The Gymnast, Part 3 (Patreon)

Commissioned by eJm

Written by HikerAngel

In a dimension as far off from any habitable part of the universe as one could be, a battle rages on.

It’s ten thousand to one. The mightiest superheroes, the scariest monsters, the most powerful gods to any faith… and a human Gymnast.

And the Gymnast is winning.

She’s expertly evading every attack with precise and flashy gymnastics, retaliating with strikes of her own that seem comically, out-of-proportionally powerful for someone of her stature. At just 4’ 8” and 24 years of age, she’s throwing around city-sized monsters that were older than the very universe she was born in.

Even though she’d much rather be known for her 30-time gold medal achievement at such a young age, every so-called powerful person in the multiverse knew her for her more notorious other feature: her endless strength. There was seemingly nothing too heavy for her to lift, nothing too tough for her to tear through, and no opposing force quick nor strong enough to leave a bruise on her skin.

She was Simone Biles. Life was pretty good for her. She had a big, dumb smile on her face as she swerved around punches from superheroes, tentacles from monsters and all sorts of strange magic inbetween.

A man in blue and red spandex cornered her into brawling range, trying to predict all of her moves with a combination of fast fists and laser vision. He may have boxed her into a corner, but she was anything but trapped. Turns out, a long, flowing red cape nearly as indestructible as oneself wasn’t the best piece of attire to bring to the heat of battle. Anyone with absurd strength could easily turn such a costume feature into a greater weakness than the actual green rock he was more famously known for.

A tug of the cape’s end turned the once unstoppable man of tomorrow into a spinning flail of destruction turned against his fellow heroes. She slammed him from the ground on her left to the ground on her right, the indestructible material designed to keep her in proving to be quite painful to be slammed repeatedly into.

Biles would have thrown him around some more, but his cape ripped at the seams from the abuse and he was careening out of sight into the hoard.

Next up, a large, muscular green man threw a massive punch and Simone caught it with her far nimbler hand. Once he realized this, he tried to yank his hand out of her grasp, but it wouldn’t budge. This only made the green man angrier, which, in turn, increased his strength ten fold.

But no amount of strength mattered to this gymnast. His strength could have increased 100-fold and it wouldn’t have made a difference.Even as his strength reached its new peak, she effortlessly yanked his arm in an awkward direction until it broke, puppeting him about before pummeling him into the ground. He didn’t get back up.

“Wow, you remind me of Gleebok. Weigh the same too… nothing.”

As soon as the final word passed her lips, Simone’s smile faded. Not because she was under the threat of losing to any of these world-ending foes, far from it. She was… bored? That was new. Her life had been full of excitement ever since she realized she could lift anything she wanted on earth with no effort expelled whatsoever, but now, creeping intrusive thoughts began to terrify her. What if everything was effortless to her?

Her gaze broke focus, staring off into the unfocused abyss around her. One of the giant eldritch monsters tried to strike her down mid-existential crisis, but she caught its massive planet-sized sword with just a single hand without even looking in its direction. Her fingers and thumb cupping the blunt edges of the blade only to squeeze ever so slightly. Even the faintest bit of pressure from Biles sent massive cracks throughout the metal forged in the space between dimensions.

The sword erupted with the force of a supernova, but it wasn’t enough to knock Biles off of her feet. Even though her sigh of disappointment was drowned in the sounds of thousands around her perishing from the sheer force of her action, the emotions she felt were still very real.

What if this was the only thing she had to look forward to in life? Sure, people—especially in niche internet subcommunities—loved her for the feats and power, especially after her first documentary was such a massive hit. But would she really have to deal with “threats” like these, which had become a weekly occurrence at this point, for the rest of her conscious existence?

She wanted a challenge.

Was that even possible? Where would she even start? Was there even such a person who could offer an object so heavy that even she could not lift it? Such questions invaded her headspace and refused to leave.

