George only had himself to blame. He was always bigger than the other kids. When they called him "fatso" or "lard butt" or some other name, he'd punch them. When he was younger, he didn't know his own strength and put several kids into the hospital with broken or crushed bones. The other parents wouldn't let George play with their kids, so George stayed home. And he ate. And he got bigger, which caused the kids to tease him more, and the cycle continued.

Now George was going to some kinda camp.

"The kids will be just like you?" his parents had told him.

"Fat?"

"No. But you can play with them and make friends."

George didn't want to go. He was afraid it would be all the same again. He was prepared to have a miserable time at camp.

---

Johnny woke up with a bounce. The four year old lifted the door from the crib. The 150lbs of weights attached to it felt like a feather to him. He ran to the mirror. Around the mirror were pictures of bodybuilders in different poses. Johnny looked at Branch Warren flexing his quads, and mimicked the pose. Johnny's short legs were like tree stumps, thick with powerful kid muscles. He rippled the muscle, relaxed it, and then tensed it into rivers of muscle cords. He turned to the side, comparing his massive hams and massive horseshoe triceps before flexing his pecs. Although he was only three feet tall, his development exceeded all the pictures on his mirrors. As he struck pose after pose, his excitement grew.

"Johnny!" his Dad called. "We have to leave soon. Come down and have your protein drink and breakfast!"

"OK!" he called back. He stood in front of the mirror, and slowly raised his arms parallel to the ground. "BOOM!" he shouted as he snapped his forearms up, causing 16 3/4 inch biceps to pop from his upper arm. "YA! Ain't nobody got muscles like these! Just wait til the other kids see me!" He turned and went down to breakfast.

--- Harry Thompson woke up at 5Am every day. He needed the time to train. He hadn't started lifting until he was eight. That was two years ago. Sure, he was a strong kid -- he needed to be. Harry's neighborhood was rough, and he needed to defend himself. His parents said that he was big for his age, and they were thankful for that.

The kids in Harry's neighborhood formed cliques, and, as they got older, gangs. There was always the fear of guns and knives coming into play, but Harry was too young for that. Harry was easily bigger and stronger than kids his age, but some of those kids had older brothers. These teens spent hours in the gym, and acted as bodyguards for their younger siblings. When Harry had a falling out with a young kid, his older brother often sought out Harry to even the score. When Harry was younger, this was a problem. But Harry learned to fight, and soon, was beating up kids over twice his age. They learned too, and soon it was two teenagers against Harry, then three. Harry was developing a reputation as one tough kid.

Harry knew the older boys were doing something to get stronger, and he wanted to do it to. He'd hang out outside the gym, and watch them lifting weights, but his parents wouldn't give him permission to go inside. But then he saw him on TV. A kid, same age as him, but huge. Solid muscle. He went to his parents and asked for weights.

"You're too young," they had told him, as they always did.

"Nah uh..." and he pulled them to the TV and showed them Tom. "He's my age and he lifts weights." Harry made a muscle. Even untrained, his arm was over 12 inches and solid. "I'm bigger than the other kids in my class. Why can't I lift weights?"

Every day for a month Harry begged his parents before they relented. They spent close to $1000 on professional equipment -- safety first. Harry lifted with a vengeance, and he grew like a weed. It was like his body was starved for stimulation, and the lifting was feeding it for the first time. He began eating ten meals a day and his body converted every calorie to muscle. Within a year, he weighed 145lbs. The older boys challenged him, and he easily put them in their place. Once, a gang of ten tried to take him on. They got in each others way, and he easily overpowered them. The biggest was 16 and bragged about his 300lb bench press, but Harry wrestled him to the ground, then flexed his massive pecs over the older boy. "You're a fucking wimp!" he told the defeated gang member. "Bet you wish you had pecs like these!" After that, he ruled the neighborhood.

