' Hey. Give it back.' That's what the man said. It reminded me of me. As a kid I said the same thing and I said it a lot. Small kids get picked on and if you look up small in the dictionary there is a picture of the elementary school edition of me. It's how life works the biggest and strongest survive and the small are simply used as footstools. I always wanted to stay inside during recess but the teacher made me go outside. Danger surrounded me from the moment I stepped outside. Instead of balls hitting the wall, balls hit the small. I happened to be the favorite target; they created a point system for where they hit me and with what. A wall ball to the head gave five hundred points, so did a basketball to the chest. Once somebody managed to get the tetherball off of it's rope and hit me with it, that person got a million points. The abuse extended from recess to the classroom. Not a day went by without my paper being ripped or my pencil broken. The physical abuse hurt a lot less than what came later.

In middle school I grew taller, but that only intensified my abuse, the short kids and the tall kids mocked me. My Parents disappeared around my third birthday and my sister got into some bad stuff. We had no money for clothes. My shins showed and my shirt didn't go all the way down. In those days I tended to be a bit of a klutz, I spent a lot of time tripping, falling and tumbling down stairs. One day in science I happened to be carrying a scalpel when I tripped over the cord of a Bunsen burner. I stabbed myself in the leg and my shirt caught on fire. I ended up shirtless with a hole in my leg where one of the schools biggest bullies rudely ripped the scalpel out from my leg. I never heard the end of that story and it ranks highly on the list of worst experiences of my life. Even through all the torment I managed to enjoy school. People tend to like doing things they are good at and difficult is not a word I associated with school. I breezed through my classes and before eighth grade they forced me to switch to a magnet school. They thought the new school held a challenge for me, but I still did not struggle. The classes stayed easy, so easy I had to ask for extra homework and spend my nights taking classes at the local high school just to keep myself involved. These kids should have appreciated me, the schools test scores rose, because of me, and now we got all kinds of funding. When I came to the school, pigs refused to go there but soon after I arrived the school went through a renaissance of sorts. New computers appeared in the library, graffiti disappeared from the bathroom stalls; it became one of the best in the nation. Even with all that I had done for them the ridicule didn't stop until in the summer before my sophomore year, we moved away.

In the new city I hid my intellect and tried to act cool. I stole clothes from one of the upper end stores in the city and scraped by with a c average. I asked questions in class and acted like I didn't understand the given answers. I knew the material well enough to have taught those classes but instead I sat in the back with the usual collection of scum. Some of the scum actually became my friends. I went over to their houses, played basketball with them after school. Until I met her, I had a good life going.

She has to be the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, with eyes like the clear blue sky. When she smiled she took my breath away, and when she laughed I had to look for a chair. I loved her from the moment I saw her but when she spoke I knew I decided to do anything she wanted. This girl blew most people out of the water when it came to brains and if put to the test might even have beaten me. Without thinking I started showing off my brains again, my test scores skyrocketed and more than once the principal called me into her office to talk about how I ought not cheat and each time I had to prove I knew the material. This girl did something to me she gave me courage, I talked to her and even asked her to be my lab partner. For some reason she actually said yes. I skipped home that day. I didn't know that I what horror my house held and when I arrived my sister's dealer stood in my kitchen, drinking my juice and wearing my robe. That soured my day immediately. I didn't know what to do, so I turned tail and ran.
I didn't return to home or school for a week and by the time I did the girl had found a new partner. Tall and muscular her new partner seemed my better. He managed to be the most popular guy in the school while also being my friend. I allowed myself to be smart around him and if he ever needed help with his homework I gladly gave it. As much as I helped him he may have helped me more. He got me into the schools drama program and even got me to try track, which didn't work out. After everything we had been through I refused to believe he chose to betray me like this. I walked over to him and challenged him to a fight. He refused. He tried to talk it over, he told me he didn't know where I had gone or if I even lived. He told me that she asked him. He didn't ask her. I didn't care and swung hard with my left. I hit him in the shoulder. He didn't feel a thing and swatted me away like a fly. I got back up and repeated the whole thing. Our teacher never even looked up from his newspaper as I hit the ground again, again and again. Eventually I gave up and ran from the room crying. I never returned to that school again.

