Stage 2: Denial

The end of March was a pretty dead time for Pro Football. The Super Bowl was normally the first weekend in February, and training camp doesn’t start until the end of July. So there’s about 6 months there where football players have “off”.

Not to say that nothing happens during those 6 months. There’s free agency, the draft, and owners meetings. For the players, there’s minicamps and OTAs. Most of the player activities are “voluntary”, but everyone shows up, at least almost everyone. It’s only about 15 days worth of training, and it’s usually necessary to keep in shape during the off-season.

Of course, that’s the minimum necessary to stay competitive. The players are all good in the NFL. In little league, high school, and even college, a lot of guys could get buy without a lot of work if they were really talented, but in the NFL, everyone is really talented. What separates the good from the great is the amount of extra work you’re willing to put in above and beyond.

Most of the great players are great because of that extra work. As Derek Hammers entered the team’s training facility, he saw the team’s All Pro lineman outside working on his footwork. The team’s starting quarterback was working on routes with the #1 wide receiver. Inside, a couple perennial Pro Bowlers were in the film room looking at tape of some of next year’s opponents. Not a whole lot of guys were there at all, but the 5 or 6 guys that were there were the 5 or 6 guys who were the best on the team.

Derek certainly considered himself in that category. His speed and instinct, coupled with his new found strength had turned him into one of the most feared linebackers in the NFL. The only way he was going to stay that way was to put extra time into the area that didn’t come naturally to him, the strength. A lot of guys mailed it in after getting their big payday, not Derek. Money wasn’t what drove him, at least not totally. He had a dream of his bust making it to Canton, and you didn’t make the Hall of Fame by being “pretty good”.

The weight room was empty. The team did have organized workout sessions, but Derek liked to come in on his own to keep his edge. Today was arms day. He took a few minutes to properly stretch before getting to work.

He started with some standard bicep curls. He loaded a barbell with 100lbs and started performing some reps. 100lbs wasn’t all that heavy for Derek, it was just a warm-up. Instead, he concentrated on his form, doing slow, controlled lifts, making sure he flexed his 22” guns as hard as he could at the top of each lift. It was important to concentrate on form when you were using light weights, that way when you got to the heavy ones, muscle memory kicked in.

After his warm up, he brought the weight up to 140lbs. A little more difficult, but still well less than he could handle. By the end of this set, he could really feel his arms start to burn. Derek loved a good workout.

Then it was time for his heavy set. He loaded the bar with 180lbs and gave his arms a little stretch. 180lbs. He couldn’t even think about the number without remembering the odd events from three day’s past. The image of his 5’6”, 137lb girlfriend lifting two such bars so easily was probably burned into his mind forever. He grabbed the heavy barbell and curled it up to his chest with a grunt. Damn it was heavy, even for a 6’5”, 265lb professional athlete. For a woman Brandy’s size, it would have been impossible to lift. Derek had been numb with shock for most of that day at the impossibility of what he saw.

The he realized that is was impossible. This wasn’t a comic book. There was no alien planet, or island full of amazons. There were no genetically altered spiders, or magical radiation rays, or whatever the hell else gave normal people superhuman strength, in such fantasy stories. This was the real world; there was no such thing as superhuman strength.

Derek had once read that if you eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. Brandy Dawson was not Wonder Woman, or Supergirl, or the Bionic Woman, or any such thing. There was no way she was strong enough to do what he had seen her do, no one was. So the weights must have been fake. Sure he had lifted them himself, and sure they seemed real enough, but it was simply impossible for her to do what she did with real weights. The only possible explanation was that she had used some kind of trick weights, or had somehow switched them, or something. Derek had no idea how, but he’d seen David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear once, and he knew that was impossible as well. Just because he didn’t know how she did it, doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.

The sudden realization was a huge relief. For a moment he had thought he was going insane, but he wasn’t. Brandy had tricked him, plain and simple. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was why? It didn’t make any sense; at least it didn’t to Derek. But then who knew how the mind of a woman worked? For the past three days he’d been trying to figure out why she was playing a prank on him. He had been avoiding her those three days. He kept telling himself he didn’t want to confront her until he knew her game, but that wasn’t totally it.

