THE EDUCATION OF DANNY (A Continuation of "The Charge") by Chip Masterson WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS SCENES OF VIOLENCE. IF YOU'RE UNDERAGE OR OFFENDED BY VIOLENCE AND/OR QUEER SEX, DON'T READ THIS. Part One Danny saved my life. By which I mean, he didn't kill me, though he could've. Almost did, in fact, and there was nothing I could do about it. It all started when I discovered he was sneaking out at night. All night. We never noticed because he was the smartest kid in each of his classes, at Cal Tech, remember. He was even smarter than some of the profs. I mean, they had more knowledge, but he could put it together faster and solve problems that stumped them. He never appeared sleepy, and he never got sick. They didn't suspect he was strong. He played this whole Clark Kent routine. They thought he ought to do some gym, since he's only thirteen, but he made his father talk them out of it. He wore big sweatshirts and stuff. Hardly anyone knew what he was capable of. I take that back. Hardly anyone knew how strong he was. None of us knew what he was capable of. You've heard maybe about some infrastructure problems we've been having in California? Seems all over the state we're suddenly falling apart. Farmers finding tractors with wheels ripped off. Earthquake retrofitters have been hauled into court, the utilities are facing huge losses, a lot of people have been hurt with bridges collapsing. Well, by now I think you know what the problem is. It isn't faulty concrete. It's something concrete was never designed to withstand. Danny. Danny isn't just strong, remember. Those legs can really pick up speed. I clocked him doing 100 yard dash in 6.4 seconds, carrying 95 lb free weights in his hands (and not down at his side, he churned his hands like anyone does). There isn't a world record he couldn't break. I think his standing jump exceeds the highest pole vault. But he isn't a sprinter: it's with long distances where he really packs on speed. Under cover of night he runs up parallel to I-5. Crossing the Grapevine over the Tehachapi mountains doesn't seem to slow him down either. You know those big powerlines that march down the state, the big power grid? On calm nights he would go up to them and where the steel meets the concrete posts, he would simply squeeze. The L-shaped steel would warp under his fingers. He'd knead and massage the squeaking metal until it was compressed and fractured but still able to support the tower's weight, for awhile. He'd do this to a few here and there. Then, some days later in the next big wind storm, the weakened towers would sink, collapse, snapping powerlines, blacking out Fresno or parts of Los Angeles, setting fire to fields.... When one highway overpass collapsed and nearly killed an RV driver, he just giggled in a way that made me ask questions. We were hanging out one Saturday (at his place, watching dorky cartoons). He had a bunch of big plastic Pepsi bottles, empty, and was crushing the openings. Maybe that doesn't sound difficult, but you try it. Try squeezing that hard threaded plastic. You'll probably need pliers and both hands. He put them between his fingers and thumbs and did eight at a time, the hard plastic narrowing into ovals then cracking as he brought his pinkie against his ring finger, his ring finger against his fuck- you finger, etc. I read him the account paper and he just laughed. "I got all this nervous energy, you know? I can't get it out playing football - -" "You'd kill people." "I know, MOTHER. So I went out one night to test myself against one of those retrofitted bridges. You know, where they put that thick iron sheath around the bridge support? "First I find where the seam is. Usually riveted and welded. Starting at the bottom, I pry a corner up. The iron wants to stay hard and in shape but my fingers tell it different. And it listens to my fingers pretty quick. I hear it creak and groan like a big baby while my fingers claw and pull at it and finally little cracks appear in the weld. Then it's pretty easy to bend it backward, screeching in pain, to pop the first rivet. I have to put a little more muscle into it but that baby finally can't hold against me, it pops with a zing. I really have to work my forearms to roll and wrench that thick iron up but the more iron I crush the more leverage I have to rip the welds wide open and burst those fuckin' rivets." Danny stopped for a minute, engrossed with his hand, turning and flexing it while the obedient muscles in his forearm dance like a python swallowing a pig, and that boy's bicep begins to swell and crest beyond any boy's fantasy. "How do you do this without being seen by cars and truckers?" "I paint myself black. I used to use spandex but it just can't expand over my muscles, it always rips. You know how I pump up, Scotty boy." He flexed both biceps, his arms suddenly bouncing from 13-year-old weight trainer to 17-year- old quarterback, and we both know it doesn't stop there. "Anyway, once it's split enough, I have to tear it off to make it look like it weakened, and I have to put my back into it, tugging and pulling the thick iron at an angle until my kid strength overstresses the metal and it rips apart along the little cracks that now run all through it. It rings like a fuckin' bell." "Language, Danny." "You know, Scott, you really oughta be my mother. Wanna breast feed me now, mommy?" I sighed and sat back, wondering what to do. "Then I can get my hands on the cool concrete," Danny continues. "Depends then on my mood. I can batter it, push at it, or press it together, but my favorite is a combination: I strike the concrete until fissures open and reaching in, I pull the crack open wider and force it deeper inside. If I'm lucky I can pull chunks away from some rebar and squeeze the metal flat with my fingers. Then I wedge the concrete back in and press the iron back in place, shoving it and pressing the jagged edges together so it'll hold until the support buckles. Then go onto the next." "But Danny, people are getting hurt!" "Weak people. Wouldn't hurt me." "You're putting people in the hospital. What did they ever do to you?" "Ah, let's talk about something else." You did what Danny told you to. So I convinced him a couple weeks later to let me come along. "Okay, but you gotta keep up with me. I ain't waiting around for that old muffle car of yours." We set out one night about 9 p.m. He let me have a head start even though my GTO, my pride and joy, has quarter-miled in 13.9 seconds at 102.8 mph at the local track. He said to rendezvous at a certain bridge up I-5 near Hanford at 11:30 p.m. That was nearly half the way to San Francisco. "I was about to start without you," he said, rattling some chains in his hands as I parked off the road and scrambled down the embankment. "I took this off some farm equipment. They won't miss it. You remember that Hercules movie that was on TV awhile back, where he tore down a temple? I wanna try that." There was a series of thin concrete columns supporting the double highway over a wash. I just sat back in the shadows and watched. Danny took the chains and wrapped them around the columns in a series of figure eights. There were two rows set in groups of four, eight columns per side of the highway, sixteen in all. He stood in the gap between the two sides of the interstate gathered the clinking links into his hands. Rattling them to test their strength, he looked at me and grinned beneath his curly mop. "I'd like to see that big oaf do this." He pulled on the chains, his arms straight out and his chest and shoulders spread high. He breathed in and out and gathered the chains link by link up into his fingers until they twisted in the air, resisting his pull. All the slack tightened and his extended forearms bunched like grapes under the skin. All along the base of the columns, each two feet in diameter, the chain clinked and turned until it was completely taut. Danny's shoulders grew in sharp distinction from his