I devoted my life to creating the ultimate body for myself. At first I did it the old fashioned way nothing put pumping iron but I didn't see a whole lot of change. So I got started using your every day run of the mill supplements only I used too much. My body rebelled against me and began to cramp up at every possible opportunity. I started getting daily massages, which quickly emptied my wallet, but I didn't see the change I wanted. I started to get desperate but I refused to take steroids. Instead I put that wonderful mind of mine to use and began experimenting. I created a new kind of supplement, an ultra-supplement; it worked better than Creatine and didn't drain your body's water resources. Unfortunately creating it cost the last of my money and I had to sell it to pay my bills, I never got to use my own ultra supplement. Broke and still trapped in the body I had hated my entire life, the body that had caused me so much pain I became desperate. I began to steal again, but this time I stole from my friends. I stayed the night with one of them, took some money while they slept and by the time they woke up I had already left. I did this for years before they finally caught on. My friends didn't press charges but I never saw them again. I began to take steroids and I finally saw results but the side effects proved too much for me. I once again put my mind to use and created a super steroid. It designed it to be the same as any other only without the potential for rage and without the other more inconvenient side effects. It almost worked but instead of protecting against rage, my creation increased it.
Eventually I felt ready. I returned to the city and called out for my old friend. I stood in the square for days waiting and watching but he never came. Instead on the eighth day of my return she came. They had married and had a happy life but when the government reactivated the draft, they called his name first. He died over there leaving her a single mother. I realized then that I still loved her and I realized that I hated anyone who hurt her, I never thought about how I might have hurt her. I marched to the steps of the white house knowing that I had no way to avoid failure. I broke down the door and walked in. As I neared the oval office the secret service began shooting at me. At first I thought the president needed better security because these ones struggled with shooting. I then realized that the bullets did in fact consistently hit me. They just didn't hurt me. It seemed my Superroid might have worked to well. I felt invincible. I dismantled the American army and the country quickly bowed to my will. My plan had been to make a statement but I went a little farther than I expected. The power went to my head. I lost control and began to seek world domination. I know very clich'. I incited a world war, every country of the earth against little old me. No one managed to kill me. When Russia tried dropping a nuclear bomb on them-selves to destroy me I walked with a little cut on my chin but otherwise unharmed. This planet belonged to me and I had no rules. The people who had once ruled over me now lived in fear of me. The terror I once felt at going outside paled when compared to the terror the people of my planet now felt.
People don't like being stepped on and eventually a group of rebels rose up. They proved no match for me but they gave the people hope. I squashed one group and a then new one rose up and each time a new group raised the people got braver. They spit on me as I walked through the town and one kid hit me in the head with a wall ball. Five hundred points. It brought back the painful memories and I lost it. I raged through the city destroying it. This gave the people even more hope. The awesome display of my power had given them hope. People are stupid. I had just been proven their better and yet they cheered for the next rebel group. I designed new weapons for my self, cufflinks that allowed me to fire concentrated energy, boots that allowed me sustained flight and yet at each new power the people gained hope. They said that I'd eventually have to stop terrorizing them and they seemed to be right. I grew tired of doing it all by myself, so I found a group of people, loyal only to me, and I trained them, raised them as my army. I left them in charge of bring terror to my people. My army turned out to be more than capable of squashing the rebels but they proved just as incapable as me at squashing the peoples' hope, their hope seemed squash proof. It seemed that no matter what I did, no matter how often I won the people always had hope.
Then the sky turned black and the thunder began speaking. They challenged me and my people to fight and these invaders made me angry. I rose from my thrown and announced myself as my world's champion. The invaders found this acceptable and pulled me in through an open hatch. I now stood on the most ornate wrestling ring I had ever seen. Eight stone pillars stood around they emerald green mat, the color more beautiful then any earth color. The alien ruined this beautiful sight. It stood seven feet tall and wide as a hummer. The legs looked like tree trunks. Spikes the color of darkest night ran down his back. It spoke in a growl but I understood him. His vulgarity surprised me and I will not repeat what he said. His fighting style seemed just as vulgar as his words. He threw his weight around hoping to land a blow. He had surprising speed and did manage to land a few and when he did he broke through my defenses. I landed a few blows of my own as well and after ten minutes both competitors had their fair share of bruises but I had quite a bit more of them than him. I knew that if I tried to continue on shear strength and skill the alien might as well have already beaten me, so I poured all of my energy into my cufflinks and fired. My reserves had been emptied but I had won. The hatch opened and I tumbled down to my planet.
As I fell, slowly aided by my flight boots that while drained still allowed me to keep my neck intact, I noticed something going on below. The rebels had taken my absence as an opportunity to attack my capital. Amazing, I defend them from a terrible threat and they repay me by attacking me. I barely had the strength to stand but as long as I had the strength to stand I had the strength to fight. I walked through the crowds towards the rebel leader and for the first time I felt pain when their bullets hit me. I refused to go down and continued my slow trek toward my own doom. It took an excruciatingly long time but I did reach the son of a gun. For some reason he had chosen not to run from me and instead he stood there dumbfounded at how I had managed to get through his guards. His gun came into my hands without much struggle and it didn't take much more energy to send him to his knees. I lorded his gun, his only source of power, over this pathetic excuse for a man. He thought he had the ability to over throw me but he didn't have the ability to overthrow a cardboard cutout of me. I held all of his power in my hands and I relished in it. I barely heard him say it but he did. Those four words ' hey, give it back.' brought back a wave of nostalgia. My guard dropped and in that moment he had beaten me. He got back up and snatched his gun back. The tide turned and he drove me back into the war going on around us. I called for my army to come and help me and they did. Many died on the way to the center but those that made it had sworn to defend me to the death and they always kept their promises. Or so I thought. The leader of the rebels began to talk and my men listened to him. All but one of them dropped their guns and walked away. The other shot me in the back. My world went black.
I woke up two times before going silently into the night. The first time I woke, I found myself sitting in a hospital bed watching a public service announcement. They had finally torn down the last of my statues. Every monument to me had been taken apart, my world had been replaced. The people had chosen to rebuild. The second time I woke up in a metal chair, with wires attached to my body. Some one flipped a switch and I felt a shock, I never felt anything again.