Alanna's Powers
Chapter Three
Push-ups and arm wrestling
Update: 27/09/1997 to misc2

 	A few months after I saw my younger sister untwist iron bars in her bare 
hands, I decided to do something stupid. While we watched TV one night downsairs 
in the basement, I picked a fight with her and started wrestling. Though I knew 
her to be incredibly strong, stronger even than either of us understood, I also 
knew that she was generally not agressive. In fact, she really did not want to 
fight back. However, I goaded her into trying. I had her pinned, which was no 
big deal since she was not trying, and I was straddling her midsection on my 
knees with her hands pinned to the ground. I looked down at her from my 
seemingly dominant position, and I said, "You're a wimpy girl, and you like 
wearing dresses."
	"I like wearing dresses, but I'm not a wimp. The only reason I act like a 
wimp is because I need to be feminine."
	"Yeah, right! You just act wimpy because you can't do anything alse." At 
that point the smile on her face began to disappear. A look of determination 
came over it.
	The next thing I knew, I was being levitated into the air. She had arched 
her back in a gymnastic move sometimes known as a bridge, and was resting on her 
feet and hands with her pelvis two feet off the ground. I had seen people do 
this, but never with a person's weight on their stomach. This placed me in an 
awkward position. The more she arched, the more my balance was shifting forward. 
I had two choices, let go of her hands or find myself falling forward onto her 
face. So there I was sitting on her stomach while she did a reverse bridge arch. 
The next thing I knew she bent her knees and elbows a little and seemed to suck 
in her stomach muscles, and then all these muscles exploded upwards, throwing me 
five feet across the room onto my butt.
	Then she calmly sat back down on the ground again and watched TV. I was 
aghast.
	"How the hell did you do that? What did you do?"
	"I don't know, I just did it. It seemed like a way to break your hold."
	"Yeah, well try it again!" And I accosted her one more time.
	"Oh, I don't want to do this again."
	"Well, you're going to have to. I'm not getting off you." I assumed the 
same position. Only this time I kneeled down on her elbows.
	"I don't think I'll try the same thing this time." She didn't! This time 
she  pushed her arms forward lifting all my weight up as if I weighed almost 
nothing. Suddenly, I was no longer on my knees on her arms but on my feet 
leaning forward with all the pressure of my eighty-five pounds. The next thing I 
knew, she had broken her wrists free of the hold of my hands, and she instead 
had my wrists firmly in her grip. Now I began to feel what it was like to have 
those strong walnut cracking hands squeezing a part of me. She hopped up into a 
standing position and started squeezing my wrists so hard that I wanted to 
scream. She turned my arms so that the elbows were up and started bending them 
in a way that would hyperextend my elbows if she did not stop. Tears came to my 
eyes; I had never imagined such pain. I had never imagined such physical power 
in such a beautiful little girl. I croaked, "please stop, Alanna."
	"Oh, am I hurting you? I'm sorry." And she honestly meant it. She had only 
been goofing off, and she had no idea of the pain she had inflicted or of the 
limits of her own strength. It was scary what she could do, and she had no idea. 
I had bruises on my wrists for a week, bruises which I dutifully kept covered. 
Neither Alanna nor I wanted anyone to find out what had happened. I had seen 
what she could do when she got that look of concentration, and I never wanted to 
see it directed at me again. 
	About a year and a half later, Alanna had grown into a very attractive 
seventh grade girl. It was time for her thirteenth birthday, and since she was 
becoming a teenager, Mom and Dad allowed her to have a co-ed party, so on her 
birthday twelve carefully chosen seventh graders arrived at the house for a 
party. Jeff and I were asked to help set up and keep an eye on things. Most of 
the kids were only a year behind me in school, so they knew me well.
	After the obligatory food and drinks, the presents, the music, and some 
games, the kids were all downstairs in the basement playroom, a large carpeted 
room with a couple of sofas and chairs around the sides as well as a TV and 
stereo in the corner. At this point some of the kids began to get antsy and were 
looking for something to do.
	It is a well documented fact that students at that age are apt to 
challenge each other physically. Arm wrestling challenges and physical games are 
typical for boys and even for the girls, so at this point an informal challenge 
was issued by one of the boys. 
	"Hey, let's see who can do the most push-ups. I'll go first." He promptly 
dropped to the floor and completed thirty-eight.
	"Jeez, not bad Chucky!" piped a small boy in the pack.
	"Now you try, Nick." Nick dropped to the floor and strained to get thirty-
six. 
	"Too bad, nice try though. You're smaller than me, so it's harder." He 
looked around. "Who's next."
	"I'll go," said Jenny Lindsay. She was acknowledged to be the best female 
athlete in the class, and the guys were worried about her beating them. True to 
their concerns, she did surpass the current high total by forcing out forty 
push-ups.
	"I don't know if I could do forty," I whispered to my brother.
	"I can beat that," bragged Jack Thompson stepping forward confidently. He 
promptly dropped to the floor and did thirty quick push-ups before slowing down. 
However, he reached forty and kept going to the amazement of all. Finally 
stopping exhausted at fifty. He got up to his feet tired and flushed but proud. 
"Beat that!" he said in a challenge to all there.
	Just about all of them tried, but none could do it Some came close, and 
others could do no more than fifteen or twenty. Some tried two or three times. 
Finally, they realized Alanna had not had her turn. 
	"Hey, it's Alanna's turn! Yeah, Alanna, birthday girl. Come on Alanna, 
give it a try," they all piped in. She just blushed and said no. You might have 
thought she was shy. She just didn't want to show them up. 
