Steel's Army

[Long-form request: army specialist reshapes history, and relaity, to his whims while he's being reprimanded]

Steel took a moment to check the state of his hair before heading in for his meeting. In the bathroom down the hall from his superior’s office, he ran each hand through his hair and flashed a cocky smile at himself. At 5’6” tall, Steel wasn’t the biggest guy around, be as he always said: it wasn’t the size of the dog in the fight, it was the size of the fight in the dog. He practiced a few cocky glares in the mirror, then made his pecs bounce. He didn’t have the biggest chest despite benching twice a week and hitting up a couple cycles of test every year, but he was determined to pack as much swagger as he could into them.

He ran his hands down his wrinkly uniform. “Damn,” he said aloud, “I wish I’d fucking ironed this last night.” He let out a deep sigh, just knowing Sergeant Daniels was going to rip into him. He suddenly felt strange as a warm and pleasant tingle spread over his shaved forearms. An image flashed in his mind of the night before--instead of playing Xbox all night, he’d set down his controller and plugged in his iron. He knew he had to look good for his meeting with Sergeant Daniels in the morning.

He remembered ironing his shirt. He could recall the smell of the steam and the iron’s hiss as it slid across the material.

Steel blinked, and looked down at his fresh, pressed shirt. “That’s right,” he said aloud, momentarily confused. “I did iron my shirt.” He smiled and nodded. Why had he remembered it being wrinkly? He didn’t allow himself to get too hung off on the fading memory. The last thing he wanted was to be late.

As Steel threw himself a few more cocky poses in the mirror, flexing his too-small-to-be-seen-in-clothes muscles, the door flew open. He was mid-pose, flashing his cocky smile, when a tall latino guy he’d never met before walked in, rolling his eyes at the flexing fuckboy preening in the mirror.

Steel seethed as the guy breezed past him, heading into the stall. Embarassment was his least favorite emotion! He put both hands on the sink and took a deep breath. A part of him wanted to kick the stall open and tell the guy to go fuck himself, but getting in trouble right before his counseling with Daniels would derail his military career in a way he wasn’t prepared to deal with. If only he hadn’t been at the mirror when the guy walked in. If only he’d decided to leave a few seconds earlier.

The tingling spread across his forearms again and the scene started to play out in his head: as he reached for the door handle, it flew open, and in a panic, a tall guy burst into the room. Steel leapt out of the way as the man, who he’d never seen before, apologized as he let out a squeaky fart, walking in an antsy waddle as if any wrong move would cause his bowels to empty.

He imagined himself saying, “Whoa, careful there, big fella!”

Then he imagined the response: “Oh, god, I’m sorry, I just… gotta shit so bad… I’m sorry…” And the taller man meekly pushed past him, slipping on a wet spot on the floor. The big guy braced himself with one hand on the floor as he let out another fart. Steel imagined himself wincing as he heard a soft splatter in the guy’s pants. “Oh fuck!” With sweat pouring down his face, the stranger shouldered a stall open and moaned as he dropped his pants. From the sound of it, not all of it made it inside the toilet.

But that was all in his head… wasn’t it?

No… it was real. It just happened. Steel wasn’t sure what that other memory of it was, but he forgot it quickly as he chuckled to himself.

Steel winced as a pungent smell rolled through the restroom. He heard the tall guy’s breathy moans as he unleashed another barrage into the toilet. Steel shook his head, feeling sorry for the guy. He just shit his pants in front of another guy! It must have been humliating. What a fucking putz, Steel thought, as he left the restroom and headed for his inevitable reprimand.

“Have a seat, Specialist Steel,” Sgt Daniels said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. Steel took a moment to eye-up the masculine frame of his 21-year old superior, filling out his uniform with ripped, lean muscle. Daniels was six inches taller than Steel, another fact about Daniel’s physicality that made the hair on the back of Steel’s neck stand up. As Steel had a seat, he took a breath. Some of Daniels’ musk--the clean scent of soap, a sharp bite of cologne, and a touch of Daniels’ own strong pheromones from a body just teeming with testosterone--hung in the air. One whiff of it made Steel’s skin tingle.

