The Gymnast, Part 2 (Patreon)

THE GYMNAST, PART 2

Commissioned by eJm

Written by HikerAngel

“Are we rolling?” A cheerful voice came asking an honest question.

“Yes, Ms. Biles. The cameras are on you.”

“Awesome, hope I don’t make a fool of myself, not used to having cameras be placed this close to my face.”

“You should be fine, Ms. Biles. This is just a mere establishing shot.”

“Yeah, but, what if I… y’know… drop this?”

“What about it?”

“Well, you wouldn’t wanna be right next to me if it accidentally came crashing down, now would ya?”

“Ms. Biles, I don’t think there’s any camera angle of you that wouldn’t put me in harm’s way. If you dropped that, it would probably decimate one half of the earth.”

“Haha, fair.”

Even when panning up to its limit, the camera couldn’t quite capture the sheer scope of whatever Simone was lifting. The glare from the midday sun prevented a clear shot of the top, so she tilted the massive structure slightly forward to block it. Expert precision was applied, yet it seemed effortless to the professional gymnast. Her eyes remained locked on the cameraman, not even looking upwards at her adjustment. She was confident in its sufficiency, which it was.

With the establishing shot finished, the director moved on to the actual interview.

“Could you please provide your name?”

“Biles. Simone Biles. Award-winning Gymnast!” She punctuated her positive attitude by removing one of her hands from the object she was holding to wave at the camera, an action that didn’t seem to compromise her hold on the absurdly large object.

“Thank you, Ms. Biles. Now, I know this next question is a little out-of-order, but I gotta know, what exactly are you holding there in your hands, er— hand?”

“I’m glad you asked! I know it seems like a tower of sorts, but that’s only because it’s on a side. Basically, I was in this tournament a few weeks ago and it felt a bit too easy. So I thought, hey, why not train harder to make it even easier for me? So, to build up my strength training, I brought the entire coliseum home with me!”

“Woah, that’s actually a massive fighting ring?”

“Yep! Too bad the whole ‘strength training’ aspect of it is kinda defeated…”

“How so?”

“I mean, it doesn’t exactly weigh anything to me, y’know?”

She punctuated her finalizing statement with a small bout of laughter. One which had a twang of awkwardness present within it. But the nervousness she felt was merely due to being rather camera shy, nothing to do with the actual feat of lifting an entire structure roughly the size of a large city.

“I’m just surprised it’s all staying together in one piece, even as you hold it at a 90 degree angle!”

“Yeah! It’s pretty incredible. I’ve often wondered if that’s just… some sort of skill I’ve picked up over the years. After all, gymnastics is all about smooth presentation, so, I thought, ‘y’know, why shouldn’t I translate that mentality into my training regiment as well?’”

“That’s a good point. Other than lifting absurd amounts of weight with your hands, what else do you do?”

That got Simone to perk her ears up in nervousness.

“Well, uh, can I be honest? I haven’t really done any other exercises in such a long time. With my career shifting into the martial arts and battling, what I’m doing now is basically it. But I’m sure if I check… my… phone… hold on for one second…”

She used her free hand to dig around in her left-side pocket. When the endeavor produced no meaningful results, she shifted the massive structure onto her other hand with no more thought than a red solo cup full of alcohol at a party. Now using her right hand to dig around in her other pocket, her phone was still nowhere to be seen on her person.

“Oh yeah, that’s right! I left it in my jacket pocket! Uh, my jacket should be somewhere on a nearby chair… Could someone please toss it to me?”

Sure enough, the director was the one to produce the jacket.

“You sure you don’t want me to look for the notes app? Your hands seem a bit full.”

“No, really! It’s fine!”

Arching her back slightly, Simone lifted her right foot behind her in the position of a scorpion kick. Then, with impeccable balance, she shifted the full weight of the structure onto her raised foot. She then gestured to the director to toss her jacket over. She caught it without deviating from her stance, holding the jacket by its collar with her right hand while she dug through its pockets with her left.

