Pumping Vengeance chapter 1

Amber sat in her car, paralyzed by trepidation and the fear of discovery.

She had known for some time that this was a bad idea. She had lied to herself that this wasn't necessary. Her car tick-tocked with the sounds of the cooling engine, as it had been sitting down the street from her boyfriend Matt's townhouse. Her car sat parked just outside the view of Matt's townhouse for her to effectively recon the situation. Amber had been sitting now for over twenty minutes agonizing about what she'd find. Her heart sank the moment she turned down his street. An unfamiliar car had been parked outside, and if her guess was right, had been there for some time now. Beads of early morning dew had collected all over the powder blue paint job and the windows. Someone had stayed the night.

Matt had gone dark. No text, nor phone call over the last week had reached him. No status updates on either Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. What had happened to him? Nobody had seen hide nor hair of Matt, and Amber had worried endlessly. Amber prided herself on giving people space if need be, but to become totally incommunicado so out of the blue like that was unnerving enough to rouse her curiosity, which led her here, sitting in her car wringing her hands.

Amber didn't recognize the car, a Prius, by the looks of it. It could be one of Matt's friends from the gym, she supposed, but a niggling feeling at the back of her mind dispelled that notion. She just couldn't place it, but that car didn't belong to any man. Amber was sure of it.

Could Matt be seeing another woman? Would he? They had been dating for six months now, seeming to be the textbook perfect couple. A chance encounter at the gym had ignited the spark between them, and a beautiful relationship had blossomed.

Amber was a fitness junkie. She liked lifting weights and being stronger and more muscular than the average girl. Being raised with brothers in a neighborhood full of boys did that to you. She had always played sports and favored 'boy' things like professional wrestling and action movies over anything deemed 'girly' like gossip and drama. She wasn't and had never been ashamed to be a girl, but she hated the idea of being considered the 'weaker sex' just because of her gender. Anything boys could do, she could do and do much better. Unfortunately, such an attitude was not conducive to a strong love life. Boys tended to either be intimidated by her and would shy away when she came calling, or they would see her as 'one of the guys' and never consider her as a girlfriend.

It wasn't because she was ugly, she knew that for a fact. Looking at herself in the rear view mirror, Amber gave her pretty features a once over. Short black hair was arrayed in a high-fade pixie cut cut with her bangs sweeping over to one side above her right intensely blue eye. Those same eyes stared back at her and sparkled with life. Despite her beauty, she couldn't shake the involuntary look of worry and self-doubt. She was twenty-one, but looked like she could be younger, with a vernally beautiful face replete with an attractively strong bone structure; chiseled cheekbones, a square, but feminine jawline, and her favorite feature of all, full, pouty, juicy, totally kissable lips. She was a beauty and she knew it, especially now that she had blossomed into full womanhood. Her awkward teenage years were behind her. She garnered stares wherever she went. Amber was the girl that guys wanted and other girls hated by virtue of being in the same room with her.

Despite that, meeting Matt seemed like a bolt out of the blue. Dates were few and far between for her at that time in her life. She had been so used to being alone that she didn't really bother with dates. Few men were willing to be with a girl who could embarrass them in the gym by lifting heavier with stricter form. Matt was different. He was an amateur bodybuilder, so that alone was a no-brainer. He was handsome, he was smart, he was funny, he was perfect. He wasn't intimidated at all by Amber and seemed to enjoy Amber's lean, athletic body and above average strength. But recently, further back than the last week, something had changed. Amber couldn't put her finger on it. He would stare at his phone and smile, clam up when spoken too, and started getting more and more distant. He'd spend long stretches of time god knew where, and would only offer vague statements as explanations. Working late, overtime, whatever excuse Matt could conjure that was feasible, he did. Amber refused to pry, believing that he simply had personal issues to work out and resolved herself to give him space.

But even her patience had its limits.

This last week was the worst. His long periods of absence gelled into one and he seemed to drop off of the face of the earth. Nobody had been forthcoming with any information and she had gone bonkers with worry by the third day. What if he was hurt? What if he had been killed? What if... What if he had been with another woman?

Amber whipped her head to the side to dispel the thought, eyes searching for something, anything, to focus on and derail that train of thought. That was impossible! Unthinkable! Not him. Not her Matt! He wouldn't. Would he? Her eyes drifted back to the powder blue Prius. Unlikely. Possibly... Maybe... Things are certainly shaping up to be that way...

