This choice: Deidre fits her superhero spandex oddly well. • Go Back...Chapter #6Step Aside, Clark Kent. by: getbig   Yvonne bolts the second the shutter clicks, scampering back down the hall to finish changing with lightning speed. Autumn snickers as a distant door slams shut. "And the girls thought I'm behind schedule every morning."
"If nothing else, it's obvious you two are sisters." Deidre elbows Autumn in the side. Earning a squawk from the older girl. The motion pops a lithe oblique into view. A slim, strong muscle that Dennis certainly would have noticed earlier. He stashes the camera safely away in his backpack as the two tease eachother.
Autumn is the self-proclaimed 'Queen Bee' of the RPGs. The girliest, the preppiest, and the trendiest in their little adventuring party. 24 years old, and riding out one last fall semester to finish off a double major in biology and neurology, the Japanese girl was always on a mission to get the others a 'sense of style". The effort never worked, with the group's closets remaining stubbornly full of graphic tees and sweatpants.
Her little sister Yvonne was everything her older sister claimed to be, turned to 11. Not officially part of the sorority, the girls had declared her 'unofficially in' before pledge week even began. Scarcely 18, Yvonne was fresh off a state debate tournament victory and trip to nationals with her cheer team. Every shirt in her closet was cropped. Every book on her shelf was dog-eared. And every character she drew up was a sorcerer.
She fit right in.
If Autumn is the face of their group, Deidre keeps the wheels turning. Auburn curls always tucked away in a huge bun, a spare pencil always holding the mop together. A planner in arm's reach at all times. An unnatural love for well-organized spreadsheets.
A score of freckles dot her nose under the bridge of thick-frame black glasses. She chuckles and a crooked smile widens the corner of thin lips to
"We missed you this summer DM," Deidre. "How was the internship?"
"Cleveland was... nice." Dennis scrunches his nose. "The project was cool! Our team was designing a replacement conveyor belt for one of the old Great Lakes freighter. The drawings had cigarette stains from the 50's on them."
"So you're taking the return offer?" She teases.
Dennis shakes his head firmly. "No way. West Coast, best coast."
"That's what I like to hear. Maybe next time you'll find a research job on campus like the rest of us." Deidre pauses for a moment. "I learned a whole lot about analog electronics this summer. Put a lot of it to work for the new cosplay."
She brings both hands casually up to the top button of her dress shirt. Slim fingers pop the first button free, then the second. By the third, Dennis knows something is different about her. As the fourth button comes loose, the shirt slips off both shoulders and halfway down her back.
Her broad, strong, muscular back. The sleeveless spandex leotard stretches as Deidre rolls her shoulders to drop the shirt on the floor. Round, capped, powerful shoulders taper down to a trim, superheroine waist, with a triangular silhouette lifted straight from the pages of a comic book.
A bicep pops to life, round and full, as she sweeps the glasses from her face with a dramatic flair. She leans forward, and the triangular boob window stretched across her chest bounces as full, round boobs that certainly were half the size last semester press forward into a valley of cleavage.
Deidre strikes a pose, and winks at him. "So, what do you think? Good, huh?"
Dennis blinks once, then twice, and kicks his brain back into gear. "How?"
"A whole lot of hard work, and help from the girls." Deidre strikes a second pose, one hand on her hip, the other reaching skyward to show off every rippling muscle in her arms.
"You can't exercise your boobs to double the size." Dennis says.
"I would have tried that years ago." Gina laments.
"People don't just grow 30 pounds of muscle and 3 cup sizes over the summer."
"4 cup sizes." Deidre corrects. "And 32 pounds of muscle. Good guesses though."
"But how?" Gina muses. "Did the RPGs find a real-life genie?"
"The only magic here is modern medical science." Autumn steps up beside Deidre to explain. "We put our heads together, and decided that to truly embody our characters, we would have to look the part, in a way no foam muscles or padded bras could re-create."
"And so between Autumn's neurology work, my electronics knowledge, and Cathy's coding skills, we solved the problem." Cathy snorts at Deidre's description from across the room.
"And it you spent all summer transforming yourselves into the perfect LARP party?" Dennis asks.
"Playing with our very own character creator." Casey boasts.
