It All Adds Up (Short Story/Male Muscle Drain) (Patreon)

It All Adds Up: A Man Divided Is Always Less Than His Hubris

Written by: SteeleBlazer

Mrs. Harkins had been teaching long enough to know that arrogance came in many shapes and sizes, and if she had a mathematical formula to prove it, she knew the mathematical mean of such arrogant men would show that the greater the size and strength of the person, the greater their arrogance. And proof of her supposition was sitting smugly in his chair at the far end of her classroom, paying no attention whatsoever to her lesson.

Today, it wore an extra-extra-XL football jersey that was still a size or two too small for his massive, mammoth muscular physique, with an ego even larger than that, and a grin just as wide as his shoulders and three sizes too smug for his face. His name was Chad Benton, captain of the football team — “the big man at school,” as he liked to remind everyone, especially when it came time to turn in homework… and today was no exception, as he once again “forgot” his homework and used his status as “big man on campus” to threaten and get yet another never-ending exemption from Mrs. Harkins.

And while she didn’t have a formula to show the bell curve of hubris and arrogance in direct correlation to size, strength, and muscle mass, she did have a special formula that would finally teach Chad his lesson… which, of course, would be the only academic lesson anyone would have ever managed to teach Chad.

“Math?” he’d once told Mrs. Harkins with a laugh. “The only equation you need to know is me plus the team equals wins.”

That much was true. Just as it was true that it was the only equation Chad had ever managed to solve.

Fed up but inspired, Mrs. Harkins decided to teach him a different kind of lesson — and since she was a teacher, she did it in her own way: with numbers, logic, and she hoped that this simple equation would get his undivided attention, and through the magic of learning, she’d finally subtract his bad attitude and his ego, and maybe he won’t be so divisive… like the soft but shrill sound of chalk writing on the blackboard.

Yeah, right, she thought to herself as she finished writing out the equation on the board. The magic of learning was lost on dumbbells like Chad, whose only arithmetic they ever used was adding more plates to their barbells and swapping out the dumbbells they used for heavier ones… Still, today’s lesson was going to be different. He was finally going to learn that knowledge is power, and it all comes down to the magic of learning… And also a good tiny bit of actual magic, because it seems like, through a lot of past student complaints and insults, Mrs. Harkins really is a witch…

With a playful tap, she dotted the last question mark and turned to face the class, asking if there were any volunteers who wanted to solve the equation. Mina Torres’ hand went up immediately. She was a quiet, nerdy little girl who always sat in the front row and never missed an answer… However, this problem wasn’t for her — or at least, not yet. No, this problem was for her problem student, Chad, who wasn’t even trying to pay attention. Since he was unwilling to volunteer, Mrs. Harkins decided to volunteer him herself.

Of course, Chad protested and gave her his usual excuse, which he thought added up to an answer. But this is math class, and she told him no excuses — get up to the board and solve the equation, and if you fail it, you won’t just fail my class, but you’ll lose your spot on the team.

To which Chad scoffed, but also narrowed his eyes, and mumbled under his breath that Mrs. Harkins was a real witch… Again, how little did he know — he was right about that. And unlucky for him, that would be the only thing he would get right today.

For as he puffed out his chest and strutted up to the chalkboard, he was met with a problem he could not bluff or intimidate or bully. On the board, written out in white chalk, neat and clean, was an equation that would expose his weakness for all the class — and even the entire school — to see:

♂(XY) > ♀(XX) = false

♂(mass) ÷ 2 + ♀(mass) = ?

Chad stood at the board staring at it blankly, absent-mindedly, as if the symbols were written in the hieroglyphics of some ancient, forgotten language — and not the universal language of mathematics in one simple, small algebraic formula. And despite his prodigious muscular mass, his brainpower was sadly not just less than his physical strength, but exponentially weaker — so much so that he wouldn’t even have known the meaning of the word exponentially if someone had bothered to define it for him… which Mrs. Harkins actually had, many times over the course of the semester.

“Well, go ahead,” said Mrs. Harkins. “Solve it.”

Chad, being a football star and not a star pupil, felt himself floundering, and he truly flailed and fumbled about — lifting the chalk, lowering it again, clearing his throat like he might bluff his way through the symbols the same way he bullied his way through life. He didn’t even know where to start.