Simone had become so distraught, she wasn’t even focusing on the battle anymore. Despite this, she was still winning. Warlords cast spells her way with physics unbeknownst to even themselves and she dismissed the powerful magic with just a mere handwave. The sheer energy produced from the low-effort motion was enough to redirect the magical charge in the opposite direction. Simone didn’t even glance up to see the result, but once attacks stopped flying in from that direction, she decided that she didn’t have to.

Slowly but surely, the attackers were whittled down until the survivors got smart and realized it would be more productive to flee with their lives spared. But Simone knew they’d just be back the next week. If she had known this would happen should she try her hand at a tournament of power, she never would have signed herself up. Her half-lidded eyes found the ground as she walked about the battlefield, sulking as she took upon the often-neglected job of clean-up duty.

A portal opened up nearby as Simone brushed the dust off her hands, recently disposing of the last massive monster in her way. Out came a group of filmmakers, ones Simone Immediately recognized.

“Biles! We found you!” exclaimed the director. “But it looks like we just missed out on the action, damn.”

“Eh, you guys would have been bored anyways,” Simone responded in monotone, nonchalantly punting a massive metal helmet worn by a former beast of war. “It was basically the same old stuff that it always was, y’know?”

“Same old stuff for you maybe! These are some insane baddies! They’re hurting my brain just attempting to conceive them!”

“Meh.” Biles responded definitively.

“Does that mean you’re officially retiring as the current heavyweight champion of the multiverse?” All cameras were honed on Simone. She didn’t even look up to smile like she usually did.

“Maybe so. I just feel like it’s almost not even fair anymore, y’know?”

“You wish you had struggles now that everything is so effortless, is that correct?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Suddenly, the focus of the cameras was shifted to the approximate area where the sound of rustling was heard. Crawling from the deceased, was the blue and red spandexed superhero from earlier.

“Y-you really want a challenging fight, you emotionless monster?” He paused to slip up some blood from internal injuries. “Try taking on the One. You won’t last two seconds against him. He’s got access to reality manipulation you couldn’t possibly counter.”

And with those last words uttered, the man perished before them all.

“You… wouldn’t happen to know where to find this One, would you?” Simone inquired innocently, possibly unaware she was talking to a corpse. When no response was given, she sighed.

But this was not a sigh of defeat. She had been reinvigorated. A person who may actually pose a threat to her unlimited strength? That intrigued her. Would she still truly be an olympian if she didn’t go for gold at every given opportunity?

She turned around, finally facing the cameras with a passionate stare. “Y’know what? I’m not resigning. Not until I challenge this ‘One’ and see what he’s capable of!”

The camera crew whooped and hollered, excited to hear that the one and only Simone Biles was ready to rise to the challenge and defeat her most challenging opponent yet: her sense of purpose.

Finding this hypothetical “One” was not an easy task. A cursory glance through the internet produced no relevant results. This was supposedly the one above all, but Biles didn’t care. She had challenged and promptly defeated thousands who claimed similar titles, what made this guy so special?

Perhaps she was wasting her time? Maybe—as one last hurrah—the America colored, spandexed man had given her a red herring to throw her off.

She rubbed tired eyes as she scrolled through the same few unrelated articles and weird forum posts. Libraries turned up nothing, neither did historians or religious scholars. She was searching for something that humans knew frighteningly little about.

Simone was ready to give up, ready to accept the life of mediocrity that lay before her. Would it even be possible for her to compete after this? She didn’t have to give it her all to win. Hell, she didn’t even have to give it her anything. What would be the point?

But then, just as Biles reached the height of her hopelessness, she heard a voice call out to her. It appeared to be one of indistinguishable radio static, breaking through reality itself to reach her.

With every garbled word, more and more of the world around her crumbled. But the world itself—her computer room—resembled more of a 3D video than the world she knew. As if she had been transported to a world beyond her comprehension and her eyes were still adjusting to their surroundings.

Simone glanced around, bringing a curious thumb and forefinger to her dainty chin as she observed the rest of the world around her dissolve into microscopic bits. Out of all the beings who had challenged her in the past, this one certainly knew how to make an entrance. Perhaps it could distract her from the emotional rut she had been in?