Derek had said some pretty horrible things, had called Brandy some pretty horrible names. He had never apologized to her. He had totally forgotten that he was about to apologize before the craziness had started. Now he knew he was in trouble. She would be mad at him, and he wasn’t sure how to face it. He supposed he should just suck it up and be a man. Despite her strange prank, he still did love her, and still wanted to marry her. His ring was going to be ready in two weeks. Before that day got here he had to repair his relationship.

Derek finished his 10th rep with the 180lb barbell. Beads of sweat had formed on his face and his whole body was trembling with effort. He slowly set the barbell down on the ground and shook out his arms, trying to get his circulation back. Then he did a couple of poses in the mirror. Derek wasn’t a bodybuilder. His arms weren’t perfectly shaped, or well defined like a bodybuilder’s would be. Derek wasn’t training for shape; he was training for pure power. Still he was pretty proud of the way his body looked, especially the 22” guns. He might not have been a bodybuilder, but he was damned close.

Derek wasn’t the only one admiring his physique. “Oooo, nice guns, stud.”

Derek turned his head at the voice. It was Brandy; he hadn’t even heard her come in. “Hey.” Derek had been dreading this moment, but in a way, he was glad it was here. Now he could just get it over with. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. It’s been awhile.” She was wearing a pair of dark blue, skintight jeans and a white, sleeveless tee shirt with pandas on it. The shirt was cut high, exposing her flat stomach. You could see the faint outline of a 6 pack on her stomach, even as she relaxed. The shirt was not low cut, unusual for Brandy’s clothes, but it was so tight, it showed off her amazing rack nonetheless.

Derek took a deep breath to give him time to collect his thoughts. “I know; it has been awhile. Look, I’m sorry I haven’t called you, and I’m not going to give you some lame ass excuse like I was too busy. Truth is, I had a bit of a hard time dealing with what happened the other day.”

Strangely enough, Brandy didn’t look angry. That was odd; women usually took every chance they got to get pissed off at a guy. Brandy’s face wasn’t filled with anger though; it was filled with compassion. “I know sweetie. That’s why I’ve been giving you your space. But I think it’s important that we talk about it. It’s the only way we can resolve whatever issues we have.”

“We don’t have any issues. Look Bran, I’m sorry. I was a jerk, and I was mean, and I said a whole lot of things that were really ignorant and I didn’t mean.”

She looked a bit surprised at the apology. Clearly this wasn’t the conversation she prepared for. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Really?”

She looked confused. “Sweetie, I was lying to you. It may not have been the lie you thought it was, but it was a lie nonetheless. You had every right to be mad at me. Really, I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. I know that trust is the backbone of any good relationship, and I’d like to think we have a good relationship. I’d hate to think that I did something to ruin that.”

There it was, she practically admitted that she tricked him into thinking she was stronger than he was. He wasn’t sure he would consider it a lie, though that was probably semantics. Derek reached out and took Brandy in his arms. He gave her a big, firm hug. “You didn’t ruin anything. Brandy, I love you, and it’s going to take a little more than a ‘lie’ to stop that. Now let’s just put this all behind us and move on with our lives.”

She smiled up at him; he felt like he was in heaven. “Fine, we’ll put it behind us.”

Derek smiled. Whew, that was a lot easier than he would have ever thought it would be. “There, now everything is back to normal. There is one thing I’m just dying to know though.”

She looked at him expectantly, like she knew the question was coming.

“How did you do that thing with the dumbbells?”

Not the question she was expecting. She arched her eyebrow in confusion. “I’m sorry, what?”

“The dumbbells, you know, was it some kind of magnet, or did you pull the ole switch a roo on me?” If the trick was easy enough, maybe it was something he could do to the guys at the on the team, his own little practical joke.

Brandy’s eyes lit up, like something finally made sense to her. “Awe, now I get it.”

Now it was Derek’s turn to be confused. “Get what?”

“Fake weights! You don’t think it was real! You’re in denial.” She sounded like she was Sherlock Holmes, cracking a big case.

“Denial, what the hell are you talking about?”

Brandy was beaming now; she looked positively excited. “It’s a coping mechanism. The brain is a very complex organ. Throughout your life you develop a sense of the ordinary, a set of established parameters that you accept as reality. The older you get, the more stringent those parameters become. When you encounter something that exists outside of those parameters, your brain will try to find a way to fit that into the reality you have grown to accept.”