“So you know why you’re here, Specialist?” Daniels began, folding his hands on the desk.

Steel nodded. “Yes I do…” He paused as his absence of respect hung between them. “...sir,” he added. Sgt. Daniels just shook his head.

Sgt. Daniels opened a thick grey folder on his desk. “You want to tell me what you think I’m about to say?”

Steel nodded again. “I think you’re about to give me a negative counseling, sir,” he said. Daniels nodded.

“Good instincts, Specialist,” he said. Sgt. Daniels started reading through Steel’s file, exhaling loudly out of his nose at each page. Steel leaned forward in his seat to see what was written, but a stern glance from Daniels set him back in his chair. At one page, Sgt. Daniels shook his head and placed a finger on the page. “Specialist, every incident I have reported here is the result of your ego and sloppiness. How many men have been hurt by your negligence in the field?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” Steel said with a shrug--a gesture that soured Daniels’ disposition even more.

“You want to explain to me what happened to Specialist Bernardino? Says here he got laid up for six months thanks to your antics during a training mission.” Sgt. Daniels shook his head.

Steel winced at the memory. He remembered visiting Bernardino while he was recovering, making jokes, trying to lighten up the move. He had flirted with the nurses, flexing his guns and bouncing his pecs as he tried to get their attention. Every one of them had rolled their eyes at his 5’6” gym-pumped frame, and Bernardino told him he didn’t want to see him again.

“I, uh…” Steel felt a tingle across his skin as he started to recall the incident where his mistake had gotten Bernardino injured. His memories felt foggy all of a sudden. He’d been helping Bernardino, right? “We weren’t on a training mission, sir,” Steel said, shaking his head. He had felt confused for a moment, but now his memories were getting clearer. “We were in the gym.”

Daniels looked down at the folder and pointed to the page. “Excuse me? It says here you were…” He looked down and froze. He read the page, then flipped to the next and back one, confused by what he saw. “...I could’ve sworn… I know I read that it said…” Daniels shook his head, his confident demeanor faltering for a moment.

“I admit, ego had something to do with it,” Steel said as he recalled the events. In his head, he could see everything happen as if he were experiencing it for the first time: he and Bernardino were close friends and training buddies. Steel had piled five plates on the bar and squatted it for the first time, with Bernardino spotting him. Steel had squatted the massive poundage for three clean ass-to-grass reps, but when he stepped away to get some water, Bernardino tried it on his own without a spot. Steel had rushed back when he heard his buddy cry out, but it was too late; Bernardino had broken his leg.

Everything was blurry to Steel for a moment as his memories started to shift and reorganize. He had a flash of Bernardino telling him he was a scrawny fuckboy, telling him he trained like a pussy, but that didn’t make any sense… he and Bernardino had always been neck-and-neck in the gym department! Sure, Bernardino was taller than he was, but that had never stopped Steel from putting up just as much (if not more) weight.

“In all honesty, it was Bernardino’s ego that got him injured. Admittedly I should have been more attentive. I bet if I hadn’t stepped away, he never would have gotten hurt.” Steel recalled his visit to Bernardino in the hospital, how the nurses’ eyes lit up at his muscular physique filling out his polo shirt and his jeans. Bernardino had seethed with resentment as the women who’d fawned over his own muscles while tending to his injuries shifted their focus to the strapping stud who had come to visit.

That was right, Steel suddenly recalled as the memory cemented in his mind. That was how it had happened. He looked down at his well-built frame, recalling a fading memory of being smaller, of taking steroids but never putting on any size. That was crazy, he knew. Since he’d first starting lifting in high school he’d put on size easily.