stretched arm. His biceps opened like pipes, swelling up above the plane of his arm, while his triceps hung below in perfect arcs that trembled slightly. His chest deepened in broad striations of twisting muscle, and the chain links emitted a tight clinking grind as they twisted a little more than natural movement would allow. A dry clunking sound broke out of the posts, as reinforced concrete started to crack and shift to find resistance against this insanity. Still Danny's lats thickened into writhing cables of kid muscle power, and little chinks of cement began to spatter down onto the ground. Two outside columns jerked inward and Danny began pumping his legs, quads bursting into diamonds of strength any adult powerlifter would envy. I saw one column split up its length to the bridge above, crumbs of concrete tumbling down, and still he poured more muscle into the straining links. On the far side I saw a column crunch inward beneath the chain, the cement crumbling away until the links caught on the rebar beneath-- and the rebar bent inward with an audible screech. He had four chains going against four columns each, links flattening against the composite stone. Three columns burst inward at once and he pulled the rusty iron links up into his hands. He didn't want to stop until each column had cracked but he didn't want to pull the bridge down entirely. He wanted the collapse to happen after he was gone. This time he miscalculated. A fully-loaded big rig thundered over the bridge and columns that split all the way up bowed outward in two directions, cracking the roadway above. The rig sailed on by but it was clear even a Hyundai would finish the job. Danny dropped the links and wrapped his arms around the column, forcing the concrete together as rebar screamed its way back into place. Pushing upward he held the roadway intact as cars and trucks roared over it. But he couldn't hold it forever. Well, he could.... I climbed up the embankment and watched for a break in the traffic while he continued to brace the column against tons of rolling steel. Finally the traffic let up and he let go. The entire two-lane bridge thundered inward, shattered concrete and torn asphalt bouncing off his chest, leaving shallow scratches in the skin. I climbed into my car to get out of there when I saw in my rearview Danny make a signature of sorts: in one large chunk of concrete, he grabbed two broken bars of rebar and twisted them, squeaking, into a bow. He called out to me, "That should keep 'em guessing." Then taking the chains, he flung them far across the fields like a giant's bola, where they vanished in the darkness. He, of course, beat me back. I have no idea what other damage he did along, but I heard afterwards there was a thresher that looked like it had gone through a tornado. When I pulled into his driveway he had a cement-crusted length of rebar that he was curling into a tight ball with the palm of one hand. I was terrified at what he might do to something like the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the challenge that thick steel and gigantic cables would represent to him. I really lit into him. "People are going to die when they hit that hole in the road. How can you justify this just to burn off energy?" "I don't see you setting out warning cones, little miss concerned." He just kept curling and crunching that half-inch bar of groaning steel into his palm, his forearm writhing like a nest of snakes. "I'm not taking the fall for you," I said, knowing the police would take one look at my car, find the chains and throw my ass in jail. "But you better find something else to take your hormones out on." "Or what, you'll send me to my room?" Danny looked up at me, and rose to his full height, just a couple inches below mine. His angelic face beamed, at odds with the rippling column of muscle supporting it. "I'd like to see you try." He grunted and looked up at the sky. "I'd like to see the room." He fixed me eyes to make sure I knew what who I was dealing with, and walked away. I leaned against my car, mind spinning. I called up Lance and Kevin. We were known (okay, we called ourselves) the Three Goats on account of we each had a rad GTO we'd restored. My Nightshade Green '68 with a full race cam and 428 engine was the fastest. I've gotten it up to 118 mph in 15.5 seconds. Kevin's '67 Black hardtop had a 348 horsepower tri-powered 389 and Lance's '69 Carousel Red Judge convertible with its Ram Air III kept neck and neck just behind, quarter-miling 17 seconds and 16 seconds each at 100 mph. Think about those speeds for a minute, and go back to my racing Danny up 1-5 in the dead of night. He wasn't even winded anymore by the time I got to that bridge and I floored it, using over half a tank of gas to get there. He'd had time to wrench apart some heavy equipment to snag those big-linked chains, forcing metal apart with his bare, thirteen-year-old hands. My engine had ticked and rattled and he had the power in his back and arms to cripple sixteen steel-reinforced concrete columns that had held up tons of traffic and withstood flash-floods with ease. I told the Goats it would be tough, but three cars with combined weight of five and half tons, nearly 1000 horsepower and over 1300 lbs of torque, we might just overpower him, if we worked together. We got some cables, and three deep sea fishing nets, the kind made out of steel mesh. We tied the cables off to the chassis and the nets were secured to the cables, and stowed it in the trunks. And waited outside Gorman for Danny to come through the next night. There was an old garage/body shop where I thought he might pass through; he had a fondness for these places. We spread our nets across the gap between two buildings and hoped for the best. About 11 p.m. he raced through and hit the nets so hard he dragged all three cars sideways and backwards many feet. We heard a savage snarling and the sound of metal mesh starting to tear. We gunned our motors and headed in different directions, stretching the cables and bringing Danny to his knees. My plan was get out and give him a stern talk while he was pinned down. I really didn't expect him to get up. Those fingers poked through the wire nets and quivered. Metal held, then stretched, then tore apart until his hands shot up. Forming fists, he rammed his arms through the taut net and started stretching the hole anew, bringing his rippling arms apart and downward as tight steel mesh ripped against his triceps. His head popped through, frightening in its mask of fury. He held a double- biceps pose for minute, hard boy muscles peaking like no child's ever could. When he was sure we'd witnessed his promise of strength, he reached in and further shredded the net. His hands worked quickly to start gathering in the net, dragging our idling cars back. Like when the Green Gargantua surfaces and drags all the villagers back into the sea. We all hit the gas but twelve big wheels ground, jerked and soon began to spin with high squeals. He kept pulling all three muscle cars backward in quick, deft jerks, his hands working the three directions like he was playing some demonic harp. We gaped in awe as he held three skidding GTOs and drew them towards himself. This thirteen- year-old-kid was outmuscling three muscle cars at once! I tried to picture a thousand horses stomping and screaming, their powerful legs kicking and thrusting and buckling as this boy-man equaled their combined strength, then exceeded it, doubled it, tripled it with sheer brawn. I could hardly imagine it, all those horses mastered by that striated chest, those bulging arms, those swollen quads, all joined at a 26" waist. Kevin started to fishtail. The squealing tires, roaring engines and thick smoke made my eyes water but I could see Lance shifting around, trying to find some traction but Danny just kept jerking his car backwards before his treads could find a grip. Lance lost all his ground first and Danny, holding Kevin and me with one bristling