“Isn’t that position… uncomfortable for you?” The cameraman asked, showing concern for the woman who seemed to show none at all.

“Nope! It’s just 5.7 billion tons of weight. Really nothing in the grand scheme of things. I could probably lift that in my sleep.”

Rifling around in the very last pocket produced her phone, which she proceeded to scroll through several pages of apps to find the notes one.

She began to whistle a made up and slightly off-key tune, as if the awkward position she was posing out was actually a common one to her.

It wasn’t long before she found what she was looking for, which meant it was time to get rid of that pesky coliseum of hers. With a bow of her socked foot, she slid the massive monolith down from the sole to her toes, which gripped at it and cocked back like a mini catapult that was ready to fire.

With a flick of her foot, she sent the monolith the size of hundreds of football fields straight to the stratosphere. It didn’t take long for it to escape earth’s gravity and float into the vastness of space. Every member of the film crew’s eyes followed the massive monument of combat until it became a blip to them. Were it not for the beaming sun, they would have stared at the sky in awe all day.

“Ah! Bingo! Here we go!” Biles said with glee as she looked at her phone, recapturing everyone’s attention. She had already forgotten about the grand coliseum she once held. “The squat to chair maneuver! This one’s a classic, great for strengthening the glutes and quadriceps, so I’ve heard!”

“You mean, you don’t actually do it?”

“Kinda? I did it once, and it didn’t really work for me. The object of it is to squat down and only barely brush against the chair so that you’ve got an indicator to know when the rep is done, but every time I attempt it, I just break the chair!”

“You… just break the chair?”

“Yep. I just can’t find one sturdy enough to handle even the slightest touch of my ass, well, for lack of a better term. And I really don’t want to break all the chairs in my house, so I don’t really bother with it. But, I’ll make an exception for this documentary, if you wanna see it.”

A chair was provided for Simone and sure enough, what she predicted came to pass. No matter how much she slowed her descent, as soon as her smooth, sizable rear touched the chair, the sturdy wood it was composed of splintered in every which way. Thankfully, Simone had already told the cast and crew to hide behind whatever cover they could find, which protected all of them from the wood chunks suddenly going from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye.

“See? Well, now that you’ve caught it on camera, that’ll definitely be the last time I do that.”

“Yeeaaah, about that… camera #3 kinda got totally destroyed from all the wood chips flying about.”

“Oops! Sorry about that! Maybe I should move onto an exercise that’s a bit less destructive? Ooh! I know! How about the glute bridge? That’d be a good exercise to get some background footage for!”

“What’s that entail?” The director asked as Simone got onto the floor and lay prone on her back with her knees up and her feet planted.

“Basically, I strengthen my core by pressing my upper back and head into the ground while lifting my hips! There’s no way that could inadvertently damage anything!”

She did as the exercise instructed, taking a deep breath and lifting her hips into the air. But, as soon as she held the position and began to count down from thirty, problems began to arise. A rumbling came from all directions which not even Simone herself was sure of the source.

Little did anyone know, by centering her core, she was actually using her hips as a push-off point. This meant that her feet and the top of her back were actually putting enough stress on the entire planet beneath her to nearly push it out of orbit around the sun. Thankfully for all seven billion humans on the big round ball, she stopped right before anything got seriously ugly.

“Well, that did nothing for me. I just felt weightless during the whole exercise. You sure we need to do any more of these Mr. Director man?”

“H-hey, here’s an idea, maybe we should just skip all the simple exercises for footage’s sake and move on to the actual interview?” The director’s frazzled voice came from behind cover once more. “ I can, uh, always just get footage from a stunt double or something, no need to break reality itself or anything!”

“Okay then! Heh, funny story about breaking reality actually, whatever you do, don’t get in a fight with a reality warper and then make him so mad he tries to compress reality itself onto you. I managed to catch the fabric of reality on both sides before it squished the both of us, but I pressed a little too hard and pushed myself outside of observable matter itself! Took me quite a while to find my bearings and make it back home, but let me tell you, it was an unforgettable experience!”