Sgt. Daniels looked bewildered as he read what, to him, seemed like a brand new sheet of paper. “I… I… okay, then, let’s look at this incident,” he said, flipping ahead. “April 3rd, drunk as a skunk, you mouthed off to some civilians and got your ass into a fight. Sanchez stepped in to help you out and got a bottle smashed in his face. He’ll be scarred for the rest of his life. What do you have to say about that?”

Steel struggled to recall the incident, which was not an easy feat. He’d had nine jager bombs by himself that night, and could barely stand when the gorilla-built locals had begun playing pool next to him. He remembered how they towered of him, and how much that pissed him off… but the rest of the night was a blur.

No, that wasn’t right, he suddenly realized as his skin tingled again. He’d been drinking water that night. He was going to be training early in the morning. He’d only gone along so he could drive Sanchez home.

Steel reached down to adjust his shirt, which felt tight all of a sudden. As he readjusted it, the discomfort faded. He smoothed it over his ripped abs, realizing it fit perfectly. “Is that what that report says, sir?” Steel asked, recalling how he’d stepped in as Sanchez mouthed off to the burly locals. They all towered over him, but Steel, at 6’ tall, looked them all square in the eye. One glance at his rock-solid muscular body and they cooled down. One of them swung a bottle at Sanchez but Steel had caught the guy’s wrist before it landed. He’d broken the guy’s wrist but the cops hadn’t found him at fault.

“I don’t mean to contradict whoever filed that report,” Steel said, clearing his throat, his voice suddenly slightly deeper in tone--no, wait, it had always sounded like that!--”...but I saw Sanchez last week. His face is fine. And you can probably check the police report. All of the cops said they were grateful I was there. It would have gone a lot worse if I hadn’t intervened.

Sgt. Daniels raised an eyebrow, then looked down at his report--which no longer matched what he’d read moments early. Daniels shook his head and sat back in shock, reading a report that confirmed exactly what Steel had just shared with him.

“Sir, I don’t know where the confusion started, but I have to say,” Steel said, sitting taller in his chair, now eye level with the Sergeant across the desk from him, “but if this counseling is based only on false reports, or…” He gestured toward the Sergeant. “...accidental misreading of reports, I’d like to clear everything up so we can move forward with no confusion.”

Daniels looked shocked as he very visibly stared up and down Steel’s massive body filling out his chair. He looked down at the file, which was now half as full as it had been before--no, it had always been like that--and flipped the folder shut. “Specialist Steel, do you remember back when we first met in basic?”

Steel smirked. “Yeah, you were always in competition with me,” he grunted.

Daniels chuckled. “That’s hardly how I remember it,” he began. “I remember seeing a young guy starved for acceptance. Honestly, I think a fraternity would have been a better fit for you, but I assumed, at the time, the military would have rubbed all that roughness away and made you into a respectable man.”

Steel raised an eyebrow, puffing out his muscular chest. “Excuse me, sir, are you saying I’m not respectable?”

Daniels shrugged. “I’m saying when we both showed up in the military, same age, I saw a guy who was always burping, farting, and flexing his muscles when the rest of us were putting in hard work and learning discipline.”

“Is that so?” Steel said, resting his big hands on his thick quads.

“To be honest, I saw you as kind of a little brother at first,” Daniels said. “You were the smallest guy in basic, and you always had to prove yourself. It was like you couldn’t stand being around guys that were bigger than you. To be honest, a lot of people thought you were gay, the way you got all riled up about us bigger guys.”

“Bigger guys?” Steel asked. He was seething, but he wanted to hear more about what Sgt. Daniels had to say about him

“I’d really hoped I could set a good example for you,” Sgt. Daniels continued, folding his hands on the desk. “I thought if you saw what my work-ethic and self-management helped me achieve, maybe you could learn from it. Every promotion I got, I hoped would impress on you the value of discipline, but… you just remained stuck in your ways no matter how many times you got reprimanded. Honestly, the way you mimicked my gym regimen and copied all of my supplementation, I was hoping you’d start to imitate the important things too.” He ran a big hand through his blonde hair, then stroked his broad chin.

