It's sort of weird – testing your limits when there doesn't seem to be any. I mean, I'm sure there has to be a point where we will be unable to do something – and I was waiting for it – but it just never came, at least with what we had to work with. We both ran around the track. Timmy was faster than I was, but only just. I had a feeling that was more of a physique thing rather than him actually being faster. The other weird thing was that as fast as I was running tonight, it didn't feel anywhere near as fast as I had run to the car accident. The strength...well, we only had the one car so it was difficult to test exactly how strong we were. We each lifted the car from the front and extended our arms so the back wheels were still on the ground and the car was tilted up at an angle. Then I stood at the front and Timmy stood at the back and we had the car completely lifted off the ground. It was actually pretty cool.
"Let's try something, Bill." Tim said as we held the car above our heads. "Make your way to the center of the car."
I knew what he was thinking, but what came out of my mouth next pretty much had to be said. "Why me?"
"Because you performed a feat of strength yesterday. You were first. Why not you?"
I couldn't argue with that kind of logic, so I inched my way to the center of the car while Timmy held up his end.
"Ready?"
I adjusted my stance and grip, looked at him and nodded. Tim let go. It was a little surprising, but the car didn't go down at all. I was standing there holding 1800 pounds of Detroit steel above my head as easily as I would a small child. After he saw that I had it, he backed away and went over to the girls. The amazement I saw on their faces probably didn't match the look I imagined I had on mine.
I stood there for about 5 minutes. "You getting tired yet?" Peg asked.
"No, not really," I answered. "I think I'll feel it in the morning, but I feel as if I could stand here for quite a while."
"Your turn," Jess said as she pushed Tim toward me.
He stood in front of me, positioned his hands under the car and told me to back away. I let go and did just that. As I watched him center himself under the car more, I couldn't help but be amazed again. Was this ever going to get old? I hoped not. I couldn't imagine being blasé about something as astounding as lifting and holding a car above my head or watching as my friend does the same thing. After about 5 minutes I went to the front of the car and held it as Timmy hand-walked to the rear and we set the car down easily.
"How do you feel," I asked, brushing the dirt off my hands.
"Same as you. I think I could have stood there for quite a while." Timmy shook his head. "But now what? We just have one car with us and each of our vehicles can't be more than 300 pounds apart from each other in weight. That isn't much of a test." Here he chuckled. "Unless you think we should play catch with it."
I joined the girls in laughing with him. "No, not just yet. Unless we find another means of strength testing, it may come to that. I did notice one thing, though – when we were running. It didn't seem to me that I was running as fast as I did when I ran to the car accident earlier today. I mean, I was running impossibly fast tonight but it still seemed slower than earlier, if 'slower' is a good word to use. It certainly didn't feel like I was running fast enough to make it from Bozeman to St. Paul in 10 minutes."
"Maybe it was the urgency of it," Peg said as we watched Timmy and Jess walk to the edge of the track. "Maybe because there was a life at stake, you knew you had to run faster, so you did. Your life wasn't in danger as you were running tonight, so you didn't run as fast. Same thing with the man on the news. There was a life on the line. He had to run faster so he did."
"Maybe," I agreed tentatively. I looked at her as an idea formed in my head. "That could be it."
"You don't sound convinced. What is it?"
"Well, I was thinking. What is it that I have in common with James Lewis of Bozeman, MT?" She looked at me as I continued, "We are different ages. We have different jobs, different backgrounds, different body types, different builds. We live in different parts of the country. We are two completely different people in every sense, except what?" I looked at her expectantly as she thought of an answer.
"Well," she said slowly, "You are both men."
"True enough," I agreed. As I was talking, I just knew the theory I had was right, but I wanted to see if someone else would arrive at the same conclusion. "But what else? What else do we have in common as it relates to our heroics today?"
Peg thought for a minute and then seemed to give up. "I don't know. I mean, you and Tim and this guy from Montana have all done something to save someone's life. It looks like that the men who are affected have the same abilities – strength and speed. Jess and I have each had a dream of you two doing something. I had a vision forced into my head before you saved the people in the car accident. That guy in Montana saw a woman that he had never met before have a vision before he..." She stopped and I saw understanding come into her eyes.