Then, the distorted voice took form, centering itself from its once unclear, echoing origins to a fixed point before Biles.

A floating stairway manifested, steps climbing up several feet until plateauing into a small five foot by five foot platform. Atop that, appeared a man in a similar fashion.

There was an almost indescribable falseness to the aura around him, something not quite right. As if the form before Biles was a mere projection, created to be more palatable to someone of her comprehension.

His form was human, but only vaguely. He resembled the silhouette of a man more than an actual one. A lesser human would be terrified of such an inconceivable presence, but Simone was getting giddy. The allure of a worthwhile fight was too hard to ignore.

“Simone Biles,” a low, gravely voice uttered from the direction of the man. “I take it you seek my presence. Why?”

She had done it, she had found the One. A million responses rushed through her mind, but only one seemed right. “I seek a challenge.”

“I see. You wish to find a worthy opponent, so that you may discover where your limits lie.”

“Yep, that sounds about right.”

“Then I shall take that as a confirmation to break you. I will not be holding back. Soon, you will learn why mortals are not meant to interfere with the affairs of God, and that will be the last thought you ever form before you are erased from existence.”

As terrified as she should have been, Biles could not help but feel excited. As it stood now, there was nothing in the multiverse that even presented her with a challenge. Despite the result of her potentially losing this encounter would be death on the scale that her existence would be erased, it got her blood pumping in the way that few things had before.

“You claim to be able to lift anything? Let’s see you get crushed under your own ambitions!”

His voice reached a crescendo of passion as a massive source of light erupted into existence from above. Looking up, Simone was forced to squint as her eyes glanced upon the radiant magnificence of a red sun.

Being nearly 1,000 times wider than the sun of her galaxy, it was quite the sight to behold. It almost looked like a flat plane of yellow-red energy due to just how massive the object was.

Already, the One was rather confused.

“Do you mind informing me on how you, a mere mortal, can withstand such reality-bending heat? You should be reduced to atoms at such extreme temperatures! That’s 3,200 degrees!”

Simone just shrugged her shoulders. “Mind telling me how you’re capable of doing all the stuff you do?”

“...Fair point, I suppose.”

There was a bout of awkward silence between the two of them.

“No matter, even if the heat does not kill you, surely the weight of such a celestial sphere will more than make up for it!”

With that, the massive star began to descend upon Biles. She held her hands up, closing her eyes as the light was becoming too annoying to even glare at. She was going to have to trust-fall the sun into the palm of her hands. Part of her wished she’d actually be able to see the feat itself, but she’d just have to wait and see.

And wait she did.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After a minute had passed, Simone began to wonder if the sun had even fallen any farther. What if this was all an elaborate prank from the One? A sort of ‘you passed this test by showing your bravery’ sort of cop-out. After all, there was no way she’d actually be able to touch the sun without feeling its intense heat, much less a sun of this caliber, right?

She slowly opened one eye, then upon recognizing the distance between her and the flaming mass quickly opened the other. What she saw nearly dropped her jaw.

She had been carrying the sun the whole time.

And she hadn’t even felt it in her grasp.

Immediately, her gaze shifted to the One. While his reaction was hard to gauge, the posture of his body suggested that he, too, had been dumbfounded by the insane feat of raw strength. It made sense though, a mere human in his presence and she was holding up an entire red giant with both hands without even realizing it. The same would have been true for one hand.

It felt exhilarating, her lips could not help but be drawn into a smile as she held an object she could not even see the entirety of above her effortlessly. But she knew this feeling would not last. Simone was not here to show off, she was here to prove herself.

Focusing her mind on the task at hand, she unflexed her fingers with the same finesse one might give to chucking a wad of paper in the nearby garbage can. The humongous star was sent careening into the sky above at rapid speeds, disappearing quickly from sight even in spite of its massive size.

“Another,” Simone demanded, her tone cold and unforgiving like steel.

“Wh-huh?” instinctively replied the One, his infinitely more powerful brain still struggling to process the scenario he had just witnessed.

“Give me another. Something heavier. A lot heavier.”

