💥 Total Distraction
Not gonna lie, extreme contortion is one hell of a challenge! But what to do when you're trapped on a deserted island and the only clue about how to escape is solving really really weird puzzles found in caves that seem like ruins of some ancient civilization...
The first puzzle was very simple but the simple split opened the door to such useful resources and equipment that they set their minds and bones to solve every single one of them.
However, for Harbert, a simple American boy with French ancestry and a cute ponytail, it was way too much to submit his civilized body to such savage practices. Luckily, he's got his faithful friend Nab, a professional savage from Africa who unfortunately ended up in America as a mere black slave.
Nab knew the key to advanced training was the famous power of distraction. He knew how to tell Harbert a story to hold him in extreme positions for an hour and more. Nab was full of great stories but the best ones were from his very own life.
After sitting up Harbert upon a flat rock by campfire and tugging him up in a pretty good looking human pretzel, Nab began about his own way of ending up in the New World.
He was not at all unfamiliar with the strange paintings and engravings they found inside this island's caves, the depicted poses looked perfectly clear to him...
Back in Africa, the art of twisting and bending was not at all rare and there were whole camps where many kids were trained to stretch until the most flexible of them were discovered. And Nab was one of these special kids.
Unfortunately, not to entertain his own people for long as one day this kid was kidnapped while his parents were napping and they never seen him again.
Nab ended up in America where he became an exotic toy in some filthy rich house. Month after month his whole family of owners treated him not even like an animal but an object that was supposed to twist, stretch and fold in every way those people could think of. They tied his body up in ridiculous positions to be used as a room decoration, forced him to sleep inside small chests and rat cages where was supposed to "take a rest".
Nab's body became so loose that unbreakable that he could probably drop from a high cliff and bounce like a piece of rubber.
All of a sudden the family sold him to an even richer scientist, Mr. Smith. "We're out of ideas but this man will turn you into a real lab rat! He has the means to break every bone in your body and then glue the bits together only to break them again!"
But this engineer suddenly turned out to be an exceptionally nice and progressive person and immediately set Nab free. Nab was really mindblown by this sudden plot twist and begged to remain at the man's side. The man didn't mind and they ended up as friends. Just friends.
During the Civil War Mr. Smith was so active all over the country that they eventually both ended up in a prison. They escaped, of course, but what did it cost! Everything. The aerostat they used to escape was taken by the storm that pulled it all the way across the seven seas until by some miracle they landed on this very island.
Mr. Smith, Nab, Harbert, his caretaker Pencroff and the journalist Gideon Spineless. Five men in total. But now their sole chance to escape was married to the idea of training Harbert to be incredibly flexible to solve the complicated puzzles they discovered.
Oddly, the cave walls were filled with pictures of two contortionists: one dark-skinned boy with dreads and one slightly tanned blond boy with a ponytail. What talents those two boys demonstrated on the paintings of the unknown ancient masters, was beyond description. Only Nab could do that but the puzzles required the second boy.
Harbert didn't need to be asked, he was a brave boy and immediately offered his body for any kind of experiments. For his bravery he was freed from all other duties and in less than a week he could already sit in a split. The progress was amazing and everyone praised him profusely. But the true challenges still lay ahead: some of the pictures were plain impossible even for Nab after spending hours trying.
Fortunately they had the genius of Mr. Smith who once read a book on human anatomy and it was enough to enable him to see the human body as some kind of a mechanism, although much more complicated than a mere machine. Though he did figure it out what in the body could be tweaked to make some impossible poses possible.
Both Nab and Harbert couldn't believe what their bodies were capable of after some sophisticated manipulations. After a few weeks of daily polishing, their joints no longer needed Smith's help to do the impossible bends naturally.
Mr. Smith only smiled: "All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial."
Meanwhile, Harbert grew to respect his own body so much that he completely stopped covering it. He learned the local paths so well that most of the time he didn't even need sandals.
In his past life in America he used to be really shy of his effeminate appearance, often randomly scolded for doing things in unmanly manner, but here on the island his inner beauty truly flourished.
And his physical beauty now belonged to his friends whom he trusted with his life. He had nothing to hide from these other four men. The island was a dangerous place and any day could be their last, so he tried to get the best of each day.
His slender feminine body doing all kinds of contortions worked surprisingly well to keep everyone's spirits high at all times. Only once in a while one of them would remember that they were meant to escape from this island, not turn it into a trapical paradise with hawt bendy boys!