Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

While I said that our group didn’t care too much for drama, it was also true that I didn’t want to see the excitement and delight in Tatiana’s eyes to quickly fade. Still, I had a way to make me seem less of an asshole alter but it seemed like Tatiana wanted to know—or should I say specifically quantify my actual grip strength with the GM150.

“Ah-ah-ah! Kaley could go later! Show off right now or I won’t come!”

“Hah? I can make you cum myself though—”

“You— Don’t be an ass! Just show us!”

Kaley nodded, “Yeah, what you did was just rude, you doofus! Unless your score’s lower than—”

“Fineee~ fine! Gimme—”

With that said, I still didn’t want to seem like an actual asshole so once I got a good grip on the device’s handle, I let out a short exhale before I gripped hard.

“Hnh!” I exclaimed before I turned the device around to see that panel, “Lookie here~ 80kgs(176.37lbs)!”

“…” Kaley.

“…” Tatiana.

“…” everyone else.

“What? Do you fucks have any idea the average for a human male and female—”

Eden cut in with a bit of confidence though still annoyed for some reason, “46kgs(101.41lbs) for men and 29kgs(63.93lbs) for women.”

I just made a blank face before I replied, “Exactly…”

Kaley shook her head, “Something’s off… I think you can score more than that, for some reason…”

“Hah? You’re crazy…”

Tatiana cut in, “You— Do it with your left hand too!”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

“Alright, Shia— Jeez, just let me— Hnh!”

Again, 80kgs(176.37lbs) on the dot.

At this point, everyone who was used to my deviousness was starting to get a little more suspicious while the people who just knew me recently were amazed—which was the reaction I was hoping for—but alas, ma wife definitely caught on and demanded a do-over.

“Why don’t you do that again and this time, try?”

I let out a sigh, “Fine, fine! I just didn’t want Tatiana to feel bad after scoring that high— you understand how crazy her score is, right?!”

Tatiana rolled her eyes, “I know, I know— I just don’t want you giving me special treatment. It’s not a total competition but I wanna know what I’m up against.”

I suddenly copied a certain cat swashbuckler’s facial expression, “Why would you be against me—”

“STOP MESSING AROUND AND JUST DO IT!!!”

“Hngh!”

This time, even the suspicious ones were impressed that I managed to hit 3-digits 100kgs(220lbs), to the exact fucking dot for both arms again—but yeah, Kaley and Tatiana couldn’t let this shit go.

“Nuh-uh, again!”

“Hnnn!” I grunted before hitting 101kgs(222.66lbs)

“This is— One more!”

“Iyaa~” I let out a weird noise before hitting 102kgs(224.87lbs)

“You—”

“Oraaa!” then I hit 103kgs(227.07)

At that point, I continued to grip the GM150 and add a kilogram for each pull, not only showing my grip strength but also my control over it. Furthermore, I stopped when I hit 125kgs(275.57) but everyone still knew that something was up because there was never any deviation plus it was the same score on both hands.

“Whew~ Now that’s a workout in itself— I’m fucking pumped! Can’t do anymore, sorry~”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Whaaat?”

Kaley shook her head, “You— Tell me, you’re also pretending somewhat when you’re swinging your katana with Quinn, right?”

I shrugged my shoulders, “Somewhat, yeah. You do know it’s tiring to power through every single swing and my katana’s only a few pounds in weight— so yeah, there are a lot of factors to consider but in the case of randomness, there will be times when it’d be off but once I’m in a zone where the pull doesn’t change, I’d only have to test swing once.

I am kind of making it sound like it’s complicated, it is, a little, but not so much.” Discover hidden tales at empire

Eden was still a little confused, “How… That’s more than twice—”

“Tatiana did more twice than the average mean too!”

Tatiana cut in, “Hold your horses, bud. I can do a lot but I don’t have the thingy landing perfectly on the dot every single time. You’re fucking crazier than I thought.”

“I guess I’m crazy physically too, heh.”

Ella cut in as well, “And you achieved that by doing this boring thing?”

“A bit of genetics too but I’m a guy as well, so—”

Megan threw a curveball, “‘Cuz you’ve been jacking off all your life?”

I threw one myself, “Yeah, and most of you can’t jack off like me so we have the definite advantage.”

Then June threw a nuke, “How about me?!”

“You— Then jackoff harder, you fuckin—”

“Pfft— HAHAHAHAHA!!!”

“STOP! I’M DYING! I’M DYING!”

“DOOFUS! DON’T— AHAHAHAHA!!!”

“WE GOT ‘EM! WE GOT ‘EM! HAHAHAHAHA!!!”

“We sure did, now back to training!”

“Awwww~ man!”

In any case, I found out that all they needed was a bit of inspiration and a bit of comedy—and a little horniness—to be motivated to continue such “menial” work, but in essence, I consider grip strength the weirdest among all strength-related activities because it fucking stays and sneaks up on everyone despite not training and despite people getting older.

‘It’s prolly where the term “Old Man Strength” comes from too… If they’re active in their youth, of course…’

Still, I didn’t make them do a lot of these exercises because it was still around 10 in the morning—because our training usually happens before or after dinnertime, but yeah, if this was the reception from the womenfolk, I can only imagine what would it be like for my brothers.

And not to put any label on it or anything, our brains were just simple and very easy to engage with—akin to finding a good stick and showing it to my menfolk could easily entertain us for a good hour or two—and by that, I mean that I may just crush an apple or carve it a certain with just my fingers and all of them would go to the gym to train grip and finger strength.

In any case, variety’s the spice of life, and while the exercises I had them do could stave them off for a month, I wanted to have something made to simulate the randomness of the “pulls” not so that they could get a better handle on it—because randomness is a fucking motherfucker—maybe a little, sure, but just to replicate the feeling as much as possible if they wanted to train alone.

‘Something more subtle too…’

If anything, I would’ve liked to get some help from Quinn but she’s out for the moment so the next best thing was to find either Raphael or Anthony—or maybe even Ken to have a long rod where the center of gravity would shift around as randomly as they could.

I already have ideas of my own but it wouldn’t hurt to get some input from everybody else.

However, it didn’t take long before Unc Zeidrick caught wind of what I was trying to do and I’mma be fucking honest and say that his idea fucking blew me out of the water.

I was thinking of making something fucking complex and would need complicated machinery—which would also be heavy, but little did I know an old toy from the 1960s, the Groan Toy, which was essentially a tube that would make this weird, funny, and nostalgic sound when you flip it over.

Essentially, all we have to do was make a staff or a shorter version of it made up of different-sized tubes filled with random objects—so where you swing it in a random direction, the different center of gravities from the multitude of tubes would make the training weapon veer off from its original path.

More so, we could also make it with materials differing in weight and strapping them all together—and the difference would be was where the person wielding it would hold it before swinging.

‘We could mess around with magnets too so depending on the swing performed the magnet could stick to a different orifice making the swing different from the first one, and applying it to different areas increases the variables too…’

In any case, those two items would give a lot more variety to their training regimen because with more things that would affect their swing arc, the more they could fiddle and practice with it so they’d know what to do if faced with a similar instance.

While it wasn’t a straight fix for randomness but it just might have the same principle of practicing 10,00 kicks 10,000 times.

“You happy with that, nephew?”

“‘Nephew?’ Where did that start?”

“Heh. I’m just trying to throw you off, kid.”

“That feels better. But yeah, thanks for this— you think we could make a few more before sundown?”

“No.”

“No? We have materials—”

“I already gave you the idea cut me some fucking slack— Heh, just kidding. Of course, we can— lemme call Russel too, so he stops sleeping in all day.”