He couldn’t help but feel simple and small, and so he puffed out his chest and started to do what he always did when he faced a problem he couldn’t solve — he tried to solve it with his strength and power, and he bullied Mrs. Harkins… Only today, he found his words no longer held the same power they once had. He was about to find out that their value had just changed, and that the answer to solving that problem lay in the equation before him. But he couldn’t know that, because math — like any and every other academic subject — wasn’t his strong suit… He just droned and whined about what the big deal was over such a simple and stupid small little, tiny mathematical problem.

And that he was the real big deal, the big man on campus, and he didn’t need to solve it… And Mrs. Harkins just doubled down and told him that he was about to learn a valuable lesson — that this tiny little problem could be life-changing — but he just scoffed at the notion as he furrowed his brow, trying to make any sense of it.

However, Mrs. Harkins assured him, while unsuccessfully suppressing a smug smile, that the math and the formula all add up!

Yet it didn’t add up to him — nor did it add up just what Mrs. Harkins was playing at — but he was about to learn that when it comes to math, never, ever doubt your mathematics instructor… because their math always adds up, just like how her plan was starting to add up.

With a deliberate and a rather loud and cheerful sigh, Mrs. Harkins turned back to the class and asked, “Is there anyone who would like to volunteer and assist Mr. Big Shot Football Star?”

Mina’s slender arm shot straight up, ready, willing, and eager to solve the problem. Mrs. Harkins called her forward, hoping she wouldn’t just solve the mathematical problem on the board — but her problem with Chad as well. Two heads were better than one, she’d once believed… but with a head as thick as Chad’s, the only thing that could be true was that the sum was greater than the parts. And that was something Mina was about to learn firsthand as she picked up a piece of dusty chalk in her petite little hand.

Chad blinked at the board as if the symbols were abstract or some alien language. Mina, meanwhile, tilted her glasses and began to write. Little did Chad know, this wasn’t just any problem — it was a formula. A living equation that carried a strange sort of balance within it, one that didn’t just calculate mass… it redistributed it.

While it all seemed like a bunch of mathematical hokum to Chad, it actually was mathematical hocus pocus, and as simple as one and one and one makes three, the spell was cast just as simply as if Chad or Mina had actually said the words hocus pocus themselves.

Mina stood at the board, chalk in hand, and began to write:

♂(XY) > ♀(XX) = false

♂(mass) ÷ 2 + ♀(mass) = ?

She spoke as she wrote, her voice calm but confident. “We begin with the assumption that the male mass — XY — is greater than the female mass — XX. That’s our starting point. Now, if we take half of the male’s total mass, divide it by two, and add it to the female’s mass, we can measure how the balance shifts.”

As Mina’s chalk moved across the board, the lines pulsed faintly — the formula came alive. Her hand never hesitated as she drew the next line:

♂(XY)/2 + ♀(XX) = ♀(XX)²

“Here,” Mina explained, “we see that the transfer of half the male’s mass to the female results in an exponential increase in her mass — the female value squared. The equation simplifies further to the inevitable conclusion…”

She drew the final result, the chalk striking firmly with each stroke, the shrill sound of it scraping across the board making Chad’s skin crawl, and as Chad looked over to Mina, something was wrong… He had always looked down on know-it-all nerds like her, and standing next to her while she solved the equation wasn’t just embarrassing but belittling. He knew she must feel all high and mighty and superior just because she could solve a stupid math problem. Big deal, he thought. I’m the big man at this school. She’s just some stupid little nerd…

Only Mina wasn’t stupid — and while she was a nerd, she was no longer little.

♀(XX) > ♂(XY) = true

At that moment, Chad felt his jersey slide lower on his shoulders. His shoes felt bigger, his sleeves baggier. His head barely reached Mina’s chin by the time she stepped back from the board, smiling in quiet triumph.

“Thus,” Mina said gently, “male mass divided by two, plus female mass, equals female mass squared. Therefore, the female becomes greater than the male.”

From behind her, Chad frowned, rubbing his temple. “Yeah, but just what the heck is all that mumbo jumbo supposed to mean?”

