Big Heroes Need Big Muscles (Patreon)

Rounding off June's stories, Mao Mao, the heroic sheriff of Pure Heart Valley, is tapping into his heroic might to save the day! Thanks again for the support, everyone, and see you in July!

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Pure Heart Valley had a simple, but increasingly urgent, problem: the monsters that threatened the Valley were getting bigger, but their heroic sheriff Mao Mao was not. A towering, draconic beast, with limbs larger than tree trunks and scales as hard as metal, breathed a noxious, boiling acid that ate away at Pure Heart Valley’s meager defenses, and crushed buildings underfoot with each earth-shaking step.

Orangusnake, the evil half-snake half-orangutan mastermind behind the Sky Pirates cackled as he rode on the back of the monster, his eyes fixed on the massive Pure Heart Ruby that loomed over the rest of the kingdom. “Bahaha! Onward, my new pet!” 

The rest of his Sky Pirate crew was just behind him, fending off Pure Heart Valley’s stalwart defenders as they tried to repel the beast.

“Dang, dude! How did Orangusnake train that thing?” Dodging the monster’s attacks and weaving between its massive limbs, Badgerclops was quickly running out of ideas, desperately firing off laser blasts from his cybernetic arm.

“Didn’t we already fight this one? He got bigger!” Adorabat shouted. Flying over the Sky Pirates, she led Ramaraffe, a giraffe with a mechanical neck, on a chase, leaving the pirate tied up in her own neck.

“A good eye, Adorabat!” Mao Mao shouted, striking the beast as hard as he could, but his sword glanced off the scaly hide. “Gah! What will it take to beat this thing?”

“Hahaha! You’re finished, Mao Mao!” Orangusnake gloated, nearly crushing Mao Mao under the foot of his new pet. “You look so puny and tiny down there! Like a teeny, tiny, mini black speck! Hah!” 

“Wait, wait… isn’t this one of the monsters that really likes cobbler?” Badgerclops said, managing to knock out Rattarang, another of the Sky Pirates.

“Uh… no, no, I think you might be mistaken,” Mao Mao said too quickly. “He looks more like a pie monster to me.”

“Mao Mao!” 

The cat relented, gritting his teeth. Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out a precious piece of berry cobbler. “A hero always takes the sacrifices…” he muttered bitterly. “Badgerclops, catch!”

Throwing the cobbler to Badgerclops, Mao Mao felt his heart sink as his cyborg partner wound up his mechanical arm and threw it with as much power as he could muster. The treat caught the monster’s attention, drawing it away from Pure Heart Valley.

Orangusnake gasped as his beast took to the sky. “Wait! Wait, no, you stupid animal! Attack the Pure Heart! Attack!”

The monster’s huge wings sliced through the air, knocking off the Sky Pirates as the beast chased after the cobbler, sending a faint, echoing cry of “We’re Okay!” on the wind.

Mao Mao, for his part, breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, there we are. Once again, Pure Heart Valley is… uhm… hm.” The cat rubbed the back of his head as he looked around the ruined square, tendrils of smoke still wafting up into the sky over the mountains of rubble and caved-in buildings.

“Sheriff!” storming towards Mao Mao was King Snugglemane XXV, the ruler of Pure Heart Valley. The tall, broad-shouldered, but impeccably groomed lion tossed his cape dramatically over his shoulder as he stood indignantly over the cat. “How do you explain what just happened?”

“Your Majesty!” Mao Mao stood at attention. “We dispatched the monster as quickly as we could and-”

“‘Quick as you could’ doesn’t mean a thing when my beautiful kingdom is left looking like this!” Snugglemane snapped, pointing at the wreckage all around him. “That was too near a thing, Sheriff! I demand an end to those Sky Pirates, immediately!”

Mao Mao breathed deeply. “You’re right, Your Majesty, they’ve become too big a danger. I will redouble my efforts with a vigorous training program to beef up my team and-”

“Training?” Snugglemane scoffed. “I need results now, Mao Mao! I do not have time to wait for you to work out!”

