A towering, sunglasses wearing spectacle of raw muscle faced the post-apocalyptic sunset with a determined stare, repeatedly flexing and unflexing his biceps in shallow meditation.
Sara spotted his ominously buff figure looming on the horizon and thought only of getting her weakened ally to safety, less they risk a run-in with one of the many bloodthirsty cannibals that roamed the desolate wastelands of the Cul-de-Sac.
"Come on, Jimmy," she said, as she struggled to carry the weight of his frail physique on one shoulder.
"Leave me, Sara," he gasped through parched lips. "I'll only slow you down."
"Don't be an idiot! Look, we'll hide in there and maybe he'll leave us alone."
The giant turned his head slightly as the sound grew louder. It was a buzz – that of multiple engines operating in unison – which heralded the arrival of the insatiable swarm. At once they were upon him, a trio of neighborhood miscreants mounted on motorcycles and armed to their scuffed leather jackets and chipped, dusty helmets with an armory of clubs, knives, swords, bats, and brass knuckles strapped to the sides of their bikes. As they circled the giant like vultures, cackling and spitting insults at him, but for the first time ever they had encountered a prey that would not be moved by their feeble taunts.
"Why aren't you shitting your pants, kid?" One of the cyclists said, dangling a homemade spiked mace of kitchen knives and nails so close to his face that he could smell the rust over the sweat and motor oil. "Show me that pretty face of yours and maybe I won't ram this thing so far up your ass you'll-"
The giant grabbed the mace with his bare hand and yanked her off the bike with the utmost ease. Her motorcycle spiralled away until it crashed into the half-destroyed wall of a shelled out convenience store nearby, startling Jimmy and Sara who were hiding within.
"Put her down now you big lug!" Another biker yelled as she threw a pool cue with sharpened lawn trimmer blades attacked to one end of it like a javelin.
The giant's sunglasses fell slightly, revealing the cool gaze of his dark eyes underneath.
Sara and Jimmy winced at the moment of the makeshift javelin's impact, but even while a javelin protruded from his shoulder the giant did not falter.
"What's that guy made of!?" Sara said in disbelief.
The biker with the club let go of it and scooted away toward her speechless sister who had thrown the javelin, both of them quivering with fright.
Of the three bikers, the third raised the visor of her helmet, revealing a pair of green eyes and cheeks stained by months of grease and grime and a lifetime of brown freckles.
"My brain can't fucking make sense of what I'm seeing here," Lee Kanker said with a cross between an amused and a pissed off grin. "Is that you, Eddy? Been doin' a lil' lifting since ole Black Eye hit? I could recognize those sweet eyes of yours anywhere, so don't bother lyin' tah me."
The giant took a deep breath. Only the sound of the stalled motorcycle engines, the searing breeze and his own light breaths tempted his calm as he closed his eyes and, with a single jolted exhale that strained his yellow polo shirt to its utmost limit, cleanly ejected the ineffectual projectile weapon from his left pectoral region.
"The boy you knew as Eddy no longer lives," he declared without compromise. "I am E, the rightful successor of the ancient Fist of the Dork Star technique."