There comes a point where everyone with a problem hits rock bottom. For a drunk, it might be getting wasted at their niece's sixth birthday party and puking on the cake. For a fat guy, it might be eating an entire turkey by themselves, then crying among the bones because they're such a slob. For Johnny "Headhunter"Velazquest, it was the day he tried to open a pickle jar and couldn't.
It was a warm September afternoon and Johnny had just gotten home from school along with his brother Lincoln and the Loud girls, with whom they were still living. Johnny was beginning to think the contractor's Mom and Dad had paid to rebuild their house had blown the money and were too afraid to say anything because they'd have to deal with dad. Johnny would be scared too. The man had been wearing a black singlet like Andre the Giant for days and kept talking about beating Hulk Hogan. He clearly wasn't well. If you told him you peed away his money, he'd probably chase you down with a metal folding chair.
Anyway, it was taking forever to get their house back, but Johnny didn't mind too much. It was kind of fun living with the Louds, even if they did gang up on him that one time and send him to the hospital. He wasn't one to live in the past or anything but he was still dealing with the effects of that. His leg ached when it rained, he had the occasional nightmare about being stomped and left for dead, his hair was so white it had to go to diversity training, and he was tormented by two voices that did nothing but talk trash to and about him all day long. One of them - Johnny called him Jeff after Jeffery Dahmer - was a total nut who urged him to destroy things, start fires, and defecate in his pants. The other, whom he called Jeeves because she sounded randomly British. Jeeves thought he was better than everyone and judged each and every step Johnny made.
Together, they formed a gruesome twosome that rarely quieted down. Even when Johnny tried to sleep at night, they were yakking it up. Jeff said a bunch of scary stuff in the hopes of giving him nightmares, and Jeeves went through a list of everything Johnny had done throughout the day, criticizing it. If he did or said something cringe, don't bother making fun of him, Jeeves would handle that later on.
No one knew about the voices. Johnny was afraid to say anything for fear of being carted away to some kind of state run mental hospital like the one in that movie Hellhole. You probably haven't seen it, not because you're some lame normie or whatever, but because no one had. It sucked. It was about some lady in a mental hospital and the head doctor, who looked like Tim Curry in drag, was running weird experiments on the patients. Johnny only saw it because Lincoln was a huge horror fan and dug deep into the genre. He watched (and liked) pretty much everything/
Anyway, Johnny was afraid of being sent to the loony bin if anyone found out about Jeff and Jeeves, so he kept them on the DL.
The point was, the Loud girls rocked his world and he was still trying to get over it. Even so, he kind of enjoyed living with them. There was always something going on, always some kind of drama or activity or merriment to be made. The only thing going on at home was Dad wrestling his Hulk Hogan plush and Mom blasting Culture Club while she cleaned the kitchen. It was a real snooze cruise over there, but here…here's where the action was.
That afternoon, Johnny came into the kitchen looking for a little after school snack. His stomach was grumbling and he needed something stat. The Loud girls were all scrounging through the pantry and cabinets for something of their own, so he went to the fridge, opened it, and looked around. He spotted a jar of delicious pickle spears and licked his lips. He grabbed it and tried to open it.
The cap wouldn't budge.
He tried again, grunting and straining. His arm muscles burned and sweat oozed down his face. Panting, he stopped to regroup, then tried again. A fat vein popped out on his neck and he ground his teeth together.
"Here," Lincoln said, "let me."
He took the jar and tried to open it.
The same exact thing happened. His pasty white face flushed deep red, his teeth gritted, and every muscle in his body tensed. "Wow," he said with a nervous chuckle, "it's on there pretty tight."
Spitting on his hands and rubbing them together, he tried once more. The Loud girls all gathered around to watch, and laughed when he couldn't get it. "Step aside," Lola said, "and let a pro do it."
"Fine," Lincoln said and handed her the jar, "have fun fail -"
Even as he spoke, Lola twisted the lid and it popped right off.
The Loud girls laughed at them. "You guys are so weak," Lynn said.
"You should work out with us," Leni said, "we have, like, a totes radical routine."
They all flexed, and Johnny couldn't deny it, each one of them had a respectable amount of muscle tone. Even Lisa, who was the dorkiest of the bunch, looked like she could hold her own against a pickle jar. Johnny looked at his own twiggy arms and flushed with embarrassment. "I loosened it up for you," Lincoln said defensively, "you're welcome."
"You couldn't loosen a wet paper bag," Luan said and laughed.
"Face it, dude," Luna said, "you guys are weak."