"More accurately, we spent 14 weeks working out how to do it, 2 weeks testing, and most of last weekend trying it for real." Cathy explains. She shifts an arm, and the armor Dennis thought was painted foam clanks with a scrape of steel on steel. Thick steel plates overlap at the joints, and real stitched leather buckles hold it together over an undershirt and leggings too hidden for Dennis to see any changes underneath.
"So you put on 32 pounds of muscle in days," Gina says.
"Minutes." Deidre breathes the word.
"Want a demo?" Autumn asks.
~
Deidre slips her shirt back on for the walk to Cathy and Autumn's apartment, and skips carefree along the sidewalk making introductions with Gina and the crew as if a moment ago she hadn't dropped the biggest bombshell of Dennis's life. Acting nonchalant about changing her body with a science project. It makes no sense. The RPGs were geeky, brainy, and studious last semester, but nothing like this.
And they even looked normal when he arrived earlier. Before taking the picture.
Perfect pictures.
Dennis turns a shade paler. He pulls the camera out of the bag again, and picks a subject. A bush on the street corner is innocent enough. Pausing a moment, he adjusts the focus and looks through the viewfinder. Soft white flowers rustles in the breeze.
Red.
He thinks the word, and every flower melts from white to crimson. Lowering the viewfinder, a white petal shakes loose and flutters to the ground. He looks back through the viewfinder, and snaps a picture of crimson flowers.
And as he stows the camera hastily away, the flowers have always been red.
Fuck.
Self-preservation instincts kick in.
No more changes, until you know what you've done.
~
A flat pedestal, salvaged from a deadlift power rack, forms the machine's base and frame. The handles from another exercise machine are welded on at chest height. A pair of headphones with a long cord hang from a white plastic hook on the wall. A dozen ethernet cables run to computers all up and down the wall, and then back to a laptop on the couch. Projectors point down from all 4 corners of the rack, casting a white glow on the platform.
"So I know what this looks like." Deidre gestures to the mess. "But what you're looking at is cutting edge bioscience. Autumn came across some research papers at work, covering the use of external stimulus to promote neurological and biological responses. It was close to some of the audio work I was doing in Dr. Feltmann's lab, so she brought a couple copies over for Cathy and I to read. Halfway through the third paper it just... clicked."
She turns to him with a glint in her eyes. "I could just see where the research led. You could combine all these different inputs to get a human body to respond exactly as intended. And they worked out the controls too! Written out in separate papers and never put in one place."
Cathy moves for the laptop on the couch, but pauses when her plate armor clinks. "I can show you the math, if you help me out of this."
Dennis starts with a gauntlet while Gina and Deidre kneel down to start on her bracers. The steel is heavy in his hands. How does Cathy walk around in this so easily? Piece by piece, they pile up the armor on the floor.
Only an inch shorter than Dennis at 6' even, Cathy is far larger than him now, carved from marble. A white undershirt is fights for survival as she rolls out both shoulders and stretches with a subtle twist in either direction. Rising onto her toes, a strong bubble butt emerges from under the hem, supported by two tree trunk thighs.
And her leggings.
Whoa.
He's never seen Cathy where clothing that so overtly shows off her body before. The spandex sits high on her waist, almost to the belly button, with a couple abdominals peaking over the band. But down below is where the real magic takes place. The wide waistband pulls fabric tight between two teardrops of powerful muscle, and sculpts an already phenomenal butt into something unbelievable. A tight pattern of thin pinstripes from waist to ankle accentuate every swell of her muscle like a topographical map.
"I stole these from Autumn, but they're on the last legs." Cathy snorts at her own pun.
"I'll buy you a new pair." Deidre stares openly at her friend's ass. "They were made for you, Cath."
"Preach." Gina agrees.
"Looking like a proper warrior," Dennis says.
Cathy turns pink at the compliments, and opens the laptop. Dennis slides in beside, and tries gamely not to focus on the round bicep at the corner of his vision as Cathy walks him through the machine's inner workings. The goal was to stimulate the brain into overdrive, pumping out signals and hormones in a controlled manner, while external energy was fed in to accelerate the process. He catches a solid 20% on the first go-around, and another 30% on the second.
Just as Cathy starts at the top for a third time, Deidre gently closes the laptop with her index finger.
"How about a practical demonstration, and then you two can continue with the theory?"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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