arm, stepped on the cable and held Lance there. First he ripped the spoiler off, then his fingers pressed down onto the trunk lid. The solid steel dimpled under his hand. He kept squeezing the steel until it crumpled down, the lid warping up against its hinges. His fingers dug in and pierced the metal like a can opener and gripped the body itself and he started shaking it, just shaking it. The wheels kept spinning as he shook them sideways and they skidded over the concrete. Then Lance did something stupid. He jumped the car into reverse. He didn't have enough room and his bumper just folded against Danny's legs. I heard Danny's shattering voice over the smoking engines and whining tires "I'll kill you for that!" and I knew what I had to do. I was farthest away, about ten feet or so, and I jumped my car into reverse. With Danny already pulling the car practically flew and knocked him down. My trunk crunched and the lid flew open, creased inward across the middle. Kevin backed at full speed into Danny. Danny was still down and I watched his torn wheels drive right over Danny's chest, like a big speed bump. Kevin flew out of his seat and hit his head on the roof. The impact stalled his motor and left him with Danny under the car. He thought he must have killed him because he started cheering, but Danny's chest could easily support that weight. He stopped cheering when he felt the car rise straight up. Danny was benching Kevin's car, lifting all four wheels off the ground. He pumped it up and down, his pecs contracting and bunching as they controlled the weight utterly: he actually threw and caught it like he was getting ready to heave it when stupid Lance rammed back into Kevin's bumper, knocking the car out of Danny's hands. The rear wheel bounced again on Danny's chest and knocked Kevin against the steering wheel. I could see blood dripping off his face as Danny stood up, five feet eight inches of enraged muscle boy. Veins snaked above writhing cables as he lifted the rear end of each car beside him. He stood there, panting, getting angrier, his little face red and his hair blazing like a corona, two shifting, stalled muscle cars held in each hand. With a roar, he flipped them. I saw it as if in slow motion. Veins burst out down his forearms and around biceps that swelled and forced the veins to snake. His long neck spoked with veins and his chest split into huge ripped relief. His shoulders exploded as he screamed and jerked his hands up. The cars rose backward, not just up but off the ground, their grills missing the concrete by inches as they spun over. Kevin and Lance tumbled around inside but Danny didn't give them a minute to sort out the confusion, the horror. He wanted to show them what muscle was all about. My jaw dropped as I saw Danny reach down into the chassis of each car as it rocked on its roof, the force and weight crunching and shattering the glass. Something squeaked beneath his hands and then he twisted his wrists. His arms expanded into vein-popping madness as the cars groaned up and scraped onto their sides and turned back over: his arms continued to support their weight and he lowered them onto their wheels. Lance and Kevin, terrified and rattled, instantly started the car and tried to race away but Danny held them firm, chassis groaning anew with the tension. Smoke enclosed Danny in a fog and the roaring of pistons and over-torqued transaxles made me wince but somehow above the ear-splitting noise of helpless muscle cars straining to break free of their superhuman captor Danny's lungs powered his voice in a heart-stopping crescendo: "I'm the fucking God here!" Lance and Kevin, terrified and frantic, each stopped and shifted in reverse, trying to crush Danny between them. His arms sank a little toward his sides but that solid mass of muscle wouldn't dent. He held and pushed them away to arms length. Grinning maniacally Danny began shoving Kevin's car toward the brick wall of the abandoned garage, dragging Lance's rocking car behind him. With that one hideous arm Danny rammed Kevin's grill into the wall, wheels still smoking in reverse and shrieking over the pavement. Gravel broke loose and rained across the yard. Lance now tried to break free, desperately hoping Danny's attention would lapse; but Danny's fist tightened and metal creaked and crunched under his fingers. He shoved Kevin's car into the wall again and the front fenders bent outward, the hood creased. Pulling it back, he rammed again, and the wall shook. More metal buckled and popped off the folding frame and the hood popped open, exposing the snarling, smoking engine. Lance's tires began peeling off strips of tortured steel-belted rubber the same time Kevin's did, and their rims began sparking and gouging the concrete. Danny's rippling arm crammed Kevin again into the wall and lightning-bolt cracks zig-zagged up the mortar. Danny pulled back and shoved again, ignoring the chunks of cement flying and smashing against his body from the wheels. The car wrinkled against the wall as he slammed it again and again, steel puckering into corrugated folds that seemed to flow like liquid. Kevin's engine made a laboring, off-kilter noise and Kevin began screaming hysterically as Danny shoved him through the wall and broken brick rained through the shattered windshield. The hood tore off its hinges and the roof dented and smashed under the debris. Turned his attention one last time to Lance, Danny kicked and sent him fishtailing into another wall so hard the wall caved in but didn't collapse. Lance crawled out through the passenger window and ran from his mangled muscle car into the night. I didn't see him again for over a week. I ran over to the hole in the garage and screamed for Danny to stop but he kicked Kevin's car and it skittered sideways. Danny approached an hydraulic lift set into the floor and reached his fingers underneath one thick prong. His back widened, his thighs raged and his whole body seemed to inflate as a deep groaning and creaking rumbled up through the oil-stained concrete. The lift came up under his force a couple inches and he took no time wrenching it further. It shook and screeched into the air, protesting the strength that manhandled it despite its rust and hydraulic-powered weight. Dry pistons pulled apart and internal machinery bent and broke and finally the lift was overhead. Twisting at the waist, Danny grabbed the passenger door of Kevin's battered car and twisted it around until Kevin's door was flush with the lift's big post. He braced his hands on the door seams and pressed. The car instantly crackled and screeched its mechanical agony. It thumped inward around the post, the roof sinking deeper inward, Kevin's unconscious body trapped between the folding door and the sinking roof. Danny reared back and slammed his hands into the denting body and it thumped again. Small shoves flattened the car through the middle and crushed Kevin within the collapsing steel cage. I wept and screamed and started throwing bricks at Danny but they simply bounced off his back with a small puff of red powder. Danny stopped and turned to me, flexing into a crab pose so thick and cut I wet myself and my knees gave out. With a sneer he turned back and shoved hard into the V-shaped auto. The wheels bent and splayed outward as the angle grew steeper. Heedless I jumped up on the quivering hood that rippled under my feet. The windshield was completely gone and I reached in grabbed Kevin under the arms and hauled him up and out of the car. Danny crammed the Detroit steel beneath his force in a blind juggernaut. The post now was where the center of the car used to be and Kevin's body would have been pulped had I not gotten to him in time. And Danny kept pressing. The body buckled and screeched and shivered and Danny squeezed it around the post. Then he stopped, stepped back and took a breath. I wept for Kevin's close call, and for what Danny irretrievably lost in this reckless moment. Danny approached the