“But sire,” the cat sheriff countered, “our training has already honed us into fine-tuned weapons of justice. If you give us some time-”

“I’ve already stopped listening to you, Mao Mao, workouts are for prestige and looking kingly, not saving the kingdom.” The King clapped his hands, summoning his two royal magi-technicians. Dressed in robes and appearing in a puff of smoke, the chameleon and squirrel bowed to Snugglemane. 

“Camille! Honey! See to it that the sheriff is actually capable of doing his job, for once!” the King commanded, striding off in an indignant huff.

Latching on to Mao Mao, Camille was already tugging the cat towards the castle. “Oh, yes sire! Ah, I know just the thing that will help us get started- leeches!”

“What- leeches?” Mao Mao gasped.

Honey, however, interjected. She placed a hand on Camille’s shoulder, and shook her head. Camille rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine. I suppose we’ll start with some of the more boring applications of magi-tech first…”

Pacing across Camille’s lab, Mao Mao grumbled. “This is ridiculous- we should be training right now, not looking for shortcuts! Heroes don’t take shortcuts.”

Adorabat cocked her head. “But what if we need to get somewhere really, really fast and the shortcut is the only way to get there?”

“What? No, Adorabat, it’s not that type of shortcut. It means we shouldn’t cut corners.”

“But what if we’re cutting circles? You need to cut corners for that,” Badgerclops commented.

“Badgerclops, you are not making this any easier!” Mao Mao snapped.

“Haha, yeah,” the cyborg chuckled, evidently pleased with himself.

“Now! Who’s ready to get big enough to fight monsters?” Camille announced, carrying a wide array of equipment in her arms; Honey trailed after, catching anything the chameleon dropped. 

“First we have, uh, let’s see here…” Camille laid out the equipment before the sheriff’s department, picking up a familiar looking amulet. “Ah, yes, Growth Amulet. Very potent, very powerful, it will increase your size ten-fold.”

Badgerclops’ eye lit up with recognition. “Oh hey-!”

Mao Mao, however, was quick to snatch it up. “Nope! That got way too out of hand last time.”

“Ah, well, there is this…” Camille sloshed a bottle filled with a bright, neon-pink liquid inside. “This is a muscle growth serum that will supercharge the drinker’s body, and should result in super strength, making anyone who drinks it stronger than any monster-”

“Gimme that!” Adorabat shot through the air, grabbing the potion out of Camille’s hand and tumbling on the floor. In her fervor to be a hero, she had already uncorked the bottle and began guzzling it down greedily.

“Adorabat, wait!” Mao Mao tugged the bottle away, leaving a single drop of the potion inside. There was a tense moment as everyone turned a wary eye on the small bat. There was a small gurgling noise came from her stomach, but then a burst of energy shot through the diminutive hero; every part of her quickly expanded with muscle, her wings swelling in size, her back spreading out- even her peg leg was, somehow, growing with the rest of her.

“Hah! Mao Mao, look at me! I betcha I can take on all those Sky Pirates at once!” Adorabat declared, flexing her new, mighty wings. She was pleased with herself, but then that same gurgling noise rose up in her core again. “Uh… Mao Mao, I don’t feel so…” Adorabat suddenly inflated like a balloon, every part of her body incredibly exaggerated and swollen, until she was a ball of muscle. “I- I can’t- bend my wings!” the vaguely bat-like, swollen lump grunted.

“Adorabat!” Badgerclops gasped. He moved to pick her up, but then his cybernetic arm nearly snapped out of its socket. “Woah, she’s like, super heavy, dude!”

Mao Mao, mouth agape, quickly rounded on the two magi-technicians. “These are your shortcuts? Either an amulet that gave us trouble already, or turning my deputies into lumpy… fleshy… boulders?” The cat stomped towards the two. “Tell me you can fix Adorabat!”

“Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry!” Camille declared. “I have something for exactly this scenario! It’s called the Really, Really Big Needle.”

“It’s called the what?” Adorabat squeaked as Badgerclops began rolling her away.

“Get Adorabat back to normal, I’m going to work out and train like we should have done in the first place!” Mao Mao shouted. Storming out of the castle, he still held his fist tight over the near-empty bottle of Camille’s growth serum.