“I… mimicked YOU?” Steel said. He knew he had to respect his superior, but his gut went cold as memories of being mocked in the showers, of struggling to put on mass while the others’ bodies filled out with muscle from their rigorous army lifestyle, flashed through his mind.

“That… is not… how it happened…” Steel said, embracing the warm tingle across his meaty forearms.

“Oh really?” Sgt. Daniels said. “Enlighten me then, Specialist.”

“Are you forgetting the night you pissed your bunk?” Steel felt like he was staring through the mists of time, watching it all unfold. It was their third night of basic, and he woke to find Daniels in a panic, huddled in a pile of his wet sheets on the bunk, rocking back and forth. He remembered how pathetic the muscular blonde had looked, how terrified he was that anyone would find out until Steel offered to help him clean up the mess. He never told anyone about what had happened.

“What are you… that didn’t…” Daniels’ eyes seemed vacant as his jaw went slack.

“I never told anybody about that,” Steel said in his deep, masculine voice. “But that didn’t stop the guys from picking on you for other reasons, did it?”

Sgt. Daniels seemed to collect himself again, shaking his head. “Specialist Steel, are you having an episode? Nobody ever ‘picked on’ me.”

Steel just smiled back. “You forgetting that first day in the showers when you walked in with that tiny little dick?”

Sgt. Daniels chuckled at first. “Is that supposed to be a joke? I don’t have a little di--” His face went white mid-sentence.

Across the table, as the memories materialized in Steel’s mind, he assumed the same was happening to Daniels: he heard, as if it were happening at that exact moment, the crack of towels as Daniels, back when they’d only both just enlisted, used both hands to cover up his shame in the showers. The other guys started chanting, “Little Dick Daniels!” Then Steel stepped in, his own big dick swinging between his legs, to block the attacks.

“Back the fuck off!” Steel barked, catching one of the whipping towels in mid-air and yanking it from the attacker’s hands. He used his tall, muscular body to shield Daniels as best he could.

Steel grinned as he recalled the incident. He could still hear the hissing of the showers and the humidity of the air as if it were yesterday. The seat he was in groaned as he adjusted his bulk, clearly bigger than he’d been moments before--no, that wasn’t right. He’d always been big.

Daniels, looking queasy, backed away from his desk and fished around underneath. Steel grinned, knowing exactly what had happened: the story about Daniels’ little dick reminded him of his embarrassingly small endowment. It was Daniels’ weak point, and clearly recalling that story had shattered his composure.

“Remember begging me to get you steroids?” Steel continued. The memories appeared in his mind as he said them aloud. “You begged me, because those tiny balls of yours barely produced any testosterone and you were tired of being the army runt.”

As Steel said it, it became real: Daniels, was no sitting six inches shorter in his desk, swimming in a uniform that was far too big on him. A moment later, the uniform fit, although it was now a size small. Daniels looked down at his skinny hands as if he were seeing them for the first time, then examined his scrawny arms with a mixed look of horror and wonder.

“No matter how hard you tried in the gym, you never could put on size,” Steel recalled. He remembered, for a fleeting moment, a Herculean man who’d always towered over him, the epitome of masculinity, but he knew that Daniels had only ever looked like that in his wildest dreams! “You tagged along with me all the time, so jealous of my size,” Steel continued, his clothes once again uncomfortably snug. His whole body suddenly felt heavier.

“I mean, geez, everyone thought you were gay the way you idolized me,” Steel recalled to the scrawny blond across the desk from him. “With all that adoration, geez… I mean, it was hard not to make progress with someone constantly complimenting him, serving him hand and foot, and worshipping the ground he walked on.”

Steel suddenly rose to his feet as his body swelled with bulk. Just before his clothes split apart, they suddenly snapped to the correct size--until his growing body filled them out again, but just before his uniform burst, they blew out to fit him properly. Minutes later, Steel cracked his knuckles, flexing his big, meaty hands. He was 6’3” and 300 pounds of rock-solid muscle.

