There are three kinds of macronutrients that you can find in food: carbs, fat, and protein. They all play important roles in the body, despite years of diet grifters telling you the opposite. Carbohydrates serve as a quick energy source. If you eat too many of them, you'll be on an energy rollercoaster all day that you didn't buy tickets to, but that you can't get off. You'll be alert, functional, and productive... until 2:30, when a lack of immediate sugar lobotomizes you, and you spend the rest of your day shuffling around blankly, trying to eat peoples' brains. On the other hand, if you don't get enough carbs, that "2:30" feeling will last all day, leaving you in an endless purgatory of grogginess. Basically: fuck keto.

Fat macros convert the most efficiently into the fats that your body uses to store energy and pad your joints. If you don't get enough, you'll get arthritis, which is so debilitatingly painful that many people who develop it opt instead for the sweet release of death, but hey, if you like the skeleton look, maybe you could get a job in a haunted house. However, if you get too much fat... well... congratulations on being an average 'murican patriot.

If you're like me, and all you want to do with your life is become powerful enough to defeat abstract concepts like time and god (or so the meme goes), then the most important macronutrient to keep track of is protein. In order to pack on muscle, you need to gain weight, and in order to make sure that the weight you gain is actual muscle instead of flabby bitch tits, a significant amount of your macros need to be protein.

Of course, there can always be too much of a good thing. If you drink too much water, you die. That's called drowning. If you breath too much air, you die. That's called hyperventilating. If you receive too much love, you die. That's called HIV. And if you eat too much protein, your kidneys will start planning a relaxing staycation to get away from their stressful day job. You don't want that. Functional kidneys are like sex, it doesn't matter unless you don't have any. But here's the deal: you almost certainly aren't eating enough protein. Yes, you; and I can prove it.

Most people should aim for 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Now, go ahead and look around your house, and see what foods are packing this kind of protein. I'll wait. Is it the Hostess twinkies? Nope, try again. The candy-corn flavored oreos? Just because it's vegan, doesn't mean it's healthy. The fresh fruit salad you chopped up yesterday and can't convince yourself to finish? Just because it's healthy, doesn't mean it has protein. There aren't too many foods that are naturally high in protein, so if you haven't set out to eat enough, your probably aren't getting enough. However, there is a surefire way to make sure that you've always got enough fuel for the gainz:

Drink Milk

Not only is nature's protein shake a complete source of amino acids, it also supplies many of the micronutrients that the body needs, like iron and calcium; things that nobody keeps track of unless they're a complete spastic nerd who is physically addicted to spreadsheets and kisses his computer before he goes to sleep every night. Put the calculator away Einstein, if you have this much free time to count how much B12 is in your multivitamins, then it means you're not meeting people, getting laid, and most importantly: hitting the god damn gym.

To truly understand how much I love milk, just look at the nutrition facts label: ten grams of protein in a cup. Six of those a day, and you no longer need to motorboat a cubic meter of chicken boobs to put on pounds. I also love milk in a personal, intimate way. When a human being is born on earth (or I guess anywhere else) they receive the three most essential things: life, a name... and then milk. That's how important it is. The ability to drink milk into adulthood made humans so tall and strong that over a mere 20000 years, populations that learned how to herd cattle went from 10% lactose-tolerant to 90%. In evolutionary time, that's the blink of an eye. That's how overpowered milk is. When the greek astronomers named the planets in the solar system, they named them after the mightiest beings they could conceive of: their gods. Jupiter, Mars, Venus. But then, what name did they give to our entire galaxy? What could possibly be so much more powerful than the gods? I'll let you google that one.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much of a choice in my diet while I was living at the orphanage. When Maggie gave me eggs, I ate eggs. When she served stew, I ate stew. And when she offered milk, I pumped as much down my throat as my stomach could carry.

Breakfast this morning was eggs with some peppers an onions mixed in, not half bad. Stella and I finished our meals and made small talk with Zerch and his group of adventurers. They had recently moved into town to participate in this Great Bee Hunt thing that I'd been hearing about.

"So, what's John paying you to help out with the bees?" I asked. Being an adventurer sounded pretty fun, but I had no clue if it was a lucrative profession or a starving artist kind of deal.

"Oh, he's not paying us." answered Zerch.

"Then... what are you getting out of it? Some of the honey? Fighting experience?"

