Gronk-Style

[6 word request: Gronk Crushes the NFL]

Roger Goodell was shocked when the R&D team the NFL had hired to find a solution to football during a pandemic turned in a request for $250 million. He planned a trip down to the lab--the fact that the NFL now owned a quantum physics lab just reinforcing the fact that the quarantine had gone on too long--and took a look at what it was they were working on.

Lee, the head scientist, greeted Goodell immediately as the NFL Commissioner gazed around the high-tech facility. “We’re so excited to be able to demonstrate our new breakthrough!” he said, shaking Goodell’s hand too vigorously.

Anders, Lee’s assistant, approached with a thick briefcase and set it on a table. He flipped the latches and it popped open. Anders produced two marble-sized spheres. He held them up as if this was all of the explanation that was necessary.

Goodell stared at the man’s proud presentation, wondering if it was a joke. “Um… do these marbles actually do anything?” he asked after too long of a silence.

Lee scowled at Anders, who chuckled nervously. “Oh!” he said. “I’m so sorry. We’ve been buried in lab work for months now…” He gently squeezed each of the marbles and they expanded until they were the size of baseballs.

Roger’s eyes went wide but he was still confused. “Are you guys going to be demonstrating something soon or…?”

Lee barked into a walkie talkie and two NFL players, center Tyler Catalina and wide receiver Julian Edelman, approached in their uniforms.

“Boys,” Goodell said with a nod, greeting the two professional athletes. They smiled and shook his hand.

Suddenly the two orbs in Anders’ hand popped open like clamshells. Energy blasted from the core of each, subsuming the two NFL players before reversing direction, retreating into the orbs which snapped shut, leaving nothing where the two large athletes had been standing.

Anders handing one of the orbs to Roger, who held it up to see a tiny Tyler beating his meaty fists against the walls of his new prison. He had to be only three inches tall. In the orb in Anders’ hand, Julian toppled around as the orb tilted back and forth.

Anders grabbed the orb (with its shrunken brute inside) and gently squeezed each of the spheres. Suddenly the two balls shrank back to marble sized.

“Did you just… shrink those players into ants?” Roger said, baffled by the mindblowing display.

“See,” Anders explained, giddy about showing off his toys, “the balls contain the players by a process that converts their mass to energy, and then when reduced down to this smaller size… they’re able to be digitized! How mind-blowing is that?”

Lee, seeing the commissioner’s baffled expression, gently ushered Anders aside, plucking the tiny marbles from his fingers. “So you see, Mr. Goodell, with the athletes digitized, we can accomplish a number of things… for example, transporting them is simple. They can cross the country in minutes now! Plus, an injured player can be contained almost immediately, frozen in that condition, until proper treatment can be given…”

Roger shook his head, confused. “I’m not saying this isn’t amazing, but you were tasked with solving the football quarantine crisis. How does making players tiny accomplish that?”

Lee approached a console in the wall, tapping a few blinking buttons. A small slot opened. Lee popped in the marbles and tapped a few more buttons.

“If you’ll join us in the next room,” Lee said gesturing as a door slid open.

“This better be good,” Goodell said as he frowned. Lee brought him to what looked like a foosball table, about six feet scross and four feet wide. The surface seemed to holographic, projecting an image of a football field.

“Our virtual field,” he said, tapping a few more buttons on the side of the holo-table. Suddenly Tyler Catalina and Julian Edelman appeared on its surface. “With the players digitized, we can have them play a full game on customizable conditions without any danger of coronavirus exposure to them. We can also project this game directly into fans’ homes--with VR goggles, they can feel like they’re on the field!”

Goodell reached toward the six-knch tall football players in the simulation, but his hand passed right through them. The tiny players shuddered as his massive fingers penetrated them.

“It causes a mild sensation,” Lee explained. “Somewhat… pleasurable?”

“It’s like a mini-orgasm when you interact with their holo-bodies,” Anders explained, receiving a hard elbow from Lee. Goodell seemed sufficiently impressed, especially when the two tiny players started chasing each other around the field.

“Holy shit!” he said. “We can get back to full-time football almost immediately!”

“As soon as we get that extra funding,” Lee said, tilting his head anxiously.

“Granted,” Goodell said, then stopped himself: “Wait, are the players entirely safe when they come out?” He watched big Tyler tackle the smaller Julian to the ground.

“Watch this!” Lee pressed a few buttons and a slot in the wall opened. The players disappeared from the simulation and Lee caught two marbles that popped out. “Entirely safe,” Lee said, squeezing the marbles so they enlarged, then popping them open. Light burst from the orbs and the two players appeared.