Every single member of the film crew blinked twice in unison. They couldn’t even begin to comprehend what she was talking about. But fortunately for them, a convenient distraction would appear in the form of a massive object growing from nothing in the sky.

It looked to be some sort of flattened black hole, pulsating outwards with crackles of electricity as it took shape before everyone’s very eyes.

Then, from the center of the rift in space-time, out came a superhero. Then another. Then another. Pretty soon, ten different people had exited the wormhole that split the sky. The director, breaking from his prolonged trance, seized the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and silently motioned for his crew to keep filming, pointing the cameras at the superhumans that descended from the sky.

The first one to land on the street was also the first to exit the portal. A tall, muscular man with a green spandex supersuit that hugged his body tightly, he looked around the area with squinted, determined eyes. It seemed as though he was scanning the area for some sort of objective, but his focus was interrupted by the second man to come through the portal.

This second guy moved almost incomprehensibly fast, his speed producing a similar lightning to the portal that had opened earlier. He wore similarly silly attire fit for a superhero, with engineer’s goggles wrapped around his forehead.

“Are you sure that the person of interest is here?” asked the green-spandexed man to the speedster. “I see nothing of the sort. Just a few regular humans.”

“Yep, that’s definitely her,” the speedster said, pointing towards Simone. “I got insane readings coming from her location, like a massive object launched into space and the entirety of the earth being lifted, nearly out of its own orbit.”

“Very well. This shouldn’t take long…”

The dressed-in-green hero took a few steps forward before shouting at Simone.

“You there, short woman with the darker complexion. You have been accused of trying to conquer the entire multiverse, using vast strength to accomplish these desires. How do you plead to these claims?”

Simone raised a lone eyebrow.

“Conquer the multiverse? Are you serious? I just wanted to prove myself on the biggest stages. I studied recent history, planned accordingly and trained to be able to reach that level. I’m sorry the competition wasn’t to my standard but I did everything right. Why am I the one being accused of being a threat?”

“So you’re not denying your power…” the green-suit hero took flight, his feet lifting off the ground in preparation for a battle. The other nine supers assumed their own battle poses accordingly. “You have also been accused of stealing a tournament approved stadium from the respective host planet. How do you plead?”

“I didn’t steal it! I asked after the competition ended if they had a use for it!  They said it wasn’t likely now that I was the champion so I took my time picking it up and taking it to my home universe to train with it.”

“In that case, where is it now?”

“Well…about that.”

Simone pointed up at the sky and everyone looked up. While it had long left the atmosphere and had become invisible to the naked human eye, the superhero was able to just barely confirm its existence before even he could no longer see it.

“Y’know, in my defense, your organization needs to make those things heavier so stuff like that doesn't happen!” She said, hoping to lighten the mood. The man in green didn’t seem enthused, instead turning his gaze towards the speedster.

“Can you confirm that the object was the stadium in question, Sonicspeed?”

“Already have, while you were talking to her, I ran my way up there and confirmed it myself in just 3 nanoseconds. You should have seen it, chief! The speed it had picked up! It could wipe out three planets!”

“Wow, and all from a flick of my foot? That’s a new personal record for me!” Simone shouted out, her face beaming with satisfaction. “At least, I think it is. I don’t really keep track of the stuff on a galactic scale.”

“Well, I’ve heard all I needed to hear!” said one of the superheroes from amongst the crowd of thirty. “She’s going down!”

With that, some of the heroes began to charge at her, but Simone didn’t seem afraid in the slightest. She looked back at the camera lens. “Isn’t this great? You guys get a somewhat accurate representation of what my tournament routine looks like! I can’t wait to watch this documentary now!”

The first guy to approach her nearly blindsided Simone by going from the size of an ant to six feet of height. He threw a punch her way, but she caught it effortlessly.

While the growing man of purple was surprised by how easy combat was for her, he wasn’t ready to give up immediately. He channeled the same energy that allowed him to grow and became even larger in size, his massive form now easily twice the size of Simone’s.