"Because you're lazy," Lori added.
Okay, Johnny could take this from Lynn, who never stopped running, jumping, and being active, even in her dreams, but Lori? "You're as lazy as we are," he said.
"Yeah," Lincoln agreed, "you're always on your butt playing video games."
Lori rolled her eyes. "I make time to get up and be active. That's why I can open a pickle jar and you can't."
They all laughed mockingly and walked away, leaving Lincoln and Johnny to marinate in their own self-loathing juices. "We're not weak," Lincoln said. "It was just stuck. We loosened it for her. Right, Johnny? Right?"
He sounded like everything he knew about the world was crashing down around his head and he was desperately trying to grab hold of something to keep from being swept away on a tide of broken boards and shattered concrete.
Johnny sighed. "I dunno. I mean, look at us, we both are kinda scrawny."
"We're not that bad," Lincoln said.
"Dude, we got shown up by a six year old girly girl. We're pretty garbage."
Lincoln didn't want to hear that, so he waved Johnny off and walked away. Ten steps in, he was winded and had to stop to catch his breath.
You know, Johnny and Lincoln both liked their junk food and their lazing around. They worked for money, but by their very nature, they weren't active or anything. Maybe they had a problem, Johnny thought, and maybe they should do something about it.
He was still thinking about that come lunch time. He sat with Lincoln, Liam, Stella, Nikki, and Ronnie Anne at their usual table by the wall. Suddenly looking up from his tray, he asked, "Do you guys think we're weak?"
"Weak?" Stella asked.
"Yeah," Johnny said, "like…look at our arms." He rolled up his sleeves and showed them.
"I dunno," Sid said, "you're not exactly, you know, what I'd call "fit.""
"You look like one of them Jews from our history book," Liam said. "The ones the Nazzies got ahold of."
Johnny and Lincoln both glared at him. "Thanks a lot," Johnny said.
"You guys aren't that bad," Nikki said.
"They're pure soy," Ronnie Anne said, "I bet they wouldn't win against a six year old."
After what happened that morning, that comment stung. The truth was, they probably couldn't Johnny had already gotten beaten to a pulp by the Loud girls. He always thought that he could have taken them one on one, at least Lola and Lisa, but now he was coming to the startling and uncomfortable realization that he would probably lose if he went toe to toe with literally any of them. Except maybe for Lily, but what would his prize be for whipping her? A plaque that said CONGRATULATIONS, YOU BEAT UP A BABY?
This could not stand. The world is a hard, mean place, and in order to get by, you had to be able to take care of yourself. You can't sit around waiting for handouts or for someone to protect you. That's how you wound up with an intrusive government who told you how to live your life, and a homicide investigation because the police showed up a day late and a dollar short. The police are a reactionary force, they only come when you call them. And by the time they do come, the action is usually over and you're covered in lumps and welts or missing your wallet. If you want true protection, you gotta be a man's man and be able to provide it for yourself.
In their current state, Lincoln and Johnny couldn't do that. They were basically little feathers floating in the wind, completely at the mercy of external forces, possessing no power or motion of their own.
That had to change.
And fast.
On the walk home that afternoon after school, Johnny brought up what he was thinking. Lincoln tried to interject at one point, but Johnny shut him down. "Just listen for a second, okay? Look, we've both been slacking off. We're out of shape and there's nothing else to it. I don't know about you, but I don't like it. I wanna be the best version of myself that I can possibly be, and in order to do that, I need to work on my flaws. Right now my biggest and most pressing flaw is that I'm weaker than a two day old kitten. You might not want to admit that you have a problem, but you do. There's no shame in that. We can always be better than we are right now. In fact, that's life. People, society..it's all about moving forward and being better. Demanding better. I, for one, demand better of myself. Darn it, I'm Johnny, I'm lit in every way…except physically. You're pretty lit too, but you could stand to put on a little muscle. That's all I'm saying."
Lincoln was quiet for a long moment as he filtered Johnny's words through his head. Finally, he drew a heavy sigh and let it out in a rush. "Alright," he said, "you're right, I could stand a little self improvement. I'm just embarrassed, okay? I couldn't even open a pickle jar. I had to have a little girl do it for me. I'm humiliated."
"Dude, so am I," Johnny said. "I bombed out there just as hard as you did. I didn't like that feeling and I want to make sure I never feel it again."
Lincoln nodded. "Alright, okay, so you're right. We have a problem and need to address it. How do we do that?"
"There's only one way," Johnny said.