out-muscled car again. He stretched his arms out along its bowed length and applied pressure. His pecs sank into the denting metal and even the muscles of his arms pinged into the panels that bent upward around them as he ground the car around the post. The thick post bent backward a few inches with a deep groan and the car convulsed beneath Danny's arms, jumping and bucking as the iron chassis horseshoed in clashing agony. Each time his feet pumped into the concrete it starred and broke, his great thighs churning the floor into a mass of fragmented cement. Finally the two left-side fenders met and Danny, wheezing a little from the strain, crushed them together, grinding the metal into a twisted lock. He released his tension and the car was so fully defeated the steel didn't even try to straighten out. He stepped back and wiped his brow, his engorged bicep obscene, peaking half way up his forearm. He turned and walked over to me, crushing broken bits of brick to powder beneath his naked feet. "He's my best friend," I sobbed, ignoring my danger. "You're no better than a murderer." He picked me up by my shirtfront and held me off the ground with one arm. The fabric ripped and cut into my skin so I braced myself against the living marble of that bulging arm. Despite everything I'd witnessed and every straight impulse I'd ever had, my stupid cock grew hard at the feel of that pulsing solid rock. Danny looked me over and saw the hard-on in my baggy jeans. "I'm hurt. I thought I was your best friend. From the looks of it, I think I am." He smiled up at me, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "I'd say, in fact, your life is in my hands. And you've seen what my hands can do." Choking, I nodded. "But you said you'd never hurt me. This hurt me!" "Aww, does baby want his bwanket?" He bobbed me up and down. Somehow I spit in his face. His eyes and lips tightened and he threw me into the air. Agony flared across my back as I hit the hard door of Kevin's car and fell to the ground. Danny walked over to me, his teen strength towering over me. He looked down over massive, veined pecs and wiped the spit off, flinging it onto me. "Of course," he said, "my life is in your hands, should you ever go to the so- called authorities. But I'd hate to see what it would take, and what it would cost, to bring me in. So you'd better think about that. I don't want to see you hanging around with Lance or Kevin anymore." "What are you going to do to them?" "Those weaklings?" he scoffed. "Nothing. The fear will eat them up bad enough. From now on, I'm not only your best friend, I'm your only friend. You'd better get used to it." And with that he walked away into the night. My car was pretty battered. I tried to start it but the engine wouldn't turn over, it just cranked and ground horribly. The tires were ready to rip apart and wouldn't make it down the hill, much less home. I carried Kevin to the roadway, staggering under his nearly dead weight, and hitched a ride down to the hospital in Sylmar from a trucker who didn't ask any questions. The police came to the hospital and I explained we'd been racing and things got out of hand. Kevin kept muttering Danny's name; when the police questioned Danny, his alibi was that he was in bed, and his parents backed him up. Why wouldn't they? When Danny wasn't pumped he just looked like a thirteen year old bodybuilder: remarkable, but not capable of the sort of superhuman feats necessary to explain three wrecked GTOs and a demolished garage. Still, I didn't like the look in Detective Salas' dark eyes. He was big, had done duty as a street cop and maybe more. He looked at Danny in way that seemed to pierce the goofy nerd act Danny put on. I began to wonder--hope? that he might be my salvation. But I can't dwell on that, it'll drive me crazy. **** Dad woke me with a swat to the head. Instinctively I cowered into a fetal position. "What the hell's wrong with you?" he snarled, yawning. "Nightmare," I said, unfolding a little. True, and as much as I was going to tell him. "That Henderson broad's on the horn. Tell her not to wake me up no more." He shuffled his grizzled belly down the hall and I tried to relax, still my racing heart. Dreaming about Danny again. Hoping this call was just another nightmare. In the kitchen I waited until I heard Dad click off. Mrs. H immediately started babbling. "Scott, you have to come over," she whispered. "I've never seen him like this. My poor peach tree. You're the only one he'll listen to." Yeah, right, I thought. I borrowed my Dad's Harley, knowing I'd catch it in the morning. Still, after Danny, my 250 pound Dad's beatings were like a girl's hissy fit. My GTO was still in the shop and would stay there until I got the dough to get her out. Besides the panel work, new tires and a master cylinder, Danny's arms (or should I saw, arm singular) had burnt out the transmission and forced her to throw a rod. Rather than risk some hairline fracture in the block I'm having the engine replaced and rebuilt. All because Danny used his arm muscles to outgun her horsepowered thrust. Then, of course, there was Kevin. But I don't like to think about that. When I pulled up I could see the roofline sagging to the back and the top of the peach tree canted at a weird angle, sinking and shivering. The Henderson's opened the door as I walked up and told me to go around back, it wasn't safe in the house. I saw what they meant. I couldn't see a single undamaged wall, and the groaning of the heavy roof made an eerie undercurrent to the pounding coming from the yard. I walked around in time to see Danny change sides. The big tree listed about forty degrees and the yard was littered with smashed fruit and leaves. One side of the tree was battered in and Danny moved, naked but for boxers, to the tilted side and started hammering with one fist like it was a punching bag. Wood splintered and flew at my eyes from the blur at the end of his arm and the tree creaked back upright a degree or two at a time, its stressed roots raising mounds of earth where Danny's fist forced them out of the ground. Horrible cracking sounds seemed to come from the earth as the tree's integrity was battered apart by the hurricane speed and power of Danny's pile-driving fist. Leaves continued to rain across the yard and I heard his mother crying inside the creaking, broken house. Terrified, watching this thirteen year old brat shove a giant tree around, I called out shakily, "D-Danny?" He turned, a storm of emotions swirling across his face. I tightened every muscle in anticipation. Suddenly he burst into tears and tackled me. Weeping and clutching at me, his body racked with sobs, he rolled me over on the uprooted soil until I thought my back would break. He squeezed the breath out of my first string quarterback's chest and I barely had air enough to whisper "Danny, stop." He threw himself off me and lay on his back, his dirty, splinter-encrusted hands covering his face. I waited until the sobbing stopped and he started moaning. I said, quietly, "Is it Kevin?" "Of course it is, dickwad," he spat out. Then, heartbreakingly, "What did I do? I lost control and tried to kill him. I WANTED to kill him. You made me do it. You tried to trap me and I couldn't stop myself. It's your fault." I felt like I'd swallowed needles. "Danny, you need help. Fact is, you're the only one who can stop you. The fucking army couldn't stop you. You're still just a kid. All kids have tantrums. It's just that you're too strong." Danny screamed at the sky and his muscles leapt into lean, taut relief; I went too far. Jumping up, he plunged his hand into the ground, exploding dirt and grass back into my face. His lat thickened and his back muscles interlocked. His triceps bulged and suddenly a line of dirt raced in two directions across the lawn. He pulled his arm out, carrying a bent and bending iron water pipe with it. His hands started twisting and squeezing the metal as he screamed, thick sprinkler pipe pulling up out