After a year of training, he turned on the television, and saw Wally O'Toole crush last year's champion. Harry took a tape of the pose down into his room. He put the tape into his VCR and started it. He walked to his mirror and ripped the shirt from his body. His thick pecs were crisscrossed with veins that connected his chest to his broad shoulders. His lats looked like wings, and his abs were a brick wall of muscle. He started to pose, comparing his growing muscle to the two boys on stage.

"Damn," he said. "Not big enough yet!"

For the next year, he redoubled his efforts. Whenever he didn't feel that he pushed himself hard enough, he'd turn on the tape. "Gotta get bigger!" he says, copying the boy's routines and watching his own muscles grow to their size then beyond.

The next year, Harry was ready. He was huge. When the competition started and Wally O'Toole came on stage, he mimicked the routine.

"YA!" Harry shouted. "He's a wimp! Look at this gun!" Harry flexed his own arm into a massive mountain of power.

On the screen, Wally hit a side chest pose. Harry made his own, his thickly veined pecs shelved over his ripped thin waist. "Take that wimp boy!" Harry screamed at his own superiority.

When Tommy came up, Harry smiled. "Come on loser, show me what you got." Tommy started his routine, and Harry compared poses. He flexed hard, then harder, trying to match Tommy.

"No way," he said through gritted teeth as he flexed a crab pose. "Can't... be..." Harry was big, but Tommy seemed bigger.

That was several months earlier. Harry used his defeat to really push himself. When he heard about muscle camp, he told his parents to send him. Saying no was not an option for them.

As he lifted, pushing himself hard. He was going to be pumped huge. He couldn't wait to leave. --- One by one, the boys arrived at the camp. "The purpose of muscle camp is to allow you to learn and grow to your full potential. It's a place where you can run and jump and play with other boys like yourself." Tommy's dad was on stage with Wally's dad. Ben's dad and the army man were in another room talking to the parents.

Tommy looked around, watching the faces of the twenty-five other boys. The youngest was three, and the oldest almost twelve. Most wore t-shirts and looked like normal boys. Some were obviously very muscular, while others looked fat. One wore a fancy dress shirt, and one muscular boy about Tommy's age wore a tight white tank top that hugged his massive pecs.

"Some of you will be here only for the summer and vacations. Others will be living here all the time."

"What about our parents?" a boy about seven asked.

"There is a town outside of camp. They will be moving here. We've arranged jobs for them, and they will be able to visit anytime. You'll also be able to spend nights and weekends with them if you want."

"What about school," the kid in the dress shirt said.

"There is a school at muscle camp. You'll have all your academic subjects, but you'll also have access to our special gym and our cafeteria," Mr. O'Toole said. "Boys, you're special. How many of you have accidentally hurt someone?"

All the boys raised their hands.

"That's because you're stronger than other boys your age."

"I'm stronger than my dad too," shouted one boy.

"How many of you lift weights?"

About 3/4 of the boys raised their hands.

"And of you, how many are the strongest in the gym."

Three hands remained up, including the boy in the tank top.

"That's good, but don't expect to be the strongest here. Each of you boys has the potential to be very muscular and very strong. Muscle camp will help you reach that potential."

"Now, we'd like to introduce you to our sons," said Tommy's father.

Tommy came into the room. He was wearing just his posing briefs. As he walked, every muscle in his hyper-toned body flexed and rippled with kid power. He heard several of the kids gasp or say "wow".

"Tommy has won two teenage bodybuilding championships, one when he was eight, the other when he was ten." Tommy raised his arms, forcing his massive biceps to flex high. "His muscles are bigger and stronger than boys twice his age, and most men." Tommy flexed into his impressive most muscular pose. As he did, he looked at the other kids. Some were staring, obviously impressed. Others grinned with an expression of desire. Then he looked at the kid in the white tank top. He was scowling, his own muscles flexing as in a challenge to Tommy's poses.

"And this is my son Wally," Mr. O'Toole said. Wally entered the room wearing nothing but a posing. He stood next to Wally. "Wally beat Tommy last year in the bodybuilding competition," Mr. O'Toole said while Wally struck his own impressive double bicep pose, "but Tommy rebounded this year to retake the title. As you can see, both our boys are massively muscled. They are also both incredibly strong. Just like you boys."