Her friendly demeanor was gone. She could feel the anxiety creeping back up from the pits of her stomach and wanted nothing to do with it. Like an addict desiring a second hit, she needed this.

The One was quick to oblige. With a wave of his hand, a massive, dull sky blue object overwhelmed the sky. It was not as large as the sun that came before it, but Simone was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t just size that mattered.

“Above you is a Neutron Star. While it is a mere twenty kilometers in length, I assure you it is one of the densest objects that can be found in space. Often 25 times the density of the average star, this should pose quite the challenge for the likes of you.”

Simone hoped he was right.

Like before, the massive sphere of energy descended, picking up speed as it somehow obeyed gravity instead of just generating its own field.

Striking a solitary finger into the air, Biles braced herself for disappointment. After all, 25 times zero was still zero.

Sure enough, the neutron star balanced perfectly on the tip of her finger, its sheer weight not even capable of cracking her fingernail as all of its momentum was halted almost comically.

The One was taken aback once more, stunned in silence, but Simone just sighed. Another expected outcome.

Then, a bout of frustration surged through her, culminating in her striking the Neutron Star with all her force. Even though such an object was made of pure atomic bonds, the sheer power of her strike shook the physics of the universe to its core and split the compressed star clean down the middle.

Frightened and unsure, the One quickly whisked away the halved object before

Newton’s third law took effect.

“I must say, you’re becoming quite the liability, Ms. Biles.”

“Oh yeah? Well I say you sold yourself quite highly for someone who hasn’t even given me a proper challenge yet!”

Even with the lack of a face, the dumbfounded anger radiating from the One was palpable.

“Fine. You desire a challenge? Then I shall bestow upon you a challenge mere strength cannot overcome!”

Throwing both of his hands forward, his arms began to tremble as he channeled a far more dangerous entity. Simone glanced back upward, only to not be greeted with an object in space, but the lack of space entirely.

The One had summoned a black hole.

It enlarged exponentially as it consumed more and more of the space around it. Simone should have been terrified like any human would have, but she couldn’t help but be excited. This was supposed to be the heaviest object in the known universe, after all.

She watched with a growing smile as the hole of nothingness continued to fester above, time itself being warped and distorted by its pull.

She could feel the hairs on her head rise as its inescapable influence began to reach her. Eager to test her own resilience to its pull, she steeled her stance in resistance. Even as the event horizon overcame all, Simone still would not budge. The entire realm was being pulled in at 58,000 miles per second, yet the massive lightless beast was also struggling at going anything other than 0 Biles per second.

Standing her ground once more, she forced the formerly inescapable force of nature to bend around her will.

Throwing her arm forward and flexing, the raw power of such an action was so overwhelming that the black circle was contorted into more of a worm-like shape. The strongest force in the universe and Simone didn’t even have to try to defeat it in a test of strength.

Needless to say, the One was dumbfounded.

“It… makes no sense…” he started to speak, yet the vibrations of sound produced no noise as they too were absorbed by the waning black hole. Gravity. Space. Matter. Time. All things consumed by the carnivorous hole, but not Biles. Without even taking a step forward, she had conquered the strongest hurdle a universe could offer.

With a trembling hand, the One reversed the effects of the black hole. Anger seethed through his teeth. Who was this woman and why was she so goddamn powerful?

Simone, staring down her silhouetted adversary, had the exact same quandary about herself toiling about in her head. Was there really nothing for her? She was beginning to assume that the One had run out of tricks, but he wasn’t about to be defeated that easily.

“You may have conquered the universe’s heaviest… but let’s see you hold the entire universe itself!”

Without even a performative wave, the entire ceiling of the infinite abyss collapsed atop Biles. For the briefest of moments, the Olympic gymnast was fearful. She had never even attempted to lift anything as insane as the observable universe. 10^53 kilos of sheer weight dropped upon her. A number almost too large for any human to properly conceive in that moment.

But the moment quickly passed.

Throwing her hand above her head, she caught an entire universe to little fanfare. Billions of cubic lightyears in her grasp and she couldn’t even feel any of it outside of the gravelly texture that pressed against her smooth skin.