What? Derek was having a hard time following anything she was saying. It just sounded like a whole bunch of shrink mumbo jumbo. Wait a minute, that’s it! “Ahhhh, now I see what’s going on here, Mrs. Fourth Year Psych Student!”

It seemed we were taking turns being confused; it was Brandy’s turn.

“This is some kind of experiment, right. I couldn’t figure out why you’d pretend to be stronger than me, but now I see. This is some kind of senior thesis, some paper you’re doing on the psychological effects of established parameters, or whatever you were talking about.”

The patient look was back. A mother trying to explain something complicated to her child. “I think we both need to get on the same page here Derek. What happened the other day wasn’t a trick. Those were real weights. I lifted them using my real strength. When I said I lied to you, I meant that I had been hiding my real strength from you.”

Confusion was back to Derek. “What?”

“Sweetie, I am strong, really strong, hell, I’m super strong. I’m the strongest person you’re ever likely to meet by a whole lot.”

“Awe, come on now Bran. I figured out your game. We both know it’s impossible for someone to be as strong as you appeared to be, so why are you keeping up the act. If you want to do your study, that’s fine, I’d be happy to help.”

She sighed. “Derek, it’s not impossible. Unlikely, sure; improbable, definitely; but impossible, no. I know how hard this is for you to comprehend; it would be hard for anyone. It’s like you opened your door and saw a Martian standing there. But I assure you this is quite real, and it’s important for you to accept that. Now I’m not saying it’s going to be easy; in fact, it will probably get harder before it gets easier, but it has to be done.”

Derek was confused, he couldn’t see what she possibly hoped to gain now that he’d figured her out. “Brandy, stop being silly. You tried to trick me, succeeded marvelously, but now it’s over. Like you said, why can’t we just move on?”

Brandy planted her fist on her hips and adopted that stubborn pose women have when they’re determined to get their way. “You’ll know when it’s time to move on, Derek. Now, neither of us is leaving here until you believe me. We’re in a gym, so just tell me what you want me to do to prove to you that I’m super strong.”

Derek was starting to get a little annoyed. This wasn’t cute anymore. Time to shut her up. “OK, Wonder Woman, let’s do it then.” He walked over to the dumbbell rack and grabbed the 140lb dumbbell. It was the heaviest they had in their gym, and it took Derek two hands to lift it. He carried it over to Brandy and set in down at her feet. “There, lets see you lift that.”

“How would you like me to lift it?”

Did it matter? It was impossible. “I don’t care, do a bicep curl.”

Brandy shrugged. “OK, how many reps?”

“100.” If they were trying to be ridiculous, might as well be really ridiculous.

Brandy just nodded as it that was all ok with her. She bent down to grab the dumbbell. She wasn’t even doing that correctly. You’re supposed to squat down when you’re lifting something heavy so you can lift with your legs. She had bent down at the waist; all the pressure would be on her back. She could really hurt herself. Derek was about to say something, when she stood up.

The numbness of shock came flooding back as he watched his 137lb girlfriend lift the 140lb dumbbell off the ground with the utmost ease. Without fanfare, she began curling the huge weight up to her chest and then lowering it back down again. This couldn’t be happening! It was impossible! But Brandy made it look ridiculously easy. Nothing moved but her one forearm. There was no rocking, no swinging, just a smooth, effortless curling motion. Up then down, up then down. Derek watched for a while, hypnotized by the movement. Then he shook his head. This wasn’t possible! It had to be some kind of trick.

He walked up to her and grabbed the arm she was curling with. There had to be some kind of brace, or mechanism, or something that was helping her do this, but he felt nothing, just the silky smoothness of her skin. Hell, her arm wasn’t even flexing!

“That’s cause this is so easy for me, it’s no strain on my arm what so ever.” It was eerie how she answered his thought like that. It was like she could read his mind. “Flex your arm for me Derek.” The whole time she continued her curls, her voice showed no sign of any kind of strain at all.

Derek did as he was bid. He flexed his gigantic, 22” biceps. He’d always been proud of their size, proud of their strength, until now.

“Good, now feel your bicep, give it a good squeeze. Feel how hard your muscle is.”