"He ain't nothin'" said the boy in the white tank top, who stood up and walked to the front of the room. "Let me show you some real muscle," he said as he pushed Wally aside.

"And you are?" Mr. O'Toole asked.

"Harry. Harry Davis," he said as he grabbed the base of his shirt. He pulled it up, but it got caught on his thick lats and huge chest. He squirmed and twisted, forcing the fabric up over the huge muscle that was an obstacle to his getting it off. Finally, he tossed the shirt on the floor. He unbuttoned his pants, then pulled them down, standing in front of the other boys in his undershorts. Harry was clearly in the same league as Tommy and Wally. He grinned knowingly. He turned and faced Wally, the grin never leaving his face. He bent the arm closest to the other boys, and grabbed the wrist with his other hand. He started to flex his chest, his pecs slowly expanding and become more ripped with each second. Harry forced his triceps to flex, attempting to straighten, stopped only by his other arm. The triceps burst into a striated horseshoe, inches thick with hard muscle power.

As Harry flexed his massive pecs to their full glory, several of the boys gasped. "He's as big as they are!" said one. "Bigger than Wally I think" "Maybe even Tommy."

"Ya," said Harry. "Come on wimps. Can you compete with these big boys? Shee-it, I bet you wish you had a chest like mine."

"We don't like swearing here," Mr. O'Toole said.

"I'll show him, Dad," said Wally, he turned to face Harry with a determined look. He bent his arm and flexed into his own award-winning side triceps pose. Wally's powerful chest exploded in size and definition, ballooning to proportions that would make a Mr. Olympia contestant proud. Thick bands of rock-hard muscle pushed veins to the surface of his skin as his pecs became boulders of power on his chest. Wally grinned as his own pecs matched, then slightly exceeded Harry's massive body.

The smile never left Harry's face.. "Pretty good, but.." then to the amazement of everyone in the room, Harry began to flex even harder, "I'm not done yet." Harry's triceps became more striated as he forced more and more power into his flex. Harry's chest continued to thicken as his lats forces his arm from his side. His pecs grew as large as Wally's, then expanded passed them, creating a shelf at least an inch larger than the ten-year-old champ's. "This is real boy-muscle, wimp," he said to Wally proudly.

"Doubtful," said Tommy, who was now flexing his own side chest. Almost instantly, his pecs formed a shelf that defied description on a boy so young. His side chest would make a Mr. Olympia cry it was so thick and ripped. Inches deep muscle covered his powerful torso, forming a shelf that hung over a ripped, cut waist.

Harry turned fast, then flexed as hard as he could, but couldn't beat Tommy's superior muscle. Harry's pecs were full, but Tommy's looked like they were formed by granite. Harry's tris looked like etched steel, but Tommy's looked like they were carved by diamonds.

"That not good enough for ya?" asked Tommy, "then check out these." He untwisted his body from the side chest pose, and stood chest to chest with Harry. He then raised his arms into a double bicep, his upper arms swelling with kid power and his peaks growing high toward the sky. "Come on! You think you're so tough. Let's see you beat my guns!"

Harry scowled. "Can't," he admitted. "Not yet, but soon. Been tracking you two in the mags. Ya got me lift'n only two years ago, and already I'm bigger than Wimpy Wally here. Saw you on TV a couple months ago, and was bigger then, but you still blew me away. Looks like you still can. But," and he shoved a finger into Tommy's pec, "I'm gettin' bigger and stronger every day and I'll be the top muscle boy here soon enough. Where I come from, you learn how to be king of the hill. I ran my neighborhood with pure muscle," and he raised his arm next to Tommy's, showing a bicep that was only slightly smaller and not quite as defined, "and I'll run this place too."

Before the father's could respond, there was a giggle from one of the kids sitting in the audience.

"How thinks this is funny," said Harry threateningly.

"I do," said a small boy who was barely three feet tall. He was wearing a very baggy sweatshirt and sweat pants obviously cut down from a much larger size. Still, as he walked forward, it was obvious that even these clothes barely covered a massively muscled physique. "You're funny."

