keith Michaels, a small, shy freshman who had joined the team in the hopes that being a member would keep him from being picked on. Right now Ethan was having a practice match against a tall blond body, their athletically lean and wiry bodies straining against one another, with the other four sitting cross-legged and watching raptly.
Stepping onto the mats which covered most of the floor, Dan maneuvered until he could fit all six of them into his picture, though the scowling Coach Martin was too far off to the side to be in the shot. That was probably just as well; season after season of losses had made him surly and irritable, the least liked teacher at the Academy.
As his finger pressed the button, Dan decided that if the photograph was any good, he'd give it to Ethan as a present.
No sooner had Dan depressed the button than the collective roar from many throats behind him practically sent him into orbit! Whirling around, he saw the bleachers were positively packed! What the hell?!? How had this many people managed to sneak in behind him without him hearing them? His back had only been turned for a moment!
Nor was the crowd at all quiet. They were cheering and laughing, a few even holding up handmade signs. "Keith the Crusher!" read one, "Deadly Dustin" another.
Taking the photo which emerged from the camera and shaking it in the air, the confused, bewildered teen turned back toward the team. What he saw made him drop both the camera and photo in shock!
All six athletes were fucking BUILT now, remarkably ripped and totally jacked! Each boy appeared to have put on at least eighty pounds of bulging, rock-hard muscle mass! Ethan and the tow-headed kid were still wrestling, but now the two were extremely burly boy behemoths! As Dan watched in helpless bewilderment, Ethan gained the advantage, pinning his opponent for the count. The awesome adolescent beasts of jaw-dropping muscles and physical power stood and shook hands with one another as the crowd in the bleachers doubled the volume of their cheering.
Somehow, amidst all that noise, Dan heard his name being called. In a daze, he turned once more toward the enthusiastic mob, trying to discern who had shouted for him. A waving of both arms enabled him to pick out Tom Weiss, one of his best friends. Tom started making frantic motions for him to get over there. Dan was about to do so when he heard a voice right behind him ask, "Couldn't resist coming in for a closer look, huh?"
Turning once again Dan saw Ethan standing only a few feet away from him. Although the two were the same height, Ethan was so much broader and thicker that it seemed he was towering imposingly over the shocked photographer. His red and black wrestling signet was stretched skin-tight over his taut, titanically muscled form.
Smirking at Dan's staring, Ethan casually lifted his tree-trunk thick right arm and flexed, his great bicep swelling up to twenty-five inches! As if in a dream, Dan reached out to feel that stone-solid, power-packed mass of pure muscle!
How on Earth had this happened?!? How had Ethan gone from a beanpole to being a teenage Mr. Universe champion?!?
Of course Ethan wasn't the only one who'd changed, a fact Dan was reminded of when he heard someone say, "Out of the way, Ethan; he's mine!"
Relaxing his massively muscled right arm, Ethan stepped aside to reveal Keith. The once-scrawny ninth grader had become a short pillar of flawlessly sculpted, stupendously large, and marble-hard muscles! Beneath his dark, curly hair there was an expression of predatory eagerness on his freckled face which Dan didn't care for at all.
"You know the rules," Keith continued, still speaking to his teammate. "Coach says anyone who trespasses on the mats while we're practicing belongs to me."
"I was just making sure he didn't get away, bro," Ethan assures his fellow wrestler. "Have fun!"
Ethan walked away without a backward glance, leaving Dan to stare nervously down at a boy whom he could have taken with one hand yesterday. Today, though, Keith was muscles on top of muscles, and Dan had no desire to tussle with him.
"Look, I'm sorry I got on the mat; I'll get off it right now, okay?"
"You're not going anywhere, not until I'm through with you!" Keith snarled, then lunged forward.
So begin yet another surreal experience in a day already full of them. Dan found himself completely helpless against the overwhelmingly, spectacularly strong younger boy! He felt like a toddler trying to wrestle with his father! The unbelievably mighty musclekid didn't even seem to notice Dan's attempts at resistance, tossing him around the gym like a rag doll before the unstoppable little Hercules brutally put him face-down into the mat in a reverse suplex slam!