Amber frowned, swallowing dryly and looking at the parked hybrid in front of Matt's place. Matt and Amber had mutually agreed to live separately. She certainly enjoyed his company, but it was nice to have a place of her own to relax and veg out sometimes without him in her business. Sitting here now, she came to realize what Matt had meant by floating that idea out there.

I'm jumping to conclusions, Amber thought with a violent shake of the head. He's clearly just has company over, that's all. It doesn't mean it's another woman. Does it? Amber sighed in exasperation. This wasn't working. She was no private detective. This was no stakeout. This was a girl refusing to accept what was clearly in front of her face. It wasn't going to get any easier and she was never going to get answers sitting here wallowing in impotent vexation.

“Fuck it,” she steeled herself, opening the door and stretching up to her full, modest height of 5'6”. Looking both ways, pretending to be on the lookout for oncoming traffic, but in reality looking to stall for just a few more seconds, she simultaneously tried to jog across the street and look casual and unassuming as she approached the mystery car. The license plate read PRINCUS.

“Prin-cus?” Amber mouthed in bewilderment. What the hell did that mean? She ran the word in her head over and over again, trying to suss out a meaning. Prink-us. Prin-cus. Prin-cuss. Prince-us. Prinsuss. Princess! Amber rocked back on her heels. Fucking Princess. Some stupid bitch thought she was cute enough to rate as 'Princess' Anything. Amber hated girls like that. Those stupid selfie-taking attention whores. Always with the heavily filtered angled selfies on InstaPix. Always with the duck lips. Always showing off their ass or their tits and wondering why guys were such animals. Girls who could have anything she wanted just by batting her fake-ass looking eyelashes at horny, thirsty guys and teasing their baser instincts with promises of sex.

Girls that took other girls' men right out from under them.

Something snapped inside of Amber. She felt anger boiling from within. As much as she wanted to disbelief the evidence, as much as she kept wanting to make excuses she knew Occam's Razor was in full effect here; the simplest explanations were always the best. Setting her jaw, she marched up to Matt's door and knocked. Amber's knuckles patted the door so softly, she squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment at how quietly she knocked. Doubtful anyone inside heard it. She knocked again, with more authority this time. Tuning her ears she heard people inside. There was confused and alarmed muffled voices and plenty of shuffling. Either they were in the process of getting dressed, or they were moving a dead body. Amber might just have the luxury of having to move two in a moment. Despite flexing her ears, everything she heard was simply too indistinct to make out.

“Who- Who is it?” came Matt's cautious baritone from behind the door.

“It's Amber,” she replied with less authority in her voice that she would've liked.

“A-Amber? Oh uh...” Matt turned away from the door and whispered something harshly to someone else that she couldn't make out.

“Yeah, y'know, Amber, as in your girlfriend whom you've disappeared on and worried half to death? That Amber,” she said caustically.

“Just gimme a sec would ya?” Matt complained, voice troubled as if attempting to do something that required dexterity, like putting on clothes in a hurry.

“I've already given you a week, Matt. C'mon, open up. I wanna talk,” Amber demanded, becoming annoyed at the delay.

The deadbolt thudded and the chain rattled before the door opened. Matt stood on the other side, surreptitiously blocking the doorway with his bulk. Amber stared at his handsome face. Matt's chiseled jaw was enough to make any girl weak in the knees, to say nothing of his boyish blue eyes. His hair was buzzed short into a John Cena-esque high and tight. His smiled a shit-eating grin that was meant to be disarming. Ordinarily one of his smiles would make her face burn with blush, but right now it looked like the perfect target for a fist. Despite that, Amber let her eye wander south just a bit. He still looked good. His body rippled with fresh muscle. His chest was perfectly smooth and full, bulging pecs seemed the perfect place to rest her head. Matt had an almost painful looking V-taper with massive, broad shoulders and a tiny, tiny waist. His abs formed a taut six pack that part of her still yearned to kiss. His crumpled jeans were unbuttoned suggestively, a slight trail of tantalizing fuzz let from his bellybutton down to his nethers. Tall, handsome, muscular, the perfect man. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and had on only a pair of unbuttoned jeans that had been thrown on in a hurry after spending quite sometime heaped on the ground. He looked frazzled, both as if he had just woken up, and that he was on edge but was trying to hide it. The effect left him looking pop-eyed and worried, like somebody was holding a gun to his head.