He threw another far more devastating punch, yet the result was the same. Biles wasn’t even fighting back at this point, waiting to see what he’d try next out of sheer curiosity.

Sure enough, he channeled more of the growing energy and quintupled his size, now larger than a three-story house. He attempted to step on Simone, but she simply erected a wayward finger and his boot was stopped in its tracks. Then, she held her middle finger under her thumb only to release it with an almost anti-climactic flick. The impact of her fingernail hitting the bottom of his sole sent him flying screaming into the sky, fated to the same endless traversal of space that the coliseum was. Only the growing man was a living organism and needed air to breathe.

“Oops, I think I laid it on a teensy bit thick there, didn’t I?” Simone said with only the faintest hint of worry in her voice as the large man disappeared into the great blue.

But her next quip was cut short by the second opponent, a black-clad ninja-like warrior with a glowing sword. He said nothing in his approach, but with the way his sword sliced through anything in his path, it seemed quite dangerous indeed.

Not wanting to deal with the hassle of this supreme sword damaging her skin-tight outfit she had dawned specifically for the documentary, Simone clasped her hands above her head with immaculate timing and caught the sword between her palms.

As soon as the ninja processed the feat, the ninja let go of the sword and pivoted backwards in fear. She then slid her hands down the blade to wield it properly, only startling the cloaked man farther. Simone raised a confused eyebrow. “What’s wrong? Was that catch really that impressive?”

“I-impossible…” the ninja actually spoke. “That’s a holy blade, one only those of my bloodline may wield. To anyone else, it weighs more than the heavens themselves!”

“Hmm, I see…” Simone responded, swinging the sword about effortlessly. “I think the problem here is that your heavens need to be heavier. I definitely feel like this should be weighing me down… but it’s not.”

The ninja fainted out of sheer disbelief, taking him out of the fight. Simone leaned forward a little to get a good glimpse at the fallen man. “Um, well, thanks for the sword anyways! I honestly think it’s cooler than most of the awards I’ve ever gotten, if that’s any consolation.”

Biles was then suddenly attacked at all sides by fifteen of the exact same person. They all dogpiled her, but the attack was instantly negated by her one-by one piling them all up into a stack on her arm like an overworked waitress.

But as fast as she had defeated them all, the identical men vanished from existence. Standing before her, however, was one more.

“So, you could handle ten of my clones? Let’s see how you handle one hundred!”

With a concentrated grunt, more versions of himself began to pop up in every single direction. He was attempting to confuse Simone, but she was already several steps ahead of him. As scores of clones poured into the street, Simone chucked the holy sword into the air only to combo it higher with a very flexible flip kick. It went flying into an arc, only to land onto the head of a very specific member of the duplicate army.

Turns out, that clone was the original copy and she had singled out his exact spot with expert strength precision. Striking him down caused all of the other duplicates of him to vanish, freeing up the streets for other supers to attack her. But at this point, several of the heroes that wanted to fight her had up and vanished when the chaos had presented an opportunity to flee.

All that remained now was the green-clad man, the speedster and a cloaked wizard man. Even they seemed surprised by the four other remaining heroes suddenly fleeing the fight.

“Cowards… the lot of them,” the man in green spandex spoke in a gruff tone. “She’s just a stronger-than-average human. Maybe if they all worked together instead of attacking her one-by-one, they’d easily be able to blindside her.”

“Are you saying that’s what we should do, Quarkman?” The speedster spoke. “I think with my speed, your strength, and the weird silent wizard guy who I forgot the name of’s magic, we’ll be able to make this whole thing go by in a breeze!”

“Yes, that was exactly what I was insinuating, SonicSpeed,” Quarkman spoke with sarcasm. “Great intuition on your part.”

With an unconscious agreement between the three of them. They all sprung into action. SonicSpeed flanked Simone, running circles around her to distract everyone and kick up dust to blind her. The crew of the documentary sputtered and coughed, yet the gymnast just seemed to be more curious over anything else.