“Well, there you go. You wanted to see me hold the entire universe and I did. There’s nothing left for me.”

Her voice contained obvious disappointment, mostly at herself. But once again, the One was not to be outdone.

“Did you really think that was all there was? You of all people should know that the Multiverse theory is correct. That may be an entire universe, dark matter included, within your grasp. But it is a mere speck of dust compared to the multitude of universes within my control!”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Simone asked rather scornfully. She was tired of the silhouetted man’s grandstanding now that she knew it often amounted to very little. “Hurry up and drop more universes on me!”

The One obliged, calling a second universe from the infinite array and dropping it atop the one she was already carrying. Outside of a small acknowledgement from the universe she was already carrying, she felt nothing.

“Another!”

A third universe was summoned and promptly deposited upon the stack. Then a fourth universe. Then a fifth universe. Still nothing.

But the One did not stop. He wanted this torment to end as quickly as Simone did. Tens of universes turned into hundreds; Hundreds turned into thousands; Thousands turned into millions; Millions turned into billions, which turned into quintillions, which turned into decillions, which turned into duovigintillion, which turned into googol, which turned into centillion, which turned into centillion (long form), which turned into googolplex, which turned into googolplexian, which turned into googolplexian plex, which turned into googolplexian plexian. Eventually, even the One lost count of how many universes he had piled on to the gymnast’s hand.

At the moment, the worst thing happening to Biles was her arm was feeling a bit tired from being raised for an extended period of time.

Biles wasn’t sure how, but eventually she could feel the universes stop falling.

“Y’know, I’m not much of a philosopher or whatever,” Simone began talking aloud out of boredom as she casually held the infinite multiverse in her palm. “But there is one question that always comes up in my head every once in a while: can god create an object so heavy even he himself cannot lift?”

“D-don’t be absurd. There’s nothing I can conjure that I cannot control.”

Simone was no detective, but even she could tell that he was lying through his teeth. So she called his bluff.

“Then give me more. Everything you’ve got. Keep piling it on until I feel something. Anything. Even if it kills me.”

Between the eldritch, inconceivable god and the human gymnast, the former was the terrified one.

“I-I can’t!” the silhouette admitted. “Any more and I might destroy the very fabric of the multiverse!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Because I’ve given you everything. There… there is no more.”

There was that feeling of dread again.

“That’s not true… it can’t be. Are you really telling me that I’m holding everything you can offer?”

“You are holding everything I can control. If I were to authenticate the next great leap and something went wrong, there would be no way I could contain it should you fail to succeed in your efforts.”

“I won’t fail. Do you know who I am? I don’t fail,” her voice grew in intensity as she began to walk forward towards the One. “I am Simone Biles! The top Olympic gymnast in the entire world!”

She grabbed the One by his hypothetical collar and brought his featureless face to hers. Even though he was only a light projection, she was able to grab the very light itself and drag it forward.

“You have more to offer, so give it to me. I don’t care if it kills you. Or me. As long as I can feel some semblance of a struggle, I can finally be at peace. Do you understand!?”

Rather ironically, while trying to find an obstacle too great for herself, she had inadvertently given the One that very thing.

“V-very well,” the One spoke, his composure having been long shattered. After seeing that he was surely frazzled, she let him go. “The space beyond the observable multiverse is dangerous. A negative, bastardization of what is known. With measurements that make no sense and are barely conceivable to even I. What you’re messing with is something that will kill you painlessly if you’re lucky.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Steadying his entire body and concentrating, the silhouetted man returned all of the universes Simone was holding. “You won’t be needing those. Even a planck’s width of matter from the outside negative matter weighs more than the entire multiverse ten times over. Once I tear a crack into the outside, one can only hope and pray that your strength will be enough to reseal it.”

“What do you mean?” Simone asked, shooting the man a curious look.

“I am not strong enough to reseal what I have torn. This very well may be the point of no return.”

Simone then turned her face back away and struck a determined pose fit for an olympian, ready to tackle whatever the great beyond threw her way.