But their sizes were reversed! Julian was now towering over the others in the room at 6’5” tall while Tyler looked down at his lean, tight little body. He glanced at his reflection in a window behind him, shocked out how--there was no other word for it--PRETTY he was now!

Meanwhile, big Julian stomped around, testing the weight of his suddenly big body, and flexed his thick hands. “Jesus, look how fucking beefy I got!” He stomped toward little Tyler and hoisted the former Center off the ground with ease.

“Simple error. Their templates got reversed as they were being de-digitized. We can fix this!” Anders said as Julian bullied the reduced Tyler around the room.

“If we get funding that is,” Lee added. “We can do a whole lot if we get funding.”

Goodell nodded, considering the possibilities.

*

Americans were desperate for football, but the marketing teams found the technology too baffling for most focus groups. It was Goodell himself who came up with the idea to make the Holo-Field’s national debut a massive event. “We need the biggest names in the NFL,” he said, “and we need a bigger audience than just football. Something to really show off what this thing can do.

The field that appeared on most Americans’ televisions (and some of their VR headsets) wasn’t a football field. It was divided into four quadrants, each a different color, with a small tower in the far corner of each.

“THE NFL PRESENTS: CAPTURE THE FLAG!” flashed on the screen, and Goodell watched as the players all lined up, ready to be absorbed into their tiny balls. One after another, Tom Brady, J.J. Watt, Richie Incognito and Ben Roethlisberger found themselves suddenly shrunken down to pocket-sized, contained inside hand-held spheres, and then suddenly shrunken further. As the marbles were fed one-by-one into the machine by a lab tech, the players appeared on the screen: Clay Matthews, Nick Bosa, AQ Shipley and Christian McCaffrey suddenly appeared in several of the quadrants. 

“Tonight’s four all star teams are composed of the best of the NFL. But will their skills on the gridiron translate to… CAPTURE THE FLAG?”

Russell Wilson, Cam Newton and Joey Bosa stood stock-still as they were each absorbed into their respective spheres before being inserted into the device. Rob Gronkowski was the final athlete still full-sized outside the Holo-field. Goodell slapped the big man on his meaty shoulder. “You ready to go cause a ruckus in there son?”

Gronk shrugged. “I dunno, man, been awhile since I played capture the flag! I’m a little nervous about…” He gestured to the orb in the lab tech’s hand. “Y’know, getting smaller and all. I’ve been big my whole life!”

Before Gronk could react, energy sprung from the ball and pulled him inside. He was only small enough to roll around in the lab tech’s hand for a moment though, before his round prison shrank down further. The lab tech pressed it into the slot.

Goodell nudged the lab tech as Gronk’s statistics appeared on screen. “Remember the plan,” he said. “Make it look like an accident. You’ll get a slap on the wrist and a major bonus.”

The lab tech nodded as he made a few adjustments. Goodell retreated to his private room to watch the show.

*

For a few seconds Gronk felt like he was flying. His whole body felt electric! Everything tingled, and he almost felt like--for at least a tiny moment--he was nothing at all. Then it was bright lights, an electric blue sky, and his feet slammed down hard on the ground. He looked around, confused that he hadn’t arrived on the field they had practiced on. The transparent electric “walls” surrounding the area seemed a lot closer than he remembered. He reached out and slapped his hand against one of them, listening to the loud “THOOM” as it reflected the force of his hand.

He heard the simulated crowd cheering, but where were all the other players? And why did the field only look about ten feet wide? Then he looked down.

He had to squat down just to see the tiny bodies backing away from his feet. They looked the size of mice--only a couple of inches tall--but as he got closer, he realized they were the other players! They were tiny. Or rather HE was HUGE!

Gronk took a step back to look at the whole field, and the little NFL players scurrying away from him like rats. “LOOK OUT!” Watts screamed as Gronk felt something squish under his cleat.

“Oh man!” Gronk said, realizing he had just flattened one of the players. He raised his foot to see what looked like chewed gum spread out amongst the cleat’s studs. Gronk looked around with a guilty expression, like a kid who got caught stealing a cookie, before he pulled the squashed player off his shoe in one gooey piece.

“Tom? Shit, is that you buddy?” Gronk was shocked to see no blood or broken bones. The squashed-flat face blinked its eyes and looked around in a panic. It looked like his mouth had been mashed shut. It was Brady, but his arms and legs flopped around like warm taffy. The pretty quarterback looked like a blue-and-red slug.

