Chapter 7: Brute Strength

I was sick and tired of Becky Finklestein. I hated the way that she bullied me, and I hated the way that Courtney swooned over her. But I couldn’t do anything to stop her, not with muscles like that. I needed an advantage. So I made a phone call.

Ernesto Valderrama was Miss Valderrama’s husband. They shared a dojo, with Ernesto teaching boys and his wife teaching girls. Lessons were over by the time I got there, but Ernesto said he would make an exception for me after I told about how I was being bullied by a juvenile delinquent who hit my girlfriend to force me into a fight. I didn’t tell him that the bully was a ten year old girl with a genius IQ who stood less than four feet tall and had arms like cannonballs.

The dojo was closed when I got there, but Ernesto let me in. He was a monster. He stood well over six feet tall with muscles bulging under his gi, five o’clock shadow, and a cruel face with two teardrop tattoos under his left eye. He laughed when I walked in. “You’re a big damn kid,” he smiled. “Who’s bullying you, kid? The Hulk?”

No, I thought, remembering the first time I saw Becky’s muscles in that karate class two years ago. It wasn’t the Hulk, it was Wonder Woman. And then I thought about her, muscles bulging in her purple spandex as she bent steel with her bare hands. It wasn’t Wonder Woman, it was the She-Hulk. I shook my head. “I need to learn how to fight just a little bit, so I get this bully off my back” I said. “I have to be able to move in and out and strike quickly, because she’s stronger than me.”

“She?”

“I mean ‘he’,” I stammered.

Ernesto Valderrama chuckled, and motioned to the middle of the room. “Okay kid,” I’ll give you a crash course. Show you a couple of dirty tricks—enough to make someone think twice about picking on you.”

“Thank you, Sensei.”

“Then come back next week, bring a check, and I’ll show you some more dirty tricks. And in a few months we’ll build some real skill around those dirty tricks. Then you can be the bully, eh!?”

We both laughed. I was feeling better. For about a second.

The door slammed open and closed behind me. It was Miss Valderrama. She was wearing big sunglasses that barely concealed a sprawling black eye. She seemed nervous and reluctant, but she was being led by the hand, dragged forward almost, by Becky Finklestein. “Don’t be afwaid Gloria,” Becky squeaked. “You have to stand up to him.”

My heart fell. Becky had her hair in a ponytail, and was wearing her glasses and a karate outfit. With a brown belt. How did she earn a brown belt after only two years of training? Was she really that good?

“What the hell is this,” Ernesto growled. “Get out of here, I have a student.”

Becky turned to me. “You should pwobably go home Gweg,” she said. “Tell Courtney again that I’m sorry. But I had to get your attention somehow.”

Ernesto looked back and forth from me to Becky and grinned from ear to ear. “This little chiquita is your bully,” he laughed. “Maybe I should just teach you how to drop kick a soccer ball, and you’ll be rid of her forever!”

Becky reddened, and a scowl crept across her face.

Gloria Valderrama stepped in front of Becky. “You’re good at that, huh Ernesto? You know all about hitting women.” Then she spit in his face. “Coward!” she hissed.

Ernesto grumbled and rolled his eyes. And then he smacked Gloria’s beautiful face, sending her sunglasses skittering away as she collapsed to the floor. Becky was standing between them in a second. “She came here to talk to you,” Becky growled through clenched teeth. “She loves you! Why do you hit her?”

Ernesto shrugged. “Who cares,” he spat. “If she doesn’t like it let her leave. I’ll find another one just like her.”

“You’re a pig,” Becky said. “And I’m going to slaughter you like one.”

Ernesto laughed. “Oh really,” he barked.

“Yeah,” Becky said, putting her hands on her hips. “If you like hitting women so much, go ahead and hit me.”

Ernesto laughed. “Oh you are protecting Gloria now?” he jeered.

“That’s right,” Becky said, and then, like a flash of white, she knocked Ernesto to the ground with a front leg sweep.

Ernesto kipped up almost instantly, his face burning with anger. “You really want me to hit you, chiquita?” he scoffed, holding up his fists. “I’ve killed men bigger than you with these hands. For fun.”

Becky put her hand to her mouth and feigned a yawn. “Blah, blah, blah,” she taunted. “Look, if you agwee to stop talking, I’ll let you hit me thwee times before I hit you back,” she said.

Ernesto laughed. “And how many times are you going to hit me?” he chuckled.

Becky cackled her cartoon witch laugh. “Just once,” she said.

Ernesto laughed again, but then in a flash he struck. After all, he wasn’t the kind of guy that hesitated to hit women. Or schoolgirls, apparently. With no warning at all he pulled his leg back and shot a side kick into Becky’s chest.