Zerch shook his head and grinned. "Nope, we're here to get stung."

Uhhhhh.....

"The venom of the bees is pretty potent. When they're all dead, we're gonna harvest some of it from the corpses. Then we'll expose ourselves to increasingly high doses to build an immunity. Might also use some to poison our weapons, or just to sell. It's a very unique kind of venom, and dangerous. One sting is enough to kill a man if he's... you know... shrimpy enough." he continued, pinching my arm.

Zerch's friends laughed, and Stella joined right in.

I bet these dyel pussies can't even bench three plates.

Just as we were finishing up, an abrupt rumbling filled the kitchen. Maggie's pans clanged as they swung into each other from their hanging rack above the sink. Zerch and his team got up.

"Well, that's our cue. I'm putting two silver pieces on 'sinkhole', anyone want in?"

Donatello, the largest one, put his hand up. "I'm going with 'very small meteor'."

Zerch's eyebrows went up. "Those are pretty rare, you sure?"

"Five to one."

"Done."

Stella and I passed our dishes to Maggie and got the bucket. With all the kids living here, we needed to take multiple trips to the stream every day to have enough. And ever since my encounter with the kitten from hell, I had Stella come along with me.

She was happy to help, as long as I did one thing in return: show her how to use ice magic. When we arrived at the stream bed, she pulled out the dagger and, after a moment to gather herself, let it rip. The power of the ice magic seemed to scale with strength, so I was surprised that Stella's progress was much faster than mine. On her first day, it went exactly how mine had gone: one small icicle, and a couple days of soreness. Less than a week later, her chunks were already significantly bigger than mine. I mean, I was also making progress but still... I thought it would be harder for girls?

"You coming to the feast tonight?" I asked Stella.

She nodded. "You?"

"Yep, can't wait. I heard that the term 'underage drinking' is a foreign concept around here."

"Well, don't go teaching it then." she returned with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah. Hand me that metal penis, I need to shoot my load."

"Eww." she said, and that brief, promising instant of warmth was replaced with revulsion. Rather than handing the dagger to me, she dropped it in the steam, forcing me to fish it out.

"Can you do it without the dagger yet?" I asked, annoyed.

She shook her head. "I've tried. I could actually feel the resistance but... It was way heavier."

What the hell? I've been waving my arms around all week like a goddamn puppet and I never felt anything like that! How is she so much better at this than me?

I was never going to match the fucking comet that Stella had just shot, so I decided to switch things up. Rather than putting out one blast of ice at full power, I cast it five times, at a resistance that felt manageable. They were pathetic, but that's fine, so was I.

Stella's eyebrows shot up. "Oooh, rapid-fire. Machine Gun Bradley over here."

"Meatheadology 101: If your one rep max is plateaued, try making progress at other rep ranges."

"You're annoyingly smart sometimes."

"Thank you, sugar toots."

she frowned. "Forget I said anything. You must have been a real hit with the ladies back on earth."

"K." I said aggressively, trying to pretend that she hadn't hit a nerve. Then her eyes lit up, as an epiphany hit her.

"Oh! I know! I've heard about people like you! They go to the gym to make up for their lack of charisma, or anything else that would attract a woman. But it doesn't work, so they wind up as 'incels'! That's what you are! You're a 'gymcel'!" she jeered.

Fuck, my cover's blown.

"Hey, hey, keep it down." I pleaded angrily. "And no, I'm not an 'incel', because I'm not 'involuntarily celibate'. I can get laid whenever I want, which makes me, if anything, a 'volcel'!"

In response to my heartfelt plea, Stella busted out laughing. "No fucking way! I know there was something off about you! God, what a fucking... what a loser! Ohmygod, I knew a guy just like you on earth. In high school, he was this shy, greasy virgin, but in college he did nothing but lift weights and got really buff!"

"That didn't that help him get a girlfriend?"

"No, because he still was still shy, covered in acne, and all he could talk about was action figures and weightlifting! It was so weird! You even look like him a little bit!" she gasped, convulsing in another fit of laughter.

"You know, I don't have to let you practice with my dagger."

Stella collected herself. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We're from earth, we have to stick together... pfffff......." she eked out.

Do I really want to be stuck to you?

The people of Apis understood 'fashionably late' about as well as they understand 'underage drinking'. Shaman feast was supposed to start just before sundown, and I made sure to leave after Maggie and Stella had departed.

