08-05-2008, 12:21 AM
Tanya's Challenge - The Crew written by Jeri
Tanya regretted her Web site for the fourth time that day, as Hulk's fist buried itself deep into her stomach, again.
Tanya had been involved in sports and athletics since she was a child. She had danced in ballet and in jazz groups. She had competed in ice-skating and gymnastics in high school, earning her back-to-back state gymnastics champion titles.
Tanya was very personable and outgoing. She had been active in school plays and private art lessons, and had been a straight A student and neighborhood babysitter. She scheduled her life and kept a strict schedule, down to her showers and naps. But of course, she usually forgot to schedule her household chores, such as cleaning her room.
Her athletics and sports background, along with months of strenuous training, led her to winning many fitness contest awards, culminating in her winning the Fitness America Nationals. Her winning personality and stage acting experience gave her the opportunity to act as a co-host on ESPN's fitness pageant shows, and eventually to her hosting her own show, giving her national attention.
In parallel with her TV hosting, she was conducting fitness classes and training competitive fitness athletes for national competitions. The Health Network did a documentary on her daily routine. It was this exposure that led indirectly to her current predicament.
In late 2000, a film producer saw her documentary and interviewed her for the lead in a movie. It was for a female undercover bodyguard, in a movie full of Jackie Chan style stunts. She won the part, due mainly to her athletics and personality. She planned on doing her own stunts as much as possible, but she knew she would need to brush up on her acting ability. She was best at being a host, as she could be herself. In the movie, she had to be another character, with a personality quite different from her own. She thought she could handle it though.
Tanya had a Web site of her own on the Internet devoted to her career. It included a biography of her life and a whole section devoted to the latest news about her life. It was on this page that she first broke the news of her new movie role. In the announcement, she said she would probably stumble in this endeavor, but that she would laugh at her mistakes and persevere. Finally, as a joke, she wrote, "The crew is definitely in for some good times (if I mess up three times in a row, just hit me in the gut, but stay away from the head, thanks guys)." This, of course, was the part of her Web site she would regret.
Tanya had black hair and a shapely figure. Due to her training in gymnastics and competitive fitness, she had a rock solid body with no fat. She had a glowing, overall tan that she kept refined with frequent outdoor tanning sessions. So, she only had to use oil on her body to highlight her muscles during competitions, instead of the combination makeup and oil the other competitors used. She had slightly larger than average breasts. But due to her training, her breasts were firm and tight, and stood out almost straight from her chest with no jiggle when she moved. Her hips were narrow, leading into long, thin, tightly muscled thighs and legs.
Her stomach was the most impressive part of her figure. It was strong and muscled, with well-defined abs and obliques and a very pronounced six-pack. It had only a thin skin covering, with no fat. When she wore a bikini, you could see the striations of her individual stomach muscle fibers under the skin. You could see every stomach muscle working as she moved. She had total control of her stomach muscles, such that with little effort, she could contract her stomach muscles from her natural hard, thick, bodybuilder's stomach to a very thin, very narrow, very shallow, very concave model's stomach.
Her stomach muscles were the strongest muscles in her body due to her fitness conditioning and training. So her statement on her Web site, though made in jest, did not concern her much, as she thought she could take any punches the crew could throw at her. And, it would give her an incentive to work extra hard on her acting ability and stunts. But she had not counted on Hulk, or on Lily
.
The movie she was starring in was about a female bodyguard who was hired to protect a businessman. He is kidnapped while she is protecting him. She follows his captors to their jungle hideout, where she picks them off one-by-one. The movie was going to be shot mostly on location, in Los Angeles for the first half, and then in the jungles just outside of Rio de Janeiro for the remainder of the filming. She lived in Los Angeles, so she thought that part of the filming would not be too interesting. But, she was really looking forward to the Rio shooting, especially for the opportunity to go to the beaches there. She even thought she might try out the topless and nude beaches, just to see what they were like. She had never done anything like that before, but was curious what it felt like to be stared at by the guys, as she knew she would present a striking figure there.