of the ground like taffy. He tortured it like he was making animals out of balloons, the solid metal pipe crushed and folded over and over and over. Finally the red left his face and he stood there, sweaty and panting. He dropped the crumpled ball of pipeline and looked over the ruined yard, the tree past saving, the house clearly condemnable. Something crossed his face and all the emotion drained away. "I'll fix this." He calmly went over, reached up and strained just a little. A thick branch bent and popped and yielded to Danny's arm, cracking off. A strip of wood pulled out down to the hole he'd pounded into the bole. He took the branch and snapped off the end, then braced it up under the roof. He moved back to the tree like a robot, chilling me to the core. I went to speak to his parents through a shattered window. "What are we going to do?" his meek father asked behind scratched glasses. Fortunately neither of them were hurt; Danny vented on inanimate objects this time. "I'll try to think of something," I promised. But what? Next day I just sleepwalked through classes until football practice. Here my scholarship is earned doing the one thing I enjoy, the one place my man's body can unleash its skill and power without being emasculated by a little, but way not-little, boy. Practice was perfect and I lingered in the locker room until everyone cleared out, milking the best part of the day for all its worth. Alone, I felt I owned the place, the team, the school. I took my time putting some baby oil on my pumped, sore muscles before changing into street clothes. I realized I wasn't alone. The craggy face of Detective Salas stood in the doorway. He wore a trench coat despite the humidity from the shower, but he looked like he was wearing my shoulder pads under the wool. "Finish up," he said with a smile. "I've got time." "Like looking at oiled-up jocks?" I challenged, flexing my pecs a little to taunt him. He'd been lurking around lately but never approaching; studying me, I guess. Pissed me off. "Give or take," he said. "I'm still wondering what connection your little friend Danny Henderson had with all that action up in Gorman." He looked me in the eye until sweat broke out on my forehead. I turned back to my locker to pull my jeans on. Suddenly I felt naked. "Nothing," I said over my shoulder. "Kevin was delirious. He got pretty banged up. I have to babysit that little brat sometimes and Kevin and Lance sometimes come over to keep me from being bored to death." I hated betraying Kev like that, but I had not choice. What did it matter? What did anything matter but staying alive and out of prison? "Yes, I know. Funny thing is though, that baby doesn't look like he needs much sitting. Like with the eight hundred pound gorilla, looks like he does all the sitting, wherever he wants." Salas stood evenly on his feet, blocking the doorway, filling it. I walked up to him and looked up into his black, calm eyes. "I just do what I'm told, detective. On the field and off." "But it's who does the telling that I think lies at the heart of three wrecked GTOs and one teenager in ICU for four weeks with a punctured lung, multiple fractures and a serious concussion. You see, the way he went through the wall is clear enough, but once we put the car back together--and here's the tricky part, it took a long time--it looked like someone tried a number of times to get through that wall. Logistically, though, there's no way it could have flattened itself around that hydraulic lift so tightly that we had to cut it loose. From where the hole is. Of course, how that ancient lift got up in the air is another question: looks like it was pried up, but not with a crowbar. Too many mysteries, you see. I hate 'em. Never read 'em. I like stories that tell themselves plain. "That's why I'm not going to collect evidence," he continued with a weary lilt to this voice, "gather facts, dust for prints and try to come up with some elaborate theory of spacemen and yetis that crossed time and space to meet in the glorified truck stop that is Gorman, California. I'm going to get the story straight, laid out like a blueprint. You're going to tell me your part in that story, if it kills me." I laughed and went back for my shirt. "It just may, detective." "Do me a flavor," he said, making as if to leave. "Your 'charge,' Master Danny Henderson, has Advanced Quantum Mechanics at eight a.m. tomorrow at Cal Tech. Let's sit in on that lecture and have a little chat afterward. I want you there, to help break the ice." "I'll have to blow off Writers Comp," I said. "I'll write you a note." He turned and left, and left me curiously afraid--and hopeful. I was late the next morning. Danny's career at Cal Tech was quickly approaching the level of a national security problem. Two standard issue goons were sitting in the back of the steep lecture hall not even pretending to take notes. They should have just left their sunglasses on. Most of the students were scribbling or holding their heads. The professor's shirt was untucked and the rolled-up sleeves were unrolling; his tie puddled on the floor and his hair was totally out of control. Danny stood at a blackboard dense with figures, symbols and equations. This was a graduate level course and Danny was easily ten years junior to anyone else: and for those ten years, most of Danny's life in fact, those students had lived math, science, physics. And Danny came in and blew them all away. The prof kept asking things like "But what if--" and "But how--" followed by sentences I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Danny wouldn't even let him finish, but would scribble on the board in a blur of motion as he explained. Reconceptualized. Manipulated. He reversed long-standing theories and hypotheses, he shattered accepted models, he synthesized database tables of facts and experiment results in his head and condensed them into irrefutable positions. Sometimes he had to repeat himself, slowly, to the Ph.D. guy. As if talking to a child. One by one the students dropped their pencils, their jaws, their heads on the desks. Danny didn't even own a pen or pencil, and when he took a test he made a big show of snapping off the eraser. He made it look like a struggle too. Wave after wave of information poured out of Danny's mouth and hand and all the prof's knowledge and experience was crushed down before him. His authority humbled. His face quivered as he realized Danny'd turned him into a T.A., wiping the board clean, asking nothing more than set-up questions, and nodding like a back-seat Chihuahua. He looked beaten before this kid's intellectual virility. And Danny didn't let on how much he relished each victory, every time he squashed some prize-winning physicist with mental brawn. Except for a little glint in his eyes that told me so. With a final flourish, Danny compressed a dozen years of research into a few simple calculations, bringing him one step closer to that unified field theory thing that Hawking can't quite grasp. "Only when I get through with it, it won't be a theory. It'll be a fact." The prof dropped his head and dramatically, self-deprecatingly applauded over his head. The students gave half-hearted, grudging applause while Danny beamed in not entirely good-natured pride. A fact picked up by the feds, no doubt. "Now we see why Danny has beaten our chess computer twelve times in a row." He'd only played it twelve times. They wouldn't let him play it anymore, in fact. As I understand it, a chess computer doesn't think, it calculates with computer- speed all the possible moves from given board positions, then evaluates values and preferable moves and unerringly chooses the move that best anticipates your next best move up to six moves in advance. And if you make a less-than-best move, it can crush you easy. It's called "brute force calculating." They say there are more possible moves on a chessboard than there are atoms in the entire fucking universe. The computer doesn't even calculate