“Hey,” he rumbled, trying to look nonchalant by leaning on his meaty forearm in the doorway.

“Hey,” Amber repeated in a slightly mocking tone. Really, Matt? Really? she thought but did not say. That's the approach you're going for? “So, care to explain?”

“E-Explain what, babe?” Matt replied, obviously playing dumb, which in all actuality, wasn't that hard for him.

Amber rolled her eyes and blew a fed up sigh. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe the week long absence would be a good place to start. Or maybe the car parked out in front? Or maybe who you have in there with you?”

“Wh-what? What c-car?” Matt sputtered. Amber glared at him.

“Seriously? The powder-blue Bitchmobile? The one belonging to Prink-us, or Prink-me, or whatever that cock-juggling Thunder-Cunt wants to call herself,” Amber said, shouting the insult into the darkened townhouse.

“What are you talkin' about babe? There's no one else here! I-I don't know whose car that is!” Matt pleaded.

“Oh really? Then why aren't you letting me inside?” Amber pressed him.

“Be-because it's a mess in here, an--”

“Oh spare the bullshit, Matt! Your place is always a sty!” Amber snapped, losing patience. “Lemme in!”

She ducked under his arm propped up in the jamb all casually, and darted into his home before he could grab her. An unmistakable undercurrent of fuck-funk that was poorly covered up with Matt's favorite bodyspray hit her in the nose. True to form, his place was a mess. Clothes were scattered everywhere, some Matt's, others belonging to a woman that was most definitely not Amber, judging by how garishly large the cups of the bra she stomped past was. She heard the bathroom door close. She knew it was the bathroom because the door was a little too big for the frame. The person operating it was obviously struggling to shut it, not caring any longer that the jig was up. Amber made a bee-line for it, ready to start swinging her knuckles. Matt sensed her purpose, and scrambled to intercept the mauling that was about to occur.

“B-Babe, wait!” Matt called after her, but she ignored him, storming deeper into this den of iniquity. “Babe I can explain!”

“I tried giving you a chance, Matt!” Amber declared. “Where is she?”

“Who?” Matt continued to lie.

“Goddammit! Don't lie to me! Who's in the bathroom?!” Amber wheeled on him and screamed. It was too much emotion. Tears of rage and pain stinging her eyes.

“Okay,” Matt relented, breathing nervously and running his meaty fingers through his buzz cut. “Okay. Yes. There is someone in there.”

Though Amber knew the truth from the get go, it was so much more damaging to hear the truth from him. She felt like she had been punched in the stomach. The world that had made sense a week ago spun. She lost all sense of direction.

“Who?” she whispered, the fight bleeding out of her like the blood draining from her face.

“A-a f-friend,” said Matt vaguely.

“Goddammit Matt...” Amber croaked, biting back more tears.

“Okay! Okay. More than a friend,” Matt admitted weasily. “We-- We've been seeing each other for... a while now.”

“A-A wh-while? How long?” Amber rasped slowly unsure of whether she truly wanted to know.

“A few months now. I don't know how long exactly.”

“Behind my back?” Amber asked rhetorically. Her disbelief was overtaking her common sense at this point. Her mind raced. Her palms sweat. Her throat was dry. She collapsed onto his couch, the couch that undoubtedly was swimming in bodily fluids. She ordinarily would have rather set fire to it before sitting on it, but her knees wouldn't lock. She felt sick.

Matt sighed and looked away. “Yes.”

“Why?” Amber sobbed, unable to hold herself back any longer. She lost her normally strong control. Big girls didn't cry. Too bad Amber felt two feet small. Matt instinctually moved to comfort her but she batted his hands away. “No! NO! Don't touch me! You don't get to touch me ever again, you pig!”

“Amber, listen--” Matt began.

“No! Why, Matt? Why? Aren't I enough for you? Don't you love me?” Amber bawled.

“Yes, of course I do, but--” Matt sighed in frustration. “It's-- It's complicated, okay?”

“Complicated?” Amber parroted in between sobs. Matt sat next to her on the couch. She shrunk away, but he took hold of her and locked her in place. His hands seemed to burn her flesh like they were seeping toxic chemicals. She once longed for his touch, now she couldn't stand it. The hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. Her skin felt like it was about to slough off of her body.