The filming in Los Angeles was not at all what she had expected. She had expected she would know every place they went for the filming. She was wrong. The sound stage used for the first part of the shoot had several sets, with offices, homes and some fake building fronts. Los Angeles was usually so noisy they had to use a sound stage for almost all the daytime city shots. Only at night, when the usual roar of the city died down, could they shoot outside. They shot in places Tanya had never seen, much less imagined.
For one shot, they shot under a bridge over the Los Angeles river, only a few blocks from downtown Los Angeles itself. The area was a desolate, empty, dirty area that looked like a haven for bums, hobos, street gangs and other unsavory characters. In actuality, it was a place for many of the homeless people who roamed the Los Angeles streets, just trying to survive. Tanya asked the construction foreman how long it had taken them to construct the set with all the filth, and he said they didn't construct anything; that was the way the place looked when they first found it. Other locations in the city were used for her first action shots.
Tanya had pretty well honed her acting skills during the scenes on the sound stage. She had been really nervous at first, and had flubbed her lines quite a bit. During the second week of shooting on the sound stage, one of the grips approached her after one incredibly long series of flubs on her part, and asked in a stuttering voice if he could punch her in the stomach. This request stopped her in her tracks. She didn't know at all what to say. After stuttering a little bit herself, she asked him why he asked her that. He explained he had been to her Web site and had seen her statement there. He produced a printed copy of the page, and showed it to her. She remembered posting something like that a few months back, but had not updated the site or even thought about it since then. She thought about it a little, then decided to honor her offer.
Tanya had never been punched in the stomach before except during her training for the movie. Even then, her trainers had pulled their punches. She thought she could take it, but wasn't sure. She figured the worst that could happen was that she would fall to the ground, clutching her stomach in pain, possibly puking her guts out. The thought of that possibility alone almost made her change her mind. But she would never know if she didn't try it. After thinking about it a little more, she decided it was a challenge she couldn't refuse.
Tanya was always challenging herself to do more difficult athletic sports. She had always thought she would like to take up boxing, but had never had the opportunity to start. Besides, she didn't really want to get a black eye while she was appearing on tv
She told the grip yes, he could punch her stomach. She reached down and pulled her T-shirt out of her pants and up to her rib line. Since her jeans were low cut, most of her stomach was exposed in this position. She flexed her stomach muscles tight, prepared herself to accept the punch, and told the grip to go ahead and punch her.
The grip had about an average build. He had some muscles due to his work, but had only a little above average strength. He pulled his fist back, and let loose with what must have been his best punch, to her upper stomach. The punch hit with a resounding, hollow thud that reverberated a little.
Tanya's body jerked back a little, but only from the momentum of the punch. She was just thrown a little off balance by it. It did not feel at all what she thought it would feel like. She thought it would drive all the air from her stomach, like she had seen in the movies. Instead, it stung a lot, with the pain going away quickly, to be replaced by only a little dull ache. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but it wasn't at all painful.
The grip asked if she was all right, even though he could see she was almost completely unaffected. She told him she was OK, then made a discovery. The whole set was quiet and all the crew were looking at the grip. Sometime during the event, everyone had seen what was going on and had stopped their work to watch. She turned a little red with embarrassment. She felt she needed to say something, if for no other reason than to protect the life of the grip, who was being stared at angrily by a couple of the crew. So she turned to the crew and stammeringly told them a short version of the challenge she had posted on her Web site. One of the crew asked her if she would continue the challenge, and she said she would, even before she thought what she was committing herself to. There was a murmur in the crew, as she realized what she had said. She thought about it a little more, and decided this would be an excellent incentive to improve her acting skills.
Tanya made more flubs over the course of her work in the sound studio. At first, she often made the three mistakes in a row needed to get her stomach punched. At the first break after the flub, one of the crew would walk over to her and she would offer her stomach to his fist, while the remainder of the crew gathered around to watch. She didn't know how they selected who would be the one to punch her. It appeared they must be taking turns and using some selection mechanism, as only one of them would immediately approach her, and the same person never punched her more than once. Of course, if she flubbed more than one set of lines before the next break, several of the men would line up in front of her, one for each line flubbed. Her record was a line of seven of the crew lined up when she had one particularly bad but long session before a break.