Exactly as he’d always been.

Little Daniels stared up at the massive muscle god--the man he’d worshipped for so many years--his posture going slack as he was overcome by the sight. Sgt. Daniels knew he would do anything for his hero. The counseling session had just been an excuse to get the gigantic man in his office.

But Steel wasn’t done recalling the past.

“Fuck, I’ve always been big,” he said, as he recalled playing football in high school, his coach rolling his eyes as concerned parents complained about their own kids getting injured playing with such an overgrown monster. He recalled when he was ten years old and realized he was taller than his own father--and nearly every adult man he knew. He flashed back even further to remember being four years old and yanking a parking meter out of the ground during a temper tantrum. He remembered smashing it against the pavement and watching the cascading coins scattering into the street. He had just been a child, but he saw the fear in his father’s eyes that day--because his father knew he wouldn’t be the big man for much longer.

Steel remembered it all--because it had all happened.

He felt a little dizzy--something was wrong with the room, or his vision. He wobbled on his big legs for a moment before slapping a hand over his eyes. His composure returned in a moment, and he looked around the massive room.

Despite the incredibly tall ceiling of the custom-built office, Steel still had to duck to keep his well-coiffed blonde hair from brushing against it. He was an absolute juggernaut of a man, a genetic freak the army had gone crazy for the moment he’d shown up. Twelve feet, six inches tall and well over 700 pounds, they more than made up for the costs to feed and clothe such a goliath by using him as a recruitment method.

Steel’s pretty blonde, jocky head looked small perched atop his mountainous traps and shoulders. His upper body flexed, an unbelievable sight as hundreds of pounds of pounds of granite flesh bunched and bounced. He had to lean forward to see little Daniels over his gigantic shelf of pec-meat.

Daniels sat in a chair so big it made him look like a midget. The little guy flinched like the size of the specially-designed seat had come as a surprise to him. His legs hung feet above the ground, his arms nowhere near the armrests. The desk itself was even bigger, a massive tank-sized piece of furniture that only served to make Daniels look even smaller by comparison.

“What are you doing sitting at my desk, Sergeant Daniels?” Steel asked. The whole room rumbled every time the titan spoke, and little Daniels actually squealed at the sound. “You realize you’re off to a bad start here, right? Especially considering how I’ve had to review all of the recent incident reports I’ve had filed on you.”

Steel stomped toward his desk with thunderous footfalls. Tiny Daniels leapt from the enormous seat and scrambled across the floor. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, sir… I’m so sorry…” He paused before referring to the enormous man and in that moment Steel suddenly recalled how he’d been the fastest promoted in military history. Once he’d reached the rank of Major, Congress, so enamored with this superhuman pinnacle of masculinity, voted to promote him to Superior General of the military, ranking above even a 5-star General. He licked his lips as he remembered how he’d insisted everyone refer to him as SUP Steel.

“SUP Steel, I don’t know what came over me, sir,” Daniels squeaked as he tried to compose himself. SUP Steel collapsed into his giant desk with a thud that made the whole room tremble. “Sir, please forgive me. I hope this doesn’t bode poorly for my review…”

But SUP Steel, the biggest man on the planet, was too busy remembering his own career: most active duty tours, the most eagle-eyed shooter on the range, and the most awards and medals at the impossibly young age of 21. As he recalled each thing, it became real, and the whole world shifted and reshaped to its new reality--and, despite a faint inkling that things used to be different, Steel accepted the reality as the true one each time it shifted.

He was SUP Steel, a title that reminded everyone he met that he was superior to them--in size, strength, and IQ, while satisfying his own fratty tendencies that others tolerated because who would want to disagree with such a gargantuan man? (And who COULD disagree with a man who could just remember things differently, such that it became the true reality?)