The ceiling then began to crack and tear, each split sending vibrations throughout the entire multiverse, ones powerful to shake cosmic entities, even distorting the appearance of the One.

But the ever-resilient Biles did not falter. She maintained perfect composition as the reality beyond reality crumbled before her.

Then, just enough of the crack opened, allowing a tiny speck of the negative outside to slip through. Simone caught the tiny sliver of strange, translucent darkness, it immediately reacted violently once it touched Simone’s skin.

As if the strange constant was alive, it began to jump around and let off huge amounts of explosive energy. It was as if it couldn’t handle the oddities of the woman holding it. But, despite 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent of this mass being ten times heavier than the entirety of the literal multiverse she had carried before, it still felt like nothing in her hand.

She was nowhere near her limit.

But more was to come. A steady stream of the strange substance slithered through the seams, fusing with the clumps of negative-matter in her hands as she held it casually. Before long, she had a blob roughly the size of a clay brick.

“Congratulations, Ms. Biles,” the One spoke. “You are the first living entity in the history of the multiverse to successfully lift -1 pounds. I’m assuming that the look on your face means you don't desire to quit anytime soon?”

The silhouette was correct in that assertion.

The split in un-reality grew wider, but due to his inexperience dealing with such a field, the negative matter began to pour out at an exponentially accelerated rate.

She found it was more trouble trying to make sure none of the strange material hit the floor. It definitely appeared to be dangerously radioactive, but Biles no longer cared. Despite how strong this goop supposedly was, she wasn’t feeling any of it!

Meanwhile, as a consequence of Simone’s demands and the One’s mistake, the multiverse was falling apart. With the barrier between reality and unreality separated, negative energy quickly spread throughout the multiverse.

The One felt his body begin to deteriorate as the radiation from the negative energy began to take its toll. He panicked and attempted to warn Simone, but no words could come out of his projected mouth.

Negative three pounds; negative five pounds; negative ten pounds; negative one hundred pounds… the weight kept climbing, the negative matter kept seeping through and Simone continued to find herself unsatisfied with both.

As the unreality continued to ensure that no one in the multiverse would survive, Simone was left with yet another dreadful, devastating conclusion. That there would simply be nothing strong enough for her.

Even as the negative pounds added into the billions for Biles, there was no end in sight. And, unbeknownst to her, she was running out of unreality to lift.

She found that by finding the sweet spot of resisting and letting the unreality flow, the negative energy would group together to attempt to seep through more cohesively. It was working. She almost had the entire concept of unreality goop on her finger tips, even if it came at the cost of every living creature in a single fell swing.

For the first time since he was born at the start of the universe, the One felt a sense of drowsiness wash over him. He was about to completely lose his grasp on reality. All of the gods were.

This was it.

The One was ready to die.

And then it all stopped.

The silhouetted man could not see Simone’s reaction, but she did see the compassionate side of her actions, patching up the hole in the multiveral reality as she was told.

But then, once she turned around, only then did the One see a massive, dopey smile on Simone’s face.

“W-what happened? Where’s all the unreality? Why are you so happy? Did we finally die and get sent to an afterlife befit for a god?”

Simone chose to answer all these questions with a simple answer.

“I did it. I found my limit.”

The One was flabbergasted. At the start of this, he was afraid that the sun would kill her. Now, he was shocked to hear the girl actually had a limit of some kind.

“R-really!? You found something you couldn’t lift?”

“Well, yes and no. If that goop really is all there is in the great beyond, then I can still lift everything, but lifting all that goop at once made me actually struggle to lift, although with about as much effort as it might take someone to move a toaster from one countertop to the next.”

“Wow, that’s really good enough for you, huh?” the dumbfounded elder creator said, unsure if there was anything left to say at this point.

“You bet it’s good enough for me! I think I’m gonna retire early at this point, maybe to focus more on the movie career.”

“With that, I bid you adieu,” said the One with a polite bow.

“Well, it’s not over over! You’ll still see me competing in the Olympics!”