them all, just a big chunk. Well, Danny can equal that brute force and perform those same calculations just as fast if not faster than any computer, and wed it to the sort of strategy and risk-taking only a human mind is capable of. And I suspect Danny's able to compute ALL the positions, period. That big blue IBM supercomputer back east, the one-and-a-half ton monster that whips Garry Kasparov's ass? I saw the tape when the kid creamed it three times in the space of thirteen minutes, twice taking the machine's queen. He didn't even use the board facsimile, he just punched positions into a keypad with no visual references as soon as the computer chose a move. Once the experts realized Danny's cerebral might, two of them fainted on the spot. Now he has it down to breaking the computer three games in just over four minutes. They shut it down after that; it starts to get too hot. Det. Salas and I met Danny in the hallway. Danny was still cocky and said, walking ahead of us, "You're that detective creep, aren't you?" "Danny, play nice," I said. "Yes Danny, I am," said Salas. "Too bad about that kid that got killed. That's why you're here, right?" He turned and looked Salas in the eye in a way that expressed no guilt, only the challenge one dominant male gives another. Salas shook his head. Submitting... perhaps. "It's you, Danny. You impressed me when I interviewed you about the murder." "Murder?" Danny snorted. "I thought it was an accident. Kids shouldn't play around with cars, you know. Someone always gets hurt." A chill ran down my spine. "There's someone I think you should meet, Danny. Someone who can maybe help guide you." "I got a bazillion counselors to do that. And those feds watching me. Funny how loud their bugging devices are. I've been able to find everyone one in the house." Salas stopped, and Danny stopped too. "That's what I mean, Danny. You seem to have extraordinary power beyond your mental prowess. I know because I'm that way as well. And we can always sense each other, can't we?" With that Salas took a can of green beans out of his coat pocket. Green fuckin' beans in his coat pocket. His hand almost covered it as he squeezed into it. The top and bottom of the can domed out as the sides crushed inward. I watched the wool across his upper arm go tight: his thumb pressed deeper into the tin, which collapsed under a pressure greater than the incompressible liquid inside. He kept crushing the unopened can and little thumps accompanied the little bumps pressed out all over the parts of the can not covered by his grip. With a squishy pop the bottom burst and thick green water spurted out of the can. The beans had been totally pulped by the compressing water inside and the tin was torn along edge that burst under his fingers. "Alright, I'll meet your friend. Shake?" Danny held out his hand. Salas dropped the can and wrapped his long, wet fingers around Danny's smaller hand. Danny smiled and his forearm seemed to ripple even beneath the sleeve. Salas remained impassive so Danny grinned wider and suddenly his baggy sweatshirt started to tighten up around his arm. Salas still made no move but met Danny's force... and started to sweat ever so lightly. Danny opened his mouth and laughed silently: he cocked his head, bright-eyed, doubling his force, then doubling that. Salas's head moved slightly as he continued to hold Danny's eyes, which narrowed as he applied even more pressure to Salas' mitt. Tearing myself away from those hands I saw Salas's jaw set and start to clench. A big ball of sweat ran down into the crevices below his eyes. But still his expression didn't change. I heard a couple sickening pops and then Danny broke the hold. "Nice to meetcha, champ," Danny said. His hand hung relaxed at his side while Salas's remained kind of stiff. "Tomorrow out at the steelworks, about six p.m. I guarantee you won't be disappointed." Danny walked me back to my bike and I looked over my shoulder at Salas. "He's shaking his hand out now, isn't he?" asked Danny, staring straight ahead. "Yup," I said, watching those big brown fingers flex and clench. "Hope his friend is tougher'n he is. Ya think they're gay?" "Never entered my mind," I said. The next evening I arrived at the steelworks before anyone else. The workers were all gone and the administrative staff was just heading out. Salas had arranged for everyone to be gone, including the nightman. I got the impression it was nothing new. Salas drove up in his sedan that said Police in everything but letters. The shocks groaned and the car rose when he got out. He'd shucked the overcoat and wore work-out shorts and a sweaty tank top. His shoulders looked more than a yard wide, and his chest was so square and thick I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It almost looked too large for the waist it teetered on and the tank top hung like curtains off the edge of his pecs. Arms nearly as big as my legs hung from shoulders of such perfection I wanted to cry. Shorts cut to be baggy stretched over thighs cut with a jigsaw--but those quads looked like they could break the blade. Calves stood out from his shins in shelf-like thickness. He saw me staring and said, "Just keep working, you'll get there." "Yeah, right," I said, feeling small and homely. The fact I could get laid three times a night by different girls meant nothing when there were guys like him in the world. Just then a squad car pulled up and a black man who dwarfed Salas got out. The car didn't groan at all, so I guess he'd had it specially adjusted for him. Four inches taller than Salas and at least fifty pounds of muscle heavier, thicker, broader and deeper. At least. Maybe a hundred pounds if that's possible. Everything was so exaggerated, but since he had a big head it knit together perfectly, like a tank or a navy destroyer. This looked like a dude who could make anything possible. His uniform must have been custom made but even so it bare contained the wealth of muscle clothing his arms and chest. The pants had to be some sort of lycra blend to stretch over thighs that I could feel jostle the coarse asphalt of the steelyard. He walked up and shook my hand, firmly but restrained. "Reggie Cole, Venice P.D. You must be the friend." I nodded, unable to speak. He looked like he could toss Salas over his head and press him with one arm. As if on cue, he said "Don't worry, keep working, you'll get there. Where's the man of the hour?" "He's thirteen. And he's late." "Whoa!" said Cole, black eyes flaring. "You didn't tell me this was some kid. I had four hours of prime stake-out overtime staring me in the face that I gave up. Who is he, someone's cousin who wants to start lifting weights and needs to know where to put his feet?" Cole went over to the front bumper of his cruiser and placed one hand on the front fender. Palming it, he lifted up and the frame rose. The frame groaned. The tire rose off the fucking ground, and he was just palming it like a fucking ball! The metal squeaked under his fingers as the end of the car rose higher, the shocks now lifting up on the rear and front tires. Suddenly the car fell with a SLAM and bounced a couple quick times on its tight shocks. "Damn! I'm gonna get it up on that one back tire if it kills someone." I backed away. Salas saw this and put a meaty hand on my shoulder. "He's just showing off. He's one of the good guys." I gave them the lowdown on Danny's, uh, activities, and officer Cole sobered up real fast thinking about a kid doing that, aged eleven to thirteen. "It's the way he can turn it on and off. Like the other night, he totally went blank, like a robot. That's not a good thing." My stomach turned over with worry-and fear. And then I saw Danny standing behind him. "Whoa!" said Cole again. "Where'd he come from?" "He's fast," I said, my gut clenching. "Been tattling on me, Scotty boy?" Danny said, eyes sparkling. "Naw, Danny. Just boasting of your accomplishments." With these two around, I felt a little brave and reckless. Salas