“Yes, complicated. I know I fucked up, Amber. I'm man enough to admit that. I hurt you, and I'm deeply, truly sorry. I didn't want to make you upset--”

“Upset? Upset?! You think I'm fucking upset, you fucking pig?!” Amber shrieked in rage.

“I deserve that,” Matt said.

“No, you deserve worse than that, you asshole!” Amber choked out, slamming her once strong fists into his muscled chest and shoulders, wracked by another bout of sobs. Each blow grew weaker and weaker until she gave up entirely. Matt never once tried to stop her, taking his lumps without complaint.

“You're right, I do,” Matt admitted.

A pall of silence fell over them, well, aside from Amber's sobbing and sniffling. Matt sat silently and gracelessly next to her, a big, heavy lump of awkwardness. She could feel his body heat and it disgusted her whereas at one time it was nice and comforting. He just felt dirty to her now. Despoiled. She wanted to vomit. Both at him being so gross and awful and at herself for being so stupid. They sat for a period of time that might've been a few moments, might've been an eternity.

“Why, Matt?” she asked again once her tears subsided for the moment and her hackles lowered. Matt's mouth became a thin, grim line.

“I--”

“Don't say 'I don't know' or 'I'm sorry' anymore! We're past that. Okay? Would you just tell me the goddamned motherfucking truth? Don't you owe me that at least?” Amber growled, getting angry again.

“Okay. Alright. Fine,” Matt yielded. He sighed and said, “If you really wanna know it's that... Well. You're too... big.”

Amber stared at him through rosy, tear-swollen eyes. “Too big?” she repeated in disbelief. Matt swallowed and fidgeted under her scrutiny.

“Y-Yeah...” he murmured, as if he knew how stupid his reasoning sounded. Before Amber could form the words, Matt interjected once more. “Look, I know it's shitty, but... It just... I don't know how to explain it. I just don't think girls should have muscles like that.”

Amber was dumbstruck. This was his excuse? She was 'too big?' How could that be possible? She hardly broached fitness levels of muscle, let alone anything that could be construed as 'too big!' Sure she was more ripped and beefier than the average woman her age, but too big?!

“You're fucking insane,” Amber muttered in disbelief. “Y-You think that I'm-I'm-I'm-I'm too big?! Too big?! And that makes it okay to sleep around on me? To disappear for a fucking week and leave me worried and concerned for your dumb ass, that you might be dead in a ditch somewhere for all I know?” Amber stood up, burning with indignant rage. “I'm too muscular for you? Is that it?”

“I know it sounds dumb...” Matt admitted.

“No, Matt, no! It's not dumb. It's not dumb at all!” Amber crowed mockingly. “Ha ha! In fact, it's perfect! It's all so clear to me. It's like I can finally see. I can see what kind of man you are! A little man. No, a boy. One who's intimidated by a girl.” Amber dropped all pretense of humor and glared at him. She knew she must've looked a mess having been whiplashed through a gauntlet of emotions, but she didn't care. Matt looked guilty, and he was, but she wasn't finished with him yet. She leaned in close, hands on her knees and met him in the eye. Or tried to. Matt wouldn't look at her. Amber stared at him for a good, long while, willing him to come aflame under the intensity of her stare. It didn't happen, mores the pity.

“Tch,” Amber sucked her teeth. Amber stood erect once more, looking down at her now ex-boyfriend with a cocktail of feelings swimming around in her brain and her heart. Anger, pain, loss, bemusement, joy, despair all jostled around and vied for supremacy. She stormed over to the closed bathroom door, where the interloper, the home-wrecker was all to cleverly hiding. She pounded on it with angry fists. “Hey, Prink-us! You still in there?”

“Y-Yes?” she heard the small voice squeak from behind the door.

“I've got good news!” Amber announced jovially. “You wanna know what?”

“W-what?” the girl timidly inquired. Amber glared at Matt from across the way, still sitting on the couch in embarrassed defeat.

“You want Matt so badly? You're in luck! You can have him! And when he invariably gets tired of you, as I know he will, then you can play hot potato with the next girl! Have fun!” Amber declared, never taking her eyes off of Matt. She didn't wait for the girl's response. She walked past Matt, still staring him down. He wouldn't look at her. “Well, I guess this is it Matt. It's been fun,” she said.

