I didn’t see the right hook he threw coming and it caught me off guard. The punch connected right on my temple, knocking me to the ground and forcing a splitting headache into me. As I looked up from the hard, cold and damp floor I saw his foot coming down on my face. What had I gotten myself into?

——-

My name is Tommy, I’m your stereotypical nerd, geek, whatever you want to call me, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be the first to call me it. I’m 14, overweight; quite severely in fact, I’ve had terrible acne since I age 10 and have worn glasses for as long as I can remember. The truth is though, I’m surprisingly agile considering my weight, I’m not a fast runner but I can move faster than anyone I know when I need to.

I have my own little group of friends who, like me, are all nerds. There’s Gerald who is one of my closest friends even though I’ve only known him for 3 years. He’s prone to random outburst of anything that’s on his mind at the time and through the few years I’ve known him his spontaneous ways have rubbed off on me. When we first met I was quiet, shy and would never have talked to someone I didn’t know but now, although still socially awkward around strangers, I’m open, loud and act the clown around my classmates. Maybe that’s just my way of trying to feel normal, something I haven’t felt for years.

Then there’s Nate who is the smallest of our group and we don’t let him forget it and also like Gerald I’ve only known him for 3 years. He is the joint most awkward member of our group around girls, his awkwardness only matched by Lenny who I have known for 12 years and would be my second best friend. Lenny is more of an Emo than anything else and while he doesn’t cut himself, he’s always depressed no matter what. I’ve never seen him smile in the entire 12 years that I’ve known him.

And last but not least there’s TJ, a star player on our schools rugby team he never hangs out with us in public but that’s because he hides his inner nerd to maintain a reputation that I have to admit he worked hard to get. He has a secret obsession with Pokémon that he hides from everyone other than me and, to the best of my knowledge his girlfriend (Yes, a major nerd has a girlfriend, quite a good looking one too, and popular).

This whole thing started one cold and rainy Tuesday while the dark clouds that promised an imminent thunderstorm hung over head. Me, Gerald, Nate and Lenny were in one of our usual debates regarding time travel and Nate not being that well experienced on the subject was keeping as quiet as possible so as not to sound stupid in front of us.

“So if I were to travel back in time and, for example, kill Nate, What would happen?” asked Gerald as he contemplated what he could and could not do if he had a time machine.

“You would cause a paradox because if you come back and kill Nate then in the future, Nate is already dead, therefore you would have no need to travel back in time so you wouldn’t so Nate would then be alive, giving you a reason to travel back and kill him and thus begins the cycle all over again.” Replied Lenny, he liked to believe in the paradox theory whereas I preferred multi-verse theory.

“Or you would travel back in time to kill Nate, which in itself would create a parallel universe where you didn’t go back, then once you did kill him there would be a universe with an alive Nate, and another one with a dead Nate” I replied, trying my best to explain multi-verse to Gerald.

“And then there’s the universe where you’re not all dorks.” We hadn’t even noticed Jeremy and his group of dumbasses walk up behind us. “Although I think that’s impossible.” His last remark awarded him with howls of laughter from his fellow imbeciles.

Me and my group were used to Jeremy by now, he was a pitiful excuse for a human being who sought out respect by picking on those who he thought were inferior, and so we used our usual tactic on him. We ran. We had found out long ago that any attempt at communicating with him resulted in either swirlys or just a beating. We ran to the one place we knew he would never step foot, the library, our safe haven and our inner sanctum.

The librarian, Mrs. Bedford, a middle aged woman who often took pity on us, went and got us a few bottles of water, as was the routine by this point. Something that wasn’t routine though, was I spotted TJ in the corner doing what actually looked like studying. Seeing as the library was pretty empty anyway I went over to him.

“What you studying?” I asked, actually puzzled to see him studying, he’s smart in the subjects he needs to be, and as for the others, he usually just gets one of the smarter people in his class to do the work for him.

“Algebra” he replied with an exhausted sigh, not even looking up from the textbook. I knew something else was up because algebra was one of his better subjects.

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

“Rebecca dumped me, she said that I was starting to become too much of a geek because my grades were increasing. I mean, I loved her and all but there’s sometimes where she’s just too Queen Bee” He was right, Rebecca was the most popular girl in our school and I don’t know how TJ even got her to go out with him in the first place, but that wasn’t something I was going to bring up now. “What brings you here Tommy, I’ve never seen you in here before?” He responded, trying to take his mind of his heart break.

“Oh, I come here a lot, it’s just I don’t think we’ve ever really been here at the same time before” I replied, trying to help take his mind of things as well. By this time Mrs. Bedford had come back and had been listening to me and TJ’s conversation.