*

On one screen, Goodell watched the action in the virtual arena, glancing to the left--at the screen displaying the real-time skyrocketing ratings--for only a moment.

“Now safety parameters keep them all from getting injured, right?” Goodell asked the lab tech without breaking his focus on Gronk as he tried to mash the gooey ball of Brady into a somewhat human shape like he was molding clay.

“Yeah, they’re digitized,” the lab tech explained, “and when we remove them from the arena they’ll be reset to their original templates. So they’ll come out unharmed no matter what--without considering, you know, psychological trauma.”

“Fuck yeah,” Goodell said. “C’mon, Gronk my boy. Let out your inner Godzilla!”

*

“Sorry, Tom,” Gronk boomed as he set the crudely reshaped Tom Brady--now looking more like a flesh-colored snowman--on the field. It wobbled as the quarterback struggled to move, his eyes wide with panic. After a few jiggles he tilted over.

Gronk shrugged, then looked at the field. The three other flags were within his reach--he could just snatch them up with ease and end this in seconds! “Too fucking easy,” he said reaching toward the red team’s flag. Clay Matthews leapt forward to protect the flag, holding tightly even as Gronk lifted it--and him--off the ground.

“Dammit, Matthews,” Gronk groaned, grabbing Clay by the feet. “Fucking let go!” As he yanked, Clay’s legs stretched. He gave another pull and Clay’s arms elongated. The pretty little linebacker looked shocked as his limbs quadrupled in length, but still, he never let go of the flag. “I admire the effort, really,” Gronk said, finally dropping Clay to the ground and pinning him there with his toe. Afraid to get squashed like Brady, Matthews let go.

With the flag in his hand, Gronk looked at Matthews’ stretched limbs and shook his head. “You’re all asymmetrical,” he said, grabbing Matthews by both ends and pulling him apart until he looked like a tall, stringy basketball player. “Haha! Clay! Get it?” he said as he set Matthews back down. The linebacker now towered over the other players (still a rodent to Gronk, of course) but his muscular body looked nearly skeletal now.

“Who’s next?” Gronk said as he reached for the blue team’s flag. Russell Wilson leapt to action, tackling Gronk’s hand as if it were a player, but Gronk flicked his wrist. “Get off me!” he said. Russell flew through the air, hitting the force field barrier for the arena--and splattered against lt like a bug. “Oh, shit, sorry man,” Gronk said, peeling off the groaning Seahawk. Gronk rolled him around in his hands, then chuckled as he placed a perfect ball of NFL quarterback on the field, his two blinking eyes the only feature that denoted that little lump was a human being. Gronk gave him a nudge with his foot and watched Wilson roll helplessly away.

“J.J.?” Gronk asked as the tall blonde defensive end backed away. “You want a piece of this, big man?” Gronk grabbed big J.J. between the palms of his hands, then slowly pressed. J.J. moaned and squealed--more in surprise than in pain--and when Gronk pulled his hands away, the pretty blonde Texan’s mass was squashed into half its height. Gronk gently set the short thick man on the field and watched as he flailed around on his thick stumpy limbs, his head squashed into his now double-sized chest.

“The fuck?” Gronk shouted as he felt a tickle at his ankle. Incognito and Roethlisberger had latched on--as if their relatively tiny statures could do anything to this building-sized man. “Okay, for real, you both have to realize that’s dumb as shit,” Gronk said as he snatched each of them up in a fist. He opened his hands and examined his captured mini-men as they gazed over the edge of Gronk’s hands at the long drop below them. “To be honest, you’re both shitheads,” Gronk said, tilting his head back and tossing Roethlisberger into the air. He caught the beefy little quarterback on his tongue and slurped him back.

But Roethlisberger wasn’t going out without a fight! His thick ball-carrying hands grabbed onto Gronk’s teeth and resisted the massive mound of muscle undulating beneath him. Gronk chuckled, then just tilted his head back, making his throat a straight drop for the Steeler. When his grip gave out, Roethlisberger tumbled down. Gronk’s neck bulged out a bit as he swallowed.

“And as for you,” Gronk said, tightly gripping Incognito’s bull-sized body. With his free hand Gronk pulled the waistband of his pants (and the jockstrap beneath) away and dropped the center in. Incognito flailed his thick arms as he tumbled down, landing on a dick that was twice the size of his body. “There you go,” Gronk said, patting his bulge. “Damn, stop squirming!” He patted with a bit more vigor, feeling Incognito squash around his junk. “Oops. Might have to scrape you off my dick in the shower later.” He looked around, unsure where the cameras were. “Sorry for the kids at home! Hope they censored that.”