Most of the crew were stronger than the first grip who had punched her, but the effect was always the same. Their fists never penetrated beyond the outer layer of her stomach muscles. In fact, she tried to relax her stomach muscles a little, just to see what a deeper stomach punch felt like. It hurt a lot, so she kept her stomach muscles taut after that. She tried pulling her stomach in really concave, but as long as she tightened her stomach muscles hard, their punches didn't have much effect.
Over the rest of the sound stage location shoot, her acting improved a lot, to the point where she wasn't punched in the stomach at all for the last week on the stage. She knew the crew still remembered her challenge, as there would sometimes be a groan from the crew when she would get the third take correct after flubbing a line twice. During the bridge scene in downtown Los Angeles, she didn't even flub one scene or line. The action scenes were a different matter.
It had been quite a while since Tanya had done any gymnastics But she thought she would be able to do the simple flips, tumbles and rolls in the script without any problem, since she was actually stronger and in better shape now than during her high school gymnastics career. She was, of course, wrong. She had forgotten how difficult it had been to pick up her gymnastics routines between school years, after a whole summer of no practice.
The movie company was shooting night scenes in several back alleys behind a row of warehouses in Santa Monica. These scenes were to be the point in the movie where Tanya would lose to a bunch of thugs and the businessman she was protecting would be kidnapped. As a part of her preparation for the movie, Tanya had received several months of kickboxing training, mostly centered on stunt work instead of actual combat. She had picked this sport up quickly due to her athletics background. Her personal trainer, Lily and several of the stunt people she sparred with had commented that her natural ability in this sport would allow her to go into competition, and probably win. She didn't think she would try it though, as she wanted to take her career in a different direction, more toward TV and movies. But, her training would allow her to do most of the stunts required by the script for the movie. The rest of the stunts and all of her adversaries in the fights would be performed by stunt people, all of whom she had already sparred and trained with.
The night shoot was scheduled for two weeks. During the first two nights, they would be shooting the shots with the businessman, where he is gagged, tied and taken away by the gang. Tanya was only in the initial establishing shots. The shots were completed on time, and the businessman was released for the remainder of the night shootings.
The third night's shoot was a complete disaster as far as Tanya was concerned. As this was the first time she had done any stunts on camera, she was a little nervous. Combined with that was the fact that she would be required to remember her lines and give her acting performance at the same time as she was trying to make the stunts look believable. The stunts at this point in the shoot were very simple, but she was having a difficult time doing them. She had overestimated her ability to remember and perform her gymnastic routines, and was missing her flips and tumbles quite often. When she did get her acrobatics correct, she would be concentrating so much on them she would miss her lines.
The director saw what was happening. He knew the best way to get her through this phase she was going through was to keep trying each shot until she got it right then go on to the next one as quickly as possible. He knew she would get into the swing of this soon. In fact, he had scheduled only the easier stunts for her first day just to allow her to settle into the part. So, he kept throwing a new scene at her as fast as she could complete the previous one successfully.
All the sessions that day went particularly long. So at the breaks, there was usually a line of several crewmen waiting to get their turn at punching her. The second break was the one where she set her record with a line of seven crewmen. As had happened in the past, she had no problem accepting their punches, though she knew each was trying to be the first to throw a punch to put her to her knees. By the end of that night's shoot, she had her acting and athletic ability back. When the crew broke for the final break of the night, there wasn't anyone in line waiting for her.
The remaining nights of the first week went a lot better. She was able to do increasingly difficult stunts and still perform her lines on cue. She only had to accept a couple punches each night. The first punch of the fourth night, however, was the worst she had taken so far. She was still sore from the third night's stunts (though not from the accompanying stomach punches), so that first punch to her sore stomach hurt enough she almost went to her knees. It was to the center of her stomach, just a little below the navel. It didn't sink in much, but the shock of it to her sore muscles caused her to bend over in pain. She spent the rest of that break doing strenuous stomach exercises to work the previous day's soreness out of her stomach, to the delight of the crew, of course.
They completed the rest of that first week's shoot only a couple shots behind schedule. Tanya knew the shots so far had the easiest stunts, and all the major stunts and all the fight scenes were due up the next week, probably with a lot more flubs and stomach punches. So when they broke for the weekend, she did an especially grueling workout session all day Sunday in preparation for what she knew would be coming.