Hunkered down in his home, surrounded by his training equipment, Mao Mao centered himself. “Alright. Badgerclops is too lazy to get through this training and Adorabat is… indisposed. It’s time I gave myself the workout of a lifetime, and tapped into my heroic willpower!” He then uncorked the potion, drinking the last few drops. “...And relying on just a little help because heroes know when to take advantage of a situation for the greater good. Not a shortcut, it’s a… boost. Yeah.”

Breathing deeply, Mao Mao drew his sword and attacked the nearest target with all his strength; his core burned with pent-up energy, his body tingled down to his paws as he leaped into the air and swung his sword with gusto. He hadn’t felt so in tune with his heroic senses since his golden moment, but now, there was a surge of strength, as if he could level entire mountains- only in the name of heroics, of course. At some point, he heard the wood boards of his training deck creak beneath him, and everything around him felt so fragile, and looked so… small. Breathing heavily, there was a huge black line blocking his lower vision, rising in rhythm with his breath. It took him a moment to realize it was his chest. 

His eyes wide, Mao Mao rushed back into his house, unintentionally creating an immensely inflated Mao Mao-shaped whole in the wall. The entire house quaked as he lumbered towards a mirror, though it was next to impossible for him to take in the whole scale of his now massive body. His head sat atop a mountain range of black cliffs and peaks that made up his engorged shoulders and pecs, supporting arms that surged in size with the slightest bend. His boulder-sized biceps made it slightly harder to swing his sword, to be sure, but none of that mattered- he was truly, heroically, absolutely jacked.

“Hah! Hard work and heroic willpower have done it again!” Mao Mao cried triumphantly, just before the floor gave way under his titanic weight, the gargantuan cat hitting the ground with a tremendous crash. “Right, right…” he muttered as he dusted himself off. “Sky Pirates apprehended first, lecture Badgerclops and Adorabat, then fix the floor.”

Later in the day, Badgerclops was cradling a dramatically down-sized, slightly deflated Adorabat in his arms as they approached the outskirts of Pure Heart Valley. 

“Ugh… everything hurts, Badgerclops…” Adorabat groaned, her wings lying limp at her sides.

“Haha, yeah dude, you kind of gained and lost three hundred pounds of muscle in like, five hours. Maybe don’t do that again?” the badger shrugged.

“Yeah, well, I just wanted to help Mao Mao… where is he, anyways?” 

The response came in the dull, heavy thud of quaking steps, a huge black figure looming on the horizon. Badgerclops groaned. “Aw, c’mon, two monsters in the same day? That’s not how this is supposed to work!”

Adorabat, however, raised her head to get a better look. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. “Oh. My. Goodness. Badgerclopsitsmaomaoandheshuge!”

The two deputies rushed to meet the immense Mao Mao, Orangusnake squished between slabs of beef as the cat carried him under his arm.

“Woah, dude! You’re massive!” Badgerclops gaped.

“Haha, well, aren’t all the best heroes?” Mao Mao chuckled deeply, his pecs bouncing, causing a tremor down his sprawling torso. 

Gasping for air, Orangusnake scrambled desperately. “Mercy! Please! Save me from this beast!” He slipped out of Mao Mao’s grasp, only for the cat to slam into him like a felled tree. An arm packing enough power for an entire artillery swung around the Sky Pirate and effortlessly pinned him against Mao Mao’s brick wall of abs. Pure Heart Valley’s greatest villain was now squirming helplessly against a black tide of powerful muscle. 

“How did he even get so jacked? Seriously, it was like trying to wrestle a mountain or something!” the villain wheezed.

“So,” Mao Mao turned to his deputies smugly. “What did we learn?”

“Ugh, it’s gonna be something about hard work paying off…” Badgerclops muttered.

“Oh, oh! I know!” Adorabat held up her wing. “Mao Mao is always right!”

“Both very good,” Mao Mao nodded, his chin bumping against the top of his swollen chest. “But I learned something myself- a true hero’s strength can come from many sources, but having huge muscles just makes it all so much better, hah!” He lifted both of his arms into a victory flex, tensing his biceps until they blotted out the sun. “Also, on a completely unrelated note, how about we celebrate by visiting my dad? I want to see him try calling me small now- I mean. I want him to see how much I’ve grown. As a hero.”