Dan slowly pushed himself up, blood gushing from his nose, to find Keith looming commandingly over his prone body.
"Don't get blood on my wrestling shoes when you kiss them," Keith warns you menacingly.
Kiss his shoes, Dan thought incredulously. Haven't I been humiliated enough? When the freckle-faced, fourteen year-old nuclear powerhouse frowned and threateningly hit a devastating double bicep pose, however, Dan decided his pride was less important than his life. Using his hands to catch the blood, he quickly kissed both of his kid conqueror's wrestling shoes.
Sitting up afterward, he was almost pathetically grateful to see Coach Martin approaching.
"I hope you've learned your lesson," he began sternly, and Dan felt a wave of relief flow over him. Wait a minute, though, how had Keith learned any kind of lesson at all? It wasn't as if Dan had even bruised the monstrously muscled youth, while he'd had the frigging crap beaten out of him! Unless . . .
"I know they're the hottest studs you've ever seen in your life, but nobody gets away with bothering my He-Boys while they're practicing," Coach Martin continued. "The mat is strictly off-limits."
The coach was actually reprimanding HIM! For stepping on the stupid mat, which Keith had half killed him! And no one in the watching crowd seemed to find this the least bit unusual. Those who weren't laughing and cheering wer chanting "Dynamite, dynamite," for some reason.
To add insult to injury, Coach clapped a hand on the extremely broad right shoulder of the smug, musclebound superboy standing confident and at ease by his side, huge arms crossed over his truly phenomenal pecs.
"Those were some nice moves, son. I'm proud of you," he told Keith sincerely, and Dan felt like vomiting.
"As for you, get to the nurse's station."
"But it's after four, she'll have already gone home," Dan protested.
"She always stays after when we have practice and matches," Coach said dismissively, "just in case my boys injure someone."
"Hey, it's not our fault all the other teams are made up of puny weaklings," Keith pointed out with a cheeky arrogance, and sourpuss Coach Martin actually threw back his head and laughed!
"No, it's not, son," he says affectionately before once more addressing Dan.
"Now, can you make it to Nurse's room on your own, or do you need Keith to carry you?" he asked mockingly.
"No problem," Keith replied, again proudly flexing his bronzed, monumentally large biceps. "He weights about as much as a feather to me!"
Dan was one hundred percent certain Keith could effortlessly carry his entire body weight the length of the campus with one hand! He was equally certain that if this short, superbly hunky Adonis accompanied him to the nurse, he'd arrive with even more injuries than he already had.
Fortunately, a third option presented itself.
"I'll get him there," Tom volunteered, running up close to the three of you, but carefully avoiding stepping on the mat. "I wouldn't want you to waste any more of your practice time, Keith," he said with apologetic humility as Dan slowly stood up.
"Fine. Get out of here!" the younger boy ordered Dan, giving him a casual yet still incredibly powerful shove, straight into Tom's arms. With Tom's help, Dan left the gym.
"Man, what were you thinking?" Tom remonstrated with him. "Everyone knows the rule about staying off the mat during practice! Were you looking to have your ass kicked by Dyna Mite?"
"Huh?" Dan asked. "Dyna Mite?"
"Keith's nickname; you know that. He really rung your bell, didn't he?" Tom asked sympathetically.
"He was so fast!" Dan admitted, shuddering at the memory. "And so STRONG! It didn't matter that I was eight inches taller; I was like a bug to him!"
"Yeah, even the Varsity football meatheads have learned to stay the fuck out of Keith's way, at least since he hospitalized Kurt and Chad."
"How isn't he in jail?" Dan questioned.
"Are you kidding? The police aren't going to touch one of Lambda's super-star wrestlers, not after that whole article in Sports Illustrated."
Dan's head was spinning, and not just from the loss of blood. Too much had changed, and it all started when he took that picture.
The picture! The camera! He'd left them both behind in the gym!
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