“Amber, wait,” Matt said, getting up and coming over to her. She wheeled around, her eyes wide and expectant, as if she were eagerly awaiting his latest excuse, or attempt at comfort.

“What's there to wait about? You made your intentions clear for the first time in our relationship. Thanks for that. A little too late, but hey, what can ya do?” Amber shrugged mockingly.

“I don't want it to end like this,” Matt said contritely.

“Well, it is. And it could've been handled a fucking lot better, but it is what it is. To think that I loved you and agonized how I didn't deserve you. Now I see it's the other way around. So I wanna thank you in a way. You didn't deserve me. I see that now. I'm gonna be the best you ever had, Matt. And you'll never get to have me again.”

And with that, she turned on her heels to leave. Reaching out to open the door, she turned one last time to look at him.

“If you think I'm too big now, just you wait, honey. I'm gonna blow your mind.”

She left his townhouse for the last time in her life, head held high, dreams clearly in sight. She made every attempt to maintain her composure, and put one foot in front of the other. Amber hopped off the steps to Matt's place, ignoring his various bromides. “We could work this out!” “This doesn't have to be like this!” It all fell on deaf ears. There was no turning back. She jumped into her car and sped away before the triumph she felt ebbed. Could it really be called a triumph? She hadn't buckled. She hadn't fallen to her knees and begged forgiveness like other girls. Forgiveness for what exactly? It was a girl thing to think one was to blame for a failed relationship. Naturally Amber had wondered what she had done wrong. Was she too needy? Too possessive? Did she not put out enough? Any and all possibilities seemed to pop in her head at once, jostling for space, making her head feel like it wanted to explode.

That said, it was the hardest thing in her life to walk out that door and not spare one look back. She counted that as a victory, no matter how small and inconsequential.

One more such 'victory' like that, and she'd be undone. A part of her had just died, and there was no real way to deal with that. What an awful week. Everything just turned to shit without warning. Fucking Matt. Fucking Prink-us. Fuck 'em all. She drove aimlessly, fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly, she thought she was about to break her fingers. Her teeth pressed together, jaw muscles flexing and popping. There was no thought, just the pressing need to get as far away as possible.

Unable to take the silence, and unwilling to let any thoughts creep into her mind, Amber poked at the radio console of her car, linking up to Slacker. She needed something offbeat and dissociative so she chose Primus. De Anza Jig from Tales From the Punchbowl started up. Nice and silly. The banjo and Les Claypool's odd hillbilly warbling helped remove her from reality. For a while anyway.

She couldn't help but think of better times as Les went on, happily waxing nostalgic about people he used to know. Better times with Matt.

“Fuck,” she whispered painfully. The last six months were great, or so she had conditioned herself to believe. She felt loved, wanted. She wasn't just a girl who wanted to be 'one of the boys' like so many others before had labeled her. She was who she was and she was loved for it, if only for a time. Around the time Les shouted out a beefy "Yeeee-haw!" in the background just before the song's end, tears came again. Wynona's Big Brown Beaver, one of her favorite all time songs from the same, started up but Amber didn't hear it.

Amber couldn't believe the words when Matt spoke them, and still couldn't mere moments later. Such disbelief would resonate for some time. 'Too big.' She was 'too big'. Too big for what? Love? How is that possible? Unable to process this and having no desire to shed more tears, she screamed in frustration, trying to ram the emotion down. Other girls cried. Amber toughed it out. Whenever the boys she apparently wanted to be one of would pick on her as a little girl, she wouldn't cry. She'd make them cry. A cutting remark, indefatigable skill, or good old fashioned fisticuffs would turn the tables right quick.

But this time, nothing she could do would work.

Unable to take it, she jerked the wheel, turning abruptly into the parking lot of a strip mall housing a dollar store, a comic book shop, a gold for cash place, and a Subway. Thankfully, the parking lot was empty. She parked her car and killed the engine midway through the first bass lick of Golden Boy from The Brown Album. She dropped her head onto the steering wheel and let it out. No one would see, and if they did no one would care. Such was the way of things. Everyone has problems. Deal with it on your own.