Derek did as she asked again. His muscle was solid; it was very solid. He had to squeeze as hard as he could to make any kind of dent at all.

Brandy nodded up and down with approval. Her arm kept moving up and down like it had a mind of it’s own. “Good, now come over here and feel my muscle.” Brandy lifted her free arm, and flexed it for Derek. Her 13” bicep looked pretty big on her petit frame, but it was simply dwarfed by Derek’s. There was no way she could possibly be stronger than him. But then how was she curling that dumbbell so easily?

Derek reached over and grabbed Brandy’s arm with his hand. It was perfectly shaped and defined, like she’d been working at it for years instead of months. He gave it a light squeeze. Damn the thing was solid, just as solid as his. He bore down, giving it a hard squeeze, nothing happened. He poured all of his might into squeezing her arm, nothing. He couldn’t dent the damn thing as much as a millimeter. It was like she was made of steel! How the hell could she possibly be this hard?

“You see, your arm is much bigger than mine, but mine is much, much harder.” There was no strain in her voice from her continued curls, and no pain from his assault on her arm. To hear her, you’d think they were lounging on chairs, having a lazy conversation. “So while you have more quantity when it comes to the muscle department, I have a lot more quality, which apparently is what’s more important, because it allows me to do this.” She turned her attention back to her arm, which had now been curling that huge dumbbell for several minutes. She seemed just as fresh now as when she started. “And 100.” She set the dumbbell lightly down on the ground, again bending from the hips. She stood back up, putting her hands back on her hips, adopting the Wonder Woman pose. “What’s next?”

Derek’s brain was trying to understand what he just saw; but it was failing miserably. There was no way she did that! It was simply impossible! There had to be a reason, there just had to. Maybe she knew some trick for dumbbells that he didn’t know. Maybe it was time to use some real weight. Not that 140lbs was anything to sneeze at, but there were a lot of guys who could lift a lot more than that, not the way Brandy just did, but they could lift it nonetheless. That was it, it was a trick with the dumbbells, time for some serious weight, time to watch her fail.

He led Brandy over to one of the squatting stations and started to load up a barbell. Plate after plate went on the bar until he had 6 45lb plates and a 25lb plate on each side, 635lbs. It was right near his max. He knew he was foolish for trying to lift such a heavy weight without anyone around to spot him, but he was bound and determined to reveal Brandy’s fraud.

“All right, stand back.” Derek positioned himself under the bar. He set his grip and then took a couple of deep breaths, psyching himself up. With a mighty heave he pushed up on the bar. The barbell rose up from the rack, it’s full weight now squarely on his shoulders. Damn it was heavy. He took a few steps forward, out away from the rack. He took another couple deep breaths and then lowered himself down to a squat position. He wasn’t sure he was using proper form; he really didn’t care. When you were lifting this much weight, form went right out the window.

The pressure on his joints was intense, but pushed the pain to the back of his mind, he’d deal with that later. Another couple of breaths and he tried to stand back up. His face reddened and every muscle in his body bulged with immense effort, but slowly and surely, he was able to rise higher and higher, until he was once again in a standing position.

One rep was all he could do with this much weight, so Derek scooted back to the rack, sweat pouring down from his face, totally spent from his exertion. He dropped the weight back down on the rack, then pulled himself out from under the weight, shaking his legs, trying to keep them loose so they wouldn’t knot up. “So, what do you think of that?”

Brandy was nodding her head up and down; she looked genuinely impressed. “Not bad sweetie, not bad at all. You should be really proud of yourself. I’m sure most guys out there would be happy if they could lift half as much.”

Derek felt his chest puff out a little bit. Things were back to normal; he had shown her the power of the stronger sex.

Brandy looked away and pointed to a dry erase board against one of the walls of the room. “What’s that, honey?”

“That’s the gym’s lifting records.” Elsewhere, it might be significant how much you weighed when showing records, but at the San Diego Chargers training facility, all they showed was the biggest lifts from the strongest guys. The record listed for the squat was 920lbs, a good deal more than Derek just lifted, but he was hardly embarrassed. A guy who outweighed Derek by about 70lbs lifted it. Most of the records on the wall were his.

Brandy smiled as though she expected that answer. Then she skipped over to the squat bar and started to remove plates. Derek audibly breathed a sigh of relief. Part of him had been afraid that she really was as strong as she said, but seeing her make the bar lighter before she lifted made him feel automatically better about the whole thing.