Steel’s enormous hands grasped at the relatively tiny folder on his desk. Daniels looked so runty sitting across from him that Steel had to stand to his full height just to see him. “Let’s see,” Steel said as he thumbed through the folder. “Looks like… a number of men have complained about your harassment of them. We really going through this again, Sergeant Daniels?”

“Honestly,” Daniels said, his hands shaking as he spoke, “I swear, I don’t know what any of them are talking about. I mean, maybe I have a wandering eyes sometimes, but… but I never meant… y’know...  sir…” The little guy looked like he was about to cry.

For a moment, Steel remembered a big, strapping man who looked down his nose at him. But that man was long gone--he never existed. Who would look down his nose at the most mammoth man on the planet?

“Do I have to bring up when we first enlisted together?”

“Please don’t, sir,” Daniels begged. Steel had to wonder--what had Daniels so spooked about Steel recounting the past?

Steel inhaled, lungs the size of a whale’s inflating as his bulky chest rose, and recalled he caught little Daniels peeping through a hole in the showers and jerking his tiny little dicklet to Steel’s soapy muscular body. He couldn’t blame the guy, even then; being around the biggest man on Earth was an overwhelming experience that left most guys, even straight men, entirely smitten with him. One whiff of the hypermasculine fog that rolled off his body every time he got even a mild sweat would short-circuit most guys’ brains, especially guys--like Daniels--who had a preference toward muscles in the first place.

Daniels had been lucky Steel was so good-natured about what he caught the little man doing. For a while, he would invite Daniels into the shower with him, letting the little guy soap the underside of the giant’s enormous, low-hanging balls and as much of the behemoth’s shaft as Daniels could reach. Steel knew the scrawny guy was probably rubbing his little dick raw in private, thinking of being subservient to such a supreme muscle god, but Steel felt sorry for the little guy. Not everyone could be born with Steel’s gifts, and most people were never able to rise to their potential anyway. They didn’t have what Steel had.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to demote you, PRIVATE Daniels,” Steel said with special emphasis on Daniels’ new title. “You’re lucky we’re not dishonorably discharging you, with all the complaints filed against you.”

“Th-thank you, sir,” Daniels said, shaking in his seat.

“And I feel what we need, Private Daniels, is to retrain you how to be a proper soldier in the army,” he decreed. He slowly recalled all the changes to the military since his promotions--like his request that his standard uniform be nothing more than camo jockstraps and military-issue custom-built compression shorts for his massive body.

Beyond those four walls, the world itself blurred and reshaped as Steel reimagined all of it--without even knowing that he was doing it, Steel was remaking the entire planet in his own image and believing it was the true reality the whole time.

“Are you ready for your new assignment, Private Daniels?” Steel boomed as he rose to his feet, his massive pecs quivering with every step as he lumbered across the room. From then on Private Daniels was his personal assistant. He paused as his tiny little servant ran to his side. “Daniels,” Steel barked. “Make sure my shoes are tied tight. It’s tough for me to get these big arms around all this mass.”

“Yes sir!” squeaked the little private, who dropped to his knees and did as he was told. While he was down there, Daniels spit-shined Steel’s enormous shoes without even being asked. Steel grinned, knowing that the little runt was entirely in his power--and how else could things be?

As he stomped out the door with his little toadie in check, he nodded at all of the other soldiers, all clad in similar camouflage jockstraps just like their heroic SUP Steel, froze and saluted the big beast. He had to tilt his whole body just to see past his own massive expanse of muscle, and he chuckled at how small normal men were in comparison. What was the point of a military at all when a man like SUP Steel was around?

For just a moment, Steel had a flash of a confusing memory--a face he only vaguely recognized staring into the mirror at a body that was far too scrawny to have been his. He’d been worried about ironing his shirt or something, hadn’t he? What a ridiculous idea; he hadn’t worn a shirt in years.

He continued to march across the base, not even aware as he left dinosaur-sized prints in the ground that he was reshaping the world to his own whims. Private Daniels hurried alongside him, desperate to please his enormous master.