“You two,” Gronk said, grabbing the Bosa’s from the ground in one hand. “I’ve got a something I want to try.”

“I’m on your team!” Nick shouted, but Gronk reached out and yanked Nick’s head right off his body. Nick wailed as he looked down and saw nothing--then glanced over to see his body, now without a head, blindly reaching out and stumbling around.

“I’m kinda over the ‘Capture the Flag’ thing,” Gronk informed Nick as he yanked Joey’s head off as well. “I’ve got my own thing going now.” Then he jammed Joey’s head on Nick’s body, then Nick’s on Joey’s. The two brothers patted down their unfamiliar bodies, knowing every inch of each of them used to belong to the other. “Holy shit! Look at you guys! I’m sure you’ve thought about swapping bodies before, right?” Gronk asked as he set them down. “Man, I’m sure you’ve seen each other’s dicks before. How’s it feel to have your brother’s dick now? If I were you I’d be psyched to give it a test drive.”

Gronk turned to Shipley and lifted the thickly built Center to his mouth. Gronk too a deep breath and blew directly into Shipley’s, unable to suppress his smirk as Shipley’s body swelled into a perfect sphere. “Hell yeah!” Gronk said, setting the inflated blimp on the ground. Shipley wiggled his hands and feet, the only bodyparts that would respond. Nearby, the Wilson ball rolled toward him. Shipley wiggled himself back and forth, trying to get out of the way, but Wilson finally collided with him. Big Shipley moaned as blimped out body bouncing every time it rolled over his head.

“Fucking cool!” Gronk said, grabbing McCaffrey’s body and stretching it several times like an empty balloon. “Let’s see what we can do here,” he said, blowing into the running back until he inflated into a long, thin balloon. McCaffrey’s inflated body squeaked loudly as Gronk twisted and readjusted, finally setting down a giraffe balloon animal with McCaffrey’s studly face.

“You’re the last one,” Gronk said to Newton, who shivered in Gronk’s massive shadow. “You ready?”

“Oh, fuck!” Newton said as Gronk’s foot raised, then stomped down hard. When he lifted his foot away, he saw a perfect disc. On one side was Newton’s face, his mouth opened wide (clearly shouting something in the last second before he was smashed into two dimensions) as well as his dick, once an impressive organ but now just a flattened out feature on his disc-shaped body.

“Heads or tails?” Gronk said as he tossed Newton’s coin-like body into the air. Then he caught it and slapped it on wrist. “Tails!” he called, pulling his hand away to see Newton from below, only the underside of his cleats, his beefy rump and his big balls visible. “Looks like I win!”

As the transmogrified little athletes groaned and writhed around the field, Gronk snatched up all the flags and smiled as he heard an announcer cheer, “GRONK WINS!”

“Not even my team,” Gronk said with a chuckle. “Just me. Cuz all you little freaks are clearly losers!” he shouted.

Then light filled the stadium, and Gronk felt himself pulled apart again.

*

Goodell smiled as he reviewed the record-breaking ratings. The country was going crazy over the event he had staged--and it was going to pay off handsomely! He quickly jogged toward the lab to greet the athletes as they emerged from the simulation--he couldn’t wait to tell them how successful this experiment was.

“We have a problem,” said the lab tech as Goodell entered the room. He held a single sphere in his hand, looking sheepishly at his feet.

“No problem on my end!” Goodell cheered, clapping his hands. “This thing was the most successful event of my career!”

The lab tech clicked open the sphere and plucked a tiny J.J. Watt from it, dangling the miniature football player between his thumb and forefinger.

Goodell chuckled. “Well, J.J., any interest in a career as a living foosball player?” he said as the tiny lineman chirped out a diatribe in his shrunken voice.

“So this isn’t a problem?” the lab tech said as he placed J.J. in a box with the others.

“They signed a waiver,” Goodell said, shrugging. “I’ll call my legal team. At that size they might not count as human beings anymore--but property of the NFL!”

Then Gronk’s sphere clicked open. Goodell and the lab tech shielded their eyes as they heard a cacophonous rumble and roar. Seconds later they found themselves knocked to the ground, debris falling all around them.

They were staring at a massive cleat--and above it, through the demolished hole that was the ceiling, was a gigantic leg, with Gronk’s massive face hundreds of feet above them, grinning and clapping his titanic fists together.

“Now that,” Goodell said, “might be a problem…”