But she kept removing plates; in fact, she removed all the plates until the bar was empty. Derek gulped; he was getting a bad feeling about this. His worries were confirmed when Brandy walked over to the stack of 100lb discs. They weren’t used very often; the 45lb discs were usually enough. Brandy bent down and grabbed a 100lb disc in each hand and brought them back over to the squat bar. She had no problem putting the discs on the bar, even using just one hand to do it. Derek was getting a very, very bad feeling about this. She went to grab two more discs, then two more, and then two more again. She kept loaded more and more discs until finally the bar was full, full of 100lb discs! Derek counted up all the discs; there were 9 of them. 9 on each side of the bar! That was, that was 1800lbs! Plus the weight of the bar, it was 1845lbs! Almost a full ton! No! It wasn’t possible; it couldn’t be possible!

“There, honey, that doubles your gym’s record. Now, do you think little old me can handle that big bad weight?” She seemed supremely confident.

Derek shook his head back and forth furiously. “No, no way. There’s no way anyone could ever lift that. It’s not possible!”

Brandy positioned herself under the bar and set herself. “Derek, I think it’s about time we changed the limits of what’s possible.” And with that she stood. None of the preamble Derek had used to lift a weight 1/3 as heavy. She simply stood, and the 1845lbs was lifted with her. The ends of the bar bowed under the enormous strain, but Brandy seemed to have no problem handling the weight. She strolled out from the rack like she had nothing on her shoulders heavier than a scarf, and walked all the way until she was right in front of Derek.

She lowered herself to the ground, slowly, gently and smoothly; down to a perfect squat position. She held the pose for several seconds, before rising back to a standing position, just as effortlessly. Then she repeated the lift again, and again, and again!

Derek’s jaw nearly came unhinged in disbelief. His mind was struggling to find some kind of toehold on reality, but there wasn’t anything there, just his girlfriend and her impossible strength. It couldn’t be real, but there she was, squatting 1845lbs, and making it look easy.

Brandy didn’t even seem to be paying attention to what she was doing. Her face wasn’t contorted in concentration, as it should have been. Instead, she stared at Derek, almost as though she was examining him. Her features were inquisitive, patient. “At first I was just going to keep my strength from you. I didn’t think there was any reason to put you through what you’re going through right now. But now that the cat’s out of the bag, I think it’s important that you accept what I am, and what I can do.”

Brandy stopped squatting, but she wasn’t done yet. She adjusted her grip on the bar, and then, without any fanfare, lifted the colossal weight up over her head. There was still not even the barest hint of effort. “It’s not a trick honey. These are the weights you and your team use every day. This is your gym, your weights. All of it is real, just like me.” She started walking around the gym, holding the near ton overhead with ease. Every now and then she’d stop and do a couple shoulder presses with the weight, it was so easy to her.

Derek was running out of excuses. Could it be possible? Could she actually be this strong? She walked back over to him and held the big barbell out in front of her. The bar bowed under the tremendous weight it held, but Brandy was handling it as easy as if it was a coat hanger.

“Would magnets explain how I could do this?” Suddenly the bar started to bend, and not further toward the ground with gravity helping, it was bending up. The plates on either side of the bar rose further and further from the ground as the bar was bent into a U shape from the impossible strength of Brandy’s super strong arms.

Derek was dumbfounded. There was no explanation; there was no trick. The only thing that made any sense at all was that Brandy really did have super strength. The realization hit Derek like a ton of bricks, he didn’t know what to do, what to say.

Unfortunately, Brandy took his realization to be continued disbelief. She took another step closer to him, and swung the U shaped bar over his head so that the weight discs were behind him. Then she continued to bend. Derek felt the barbell tighten around his arms until they were trapped. She had wrapped him up using a solid steel bar!

She moved her hands back around to the front of the bar, which was tight around his chest. “And just incase you still don’t believe the weight is real.” Slowly, Derek felt the weight around his chest increase more and more. His knees buckled and he was forced down to the ground until he heard the weight THUD to the ground behind him. Brandy let go and took a step back, her hands crossed under her breasts. “All right, big boy, try to get up.”