"You and James Lewis both did what you did today because a woman had a vision about it and told you to!" She exclaimed triumphantly. "You ran faster earlier today because I saw in my head that you were at the scene. The same thing must have happened to her. She saw that he was in St. Paul so she told him that he had to get there...that he could get there – no matter what!"
"That's my thought, exactly," I said to her. "It never really hit me until just now. All the affected men – and if I'm right, there are more of us than just me, Timmy and James from Bozeman – are strong and fast now under any condition; but I think that the affected men are able to do much more – almost limitless feats of strength or speed – if they do it at the direction of a woman who had the vision of them doing so."
"Oh my God..." She said with a mischievous look on her face. "Do you know what this means?" Oh, man...here it comes. "You'd be better off if you just listened to me more." Yep...thought so.
"Yes, Peg," I drawled with an exasperated voice as I rolled my eyes while she grinned up at me. "How did I know that was coming? I wonder though – seriously – if I am going to meet some random woman that tells me to go to New York or something and catch a subway...and I don't mean ride one."
"Well I had a dream and a vision about you. No one else, just you. Jess had the dream about Tim and the little girl. That woman in Montana obviously had a vision. James Lewis mentioned her grabbing the side of her head. Maybe it's like the ultimate matchmaking service – only for superheroes instead of dating."
"I think you could be right. A man gets enhanced strength and speed and is able to do much more with it when he follows the precognitive dreams or visions of a woman. Or maybe the woman – the one chosen to be his...I don't know...his seer...for lack of a better word."
"If we are right, that's pretty amazing."
"Yeah, I think so too. I think we should tell Timmy and Jess what we think of all this. Get their thoughts." I turned towards the direction they had walked away in and began to call out to them, when all of a sudden...
Did you know that "Oof" as a sound is actually a real word? It's something that really can come out of your mouth – something you can say. I had never really thought about it until just that moment. As I turned around I saw a flash of metal and felt an explosion against my chest. Timmy had pulled up a 4-foot metal pole that was part of the chain fence surrounding the track and, catching me off-guard, swung it at me with a fair amount of strength – which is saying a lot considering we had each held up a car not 15-minutes ago. "OOF!" I exclaimed (see, I told you) as I flew at least half the length of the football field. I finally landed with a grunt and just lay there with my eyes closed. Across the field I heard Peg cry, in a concerned voice, "Bill!" and then "Tim!" in a more scolding voice. I'm not sure if I lost consciousness, but when I opened my eyes, Peg, Tim and Jess were all on their knees next to me looking concerned.
"Dude," Tim said. "I'm sorry. Are you OK?"
"Ohhh..." I groaned and closed my eyes again. "That's going to leave a mark." I sat up a little and looked at my best friend. "Sorry, Timmy? That didn't look like an accident. What the...what the hell were you thinking?" I was a little angry but probably not as much as I should have been.
Some of the concern had left his face. "I was thinking that just lifting a car wasn't much of a test." He started to grin, "I wanted to see what else we could do."
"What else we could do? Timmy, if you can lift a car I'm fairly sure you can knock a man across a football field with a pipe. What kind of test is that? And what are you laughing about?"
"Look who knows so much. This wasn't a strength test for me. It was a strength test for you. Do you know the kind of force I just hit you with?"
"I have a fair idea," I answered, rubbing my chest. "But I don't quite feel like doing the math right now. Enlighten me."
"Anything broken? Still alive and all that?"
"I don't think anything's broken. Pretty sure I'm still alive, but your future is in question. I still don't..." And then I got it. I looked straight at him and said, "I should pretty much be dead or seriously hurt right now." I sat up the rest of the way and began to get to my feet. Peg and Jess each grabbed an arm and helped me the rest of the way up. "OK, Timmy. It was a good test and don't think I won't get you back." He grinned back at me. "Now, do it again."
The smile fell from his face as Peg and Jess both shook their heads and started to protest. "No, really. It was a good test," I said to them. "We are here to test our limits, not see how long we can hold up a car. But I want to see what happens when I'm ready for it."
"Your call, man," he said as he jogged to where he had dropped the pole.