Mina turned, dotting the end of her final equation with her piece of chalk like it was an exclamation point, and cheerfully exclaimed, “It means your muscles were divided from you, and now you’re literally half the man you used to be, and I’ve gained all your muscular mass — and I’ve got great big jumbo-sized muscles!”

“Isn’t that correct, Mrs. Harkins?” Mina didn’t so much ask as proclaim as she flexed her big, brawny arms with a proud giggle; her shirt seams stretching the sleeves of her tight T-shirt to their limit.

“No way, that’s impossible — it can’t be right,” Chad protested weakly, as he not only didn’t have any strength to his counter-argument, but barely had a leg to stand on as they were suddenly weak and wobbly — just like his grasp of math, and the pants he was trying to figure out why they were suddenly loose and ill-fitting on him — despite Mina not just saying but writing out the answer on the chalkboard for him to see.

“Trust me,” Mina said to him as she flexed that great big bicep of hers right in front of his face, “it all adds up,” and up shot that bicep of hers, with all its newly added muscularity, as both Mina and Mrs. Harkins shared a wink and a smile almost as wide as Mina’s shoulders.

And the answer — and the truth — was plain as day to not just Mrs. Harkins, but the entire class, as they looked not at the solved equation, but at the two students.

Chad looked on in disbelief and horror. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t — because the mathematical proof was on the board, and the proof of the strength of the theorem was right in front of his eyes. It was in the way she now towered over him, and in the way his oversized jersey hung limply from his narrow shoulders, his spindly arms no longer filling the sleeves. And for the first time in his life, he realized that his intelligence had been his biggest weakness… had been — because now, being weak was his biggest weakness. And he knew he couldn’t bully or intimidate either Mrs. Harkins or Mina — especially Mina and those muscles of hers — muscles that had once been his — about not just changing the answer… let alone giving him back his size and strength.

And as Mina flexed her mighty female muscles, Mrs. Harkins knew Mina had solved both of her problems for her. And as Mina’s biceps burst through her sleeves, the entire class burst into both applause and laughter, which, despite his limited skill in math, Chad knew was divided evenly between him and Mina.

And in his shock and embarrassment, he did his own mathematical equation by adding to the laughter, as his grip on his jeans slipped and they fell down to his spindly, tiny, little ankles, revealing his anemic muscular physique — which now had a direct correlation and was equal to his mental cognition and his mathematical ability.

Which, sadly for him, meant that his brawn now equaled his brains — a formula that looked like this:

Brawn = Brains

But you could easily add on to it with just a little bit of brains and imagination, and that expanded equation would read:

Brawn = Brains < Strength = Wimp

Which, of course, he didn’t have the brains to even create the formula, let alone compute the equation. Yet what it really equated to was simple enough for even him to understand — he wasn’t just an idiot anymore… he was a wimpy weakling now, too.

Yes, strength was no longer his strong suit, but even Chad still knew the odds were poor that he’d ever be suiting up to play football again. But as it turned out, for Mina, math wasn’t her only strong suit. Now she was just as strong as she was smart — and that suited her just fine.

And she wasn’t just as strong as what he used to be, but exponentially stronger as well, which meant for her she now had a near-infinite number of positive outcomes for the remainder of her collegiate career… while Chad was about to find out that, like his muscles, all his positive outcomes had been subtracted away, leaving only one — a negative outcome.

As for Chad’s old equation — him on the team equals victory — with the sum of his strength changed and flipped to an integer with a negative correlation, it had, of course, been proven false.

With a capital F. The same F that would soon be marked on his report card.

And to think, one tiny mathematical formula had rewritten the very laws of the school.

Mrs. Harkins smiled at her star pupil and said, “Well done, Mina. I think we’ve found a proof worth sharing.”

And they did — across the entire student body.

At first, the reaction of the student body was divided. But the math wasn’t. And soon enough, the strength of the boys was divided among the girls.

Before long, every girl in school carried her own proof, flexing great big biceps built on one unbreakable theorem:

Nothing is stronger than mighty female muscles.

As for Chad, sadly without his size and strength, he found that nothing quite added up for him anymore — and for the first time in his life, he not only learned his lesson, but it would leave him forever divided, as he was finally forced to live with the remainder.