Of course it was useless. Under the best conditions, it was 3 times more than Derek could squat, and there was no way he’d be able to so much as budge the weight from the ground using all his strength. But with the barbell tied around him like it was, he had absolutely no leverage, which made the lift even harder. For the sake of trying, he struggled against the weight, but it was like being strapped to a car; he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Do you believe me now?” Brandy arched an eyebrow at him, again her expression was more inquisitive than it was challenging.

“I do, I mean I have to don’t I? What other explanation is there? But how did you get so strong? How is it possible?”

Brandy shrugged. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m from another planet of super strong amazon women. I was sent here by my people to protect mankind from it’s own increasing violence.”

Derek’s eyes bugged out in his skull. “Really?!”

“No, not really.” Brandy sighed. “Derek, I’m human, just the same as you or anyone else.”

“Brandy, you’re nowhere near the same as anyone else.”

She walked over and knelt beside him. Her fingers tracing across the metal bar still bent around Derek’s chest. “Albert Einstein was hundreds of times smarter than anyone else in history, but nobody thought he was from an alien world. Ludwig van Beethoven was deaf for a good part of his life and was still able to write amazing pieces of music without hearing a note, yet he didn’t come from some magical isle filled with super human composers.”

Brandy placed her thumb and index finger on either side of the bar. No way! She couldn’t possibly! But sure enough, Derek felt the weight get lighter and lighter around him, and soon he himself was lifted up off his feet. Derek’s jaw dropped at this newest display of strength. Brandy was holding both Derek and the 1845lb barbell off the ground with just two fingers! She still wasn’t straining! She was unbelievable!

“It would take hundreds of men to equal the strength that I have right now, and I have no idea if I’m still getting stronger, or how strong I can eventually become. But what I do know is that I’m 100% human. I’m just another in a long line of people throughout history that has been given a gift above and beyond what most people are given. For me, that gift just happens to be strength.” The whole speech was given without any hint of strain in her voice. Over a ton, and it still seemed weightless to her.

Derek looked at her arm, the beautiful, perfectly feminine arm that was so effortlessly supporting such an enormous weight. She followed his gaze and actually giggled. “You know babe, I really do love being so strong. It’s such a rush being able to do things no one else in the world can.”

Derek heard the screeching of metal. His gaze jumped back to her fingers, which were now squeezing into the bar. The solid steel stood no chance against the power of her fingers. Once she had squeezed it practically thin, she once more grabbed the bar with both hands and started to pull. Slowly, incredibly, the metal bar started to pull apart like it was taffy. Derek felt a sense of relief as the metal was pulled away from his arms and chest. Soon the bar split in two and Derek dropped down to the ground. He looked up at Brandy, who was holding one half of the mangled bar with each hand.

“Oops, it looks like I broke your weight. Here, let me fix it.” Derek watched in amazement and Brandy brought the two halves together and started squeezing the metal. Solid steel was molded between her hands like it was clay. Soon, her powerful hands had fused the metal bar back into one mangled mass, much shorter than it was before; far too short to be used with two hands. That hardly mattered to Brandy. She held the bar casually in one hand. “There. Now you finally have a dumbbell that I can get some use out of.” She effortlessly curled the monstrosity with the greatest of ease. Derek could only watch in wonder as she lifted such a ponderous weight. Derek wouldn’t be able to handle a tenth of the weight as easily with both hands.

Brandy blasted through 30 curls looking almost bored. Finally she sighed and put the gargantuan dumbbell down. “Nope, even that’s as light as a feather to me. Gonna have to find something a lot heavier to give me any kind of descent workout.”

Brandy walked back over to Derek and helped him up off the ground. She led him over to a nearby bench and let him sit on it. “I think we took a big step today Derek, but there are going to be a lot more steps we have to take before this turns into something you’re able to easily accept. Like I said before, it’s probably going to get harder before it gets easier.” Brandy sat down on Derek’s lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “But I want you to know something. I love you with all of my heart, and I have a tremendous amount of patience. I’ll give you as long as you need to deal with this, but when it’s all over, I promise you, our relationship is going to be far stronger than it ever was, and we’ll feel a richer love for each other than you have ever felt.”

Brandy hugged him, and he hugged her back. Derek didn’t hear much past “going to get harder”. How the hell was this going to get harder? Derek wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.