Quarkman came from the sky with a gravity-influenced haymaker. He was ready to put all of his effort into this punch, even if it decimated the entire galaxy in the process. Anything to get rid of the multiversal threat that was Simone Biles.

Just as she seemed too distracted to notice, Simone suddenly lifted up her hand to catch his fist without even facing him to do so. All his momentum was suddenly halted as soon as he landed in her palm. She then lifted her head to greet him with a cheerful smile.

“I-impossible! How did you catch my punch!? My fists can strike through supernovas!”

“Impossible? Um, you all realize I’m holding back, right? If I went a bit more all out, we’d be causing a lot more damage right now.”

“If the damage kills you, I’d consider that a victory for the entire multiverse! Even if I had to destroy this entire pathetic planet just to achieve it!”

“Well I wouldn’t! My boyfriend still lives on this planet!” Biles retorted, innocently ignoring the bigger picture.

Quarkman attempted to strike again, but his fist was firmly secured within Biles’ grasp. Desiring for the humiliating tirade to end, he called out.

“SonicSpeed! Wizard! Do something!”

“Oh, y’know what? This looks like a really good photo op!”

Before the speedster could react, Simone crouched low and performed a flawless wolf turn, sweeping her leg at just the right time to catch SonicSpeed off-guard and trip him up. His momentum sent him flying across the square and the dust he had kicked up quickly settled. At the end of her gymnastics move, she ended up squarely facing the camera, where she threw up a peace sign and winked, all the while still holding Quarkman squarely in place.

“Aaaand got it,” the cameraman said, confirming the photo was a success. “Thanks for clearing the dust out of the way, there was a good ten seconds where we had no good video coverage of anything.”

“Don’t mention it, guys! You sure you don’t want to continue asking me questions? I think I’ve got this whole situation under control now.”

“Sure thing, Ms. Biles. Although I feel like since this day has taken a turn for the weird, perhaps we should ask more relevant questions?”

“Okay then, what do you have in mind?”

“Let’s see… How would you combat the fast man? Er, I believe SonicSpeed was his name? He seemed to be moving way faster than the human eye could even perceive. So, how could you defeat him?”

“Oh, well that’s quite simple,” Simone responded, still holding Quarkman high as she stared down SonicSpeed from across the plaza. “When I try and combat someone potentially faster, I think about where they will be and not where they are.”

She then pivoted her back foot five minutes counterclockwise and threw up her arm in the form of an intercepting lariat. As if on cue, SonicSpeed ran headfirst into her outstretched elbow and was knocked on to his back once more.

“See, just like that. Thanks, speedy guy!”

SonicSpeed didn’t get up.

“Wizard! Where are you!?” Quarkman shouted, still caught within his uncomfortable hold. “I told you to attack alongside us!”

“Patience, young one,” came the voice of an older man clearly wiser than most. “I merely used your distraction as an opportunity to finish conjuring my spell. Soon, you will achieve your victory.”

Now Simone, the director and the rest of the crew were interested. Real magic flowed through the robed man’s veins as a blue orb grew in size before his hands. His ancient, bony fingers stretched forward, converting the orb into a bolt of lightning which struck Simone directly in the chest.

It appeared to have no effect at first, with the bolt not even damaging Simone’s outfit. However, the true outcome was realized when Simone’s entire body suddenly shrunk a full foot.

“Huh? What’s happening to me?” Biles asked in confusion as her entire form shrunk to the size of a thimble. While it caused him great pain, Quarkman was just barely able to escape Simone’s grasp.

Her speech would have been unintelligible, were it not for the clip-on mic that had also shrunken alongside Simone.

“Woah, this feels so weird!” Biles’ voice spoke from the camera’s output. “The ground is so detailed now.”

A massive Quarkman floated down, his voice booming at the tiny Biles. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to become acquainted with it. Goodbye, Simone Biles.”

He lifted his foot up and stomped down with all his force.

