"Growth Spurts" by Dean Valden

Hi there, I'm Dean. You ever wonder who designs and makes every superhero's outfit? No way does every hero have the ability to design and craft a wearable masterpiece. That's my job.

I do have a power though, don't get me wrong, and it's not just an amazing fashion sense. I can control the growth of my muscles and bones, basically meaning I can get big and tall whenever I want.

Right then, I guess it's time to tell you how I got here.

My parents met in New York, at the Empire State Building. They weren't tourists though, they came closer to performers. They were there as temporary exhibits at the Guinness World Records Museum, since they were both record holders.

As you can probably guess, they were both related to growth. My dad had the longest finger nails on record, and my mom was his equal in terms of hair. Yeah, weird couple, right?

Anyway, they turned up for this exhibition and were placed at booths next to each other, and they just hit it off. Before long they'd used the money they got from the exhibition to get a place in the city, then they did a final few appearances at the museum and a few of the Ripley's Odditoriums before cutting their respective nails and hair in order to have me.

My parents were a weird mixture of cultures. My dad was Indo-German and my mom had an Italian mom and a dad with mixed Japanese-American heritage. With all that going on there's no wonder I get on so well with everyone at The Academy.

I had a pretty normal childhood - for all intents and purposes I was a normal child. I wasn't born with wings or something fancy like Beth, which is a relief because her costume was hard enough to design and make with that ruddery wingy thing at the end so I'd rather not do another one of those, thank you very much.

Anyway, one day I got into a bit of a scuffle at school. It was in my first year of high school, I was just hitting puberty and it seemed one of my classmates thought he could hit me harder. Typical playground fight in every way except one.

I was flicking through a magazine I'd got on a bench. I'm pretty sure it was Vogue, it explains why I want a career in fashion and also why this jumped-up punk wanted a piece. He came up behind me and pulled me back, all of his buddies sniggering away like chimps.

That stopped in a matter of seconds. You should have seen their faces drop when I stood back, all six foot of me and still going. What made it worse for them was the fact I was still a couple of inches under five before I hit the floor.

It wasn't just the height though. As I grew I got wider, more muscly. Mr Helstrom tends to exaggerate a lot when he's training us, but he usually says I'm six feet tall and six feet wide, built like a brick outhouse.

So those kids ran away and everything was fine. Except it wasn't, because now I was stuck as the biggest, tallest, strongest high schooler ever, with no idea how to reverse it. I'd hit seven foot tall, so I had to crouch to get under doorways, as well as go sideways because I was so wide. It was pretty ridiculous, and I looked it in my tiny little ripped school uniform.

I got home with still no idea of how to get back to normal. I had to sleep with my legs dangling over the end of my bed, and I could lift my dad up and move him when he was sat in the comfy chair in the lounge. There were a few ups and downs, but at the time I definitely wanted more downs, if you catch my drift.

A couple days later (after my dad needed to teach me to shave, just to let you know) I got a weird package. Nothing spectacular like Gerard though - it was a syringe filled with a strange, sky blue liquid and instructions on how to administer it. No list of ingredients though.

We were a little suspicious of this strange delivery, but it did say that it would change me back to normal. We mulled it over for a few days, but when we realised that I wasn't getting any better and this whole ordeal was really inconvenient we decided it was worth a try.

My dad was training to be a dentist, so he was the most well equipped to deal with it. I hated needles back then, still do to some degree, but it got better. It had to really.

Nothing happened at first, which we kind of expected. My parents were thinking of buying me some new clothes to wear since it seemed irreversible (up to that point they'd borrowed stuff off of a couple of guys they knew from their Guinness days), but they didn't need to. Miraculously, overnight, I'd shrunk back to normal.

I'm not saying it was perfect - I still needed to shave every day - but it was an improvement. I kinda liked being the only fourteen year old I knew with a goatee. For The Academy's resident fashion designer, I wasn't very fashionable, although it's grown on me since then and I refuse to get rid of it.

I thought I was in the clear after that, but my troubles just kept on... (I'm sorry, Rod made me put it in) growing. I had to make a presentation in front of my class one day at school, and I guess that stressed me out enough to set me off.

I was stood up at the front, and I'll never forget I was presenting my book report on Miyamoto Musashi's 'The Book of Five Rings' that I'd borrowed from my mom. I was shaking a little and I dropped my notes. Before I knew it I'd hit my head on the hanging ceiling light.

In an instant I was back to the same problem I'd had before, with no way of contacting whoever gave me the serum that fixed me last time. They, on the other hand, knew exactly how to contact me, as within only a couple of days a new syringe of blue liquid.

I was back to normal in no time, but I couldn't help but wonder who it was that knew so much about me that they could deliver exactly what would treat my condition. I found out before long though, but not in the best of circumstances.

A couple of days after the second syringe turned up, a strange man knocked at our door. He was quite muscular, with short brown hair and a German accent. He told me that he represented a company that specialized in genetics, I can't remember the name exactly, something like GaiseriCo I think.

Anyway, he was going on about how my genes, with their potential for growth, could be used to create military super-soldiers, sold to the highest bidder to make me rich. This wasn't really my thing, I wasn't a violent guy, I never actually laid a finger on the guys that bullied me the first time I changed. That meant that I had to turn this guy down.