Tanya regretted her Web site for the fourth time that day, as Hulk's fist buried itself deep into her stomach, again.
Tanya had been involved in sports and athletics since she was a child. She had danced in ballet and in jazz groups. She had competed in ice-skating and gymnastics in high school, earning her back-to-back state gymnastics champion titles.
Tanya was very personable and outgoing. She had been active in school plays and private art lessons, and had been a straight A student and neighborhood babysitter. She scheduled her life and kept a strict schedule, down to her showers and naps. But of course, she usually forgot to schedule her household chores, such as cleaning her room.
Her athletics and sports background, along with months of strenuous training, led her to winning many fitness contest awards, culminating in her winning the Fitness America Nationals. Her winning personality and stage acting experience gave her the opportunity to act as a co-host on ESPN's fitness pageant shows, and eventually to her hosting her own show, giving her national attention.
In parallel with her TV hosting, she was conducting fitness classes and training competitive fitness athletes for national competitions. The Health Network did a documentary on her daily routine. It was this exposure that led indirectly to her current predicament.
In late 2000, a film producer saw her documentary and interviewed her for the lead in a movie. It was for a female undercover bodyguard, in a movie full of Jackie Chan style stunts. She won the part, due mainly to her athletics and personality. She planned on doing her own stunts as much as possible, but she knew she would need to brush up on her acting ability. She was best at being a host, as she could be herself. In the movie, she had to be another character, with a personality quite different from her own. She thought she could handle it though.
Tanya had a Web site of her own on the Internet devoted to her career. It included a biography of her life and a whole section devoted to the latest news about her life. It was on this page that she first broke the news of her new movie role. In the announcement, she said she would probably stumble in this endeavor, but that she would laugh at her mistakes and persevere. Finally, as a joke, she wrote, "The crew is definitely in for some good times (if I mess up three times in a row, just hit me in the gut, but stay away from the head, thanks guys)." This, of course, was the part of her Web site she would regret.
Tanya had black hair and a shapely figure. Due to her training in gymnastics and competitive fitness, she had a rock solid body with no fat. She had a glowing, overall tan that she kept refined with frequent outdoor tanning sessions. So, she only had to use oil on her body to highlight her muscles during competitions, instead of the combination makeup and oil the other competitors used. She had slightly larger than average breasts. But due to her training, her breasts were firm and tight, and stood out almost straight from her chest with no jiggle when she moved. Her hips were narrow, leading into long, thin, tightly muscled thighs and legs.
Her stomach was the most impressive part of her figure. It was strong and muscled, with well-defined abs and obliques and a very pronounced six-pack. It had only a thin skin covering, with no fat. When she wore a bikini, you could see the striations of her individual stomach muscle fibers under the skin. You could see every stomach muscle working as she moved. She had total control of her stomach muscles, such that with little effort, she could contract her stomach muscles from her natural hard, thick, bodybuilder's stomach to a very thin, very narrow, very shallow, very concave model's stomach.
Her stomach muscles were the strongest muscles in her body due to her fitness conditioning and training. So her statement on her Web site, though made in jest, did not concern her much, as she thought she could take any punches the crew could throw at her. And, it would give her an incentive to work extra hard on her acting ability and stunts. But she had not counted on Hulk, or on Lily
.
The movie she was starring in was about a female bodyguard who was hired to protect a businessman. He is kidnapped while she is protecting him. She follows his captors to their jungle hideout, where she picks them off one-by-one. The movie was going to be shot mostly on location, in Los Angeles for the first half, and then in the jungles just outside of Rio de Janeiro for the remainder of the filming. She lived in Los Angeles, so she thought that part of the filming would not be too interesting. But, she was really looking forward to the Rio shooting, especially for the opportunity to go to the beaches there. She even thought she might try out the topless and nude beaches, just to see what they were like. She had never done anything like that before, but was curious what it felt like to be stared at by the guys, as she knew she would present a striking figure there.
The filming in Los Angeles was not at all what she had expected. She had expected she would know every place they went for the filming. She was wrong. The sound stage used for the first part of the shoot had several sets, with offices, homes and some fake building fronts. Los Angeles was usually so noisy they had to use a sound stage for almost all the daytime city shots. Only at night, when the usual roar of the city died down, could they shoot outside. They shot in places Tanya had never seen, much less imagined.