made introductions but Danny didn't try the handshake test again. He seemed impressed by Cole's and Salas's size. At least, a little bit. "So what are YOU gonna teach ME?" he asked. We walked over to the chain link fence and placed his fingers in the links. He barely seemed to move as the links stretched into his palm at started popping loose. "Don't do that, son, it's private property," said Cole, walking to tower a good two feet over Danny. God, the cop must weigh over four hundred pounds, and Danny still hadn't broken 180. Crackling issued from Salas's car. Apparently he was needed at a crime scene. Danny chucked his head. "Gonna blame me for that too?" "Can you handle this?" he called over to Cole. "No problem." Cole looked down at the boy with a paternal coldness. "We'll be just fine." I myself felt a little wary at losing Salas but Cole looked like he could tie Danny up with one big hand. "Let's adjourn inside," said Cole as he led the way into the steel mill, his hard ass symbolizing everything he was. Once inside he gave the big steel door a shove and it slid obediently closed. Turning, he said to Danny, "I'm a good cop, not a bad cop. But school's in session and you're gonna learn how to behave in public." "Or what?" smart-mouthed Danny. "Or this." Cole flexed one bicep that defied the imagination. I shook my head and blinked. It looked like some sort of melon rising up, crinkling back the cotton sleeve, and a big vein throbbed over the top of the split peak and spread greedy conduits like talons over the round muscle. The triceps was like half of some giant's dinner plate. He extended his arm and the muscle stretched out but kept a peak even as his elbow bent backward a little: there was simply too much muscle in it. Then he shot it up hard and it leapt like an earthquake and I let out a shocked breath at its mammoth power. He stared at it lovingly, then looked at Danny, pointing at it with his other hand. Making sure Danny took it ALL in. Danny wasn't impressed. Danny flew at Cole's midsection, knocking him back a few steps and making him grunt a little. Cole grinned. Danny clung to his chest but couldn't wrap his arms around his expanse of back. Cole made as if to pry Danny off but the kid dug his thighs around Cole's waist, locked his feet and flexed his quads. Hard. Cole's dense musculature caved beneath Danny's pressure and Cole's face opened in surprise as a deep groan came out along with all his air. Danny grabbed Cole's pecs and dug his thumb up under them, and crushed the muscle in his hands. Cole flexed into marble hardness but Danny's stone-splitting fingers dented the muscle, massaging its rock into squirming mud. Cole's hands moved toward Danny's shoulders to throw him off but Danny's hands moved faster as his legs twisted around that waist that become impossibly narrower. The boy's fingers grabbed those granite monolith biceps and sank into the impenetrable muscle, finding the split between the heads and digging deeper, and deeper. For the first time in his adult life Cole screamed and flexed to no avail. Danny savaged the officer's steel-breaking muscles until pain drove the cop to wrench his arms free and box Danny's ears. Danny fell stunned to the floor and Cole staggered back, hardly knowing which of his tortured muscles to tend to. But Danny shook it off first and sped past him in a blur. Rebounding off the wall with that dry clink of brick sliding against previously solid mortar, Danny landed full on Cole's back and spread his knees apart to take in the expanse of Cole's enormous lats: and begin compressing them. Cole staggered forward and Danny placed his hands on either side of the officer's head. I'd seen this before, with a basketball and a parking meter. Now Cole's eyes bugged as the kind of pressure only Danny can exert threatened his skull's density. The cop's hands grabbed Danny's wrists and pulled--and he screamed again. Danny narrowed his eyes as his pecs stood straight out between his brawn-bristling arms and his lats flared out in wings to rival the larger cop's. Cole's upended, reddening biceps and deeply lobed triceps pulled at the boy's wrists... and Cole shrieked and bent forward, striving to throw Danny off his back like a bucking horse. But Danny applied more pressure still. I ran out to the cruiser and yelled at the dispatcher to send Salas back ASAP and ran back inside. When I got there my knees gave out. There was an indentation inches into the brick wall roughly the size of Danny's back, and Danny had Cole on his belly. Cole's arms were trapped at his sides and Danny's quads braced them both and squeezed while he pulled Cole's head backward on its triangular neck. Foam was spitting out of Cole's mouth and try as he might to buck or flail his legs, a child less than half his weight held him down and ground him into the concrete. Explosions of power rocked Cole's body in an awesome display but Danny contained each explosion with his own physical strength. And sought to implode him with squeezes of his own. Danny's knees widened and let Cole's arms out. Cole immediately tried to push himself up but Danny grabbed his wrists and began forcing those arms backward. The muscle density any powerlifter or Mister Olympia would drool found rose in Cole's back as those thick arms were manhandled--or boyhandled--backward. Danny laughed as he strained, his shoulders and back starting to rival the man's in size, and handily exceeding them in strength and endurance. Danny was hardly breathing heavy as the man beneath him heaved and grimaced. Cole tried to kick Danny's head but Danny ducked, again too fast, and with an effort that strained his kid's face and made cartilage crackle and pop, Danny brought both of Cole's wrists together--and secured them in one long-fingered hand. His other hand shot back and grabbed Cole's foot, and a thigh that could squat a bus struggled to extend, only to find Danny's arm had other plans for it. And all that hardened muscle HAD to submit, submit, bow and dance to Danny's absolute will. Danny threw out his chest and drew inward, one arm mastering the savage thrusts of the panicking man and the other bulging bicep peaking higher as it crippled the force of that tree-trunk leg. His mountainous back expanded and his arms drew closer together, stretching the big cop beneath him. Danny now yelled in glory as he totally contained and controlled the man who would be his teacher. Standing up, he bent Cole backward like a fucking bow. Cole shrieked in high- pitched, incredulous terror. Danny's authority could not be more complete, or more terrifying. "Danny, stop it! Don't kill him! Haven't you had enough?" I hurled a broken brick at his head, knowing it wouldn't hurt him. It bounced of his skull and his neck didn't even move. Through gritted teeth he yelled, "Say uncle." Cole bellowed in agony and Danny bent him further, his biceps peaking much larger in proportion to his body than Cole's to his, and almost as big as Cole's. "Say uncle!" he yelled. Cole groaned and Danny bent him even further, sweat just beginning to bead off him. Cole gritted his teeth and tensed every quaking muscle in his body in an effort to break Danny's hold. But Danny had more in store, more than Cole could handle. Danny's muscles pulsed as he conquered this new thrust and bent Cole's chest farther off the ground. Vertebrae started to pop within the dense cords and plates of the policeman's back that couldn't flex or stretch outward so long as Danny crushed them inward. Inward against the straining bone. Cole breathed heavily, snot and spit flying out of his face, and suddenly Danny started rocking him back and forth across his bowed belly, banging his head against the concrete and lifting it high up into the air. Playing with the helpless muscle man as if he were a toy. Finally Cole issued a strangled cry "Uncle!" just as Det. Salas ran into the warehouse. Danny let go and stood with his foot on Cole's back, flexing and giving a Tarzan yell. Salas