"Bill, are you sure?" Peg asked with obvious concern in her voice. "That looked like it really hurt."
"It did a bit," I answered truthfully. "But Timmy's right. I should at least have a broken rib or twelve from that, if not just flat out dead. I think it'll be different this time."
Peg didn't look too convinced as we watched Tim jog back to us holding the pole.
"Alright Timmy," I said. "Hit me with as much force...no, hit me harder this time."
He took a practice swing like a baseball player who had just stepped up to the plate. "You ready?" I nodded. Timmy took a step back and then stepped forward, leaning into his swing. I tensed as the blow connected.
I was knocked back about half a step as the pole bent then snapped in half with a musical twang.
"Whoa!" Tim said as the girls looked on in wonder. "How did you know? So, we're invulnerable too? Does this mean we're, like, bulletproof?"
I thought about the whole bulletproof thing before I answered. "I don't know about bulletproof. That's a different kind of force, and with a projectile – which is way different than a length of pipe. Think about it, though. With the strength and speed there has to be a measure of invulnerability otherwise we could be holed by a stray dragonfly while we run; or be so sore after a feat of strength that we couldn't move for a week."
"Speaking of invulnerable," Peg added as she pointed to my chest. "Let me see."
"Already trying to get my shirt off?" I joked. "It just feels like a dull throb now. I doubt it is anything serious."
"I don't care. Let me see." I knew that look. I pulled off my shirt – a little embarrassed because, as I said earlier, I am pretty out of shape. Looking down on my chest I could see two distinct, but very different marks. One of them was a good size welt, which looked like it would turn into a very nice bruise. There was even a little broken skin – a cut or a scrape – in the middle of it. The other mark was nothing more than a reddened area of skin. It bore an unmistakable resemblance to a length of pipe, but that was it.
She lightly touched her fingers to the welt and winced a little. "Does it hurt a lot? It looks like it hurts a lot."
"It hurts some. Quite a bit more than the other one does, but not nearly as much as it should." I continued to look down at the marks and noticed something else. It was probably a trick of my eyes or the light or something, but I looked...I don't know...slimmer. Not a lot slimmer, mind you, and certainly not buff; but enough to make me think that my body was going to continue making adjustments to these new...powers. Even my arms were a little more defined, as if I had been working out moderately for a couple of months.
"OK, Peg," I winked as I put my shirt back on. "Seen enough?"
"Very funny," she laughed back. "I wonder if that is going to heal any faster than normal."
"I don't think the cut will, but as we get stronger we may find that stuff like this won't show as much or for as long. Especially if we are ready for whatever it is that could hit us. Time will tell, I guess. But Timmy, what if you had been wrong?"
"It's like you said with the dragonfly and the week in bed. When our arms or spines didn't snap from holding the car up, I figured there was more to the strength thing than just power-lifting – so I thought I would see. And better to test it on you than me."
"Oh? How do you figure that?"
"I'm way younger than you are and have my whole life ahead of me," Timmy grinned mischievously. "As old as you are, I thought..."
Jess stepped between us and said quickly, "I think that's enough for now." Timmy laughed. "We probably shouldn't test much more than you getting knocked 200 feet." We all chuckled at that, but I think my laugh may have sounded a little more relieved. "We learned some from the news report and I think we learned a lot here tonight."
As we walked back to the car Peg linked her arm in mine. "I still can't believe he did that. And I really can't believe you are walking away from it not more than 15 minutes later. I was so scared. I thought you would be...well, I'm glad you're OK."
I looked down at her and smiled. "It wasn't that bad...alright...maybe it was, but still it was a good theory and a good test. Even if it was a little...unorthodox, we learned a lot from it. And Peg," I stopped and turned to look at her. "I'm glad you were a little worried."
"Don't let it go to your head," she said with a smile as she stood on her tip-toes and kissed me on the cheek. It was a good moment, up to the point where Tim let go with a loud wolf-whistle.
We turned and looked back to see Tim and Jess laughing a little bit, but it wasn't making fun. It was a warm laugh – a sort of "it's about time" laugh. We walked back to the car, Peg's arm again linked in mine, and I couldn't help but think that maybe this hero thing wasn't going to be so bad.