"Look, warfare and all that just isn't something I'm okay with," I told him, flat out.

"But you would be handsomely rewarded for your contributions, does that not sound like something you would be interested in?"

"As nice as that sounds, it's dirty money. I can't do that," was my reply. Pretty clued up for a fifteen year old, huh?

"Well, just think about it, you may change your mind." On that note, he handed me his business card and left.

The whole thing was a bit weird, and I wanted nothing to do with it, so the business card went straight in the trash. I thought that would be the end of it, but boy was I wrong.

About a week later the same guy turned up at the door, except somehow his hair has gotten considerably longer and was now slicked back, and as far as I knew I was the only one with control over the rapid growth of my cells.

"Look man, I've already said no," I told him, which prompted a quizzical look on his face.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about young man," came his reply.

"Is this a trick or something? Some kind of a test? To see if I'm worthy or something like - " I stopped short, realising my mistake.

Walking towards the house, behind the guy I was talking to, was the guy I was talking to the last time. I looked between the two and the hair became more apparent, and I noticed the new guy had an old-looking wedding ring on as he waved his hand in front of my face to take me out of my daze, but I didn't see one on the other guy when he handed me his card.

The new guy turned around to see what I was staring at, but as he did the old guy rugby tackled him through the door and into our hallway. At that instant whatever made me grow clicked on and I was suddenly crouching so I didn't hit my head on the ceiling.

In the chaos I couldn't really tell who was who. In one instant one of them was pinned on the floor with his legs around the other getting punched in the face while he tried to cover himself with his elbows. Seconds later, they'd knocked over a table while the other one had got on top and was trying to pin his opponent down.

In all of the action I did the only thing I thought I could, and grabbed each of them by the scruff of their neck and pulled them apart, lifting them a couple of inches off the ground as I held them before me.

"Right. What the hell is going on here?" I demanded of them, as though they were naughty schoolchildren.

"You're probably not going to believe me," answered the one with the swept back hair. "But he's a clone created by the owner of the company whose business card he gave you the other day. The people I represent have been watching you for a while but he got to you first."

"Umm... Yeah, I don't really know what to say to that..." I said as I turned to the other guy. "Do you have anything to add?"

"Nope, I think he covered it pretty well..."

"Okay then, I'm guessing one of you sent me the serum," I prompted.

"That was us," came the simultaneous reply, followed by "he's lying, it was us."

At that point I couldn't help but smile a little, you've got to admit a situation like that is pretty funny. That's when I had my idea.

"Okay, okay, enough bickering. Which one of you sent the pills?"

"Us!" came short-hair's reply, quick as a flash, and no sooner than he'd said that I threw him through the doorway so hard that he dented the side of the car he'd arrived in.

I let go of the new guy and he watched the man is just thrown scramble to his feet and get into his car before driving off. He turned back around, a relatively calm demeanour on his face considering everything that had just happened.

"So I guess you're not new to this stuff, huh?" I asked him.

"Look, without being rude, you don't come close to the weirdest I've seen. I can tell you more if you're interested?"

He had me hook, line and sinker. Coming from the background I had, with all of my parents old Guinness buddies popping by, I loved anything weird. This guy had done his research.

We spent the next hour or so swapping stories, but none of mine compared to a guy who was part tree or a ghost from the 1800s. After he's finished, he made his move.

"So, how do you fancy joining the team. I've seen what you can do, you could be a real asset."

"Like I told the other guy, I don't wanna be used for war. That's not right."

"Who said anything about war? I was talking about these.

He flicked through the pages of a notebook that sat on the coffee table in our lounge. On every page was a scribble or doodle or sketch. They were my fashion designs.

"You know too much to not want to be involved. I've been doing this long enough to recognise that look in your eye. You don't necessarily have to take a hands-on approach, just help us with designs for costumes and we'll teach you how to use your powers, and supply you with as much of that serum as you need."

"Wow, okay," I stumbled over my words as I spoke because I never expected to get that kind of offer. "I'd love to, I really would, that sounds amazing."

"Well, how about I give you a week to talk it through with your parents and then I'll be back to pick you up. Unless you change your mind, in which case you should call me on this."

He handed me a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it in blue biro. For some reason I trusted this a whole lot more than the first guys flashy business card. It was more down to earth - he wasn't hiding behind some vast, faceless corporation like the other guy.

I never had to call that number in the end though. My parents were glad that I would be following my dreams, even if they never expected my big breakthrough to be in designing costumes for superheroes. The only two conditions were that I wrote or called or whatever I could just to let them know how I was doing, and that I cleared up the mess from the fight.

A week later I was riding shotgun with a guy whose ass I almost kicked, swapping more stories like a couple of old friends who hadn't seen each other in years. I have to say, Mr Helstrom is a pretty great guy, which made the journey to The Academy a hell of a lot better. I don't get sea-sick like Jonathan, it was just really dull.

Right then, that's about the whole story. Nowadays I spend my time designing and making costumes, trying to avoid the skin-tight lycra stuff and going down a more practical and protective route. There's a lot of training too, and I'm not saying that I don't occasionally bust a few heads out in the field, which is s lot nicer now the serum's drinkable and doesn't need to be injected.

Okay, best get back to the costumes now. I can see Victor waiting outside my room holding what seems to be a road sign. This is gonna be a long day...