He expected great tectonic shifts, hell, he at least expected the pavement to crack, but no such event occured. He couldn’t even feel the rubber of his own shoe touching the ground.

“What the—?”

But before Quarkman could finish his confused mumble, his entire body was suddenly tossed into the air. He just barely managed to take flight and hold himself before he was sent past the stratosphere.

“Wow, y’know, I really thought I’d be weaker from this whole shrinking thing,” Simone’s voice came once more for the camera speakers. “But I think it just made me stronger? Like, I can’t really explain it, but I think having all my atoms compressed just made me hit a lot harder. I kinda like this!”

“Nnng! You’re not supposed to like this! You’re supposed to die!” Quarkman screamed from the skies. At top speed, he charged towards Simone with everything he had. The world-famous gymnast didn’t really seem to care.

“So, do you have any more questions for me? Like what it means to be tiny, perhaps?”

“Hmm, well, does it feel weird to—”

“Oop! Hold that thought! I guess I gotta take care of this guy real quick!”

Then, Simone disappeared from sight. She was already rather hard to distinguish from her surroundings, but she moved with such speed that literally no one could see where she went, not even Quarkman. But the green-spandexed superhero was beyond caring at this point. He was just going to fly straight through the earth at this point and hope that the vacuum of space would kill Simone upon the entire planet imploding.

But right before he could collide with the ground, his body froze in place and contorted unnaturally. He could feel his spine be pushed to the limit as all four of his limbs were brought together behind him. Making Simone smaller only made this part even more painful for him, as this was the only way for her to stop him from doing anything drastic.

“W-wizard!” Quarkman called out in desperation. “Change her back! Unshrink her! This is even worse than before!”

“Very well,” came the old man. “But after this, I’m leaving. This battle’s winner was decided long before it had even begun. I see that now. To prolong it any longer would prove tedious.”

And with that, Simone was returned to her normal size. Of course, that didn’t stop her from immediately wailing on Quarkman further with well-placed non-lethal punches.

“Alright, I think this battle’s just about wrapped up,” Simone declared, dropping the green-suited hero to the floor and stepping upon him to prevent escape. She then waved goodbye to the departing old wizard as his body became more and more transparent until it vanished completely. “Any other questions you have for me, director?”

“Well, I guess the only other question left is: why don’t you conquer the universe? I mean, you clearly could, like, whenever you wanted?”

“Meh, not really my thing. I just like having metals on my wall, y’know?”

“Ah, so you’re just going to try your hand at every sport?”

“Um, if you want to get technical, I could have had more medals than I already do but I’d much rather stick with the events I know, wouldn’t want to add too much to my schedule, you know?”

The director then pointed to zoom in on the man she was containing within a headlock. With his mask ripped and face thoroughly pummeled, Quarkman was almost unrecognizable.

“What’s next on your agenda, Ms. Biles?”

“I think I’m just gonna hang out. Lift some stuff. Spend time with my loved ones and my boyfriend. This whole ‘fighting superheroes’ shtick seems to cause a lot of unnecessary risk to the planet, y’know?”

With that, she dropped the defeated Quarkman to the floor, a pool of blood quickly spreading out in a sphere around his body.

“Aaaand we’re done! That’s a wrap!”

The film crew began packing their belongings, seeming almost eager to be as far away from Biles as humanly possible. The director, however, was a madman, approaching Simone with excitement in his tone.

“Wow! I really can’t believe we caught that once-in-a-lifetime encounter on film! You were a blast to work with, Ms. Biles!”

“Why, thank you for the kind words! But I wouldn’t call that a once in a lifetime thing, this has basically become an average Tuesday for me at this point.”

The director’s eyes widened. “F-for real!?”

“Yeah, they’ve basically replaced the average workout routine for me going forward. Plus, all the new faces keep it interesting.”

The director’s silence was palpable.

“But, hey, I welcome the challenge, after all, I’m only getting stronger. Maybe I should try my hand at objects beyond the galactic level…”