I couldn’t believe it. That was a real kick! As far as he knew, Becky was just an ordinary ten year old girl, and he threw a serious kick right at her!

But of course Becky Finklestein was no ordinary ten year old girl, and Ernesto’s leg buckled as his foot glanced harmlessly off of her torso. “That tickles,” she giggled, untying her belt and loosening her pants. “I won’t even count that one.”

Ernesto was on one knee, stretching out his knee as Becky threw her karate outfit into the corner. She was now standing in the middle of the dojo wearing Supergirl Underoos that were stretched so tightly over her hulking preteen body that they might as well have been painted on. And the way they fit, it wouldn’t have taken much paint. The Underoos were so stretched and distorted by Becky’s bulk that they might as well have been a bikini. They made Supergirl’s skin-tight costume look downright modest, hugging tight against her monstrous thighs and stretching tighly over her developing bust. But then again, Supergirl didn’t have a body like Becky Finklestein.

“Oh my goodness,” Gloria blurted out.

“Dios mio,” Ernesto mumbled.

Becky smiled, and her braces gleamed in the light of the setting sun. “You pwobably don’t want to hit my chest,” she purred. “It’s really stwong. See?”

And then she flexed her right pectoral. It expanded upward and outward in a rippling wave of striated, freckled flesh, pushing its way up through the distressed neck of the blue top, distorting the Supergirl logo beyond recognition. And then she flexed the left one, just as deliberately, until it swelled up to equal its counterpart. Her top was quivering with tension as the three of us gawked at her impossible muscularity. And then she relaxed her right pectoral. And then relaxed her left pectoral. She repeated the cycle of pec flexing again, one-two-three-four, as Ernesto rose to his feet. We all gawked as the compromised blue top shifted and strained as her muscles contracted and relaxed.

Ernesto looked confused, like he was on Candid Camera, but he didn’t look scared. “This is some kind of trick, Gloria,” he spat at his wife.

But she didn’t hear. She was gawking in disbelief at Becky’s overinflated physique. She looked as confused as Ernesto, but she was smiling.

“No trick,” Becky said, resting her hands on her hips. “Just girl power. Pure, unadulterated girl power. You get thwee chances to hurt this body. Then I get to hit you.”

Becky’s green eyes burned with steely confidence as Ernesto picked his next move. The karate master flashed forward suddenly, and brought a spinning backfist down into Becky’s right arm, where the deltoids met the triceps. I had seen that move in kung-fu movies. It was supposed to cripple an opponent’s arm, or at least make it useless for fighting. But of course Becky Finklestein was no ordinary opponent. The force of the punch was so great that it knocked Ernesto off his feet as his hand bounced uselessly off of the ten year old’s bloated musculature. Becky didn’t even blink. “That’s one,” she chirped. “You pwobably don’t want to hit my arms. They’re really stwong. See?”

Then Becky curled her arms up into a double biceps pose. The sleeves of the Underoos, already straining to find a safe place between her biceps and shoulders, split instantly as her enormous, freckled arms erupted into terrifyingly perfect muscle shapes. Gloria gasped in disbelief and covered her mouth. “Oops,” Becky giggled tauntingly as she squeezed another inch of mass out her impossibly muscular arms.

Ernesto still looked confused, but now he also looked angry. Taking a page from Becky’s book, he kicked out with a front sweep, but his foot glanced harmlessly off of Becky’s bulging, diamond-shaped calves, and he fell to the ground again.

Becky pointed her left toe, and blew a bubble as her legs bloomed into slabs of muscle, the teardrop-shaped heads of her vastus muscles relaxing and contracting as she wiggled her foot. “You’re so weak!” she said, laughing. “I barely felt that. And you only get to hit me one more time before I hit you.”

“Se perfecto...” Gloria muttered as she ogled Becky’s legs.

Becky’s thigh was a column of sculpted muscle shapes, tapering into one another and bulging with power. She was showing perfect definition in muscle groups that I had only seen in Courtney’s anatomy textbooks, muscle groups that none of the bodybuilders showing off in weightlifting magazines had, at least not the way Becky had them. She glared down at Ernesto. “Sensei told me that you have lousy form, but you make up for it with brute stwength,” she mused. “I see the lousy form, but I’m still waiting to see the brute stwength.” Then Becky relaxed her left leg, and shook the quad of her right. I swear I could feel the dojo shake as her leg hardened into muscular perfection. “You’re lucky I just wanted your attention when I kicked you, pig. Just look at my legs. Aren’t they huge?”

I didn’t want to look at Becky’s legs. I wanted to go home. I should have left when Becky told me to. Ernesto was a piece of crap, but he wasn’t my bully. Becky was my bully. Some part of me was rooting for a huge man with gang tattoos and a black belt in karate to beat up a ten year old girl.