Amber had never hurt like this before. This wasn't like her cat dying as a child, or being unable to try out for Pee-Wee football because she was a girl, this was real pain. Pain brought on by the proverbial rug being swept out from under her. Her whole world, everything she thought was true and good these last six months weren't even real. It wasn't even possible to crush this down or convert it into another emotion like she might if she stubbed her toe in the dark, or accidentally turned the wrong knob in the shower. This was emotion beyond control and she hated it. She hated a lot of things. She hated Matt. She hated Prink-us. She hated being alone again.

And that's what she was.

Would it have been better if Matt had broken up with her to her face, or even something lame like a text, or if this were twenty years ago, a phone call? Hell, a 'Dear Jane,' letter would be acceptable. Infuriating, but at least it meant that Matt would've considered her feelings a bit more than, “Oh, hey, we're still dating? Oops.” A flowery, meandering supplication, an “it's not you, it's me,” would be preferable to simply being forgotten like an old stuffed animal. That's what hurt the most; Matt's surprise at seeing her come to his doorstep. He was having so much fun with his little fucktoy that last week's model seemed so inadequate to him it slipped his mind.

Matt was her longest relationship. She had dated other boys in the past, but none had lasted more than a few months at a time. One boy could've, if he hadn't moved away one summer. The others seemed to get weird when she showed them up at anything athletic. Naturally, she gravitated towards those types. It seemed like a realistic fit; an athletic girl with an athletic guy. She could never seem to grasp the idea that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. Boys had such fragile egos. To be weaker, or slower than, or not as skilled as a girl was one of the most frightening things to them.

Her pride prevented herself from lowering her own standards for herself for anyone. If they couldn't handle her, that was their problem. But it was so tempting. Just reign it in, be more of a girly girl, she'd hear in her head sometimes. Amber would not bend, so it was well past time that she finally broke.

She slumped back into the seat. The tears had subsided. It felt like the last of it had come out. Maybe it was good, like leeching. Getting all that poison out of one's system. She couldn't recall the last time she had truly cried. It felt like years of buried, neglected sadness forming a tsunami within her and laying waste to all of her carefully constructed emotional defenses in one stroke. Amber felt tired. There was little left within her to do anything, but she couldn't just sit here.

Sniffling, she wiped her face, steeling her emotions once more, and looked into the mirror. Red, swollen, and puffy, she looked back at herself. What had she said back at... his place? You ain't seen nothin' yet? What did that mean? Was it merely idle talk spoken out of anger? Was she still reeling from the blow? Amber said a lot of things when she got upset. Most of them she came to regret sometime down the road for various reasons. But for some reason, the vow she made didn't seem like one of those things.

She had vowed to blow his mind.

How? Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Amber's body. She had been lifting weights since her middle school days in order to play better at all the sports she was involved in. It took her almost half her life up to this point to make her the woman she was today. It was just automatic. Three days a week, go to the gym. Eat right. Burn excess calories. But now, that seemed so... inadequate.

Somehow, and Amber didn't know how, she was capable of more. And she wanted more.

A smile broke on her beautiful, tear swollen face. More. More muscle, more strength. With a rebel yell. More, more, more. It made sense to her now, and she kicked herself for ever letting it evade her thoughts. Up to this point, she had lived her life by her own rules, ignoring the call of what was expected of her and living how she wanted. Why should that change? Because one man said so? Fuck him. Fuck 'em all if they couldn't handle it. Was she so blinded by her supposed love of one man that she couldn't see how she might abandon her principles to appease him?

She was right, back there. Amber really should thank him. She may be alone now, but at least she was free. The way she saw it now, from a fresh perspective and with a clear head, she had some work to do.

She had, after all a promise to keep.

Looking towards the Dollar Store, she wondered if they had any posterboard.

----

Hours later, after some fruitless shopping, Amber sat at home in her modest once again bachelorette apartment trying to figure out what to make of the posterboard and office supplies she had run all over town to find. Everything sat arrayed around her, ready to be used to create... something. At the edges of her mind, she envisaged a chart, but a chart of what? Every good journey began with a plan in mind, but in her fury to put it all together, she almost forgot what she was about to embark on...

She wanted to redouble her efforts in the gym, obviously. But what was this chart meant to represent? Growth? Was she wanting to log her gains in some sort of roadmap? She didn't know what she had intended to do, but that sounded pretty cool.