Let Stella talk shit about me for awhile, then I'll roll in and spit hot bars about her horns until she loses her whole sense of self-confidence!

The feast was being held in a large building next to the chapel. Not as tall as the chapel, but much wider, and filled with long tables covered in food and drank. There were plenty of seats, but most people were standing, wandering around, trying the dishes, conversing... and getting their fucking lights knocked out by gallons of shit-ass piss beer.

"Hey, you're Bradley, right? The Calderan?" came a powerful voice. I turned, and saw the speaker: a very tall, well-muscled teenager with short blonde hair and a deep farmer's tan. He was standing in a group with two other boys, Allison, and... Stella, of course. I grabbed a glass of beer from a table as I walked over; it would surely be needed.

Oh boy... Time to find out what that horny slut's been saying about me.

"Y-yeah, that's me... but you can call me Brad. Who are you?"

"Name's Albert. Albert Harvestar. But you can call me Burt." he parroted, almost... mockingly?

"Oh yeah, you're John's kid! Nice to meet you!"

Burt reached out and patted me on the head. "Watch who you're calling 'kid', short stuff. You might be a geezer on the inside, but you don't look any older than me."

Is he... mogging me?

As soon as Burt started talking, I could feel the disdain. I no longer wanted to talk, or even make cheap shots at Stella.

I need to get my ass away from these douchebags ASAP.

I shot Allison a quizzical look.

This is your guy, huh... Why?

Before she could telepathically respond, Zerch staggered up, completely plastered, and clapped Burt on the back.

"Great job in that battle, Burt! That Calderan was a fucking monster! I think some of the tentacle juice got on my neck, because it's all red and swollen, like I fucked a whole brothel of Varonesian chicks or something!"

"Hurts so good, don't it!" Burt roared, slapping the bruises.

"I mean it though! If you hadn't gotten that hit in early, people could have died! You're a fucking hero!"

Stella flashed an... envious(?) look at Allison as she beamed up at her betrothed.

Abort! Abort! I AM LEAVING! Slowly! Back... away....

But they weren't done yet: just as I was about to turn away, one of Burt's friends called out.

"Wait, Bradley! Does it bother you that we killed one of your Calderan friends? Like, didn't you feel its pain or something?"

"Uhhh...."

"Holy shit! Are those slave shackles? Are you one of those slaves from the west coast desert? Did you escape from your master? Was he some fat old guy who likes little boys? Holy shit!"

I'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt. He's so far gone that if he ate the mushrooms he would see double. But still...

"What's your name?" I asked firmly.

So I can write it underneath Stella and Burt on my shit list.

"I'm Clayton! But you can call me Clayton, Bradley."

The kid was shorter than Burt, but still a bit taller than me. He had short brown hair, and a wiry build. I wasn't intimidated.

"I think I'll call you Clay, actually. Because that's what you remind me of. Dirt."

Burt roared at that. "Little fucker can talk! He's pretty smart, Clay!"

"Okay, Mr. smartass, if you're so fucking smart, how about we play some chess!"

What?

I looked around the hall and, sure enough, there was a chess board set up in a corner with a couple of chairs.

Well I'll be damned...

I grabbed another beer on my way over and started chugging like my sanity depended on it. Because it did.

"So, this one is the bishop... It goes diagonal... and this one is the rook... it goes straight." Clayton slurred as he set up the pieces.

"Yeah, I've played before. Looks like the same starting position, too."

Burt's other friend, Owen, explained the finer points while Clayton oriented himself. Same rules as chess on earth, surprisingly, right down to castling and en passant. Except they call the 'queen' the 'champion' for some reason.

Erasing the strong woman... nice.

Clayton was white, and in three moves I could already tell I was going to win. He was going for a scholar's mate: a wild attempt to win the game in four moves. It only works on complete beginners, and once you protect against it, the guy's queen (er... champion) is begging to be attacked. So that's what I did, and before long Clayton blundered a knight. After that, I just traded down the rest of the pieces and won the endgame. It sounds like I know what I'm doing, but I'm really not that good at my chess; my little brother was always "The Brain" of the family. The reason I stopped playing was because of how many times he thrashed me... as a five-year-old.

"Alright... that wassa warmup." Clayton managed. "Now's for realsssss."

So we played again. He opened with the exact same moves, and I used the same reponses. Then we got to the move where he blundered.