Harry clenched his fists, his arms rippling with explosive strength that he was struggling to contain, but the small boy kept walking forward.

"You may be taller than me, and probably stronger, but..." and the boy removed his shirt. The room was silenced by what they saw. The boy was nearly as wide as he was tall. Muscle was bunching and bulging all over his small frame. He bent over, crunching his eight-pack abs and twisting his obliques while flaring lats so wide that they cast a shadow on the floor below him. The boy seems to struggle as he pushes the pants from his tiny waist to his bubble-like glutes, then over massive quads and hams and wide, diamond-shaped calves.

"Darn, there's another one," said Wally.

"I'm Johnny," said the massively muscled boy, "and I'm four. You older boys have some big muscles, but mine are bigger." To prove his point, Johnny hit a crab pose. Thick bunches of muscle crashed together as his ripped pecs fought against each other for space. The boy's already impossibly wide lats grew larger into a wingspread greater than an eagle's. The boy's abs formed a V-shaped rocky structure, framed by thick coiled intercostals. His short legs appeared wider than they were long, ripped with rivers of flowing muscles. His knees seemed to bow outward, pushed apart by huge quads and hams, yet his calves were so thick and wide they seemed to touch. "I may be smaller, and maybe not as strong yet, but my muscles look way bigger than yours. I'm the biggest there is or ever will be."

"I doubt that," said a voice from the back.

Ben walked in, followed by his father. Like Tommy and Wally, he was wearing nothing but posing briefs.

Ben's father walked into the room behind Ben. "We just finished with the parents. They're talking to the General now," he announced. "Ben wanted to meet the new kids."

Ben walked to the front of the room with the confidence of a boy who could not be beaten. His eyes never left Johnny. He stopped inches from the younger boy, towering over him. Looking down over his own massive chest, he asked with derision, "Think you got muscle? Why?"

"Cause," said Johnny. "Harry is bigger than Wimpy Wally. Tommy's bigger than Harry. And I'm the biggest of them all."

For the first time, Wally looked up. He turned toward Wally, then toward Harry, then toward Wally again. "His name is Wally. He's not a wimp," asserted Ben. "He's my friend." Then, with emphasis, "And I'm bigger than you."

"Nah uh," Johnny said. My Mom and Dad have been helping me build muscle since I was born. Think you can beat this arm?" he said with confidence as he raised his right arm and flexed his massive bicep. The muscle flexed so large and hard, it pushed his equally developed forearm back as muscle fought against muscle on his small frame.

Ben looked at Johnny's mountainous arm. A kid half his age was challenging him. Wally's words rang in his ears, 'what if there is a kid bigger than Ben.' Ben slowly raised his arm. With deliberation, his bicep formed a thick hill on his arm. He twisted his wrist, causing his bowling-pin-like forearm to thicken. He contracted his bicep, his huge peak fighting against the forearm for room. Ben's bicep flexed harder and harder, growing huge and ripped, veins popping through the skin as he willed more strength into it.

Johnny's eyes widened at the sight. He tried to flex harder, but his own huge arm was being eclipsed by Ben's gun.

"You mean like that?" Ben asked. "You're good kid, but not that good. I'm the biggest muscle kid in camp, and no one's got more muscle than me."

Dan watched from the back with a grin. He knew Johnny's parents, had given them instructions on building the crib and training their boy. But of course, he had held back. And now it was beginning to pay off. Ben was beginning to realize and act on his true potential. Dan felt proud.

In the audience, George watched the kids at the front of the room. He saw them flex, showing off their bodies. One by one, the other boys joined them, displaying bodies that ranged from skinny but toned to hugely muscled. Some were large, like him. That's when it happened. Something inside George began to stir. He looked at Harry and Wally and Tommy. He watched Ben and Johnny. He wanted that. In his soul, he needed to be like them. To be as big, as buff, as strong and as confident as they are. At that moment, George's life changed forever. •