Suddenly finding inspiration, Amber hopped up, and promptly stumbled, forgetting that she had been sitting cross-legged for some time now.

“Ow. Shit,” she hissed, shaking some feeling back into her shapely legs. She hurried into her bathroom, patently ignoring the organized chaos of her sink to look into the mirror. She stripped off her clothes down to her underwear. Amber appraised her body like an overly critical art snob passing judgment on a sculpture. That's what she was, she supposed, a sculpture. Only one that barely resembled the finished product, or so she really hoped.

Amber stood like a physique girl waiting to be told by the judges to hit a pose, shoulders spread, arms crooked and fingers splayed outwards. Ordinarily, Amber would like what she saw. Her body was toned and devoid of any unsightly fat. Her curves were hard and forged by many hours in the gym. But now, it just seemed so wrong. She looked flat, underdeveloped. The muscle tone that was deemed mere hours ago to be 'too big' simply wasn't big enough.

Her pretty face and head sat atop a stack-of-dimes neck, attached to slim shoulders and thin, weedy arms. Her chest was flat and devoid of anything vaguely three-dimensional, and her belly was missing the eight-pack she yearned for. Her waist and hips were fine, no excess fat there, but her legs just weren't going to cut it. She needed quads and calves that just [i]bulged[/i] with muscle, not just merely considered to be shapely.

Amber quarter-turned to the right and witnessed more of the same. Her waist was nice and trim from any angle, and she wanted to keep it that way. Her butt was round and firm, the envy of white girls everywhere, but it just didn't... 'pop.' Nothing about her body 'popped'. It might be a good foundation, but there was so much to do and Amber felt like there was absolutely no time to do it in. Abandoning the pose, she stepped onto the scale, looking at her current weight. 118 pounds. Sickly. Anorexic, practically.

She ran back out into her living room to retrieve her phone. Amber flushed the SD card to rid herself of any memory of 'that man' she once had feelings for. She dumped and blocked number after she saw numerous texts and voicemails logged in her status bar. She raced back into the bathroom and thumbed off the security screen to reach her camera app. The sluggish speed of her phone made her want to throw it. The mirror in her bathroom was simply not big enough to allow her to take a full-body shot like she wanted.

“Tch,” she sucked her teeth in annoyance. Note to self, she thought as she raised her camera to the perfect angle to snap a selfie. If this is gonna work, I'm gonna need a bigger mirror. She made a point to remember to check online to see if one was priced reasonably to have it expedited to her apartment.

The camera shutter clicked. She pulled the phone closer to her face to analyze the shot. That one didn't work. She snapped again. This time her eyes were closed. Goddamn it. Once more. Hmm. It would have to do.

She left the bathroom with an objective. Amber headed over to her computer and fired it up. After a short period waiting, which seemed like an eternity, she was greeted by a picture of Matt and herself at the beach as her homescreen. Almost recoiling in horror, Amber mashed the buttons of her keyboard to send it away and tapped in her password. She had a lot of work to do, yet more obstacles seemed to present themselves in her way. Her desktop picture wasn't much better. Amber had laid her head on Matt's chest and taken a selfie with him at some point in the distant past. If she knew what was churning through his venal mind then, she never would've done so. She didn't want to look at it. Right-clicking, she flew through the commands to change the picture used as her homescreen and desktop pictures to something less vomit-inducing.

There was a folder in her pictures containing hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of them together. What was she thinking? Amber shuddered. Was she so in need of companionship and so disbelieving that something would go so horribly wrong that she needed hourly affirmation that she had a boyfriend? How disgusting! She had never felt more embarrassed about anything else she had ever done in her life. With little provocation, she deleted them and sent them through her anti-virus program's shredding function, consigning them to nothingness.

Next, she opened Firefox and went to her social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all contained much of the same. Lovey-dovey, mushy-gushy, douche-chilling bullshit that she got rid of not a moment too soon. There was nothing on any of her accounts worth saving. She closed them all without any remorse. The 'friends' she had on them were mostly people she knew through Matt. There was no reason to talk to any of them now, to read any of their inane statuses, or see any of their stupid pictures.

But she wasn't totally done with them. She reopened Instagram and signed up again. Flying through most of the registration, she balked at the username. She had simply used her real name before, but that would make her too easy to find, if someone wanted to look her up. No, this needed to be done without any interference. This was a new life, she a phoenix born from the ashes--

That was it!