drew his weapon but Danny didn't even notice. He did the most surprising thing I've ever seen him do. He went around and putting his hands under Cole's armpits (Cole instinctively flinching), lifted the big man to his feet. Cole stood but staggered, and Danny reached out his hand, beaming. "Great fight! You're one strong dude! Never fought anything as tough as you, man. Shake?" Cole looked at him, wheezing, and locked eyes. Suddenly Cole laughed, in spite of bruised ribs and cracked tendons. He reached down and picked Danny up and swung him around--like a kid. Then he threw Danny a good forty feet, and Danny landed right and immediately charged him, giggling. They went down and wrestled, this time Cole getting on top. He held Danny's arms down but those arms struggled to rise, rise against Cole's weight and strength. Cole writhed to master the boy but he finally gave up, holding his hands up in surrender. "You win, kid. God damn almighty, you win." He laughed and shook his head. Danny jumped up as fresh as spring. Then he suddenly got shy. "So, you gonna teach me stuff? Like how to control my temper?" Moods change fast for Danny, as fast as those flying hands. "Why did you try to kill Kevin Wallace?" Salas asked, holstering his piece. Danny got very solemn for a moment, then burst into tears. I went over to him and he clutched me again, squeezing me hard but not enough to hurt (much). Finally, sniffling, Danny asked, "Am I going to jail?" Salas shook his head. "No, but you're gonna settle accounts. Boy like you has special needs, but you're not above the law. You need to learn that." "And I don't think there's a prison on earth that could hold you," Cole added, rubbing his tormented biceps. When he shook them out, it was like a bear getting out of a stream and drying its coat. For the first time, ever, I felt sorry for Danny. His super strength was going to be as much a burden as a joy. At least, if you consider rarely being able to fully use it a burden. I know I would. Danny looked curious. "Am I- are we some kind of freaks?" His brow knit, worried, then lightened. "Can we be superheroes? Like in the comics?" "No and no," said Cole, rising to his full height and width. "We're just genetically blessed, that's all." Salas added, "But with your brain power too, you're unique. You're growing up faster than you should have to, but that's the breaks. We'll be here to help. But you've got to obey us in everything. You always have a choice to do good or ill. What you choose to do will not only reflect, but shape who you are. Who you become. Don't let your attack on Kevin, Lance and Scott be the start of the wrong road." "And that starts with obeying your parents," I said, hoping they'd back me up. Cole nodded, to my relief. "So you guys never killed anybody? With your hands?" They pondered again. "We'll tell you about it in your training. For now the answer is no, to you." "Can we start training now? I'm still kind of fired up." Danny's leg jittered so hard I was afraid the floor would crack. Without a word officer Cole squatted down, his immense thighs tensed, and then he leapt straight up in the air to the catwalk. It must have been over twenty feet high! He went over the rail and landed with a boom that shook the whole structure. He ran down the walkway to where the big vat that pours the liquid steel down sat on its track. With one brawny arm, he started pulling that heavy machinery back to where we were. The iron scraped and squealed and I could see the gears over on the machinery that moved it turning grudgingly under his force. When he got close he jumped up on it and hanging by one arm from the cross beam, unhook the empty thick-walled cauldron and prepared to drop it. I moved back but Cole shouted "Stay where you are!" so commandingly my body froze before my mind could even react. The hunk of metal picked up speed gravity greedily pulled it down but Danny, seeing our heads higher than his own, jumped up to meet it. Cocking his hand on the way up, he hit the accelerating steel with the heel of his hand and not only stopped its descent but propelled it back up to Cole faster than it had fallen. Cole shouted "Whoa!" and caught it with his free hand: and had trouble stopping it. It actually pulled him upward a little before his tensing muscles stopped it and the two hung there from his one hand, swinging a little from the velocity. Salas complimented him. "Good instinct, Danny, especially the jump. But what if it had fallen on its own, and someone like Cole wasn't there to catch it?" 'Oh," he said. "I guess it might've gone through the roof." "And come down again, somewhere else." "So I should make sure it doesn't come down again?" Salas paused, and Cole, hooking the cauldron back on, laughed. Salas grinned too. "Then you'd take out a communications satellite and cause more trouble. No, the point is you should yell 'Heads up' and catch it. That way the steel mill keeps its property, its roof, and everyone is safe." "Aw, man," said Danny. "I shoulda thought of that." Cole dropped to the ground, his legs effortless absorbing the shock of his four hundred plus pounds. The cement floor, though, shook from the impact. "Good first lesson. Now we can play." He walked over and found a I-beam on the scrap heap, one that had a piece broken off the end. He picked the hunk of steel up in one hand and tossed it to Danny. My jaw dropped-yes, again-as Danny reached out and caught it with one hand, stopping it in mid-air and holding it before him while his thick delt pulsed. Cole nodded. "Knock yourself out." "All right!" shouted Danny and immediately the beam started vibrating and letting off a dim gong-like tone. His fingers gripped across the top of the beam but the metal didn't bend under them; still, that bell-like tone continued to grow louder. As I watched, the thick support steel began to warp outward around his fingers, the ends of the beam bowing slightly toward each other along the top. Out and downward the top half of the beam warped as his forearm muscles expanded and increased their tension on the metal. His knuckles went white as the ringing got achingly loud and the pressure began to deform the bottom portion of the beam as it curled around his grip. Finally he dropped the distorted hunk with a loud crash and watched it rock and bob. But he wasn't done with it yet. He grabbed one end and secured a grip on the wide middle portion, between the two caps. His shoulders spread and his back thickened through. I watched the striations on his chest play as, without bracing the beam against any part of his body, pushing and pulling, he overstressed the steel with his muscle power and small cracks formed in the end. He kept piling on the pressure until one crack widened and then he pulled outward and the solid steel beam ripped open! The metal made a horrible ringing crack, like some gigantic bell breaking open as Danny ripped it down the middle. The jagged edges tried to veer one way or another but Danny's arms controlled the tear so it continued down through the warped hunk, the two split ends now curling away from each other like a fucking zipper. He never stopped but kept ripping, keeping the opening seam straight down the middle. The steel screeched as it tore apart and Danny never tired, his arms worked and the thick steel ripped. When he had two curled ribbons he finally looked, for the first time in the evening, a little winded. I wondered if Salas had been here, if that would have made any difference. I refused to answer my own question. Cole studied him. "We'll meet every Sunday, at your home or here. For training. In the meantime, behave yourself, don't show off in class and obey your parents. Consider it a discipline. Discipline always makes a man stronger, never weaker. You're doing this for yourself." "Sure, whatever," said Danny, breaking into a broad smile. For good or for ill, I pondered. I wish I could be at peace that it would all be for good. TO BE CONTINUED chipmasterson@yahoo.com