"Careful with your bishop." I warned.

Then he made the same exact same mistake, and I punished him without a shred of remorse.

Dude's memory is gone. Maybe I should just pretend that we never met, and that he was never such a massive douche to me...

Nobody laughed or anything, so I glanced at the peanut gallery. Burt and Stella were chatting, while Allison hung on his arm moodily. Owen was swallowing a smile at least.

Clayton got up furiously. "Dumb fucking game anyway! Owen, this is your thing, why don't you trash him? I need to piss!"

"Actually, I'm gonna head out, too." said Burt. "I've never actually seen the orphanage, so Stella's gonna show me around."

Nice! Two down, one to go. Why the fuck am I hanging out with teenagers anyway!?

Without the flunkies around, Owen started to act like a decent human being.

"Fair warning: I'm pretty good at this," he said. "You want to play as white?"

"Sure."

I only know one opening system: The London. But, if you're a simple guy like me, playing against simple opponents, that's all you need. So I played my moves, and he played a bunch of moves that seemingly made sense... until I opened his H file with a pawn strike and swarmed his king. Owen sat, stunned. Clearly, that had never happened to him before.

"Can we... play again?" he asked.

"You got it."

Once again, I played my same opening. He used different moves this time, guarding against my H file attack.

"Hey, not bad," I said, "You're not playing the exact same losing moves over and over. I can see why Clayton thinks you're good."

Owen snorted. Unfortunately, by focusing his defense on the H file, Owen had neglected the defense of his queen's side (champion's side???), so I rotated my (fuck it) champion over and marched my pawns on through. He left me with one passed pawn, which I advanced to the promotion square.

"I.... concede." said Owen sulkily, and I nodded.

"Good game. Don't be down, I can tell that you're good at this. You just haven't played as many games as I have."

"How? I play this game all the time with the adults, and we're the same age. Is this the only thing you do with your life?"

"I'm 31 years old, bro. And I lived in a world where we could watch all the best chess players, no matter where we were lived. I've watched grandmasters lecture on how to play the kinds of positions that we just went through."

Owen's eyes went wide. "Seriously?! Then you must be incredibly good!"

"Not really. Thing about chess is, no matter how good you are, there are always a hundred ten-year-old prodigies who can stomp you. If you can believe it."

"I believe it," interjected Allison. "You act like a 10-year-old yourself, sometimes."

"Ha ha Allison." I enunciated. "Wait... what are you still doing here!? I thought you went with Burt and Stella."

She shook her head. "They said they were gonna be quick."

Oh, this poor naive girl...

I aquiesced another beer; this was gonna get heavy.

"Allison, how much do you know about earth?" I began. Owen leaned in, intrigued.

"What's that? Where you came from?"

"Yup, where me and Stella came from. And on this planet called 'Earth', there's a pill, a little tablet, that women can take that prevents them from getting pregnant. Does Alterra have anything like that?"

Allison shook her head. "No, haven't heard of it. I mean, there's some herbal teas that are supposed to, but it's all hearsay... what's your point?"

"Well, the pills on earth aren't hearsay. They always work. So you know what women on earth do? They spend their twenties partying away, racking up triple-digit body counts. Stella might look like a teenager, but so do I. Stella is twenty seven years old, on the back end of her partying days, and this is just a wild guess, but she seems like an absolute thot. If I were you, I would be worried."

"Thot? Triple-Digit? What's a... body count?" asked Allison fearfully.

Oof.

"Well, you see... when a man and a woman tolerate each other very, very much..."

"Uh huh?"

"Um.... let me try again... You saw me checkmate Owen just now, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, Burt is probably checkmating Stella right now. On her back rank."

"Oh... I'm gonna... go..." Allison faltered, tears welling in her eyes, before turning to leave.

Owen frowned at me. "Why would you say that? You didn't have to make her cry! Or if you suspected something, you could have told her sooner!"

I raised my eyebrow. "Defensive. You have a thing for Allison, right?"

Owen froze. "N-no, not at all..."

"Yeah you do. You're smart, she's smart. I'm fantasizing about it right now, actually. Play your cards right, and she could be yours... after she catches Burt porking Stella's brains out."

"Porking her... that's disgusting." spat Owen. "I don't know what your world was like, but on Alterra girls don't throw themselves around like that." Then he left.

I sipped my beer triumphantly.

And then there was one.