A phoenix! She was a phoenix! It only made sense. She had killed her old life, and was starting over again. In addition, Beth Phoenix was one of her all time favorite wrestlers, so it would have a double meaning. Amber felt especially clever. With a swell of pride, she punched in 'XxMusclePhoenixxX' as her username for Instagram. This would prove useful yet. She began setting up her page.

'XxMusclePhoenixxX

The Muscle Phoenix Aspirant Female Bodybuilder, Muscle Freak, Born Again. Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride.

0 posts 0 followers 0 following'

If she played her cards right, that last line would change.

She had previously used it to follow several of her idols in the fitness industry, to look to them for inspiration, to say “One day that'll be me.” One day, the same would done by someone else about her. But now, through her reopened eyes, they seemed so... inadequate. So limited. These women she worshiped didn't have the extreme quality she was looking for now. Instead, she began following bodybuilders. All the fitness and physique competitors of yesterday forgotten. She did search after search, looking for the biggest, beefiest women she could find and followed them all.

Amber plugged her phone into the computer via one of it's USB ports and uploaded her latest selfie. It seemed embarrassing to post it now, but it further galvanized her to keep moving forward. Laugh now if you must, she thought, But this is only the beginning.

“This photo needs a caption,” she muttered to herself. Straightening her back, squaring her shoulders, she committed her fingers to the keyboard

'XxMusclePhoenixxX The first step on the road to greatness is the hardest. I don't care what I have to do, I'm gonna get HUGE!💪💪💪 #BeginAgain #GetBig #RealWomenHaveMuscles'

That was it. She had sent her declaration to the world. It was only a matter of time before someone else would read it. The selfie was the first of many charting her personal renaissance. They'd see. They'd all see.

The Muscle Phoenix would soar to new heights.

----

Somewhere across the world, in a server farm hidden away from prying eyes, a search algorithm scoured the internet for potential test subjects as it had millions of times that day, billions of times that week, and so on. It did what it was created to do; look for profiles meeting certain requirements on all the major social media sites. Various factors had to be satisfied, as the algorithm was programmed to look for key factors. Out of the millions and millions of social networking profiles they were all filtered, parsed, ran through a battery of 'if-else' subroutines that narrowed the search down to one. One hit. North America.

An electronic red flag was thrown, alerting the computing staff monitoring the program to one potential test subject, the one they were looking for. People scrambled. Calls were made, information was exchanged and verified, and the order came down from the top; watch, do not engage. The CEO had a hand in every cookie jar they made. She made the company what it was through careful screening and selection of test subjects. Only the best possible candidates would be selected, no exceptions. She knew this was only the beginning of the first step, and one that was not yet reliable. Such false positives were made before. The sorting algorithm was effective, but not perfect. Not every hit could be relied upon without further investigation. The CEO was patient. They would wait, she decreed, after the information labored its way to her desk and she reviewed it in full. Still so many gaps and grey areas to work out. Her various teams working in the area would research and see what this potential client had to offer.

PumpLabs International was always looking for new test subjects, but the problem was finding the right ones. Ones that would be open to new possibilities, ones that could be trusted to perform, ones that would agree to just about anything they were asked. And most importantly, ones that would keep their mouths shut. The labs were always working overtime to push the envelope as far as human development was concerned, some of the fruits of their labors were too powerful to be released just yet. The need for refinement and retooling was ever present. Rolling out the first iteration of the PumpSuit was successful. Nearly every prototype sent out had done it's job to a T. But, like any good project, there was continuous room for improvement. The PumpSuit Mk.II has just gone live, and PumpLabs International was looking for it's inaugural test subject.

The CEO would remain cautiously optimistic. This girl they had found. Nothing was known about her, but the company had the best e-findsmen in the world, working day and night to uncover the truth as necessary. They would not go off half-cocked. She had not devoted her life to perfection only to fail now. Too much was riding on the experiment to allow it to fail. They would continue as always, waiting in the wings to see what would come of this girl they had found. Still, the CEO smiled. After months of fruitless searching, they had finally found one who might be the guarantor of success for their latest project. The order came down from the top to scramble HUMINT units to gather information surreptitiously and to acquire and engage with the subject as necessary.

She may yet be the answer they were looking for...