	"Come on!" said Jack. "I want to make it a clean sweep of everybody. What 
are you chicken?"
	"Yes, I'm chicken!" she said. "I am afraid of embarrassment." She meant 
his, I think. 
	"Don't be afraid; you may be a little wimpy, but we won't hold it against 
you. Are you afraid to lose to Jenny? Are you afraid you can't do half of what I 
did? Come on, I challenge you to get down on the floor and do as many push-ups 
as you can. We won't laugh."
	I saw that look come over her, that look of concentration she got when she 
got angry. Jack had hit a nerve, and he was about to be surprised. 
	"It's not me who's going to be embarrassed," she whispered to herself.
	She lowered herself to the floor and began slowly to do push-ups. At 
fifteen she picked up the pace, at thirty she sped up again. I noticed the 
sinews in her forarms begin to swell, and her shoulders were starting to bulge. 
Ten seconds later the sick look in Jack's face told everyone that she was going 
to pass his mark of fifty soon, and she showed no signs of slowing down. 
Suddenly, as she completed her forty seventh push-up, Jack Thompson sat on the 
middle of her back.
	"Get off my back, Jack," said Alanna calmly but forcefully. "I want to 
finish this." 
	"Now see if you can beat my mark of fifty," Jack taunted.
	"O.K., I will." Alanna took a deep breath and exhaled as she pushed 
herself and Jack up with relative ease. She slowly let herself down with perfect 
push-up form. She had now only two to go. She pressed one more out, her eyes 
popping a little, forty-nine. Then she managed another. She had done her fifty, 
but to the amazement of all, with Jack Thompson sitting on her back, she pressed 
out five more push-ups. At this point the muscles in her chest and along the 
backs of her arms had swelled to impressive size. They were forcing her loosely 
fitting shirt to look tighter, and forcing her breasts to press against the 
front of her shirt.
	Jeff and I stood there gawking. We could not believe what we had just 
seen.
	 "O.K.," she said, "I think that beats you, are you satisfied, or do you 
want me to do it again?" 
	"Um no, I guess that's good enough, but how about arm wrestling. I'll bet 
you cant beat me in arm wrestling." She rolled her eyes and looked at me. This 
was not turning out to be the birthday party she had dreamed of.
	"Come on," she whined. "I don't really want to."
	"Aw jeez, Alanna, you gotta give me a chance to prove it was a fluke. I 
know I can beat you. Are you afraid?"
	She laughed a little laugh.
	"O.K., if you insist." They set up a table, and each of them took their 
places. The boys rallied around Jack, and the girls were mostly supportive of 
Alanna. I had to be the referee. I had seen arm wrestling on TV, and I made them 
grip their hands correctly and assume a fair position. 
	"Ready, st, wrestle."
	No sooner had I lifted my hands off their hands than Jack's arm was pinned 
to the table.
	"Hey, that was too quick. I wasn't ready." 
	"O.K., let's go again." Once again he was pinned in a matter of seconds, 
and once again he complained, so one more time I set them up. 
	This time she nonchalantly held her arm up in the position, and he could 
not move it. She was toying with him and enjoying it. He was pushing, and 
heaving. She was looking at her nails, staring into space, asking for another 
piece of birthday cake, and giving every appearance of not even trying. "Tell me 
when you want to start" she said. "I don't want to take advantage of you."
	Well, that really pissed him off, so he took his left arm out from under 
the table and started pulling her arm backwards with his left while pushing with 
his right, two arms against her one. Her arm began to bend back a little, two 
inches, three inches, four inches. She still had that detached look about her. 
"Are you sure you haven't started?" she asked. "I think you're cheating." 
	Then, quick as lightning her right arm came crashing down on his and he 
fell sideways to the floor, his left arm having been pulled over as well as his 
right arm pushed. 
	"Man, what happened?" Jack asked?
	"You lost to a girl, that's all" said Nick. "In fact she killed you, if I 
were you I wouldn't show my face in school for a while."
	That broke up the party pretty quickly. Alanna seemed pretty upset by the 
way the party had ended, but later on she confided in me that there were certain 
parts she enjoyed about it.
	"I'm glad I kicked his butt; Jack really had it coming to him, but I 
really don't get a big kick out of beating boys. What I do enjoy is being 
strong. It feels really good to do something really difficult. It's like a rush 
or something." I understood what she meant, but I could not identify with what 
she was talking about.
	Jeff had seemed pretty unimpressed. After all, he was the best athlete in 
the tenth grade at Culver High School, a starting linebacker on the Varsity 
football and a wrestler. He must have been somewhat startled by her performance 
though because that night he called me into his bedroom and asked "Jason, how 
much do you weigh?" 
	"Ninety-five pounds!" I answered.
	"How does that compare with Jack, do you think?"
	"Oh, I think he's a little over a hundred, but we're about the same.
	"O.K., I want you to sit on my back while I do push-ups. I know Alanna had 
already done about fifty, but I want to see how many I can do with you on my 
back when I'm rested." 
	I wanted to convince him not to try. I wanted him to avoid the humiliation 
that was coming, but he had to find out sooner or later. He might as well find 
out now with only me around. He got down into the push-up position.
	"Do you want to start up or down," I asked.
	"Up, I think."  I sat on his back, and his arms gadually crumbled under 
our combined weight as he tried to let himself down for his first push-up. As we 
untangled ourselves from the human pile on the floor, he gave me a very 
embarrassed look.
	"Don't you breathe a word of this to anybody." That night Jeff decided he 
was going ask for a weight bench for christmas