“Tommy and his friends usually come here after they’ve ran from that bully Jeremy.” She interjected from over my shoulder, making me jump as I hadn’t noticed her standing there.

“Jeremy? He’s a weakling, all you gotta do is stand up to him and fight him, and everyone thinks he’s tough because he beats up people smaller than him.” Replied TJ in a suggestive tone, he was implying that I go fight Jeremy, but I knew it was no use as I was out numbered.

“If your thinking you’ll be outnumbered Tommy don’t worry, we got your back” said Gerald as he walked over, standing beside me now he continued, “as long as we stick together we can win, strength in numbers and all that”

Taking Gerald’s word to mind I spoke up “Yeah, he’s been oppressing us like he was a dictator for too long, it’s about time we stood up to him.” Now looking back at TJ he has an agitated expression on his face and I immediately knew what it was about. “TJ, you don’t have to fight if you want to save face, we all know how hard you worked for your reputation”

“Thanks Tommy, I’ll be there in the sidelines cheering you on”

And so I and my band of friends took off down the hallways, TJ in tow along with Mrs. Bedford who didn’t have a chance to express her disapproval. Now speeding along I decided it would be best to not give Jeremy a chance to react, if we had the element of surprise we might actually stand a chance. Jeremy would be in the foyer flirting with any girl that passed along with his group.

As we entered the foyer I spotted Jeremy and homed in on my target. He appeared to be chatting up a blonde girl from my class, one who I had had a crush on since I first heard her laugh and saw her smile. My group had managed to keep up our speed and as I was the spear head in the formation we had unknowingly spread into, I was the one who tackled Jeremy and before we had even hit the ground I heard the grunts from the rest of his cohorts as each of my friends tackled them to the ground also. We had the upper hand.

This being a school fight, the rest of the surrounding pupils had naturally formed a ring around us to watch the rest of the entertainment. At the side of that ring I saw TJ standing cheering along with everyone else who had been in the library. Apparently we were fighting for a just cause.

I turned my attention back to the matter at hand and started punching Jeremy in the face and chest as much and as hard as I could, that’s when another of his friend stepped from the crowd and kicked me off of him and soon did the same to my comrades. That’s when Lenny and Nate decided it would be a good time to run. It was now 2 V 5 as me and Gerald were surrounded.

“KICK THEIR FUCKING HEADS IN!” I heard being yelled from the assembled onlookers which go a chorus of “yeah”. Then in a blur as me and Gerald stood back to back, spinning slowly to keep track of our combatants, their ring faltered and in crashed TJ, knocking down 2 of Jeremy’s friends in the process and actually knocking them out. Now with even playing fields I set my sights on Jeremy again and stepped forward towards him, now just 3 paces away I made a quick side step to my right then lunged at him having figured out before during our initial assault that he wasn’t strong enough to roll me off him, now my weight was an advantage.

I again straddled his abdomen and started laying into his face and chest until I punched and was rewarded with the sound of a loud crack, like someone had broken a large stick. I had broken one of his ribs. Knowing that he would be no competition any more I turned to see Gerald fall to the ground with a thump while TJ had his opponent in a head lock that I knew he wasn’t getting out of.

I stood up straight and with a mighty yell I charged the only free adversary, he was anticipating it and stepped to the side. That’s when I realized who it actually was. It was David who had recently won 2nd place in the national Kick boxing championship. I knew I was screwed but only a coward runs from a fight. I did my best to block any attacks he directed my way and largely succeeded until I heard a loud crack and grunt as I looked behind me and saw TJ’s arm bent in a way it was never supposed to be bent.
BAM

——–

I regained consciousness and discovered I was in the principal’s office and instantly felt the splitting headache and my sore sides. I wasn’t sure when they had gotten hit.

I looked up at Mr. Markham and saw him glaring down at me. I tried to lift myself up but was met only with pain as a grunt escaped my clenched teeth.

“Relax Tommy; you got beat up pretty bad. After I pulled those two off of you, your friends Lenny and Nate dragged you away and I told them to bring you in here. There’s a paramedic on his way here to examine you and a police officer to get a statement about what happened and I will have to give you and your friend’s detentions, even though I understand why you did it”

‘Aw shit’ I thought to myself as I instantly knew how my parents would react, well to be more specific my mum, I knew my dad would just say ‘it’s about time you stood up to those bullies son’ to which he’d get a punch from my mother who would be telling me how foolish I was blah blah blah.

———-

Authors note: This is my first attempt at writing non-erotic literature and I will aim to continue this series if I get positive feedback. This story is loosely based on real events which occurred to me.

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