Cut to them standing in Lori and Leni's room, the Loud girls all gathered around. "And that's why we want to exercise with you guys."
Lynn tapped her chin. "Alright, but the first thing you gotta do is put on some weight. You need weight to build muscle. Eat lots of protein."
The Loud girls charted out a three month plan to whip Lincoln and Johnny into shape. The first month was dedicated to weight gain and light weight training. It started the next day: Lynn dragged them out of bed and forced them to eat raw eggs and protein powder. At lunch and dinner, they ate nothing but meat. They did this for two weeks ad began to gain a little. Lynn then pushed them into lifting, not much at first, just a bit. She also woke them up at 5am to jog around the neighborhood. They were both groggy, tired, and could barely stagger half a block. Lynn jogged backwards, barking orders like a boot camp drill sergeant. At one point, Lincoln collapsed and Johnny stumbled. "Please, can we stop?" he asked.
"No," Lynn snapped, "now come on."
By the end of that first day, Johnny was so sore and tired that he dropped into bed as soon as he was done with his meat and fell asleep. The next day played out pretty much the same way. And the next. And still the next. It was so hard and grueling that Jeff and Jeeves were both silent.
Pretty soon, Lola got ahold of them and made them do yoga and calaestetics with her, Luan, and Luna. They held classes in Lola's room every day, Johnny reaching, kicking, jogging in place, and jumping rope. At first, he and Lincoln would get tangled in the ropes and fall over, pop and crack muscles trying to stretch, and generally fail. "You simply must master this class if you wish to attain physical perfection," Lola said coldly.
Johnny almost gave up, but he wanted to be fit too badly, so he soldiered on. It would all be worth it in the end. During the second month, they increased their weight training. Johnny went from feeling bleh and tired to feeling pretty okay. He had more energy and his morning runs with Lynn and Lincoln weren't so hard anymore. He couldn't see much of an improvement in his own body, but Lincoln was starting to look a little more cut than he had previously. Lincoln said the same of him, so what they were doing was obviously working.
Knowing that it was having the intended effect was the motivation Johnny needed to not only continue his current routine but to push himself harder. After school, he and Lincoln would hit the gym with Lynn and do a little time on every single machine from the stationary bikes to the treadmills and everything in between. When they were done, they would play a game of basketball with whoever happened to be around, then swim laps in the pool. They started adding fruits and vegetables to their diets, and twice a day, Leni would make them a kale wheat juice smoothie that tasted like dookie but was power packed with all the vitamins and minerals they needed to accomplish their goals of becoming the best version of themselves that they could.
Slowly, over time, they improved at jumping rope. Cardio became easier, and Johnny found a certain pleasure in being pleasantly winded and sweaty at the end of a good workout. He used to think sitting on the couch was the best feeling in the world, but he was dead wrong, this was.
At the end of the second month, Lynn invited them to play a game to tackle football with her friends in order to see how far they had come. The opposing team was made up of the biggest, meanest girls Johnny had ever seen, and he felt a twist of cold fear. Surely, they would destroy him and Lincoln like heatseeking missiles.
He was wrong.
He and Lincoln were both far faster and more agile than he had thought. They were able to duck and dodge, push and shove. Their balance was better, their hand-eye coordination was better, and everyone was complimenting them on their newly sculpted physiques.
They got tackled a few times, and while it hurt a little, it didn't shatter them into a million quivering little pieces the way it might have just a few short months ago. They lost the game, but they held their own exceptionally well, which impressed Lynn. "You guys have come a long way," she said on the walk back home. "I'm proud of you."
It wasn't enough for Lincoln and Johnny, however, they wanted to be bigger, stronger. They wanted to be disgustingly huge, with muscles on muscles. So they kept working, on their own and with the Louds. They lifted weights, jumped rope, ran laps, swam, and ate only healthy foods. Johnny jonesed now and then for junk, but he resisted the temptation. The hardest thing to give up was chocolate cherry cola, but now, he drank mainly water. When he needed a little fizz in his biz, he had a diet soda.
One day Dad walked in on them while they were brushing their teeth in the bathroom. Both were shirtless and had the makings of sculpted chests. Dad squealed and jumped up and down. "You look like wrestlers. You can be in AEW one day. You can succeed where I failed." He swept them both into a tight bear hug and squeezed them to the point of almost passing out.
Still they worked, harder and harder every day. Lynn told them to take a break and chill, but they didn't listen. They were light a freight train speeding downhill. They couldn't stop, wouldn't stop.
Not until they were buff.