For one shot, they shot under a bridge over the Los Angeles river, only a few blocks from downtown Los Angeles itself. The area was a desolate, empty, dirty area that looked like a haven for bums, hobos, street gangs and other unsavory characters. In actuality, it was a place for many of the homeless people who roamed the Los Angeles streets, just trying to survive. Tanya asked the construction foreman how long it had taken them to construct the set with all the filth, and he said they didn't construct anything; that was the way the place looked when they first found it. Other locations in the city were used for her first action shots.
Tanya had pretty well honed her acting skills during the scenes on the sound stage. She had been really nervous at first, and had flubbed her lines quite a bit. During the second week of shooting on the sound stage, one of the grips approached her after one incredibly long series of flubs on her part, and asked in a stuttering voice if he could punch her in the stomach. This request stopped her in her tracks. She didn't know at all what to say. After stuttering a little bit herself, she asked him why he asked her that. He explained he had been to her Web site and had seen her statement there. He produced a printed copy of the page, and showed it to her. She remembered posting something like that a few months back, but had not updated the site or even thought about it since then. She thought about it a little, then decided to honor her offer.
Tanya had never been punched in the stomach before except during her training for the movie. Even then, her trainers had pulled their punches. She thought she could take it, but wasn't sure. She figured the worst that could happen was that she would fall to the ground, clutching her stomach in pain, possibly puking her guts out. The thought of that possibility alone almost made her change her mind. But she would never know if she didn't try it. After thinking about it a little more, she decided it was a challenge she couldn't refuse.
Tanya was always challenging herself to do more difficult athletic sports. She had always thought she would like to take up boxing, but had never had the opportunity to start. Besides, she didn't really want to get a black eye while she was appearing on tv
She told the grip yes, he could punch her stomach. She reached down and pulled her T-shirt out of her pants and up to her rib line. Since her jeans were low cut, most of her stomach was exposed in this position. She flexed her stomach muscles tight, prepared herself to accept the punch, and told the grip to go ahead and punch her.
The grip had about an average build. He had some muscles due to his work, but had only a little above average strength. He pulled his fist back, and let loose with what must have been his best punch, to her upper stomach. The punch hit with a resounding, hollow thud that reverberated a little.
Tanya's body jerked back a little, but only from the momentum of the punch. She was just thrown a little off balance by it. It did not feel at all what she thought it would feel like. She thought it would drive all the air from her stomach, like she had seen in the movies. Instead, it stung a lot, with the pain going away quickly, to be replaced by only a little dull ache. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but it wasn't at all painful.
The grip asked if she was all right, even though he could see she was almost completely unaffected. She told him she was OK, then made a discovery. The whole set was quiet and all the crew were looking at the grip. Sometime during the event, everyone had seen what was going on and had stopped their work to watch. She turned a little red with embarrassment. She felt she needed to say something, if for no other reason than to protect the life of the grip, who was being stared at angrily by a couple of the crew. So she turned to the crew and stammeringly told them a short version of the challenge she had posted on her Web site. One of the crew asked her if she would continue the challenge, and she said she would, even before she thought what she was committing herself to. There was a murmur in the crew, as she realized what she had said. She thought about it a little more, and decided this would be an excellent incentive to improve her acting skills.
Tanya made more flubs over the course of her work in the sound studio. At first, she often made the three mistakes in a row needed to get her stomach punched. At the first break after the flub, one of the crew would walk over to her and she would offer her stomach to his fist, while the remainder of the crew gathered around to watch. She didn't know how they selected who would be the one to punch her. It appeared they must be taking turns and using some selection mechanism, as only one of them would immediately approach her, and the same person never punched her more than once. Of course, if she flubbed more than one set of lines before the next break, several of the men would line up in front of her, one for each line flubbed. Her record was a line of seven of the crew lined up when she had one particularly bad but long session before a break.
