Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 15:25:02 -0500
From: Tags <tagsnola@lycos.com>
Subject: The Charges 5

Disclaimer

This story, written by Chip Masterson is a work of fiction.  No charachters
depicted in this story represent anyone, living or dead.  It features the
exploits of young Danny Henderson, starting between when he was twelve
years old and extending into his thirteenth year.  Danny is genetically
gifted with phenomenal strength which continues to increase geometrically
as he gets older and as he continues to test and hone his strength.  He is
also a super-genius, but, he is no more emotionally mature than any
ordinary twelve or thirteen year.  Because of the power in his body and his
mind, he is beyond the reach of the normal controlling influence of his
parents.

I have modified very minor points in Chip's episodes to better dovetail
with the stories I have written which follow in sequence behind these that
Chip has written.  The reason I have included these stories of Chip's along
with my own is to establish the premise of my stories.

Chip has written subsequent episodes introducing another superkid,
"Tetsuo."  This character simply does not exist in my episodes and never
will.  The inconsistencies can be confusing unless you the reader see my
stories and Chip's "Tetsuo" episodes simply as bifurcations from a common
source.  My episodes and Chip's "Tetsuo" episodes simply represent what one
might view as "parallel universes."

My slight modifications of Chip's episodes have been made with his express
permission.  My thanks to Chip for sharing his charactes with me and for
allowing me to repost his stories.

Although there are no overt sexual incidents in any of Chip's episodes, if
sidelong references to homo-eroticism are offensive to you, do not read
this story.  If you are seeking overt homo-erotic stimulation, do you will
not find it here.

Tags

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THE EDUCATION OF DANNY, Part 2
(A Continuation of THE CHARGE)
By Chip Masterson

DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDERAGE, EASILY OFFENDED BY
QUEER SEX OR MADE QUEASY BY EXTREME FEATS OF
MUSCLE IN ACTION.


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.  Salvage of the wreck was
nothing but a distant dream.  All because Danny used his arm muscles to
outgun her horsepowered thrust.

Then, of course, there was Kevin, still in the intensive care unit at St.
Joseph's hospital, his life hanging by a thread.  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?  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 distraught father asked.  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 your connection with
Kevin Wallace's is.  I'd like to have a shot at getting the story from him,
but he's still at St' Joe's in a coma.  He may or may not make it."  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.

"Like I told you before," I said over my shoulder.  "We were acting stupid
with our cars and Kevin got hurt."  I hated betraying Kev like that and
MYSELF, but at least he was still alive.  At least there was some hope.  If
I were to bring Danny's ire down on Kevin, or myself... or on this
Detecive, there would be no hope for ANY of us!

"Yeah.  That's what you said before.  But still, I'd like to know how young
Danny Henderson fits into all of this."

"Him?" I asked.  "I barely know the kid.  He's got nothing to do with any
of this.  I've babysat for him a few times."

"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 who may or may not live.  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
Danny Henderson's 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 ver afraid, for
myself, for Kevin and Lance and especially for Detective Salas.

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 damn near 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
assault which may yet turn out to be murder if Kevin doesn't manage to
pull though."

"Murder?" Danny snorted.  "I thought it was an accident.  It's like I've tried
explaining to 'dickface,' here.  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.  He
walked his hands under the car and grasped the frame.  The car rose off the
fucking ground, and he just pressed it... for fuckin' reps!   Suddenly the car
fell with a SLAM and bounced a couple quick times on its tight shocks.
"Damn!  Fifty reps!  I'm gonna get it up to one fifty 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 and bow 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 what you did to Kevin Wallace near 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.

"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, unhooked
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 effortlessly 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 end 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
(modified with permission by TagsNOLA@lycos.com)