Three months... three months have passed since Lincoln & Johnny got started on their training regimen and the results have been immense!
The grueling training that the boys put themselves under has given them bulging pectorals, washboard abs, muscular toned up arms, and legs. One would say that if they had spiky blonde hair they wouldn't look too far off from a certain alien warrior race.
They didn't get their new physique all on their own though, thanks to the Loud sisters, they made the road to the boys transformation a little easier to deal with. They complied with Lincoln's plan and even gave Lincoln and Johnny help in reaching their goal in their own way.
Lori helped Lincoln and Johnny by watching everything they ate and aided them in eating healthy foods.
Leni made Lincoln and Johnny sleeveless orange GIs complete with black custom-made MMA gloves. She got the idea from watching Lincoln play Alley Brawler with Johnny one day.
Luna made a playlist for Lincoln and Johnny to listen to while they exercises, with the songs ranging from rock, hip-hop, EDM, and even some of Luna's original songs at the boys's request. She would also use Lincoln and Johnny to help out Chunkette by lifting her equipment into Chunkette's van for their gigs.
Luan would sometimes have Lincoln and Johnny help her by carrying her props and even putting on an act of being a strongman, uniform and all much to Lincoln's confusion. He asked her why they had to wear the leotards, she simply said, "Because it's funny".
Lynn, who was the most ecstatic about Lincoln and Johnny's workout regimen, helped them by teaching him proper exercise routines involving cardio, strength training, and even self-defense. They occasionally spar during the week and much to both her and the sister's surprise, Lincoln has beaten Lynn quite easily during the sparring sessions. When Lynn asked Lincoln how he beat her so easily he shrugged his shoulders and explained to her, "I merely saw an opening and went for it."
Lucy didn't really have a way to help the boys with their training, but she does use Johnny's strength to her advantage in the form of getting piggyback rides from him. Despite her love for the darkness and all things macabre, she loves to cling to the back of her crush and have him take her either around the house to find a new dark place or simply just for fun.
Lana loves to have Lincoln and Johnny help her when she's tinkering with vanzilla or just fixing something heavy around the house. Like Lucy, she also doesn't pass up a chance at a piggyback ride on Johnny or riding atop of his shoulders.
Lola now exclusively uses Johnny as a bodyguard instead of a butler due to his new physique and she often asks him to be carried around like the princess she is. She simply wants a more dramatic way of being carried compared to Lana and Lucy.
Lisa helped Lincoln and Johnny by creating advanced weight bracers and shoes to help the boys further develop their body and yield greater results. She often asks them to let her conduct tests on them to monitor their muscle growth and to see if they went through many changes in their general psyche with the increase in testosterone.
Lily couldn't do much due to being a baby, but whenever the boys watched over her they used the time to relax their bodies and enjoy Lily's company.
The boys change did not go unnoticed by their friends and the students at their school. Many were wondering what caused this change in the boys. A few of the athletes at the school were jealous of their new physique, and quite a few of students of the female variety started swooning over them, especially during gym where they would be wearing a tight white shirt with loose gym shorts that would give them a good view of their bodies.
They would often find several girls standing by their locker waiting for him to come by so they could flirt with them.
They were a little unnerved whenever they had lunch in school or walked the hallways, mainly because they could just feel the eyes of several girls on them as well as the ire of several guys.
"So Lincoln, you've been noticing the looks we've been getting in school right?"
Lincoln shrugged his shoulders, "Yeah I have, I guess we became the target of a few girl's crushes."
Johnny stopped walking and turned to Lincoln dumbfounded by what his brother said.
"Dude seriously? A few girls crushes? Try our whole class! Lincoln, we're practically drowning in it, man!"
They could have any girl they wanted. That was a good feeling. To be honest, though, Johnny only wanted one thing.
To be bigger.
He and Lincoln kept on keeping on. Then, one day, it happened. They got so big that their tiny little boy skeletons couldn't support the muscle. Their ankles hurt, their knees ached, and their backs throbbed with pain.
They went to the doctor and he told them they needed to give it a rest. "If you keep this up, you're going to crush your skeletons, then you'll just be a pile of muscles sitting there. You don't want that, do you?"
Wide eyed, both boys shook their heads.
Now they had to lose their muscles, at least some of them. Going back to junk food and sitting on the couch was as hard as starting to exercise, but it became easier.
Johnny didn't want to lose all the progress he'd made, but he was happy about one thing.
He got to have his chocolate cherry cola again.
And that was worth all the back pain in the world.
Ouch.
Okay, it was only worth some of the back pain in the world.