Most of the crew were stronger than the first grip who had punched her, but the effect was always the same. Their fists never penetrated beyond the outer layer of her stomach muscles. In fact, she tried to relax her stomach muscles a little, just to see what a deeper stomach punch felt like. It hurt a lot, so she kept her stomach muscles taut after that. She tried pulling her stomach in really concave, but as long as she tightened her stomach muscles hard, their punches didn't have much effect.
Over the rest of the sound stage location shoot, her acting improved a lot, to the point where she wasn't punched in the stomach at all for the last week on the stage. She knew the crew still remembered her challenge, as there would sometimes be a groan from the crew when she would get the third take correct after flubbing a line twice. During the bridge scene in downtown Los Angeles, she didn't even flub one scene or line. The action scenes were a different matter.
It had been quite a while since Tanya had done any gymnastics But she thought she would be able to do the simple flips, tumbles and rolls in the script without any problem, since she was actually stronger and in better shape now than during her high school gymnastics career. She was, of course, wrong. She had forgotten how difficult it had been to pick up her gymnastics routines between school years, after a whole summer of no practice.
The movie company was shooting night scenes in several back alleys behind a row of warehouses in Santa Monica. These scenes were to be the point in the movie where Tanya would lose to a bunch of thugs and the businessman she was protecting would be kidnapped. As a part of her preparation for the movie, Tanya had received several months of kickboxing training, mostly centered on stunt work instead of actual combat. She had picked this sport up quickly due to her athletics background. Her personal trainer, Lily and several of the stunt people she sparred with had commented that her natural ability in this sport would allow her to go into competition, and probably win. She didn't think she would try it though, as she wanted to take her career in a different direction, more toward TV and movies. But, her training would allow her to do most of the stunts required by the script for the movie. The rest of the stunts and all of her adversaries in the fights would be performed by stunt people, all of whom she had already sparred and trained with.
The night shoot was scheduled for two weeks. During the first two nights, they would be shooting the shots with the businessman, where he is gagged, tied and taken away by the gang. Tanya was only in the initial establishing shots. The shots were completed on time, and the businessman was released for the remainder of the night shootings.
The third night's shoot was a complete disaster as far as Tanya was concerned. As this was the first time she had done any stunts on camera, she was a little nervous. Combined with that was the fact that she would be required to remember her lines and give her acting performance at the same time as she was trying to make the stunts look believable. The stunts at this point in the shoot were very simple, but she was having a difficult time doing them. She had overestimated her ability to remember and perform her gymnastic routines, and was missing her flips and tumbles quite often. When she did get her acrobatics correct, she would be concentrating so much on them she would miss her lines.
The director saw what was happening. He knew the best way to get her through this phase she was going through was to keep trying each shot until she got it right then go on to the next one as quickly as possible. He knew she would get into the swing of this soon. In fact, he had scheduled only the easier stunts for her first day just to allow her to settle into the part. So, he kept throwing a new scene at her as fast as she could complete the previous one successfully.
All the sessions that day went particularly long. So at the breaks, there was usually a line of several crewmen waiting to get their turn at punching her. The second break was the one where she set her record with a line of seven crewmen. As had happened in the past, she had no problem accepting their punches, though she knew each was trying to be the first to throw a punch to put her to her knees. By the end of that night's shoot, she had her acting and athletic ability back. When the crew broke for the final break of the night, there wasn't anyone in line waiting for her.
The remaining nights of the first week went a lot better. She was able to do increasingly difficult stunts and still perform her lines on cue. She only had to accept a couple punches each night. The first punch of the fourth night, however, was the worst she had taken so far. She was still sore from the third night's stunts (though not from the accompanying stomach punches), so that first punch to her sore stomach hurt enough she almost went to her knees. It was to the center of her stomach, just a little below the navel. It didn't sink in much, but the shock of it to her sore muscles caused her to bend over in pain. She spent the rest of that break doing strenuous stomach exercises to work the previous day's soreness out of her stomach, to the delight of the crew, of course.
They completed the rest of that first week's shoot only a couple shots behind schedule. Tanya knew the shots so far had the easiest stunts, and all the major stunts and all the fight scenes were due up the next week, probably with a lot more flubs and stomach punches. So when they broke for the weekend, she did an especially grueling workout session all day Sunday in preparation for what she knew would be coming.