stamina and will

consequences of nothing

The day was not like any other, or at least it won’t be. Dean was in his gym teaching a lesson to a few young kids who were in the local track and field team. His gym was not the biggest but decently large with a front room with a receptionist desk, a main room filled with machines, and two off rooms, one for lessons and another for free weights. He was going over proper running technique to the kids when a stomping sound distracted him. It can be pretty easy to distract Dean with sound, his hearing is quite good and when mixed with his kindness and natural curiosity he likes to check out what's causing the sound, as seen with the many times he’s walked into situations where people are being bullied. Right now isn’t a good time though, the local school is paying for this lesson after all, but the stomping not only gets louder but causes a few of the children's water bottles to fall over so he decided he needed to check it out.

It turns out stepping out of the door was the worst choice he could have made as the first thing he noticed was a large fist approaching his face. Not having the reaction speed and being too off guard to dodge, Dean gets hit right in the face by the powerful fist. His nose crumples in on itself and his teeth start to rattle in his jaw as his neck gets whipped into the air with the rest of his body following. He’s in the air still feeling the effects of the punch when his back gets hit nearly just as hard when he rams into the desk, crumpling it under him as he starts to roll and spin. The tumbling of his body makes the existing pain worst and before it even has a chance to improve he goes through the wall into the main room and tumble into machines and not stopping till he knocks over 3 machines 2 containing up to 60 kilos and 1 being Deans own personal leg press that can hold up to 2k kilos, left there on his back with his shoulders leaning against the heaviest. Laying in a pile of tangled metal weighing thousands of kilos feeling nothing but the very present existence of his own body and what’s inside. A trail of destruction and blood from Dean’s nose, mouth, and forehead.

This is the worst pain Dean has felt in his whole life. His once large nose was now nearly flat against his face as his teeth continued to rattle in his jaw from the first hit to the face, a few teeth feeling loose and one mouler in his top right side of his mouth had fallen out and a mouler in his top left had been left in pieces. The collision with the desk left his back feeling worse for wear as it seemed like each vertebrae were rattling and moving about his body in a way they never should. The tumble worsened all the existing pain in his body while adding a wild fire of pain across his shoulder, arms, and legs. His shoulders got the worst from the tumble as they smashed onto the heavy machines leaving a large uncontrolled flame across his shoulders. His brain is truly what got the worse, bouncing around his head with each subsequent hit like an olympic game of ping pong set to x2 speed leaving him dizzy and woozy, just barely conscious but very much concussed. Overall though he was lucky as his worst physical injuries were a broken nose, fractured jaw, and some fractures in his collarbone. The pain was unbearable but not enough to really injure the superhuman that felt it.

The sound of the children screaming from the other room is what gave Dean his focus back and caused him to look up and see what hit him, he feels like it was an out of control car but he knows it wasn’t. He tries to open his eyes but finds he can only open the left one, that's an issue that can wait after this is over. What he saw when he looked up though was the last thing he was expecting, a monster, unmistakingly so, but with the face of someone he hasn’t seen in over 2 decades looking just like the last time he saw him but with much, much more anger plaguing his face. This is without a doubt Kenny but what the hell happened to him.

More screaming from the kids once again gave a reality check to Dean, this is not the time to be distracted and the reason Kenny looks like that or more importantly is attacking him can wait till after these kids are safe. It’s his responsibility to keep them safe, he is being paid after all.

“Oh? You’re still alive? Maybe I shouldn’t have held back so much,” Kenny said in a darker voice showing off his new sharp teeth and powerful jaw.

Dean manages to force himself up, the safety of his students giving him the will to fight against the pain, to try to look the monster in the eyes, which proves to be difficult from the 2 and a half foot difference between him and this new form of Kenny, as he says, “Kenny? Is that you? What happened to you?” At first Dean was going to make a snarky comment to try to distract him but his own curiosity, and maybe the concussion, stopped him. He asked the question which had been plaguing his mind since he first saw the monster and one that he has asked in the past.

“Ah, so you even recognize the ones you grinded under your heel. But yes, I once WAS the one known as Kenny but now I’m something better. I’m like an even better me, yes, that’s who I am, I AM BETTER ME,” the monster, apparently now known as Better Me (stupid name), says while cackling, “I HAVE IMPROVED, I’M SMARTER THAN LEROY NOW, STRONGER AND BIGGER THAN EVEREST, and the most important part I’M BETTER THAN YOU.”

Kenn- I mean Better Me’s monologue gave Dean the time to recover enough to move again. Dean is more durable than most people know, after 2 years of marathons he even stopped using body glide as chafing became a non-issue. All Dean can think about though is how Better Me needs to be out of here and far from here so the kids have the chance to run or at least be safer. That means that he has to be the one to move him and to do that he needs to use his greatest strengths. As Better Me continues cackling Dean charges towards him and grabs him to continue pushing him out of the building through the hole in the wall going into the front room and breaking the metal frame and the glass of his door as he goes outside getting Better Me to the middle of the street before he gets stopped.

What stopped him was Better Me simply stomping his feet into the ground causing a groove to be grounded into the asphalt. Dean looks up, realizing even his perfectly strong legs, legs that could even move Fuji if he desired, were stuck in the ground only causing more cracks as he tries to keep moving forward. This wasn’t far enough to protect his students.

The smirk on Better Me’s face grew as he saw that second of desperation that appeared on his supposed rival's face and said, “you seem desperate to move me. Well what about this, after I kill you I’ll go in there and kill whoever it is you’re protecting so you can burn in hell together.”

As he said this he lifted his arms into the air and the flesh along his forearms started to squirm and move revealing themselves as tentacles. The tentacles extend and wrap themselves around Dean’s body and pull him off of Better Me’s body. Dean was hefted into the air, blood still pouring out of multiple places in his face, the tightness of the appendages wrapping around him causing him to cough up even more blood.

“Like them? They were a gift to me from this new body. Born from my jealousy for you and everyone else,” Better Me throws Dean, his body bouncing off the ground and leaving a crater before crashing into a postal box mangling the metal and pulling it from the ground, as he continues to say, “I can admit that now, I was jealous of how far everyone around me could go. That jealousy ruined my life and eventually it’s what turned me into this. I can certainly admit that, as this new mind of mine made that clear. So I’m not jealous of you anymore like I used to be, if anything I need to thank you for allowing me to turn into a better me.”

“If you a-ain’t jealous no’ m-mo, then why are y-you attackin' m-me?” Dean manages to struggle out, trying to give himself the time to recover. He hasn’t talked to Kenny for a while but he knows that he always loved to talk and it seems Better Me was the same.

Better Me glares at him and snarls out, ”Didn’t you hear me? My life was ruined by that jealousy, jealousy caused by you. So if you connect the dots, you ruined my life.”