Trina

She becomes a very strong girl


Afterwards, it seemed completely appropriate that Trina and I met in the 
gym. I remember it so clearly. I was without my usual workout partner, 
Mark, but I was trying to bench my usual weights anyway. The first few 
reps went just fine, but then I started to fade, and I was getting a 
little worried as I approached the seventh repetition at 200 pounds. 

As I struggled against the bar, and just as I was about to fail, I heard 
a cheerful voice 

"Need some help?" 

I couldn't speak anymore, so I just nodded my head, and a pair of arms 
came into my field of view and helped me get the bar back on the bench. 
Nice arms, not too muscular, but smooth and well-defined. I looked up, 
and the face was even better: blonde hair, brown eyes, and a beautiful 
smile. She introduced herself, and I thanked her, and one thing led to 
another, and we were telling one another our life stories over coffee. 
She was a undergraduate at the college, majoring in biology, and I was a 
grad student in history. 

After that, Trina became my new workout partner, and I discovered a new 
dedication to the gym, and set myself a goal on the bench press of 300 
pounds. Trina was far more dedicated than I, but she was a hard gainer, 
even for a girl. She could just about bench 100 pounds, but it seemed 
that no matter how hard she tried, she was stuck at that level. I 
promised to help, but it didn't seem to make any difference how much I 
pushed and exhorted her on. 

The good news was that we were proving to be very compatible, and moved 
in together starting in January. As we built a routine of work, working 
out, and just hanging out together, those became the happiest days of my 
life. Trina liked to wrestle, so we had a lot of mock-serious battles on 
the living-room floor, but since she was 5 feet 8 and maybe 130 pounds, 
and I was 6 feet even and about 190, I always won. 

One day near the end of the spring semester, Trina came home with a big 
grin on her face. 

"What is it?," I asked. "You look like you just won the lottery!" 

She laughed. "Remember Professor Barnes? The one I wanted to do my 
senior thesis with next year? Well, he's asked me to be part of a 
project that he's working on." 

"That's great! What sort of project is it?" 

"Well, that's the neat part. It's a study of a technique that he's 
developed to help athletes through workout plateaus... and I get to be a 
test subject, as well as a researcher!" 

Considering all the trouble she'd had putting on muscle, I could see why 
she'd be particularly pleased with this. "When do you start?" 

"The middle of May, just about when classes get out. It'll run through 
the summer, and through all of next year, too. The bad news is that, for 
most of the summer, we'll be working out of the university's old marine 
research lab in the Bahamas, the one that lost its funding a few years 
back. Dr. Barnes says that it will provide his research group with a 
controlled environment. But you can come and visit!" 

I knew that I'd be pretty busy that summer, and told her so. "But if 
it's important to you, and I can see that it is, go ahead. We can still 
talk by email." 

So it started. In mid-May, she started on the program. I never really 
understood what it involved, except that it was some sort of biochemical 
thing. Early on, I expressed concern, but Trina assured me that her 
professor knew what he was doing, so I stopped worrying. And the results 
certainly were impressive! Trina broke through her old plateau almost 
immediately, and within a month had raised her bench press maximum to 
150 pounds. I even noticed that she was harder to beat in armwrestling, 
though I could still do it without much of a strain. The neatest thing 
about it, she said, was that she was never tired, and seemed to recover 
almost immediately from working out. After a few weeks, she was working 
out twice a day -- in the morning with me, and in the afternoon by 
herself over at the lab, which had all sorts of high-tech exercise 
equipment. 

In early July, she flew down to the Bahamas. By then, she had worked out 
that she would spend the rest of the summer and the entire fall semester 
down at the old marine lab, working on this project. I was sad to see 
her go, but I promised her that I'd visit. I promised myself that I'd 
work harder than ever in the gym, so I'd look good when I visited her. 

Things got hectic at work, and I had to pick up an extra class to teach 
in the fall, so I never did make it down to visit during the summer. I 
did pass my 300-pound bench press mark near the end of summer, and sent 
an excited email down to Trina. She said, "That's great, Dave! Wait'll 
you see how I'm doing," and she sent me out to buy a few swimsuits and 
workout clothes for when I came down. They were all a few sizes larger 
than I remembered her wearing, but my memory for stuff like that was 
never very good. 

Trina continually asked me when I was coming down to visit, so I finally 
settled on an extended Thanksgiving break. I got someone to cover my 
last week of classes and finals for me, and I was off. 

I was met at the airstrip by a student that I barely recognized. 

"I'm Brian," he said. I looked around for Trina. 

"Where's Trina?," I asked. 

He gave me a funny look. "She's back at base camp. You can see her when 
we get there. They keep her pretty busy, so I said that I'd come out to 
get you." 

"Base camp", as he called it, was a few miles out from the little town 
where I had landed. The island was the usual Bahamian sandstrip, with a 
few straggly trees struggling amidst the undergrowth. The beaches and 
water were beautiful, though. Soon we were at the camp, and Brian showed 
me my room, which was small but on the beach. 

"Wait here a minute, and I'll send Trina over from the lab," he said. 
"Oh, and she said that you were bringing some clothes for her?" This 
struck me as sort of strange, but I passed the clothes along to him, and 
sat down to wait, excited that I'd finally see Trina again. After a 
couple of minutes, a loud knock came at the door. 

"Who's there?," I said with a grin. 

"C'est moi!," Trina announced as she burst into the room. I jumped up to 
give her a hug, but she held out her arms, indicating that I shouldn't. 
Then I noticed that she was wearing a long bathrobe. 

"Isn't that kind of hot?," I asked. "Why don't you take it off?" I 
arched my eyebrows like a Marx brother. 

She grinned. "I just wanted you to have the full effect!" 

With that, the robe dropped to the floor to reveal her new body, clad in 
a yellow two-piece swimsuit that I'd brought for her. I was stunned. 
Gone was the old fitness-model Trina. Now she looked like a female 
bodybuilder! I whistled. "Wow!" 

"You like? I wasn't sure if you would, you know." 

"Beautiful!," I said, and gave her a big hug. She felt solid all over, 
in fact surprisingly solid. I commented on that. 

"You're observant, aren't you. Yes, there's more to this girl than meets 
the eye. Let's compare arms." 

I looked puzzled, but held out my left arm next to her right. Mine was 
still larger, but not by much. 

"You've gotten bigger, too, haven't you? What's your bench up to now?" 

"About 330 or so. How about yours?" I guessed she could probably lift at 
least 275 or so. 

She just smiled at me. "Let me show you. It's more fun that way." She 
moved over to the small table, and planted her right elbow on it an 
obvious armwrestling challenge. I grinned and moved over. 

"No speed moves," she said. "I'll count to three, and then we go." 

I agreed, and we locked hands. There was something peculiar about her 
grip, but I couldn't figure out what it was in the three seconds before 
we started. At the word "Go," I built up the pressure suddenly, until I 
was pushing as hard as I could. Now I'd armwrestled plenty of times 
before, and I know that no matter how much stronger one person is than 
another, there's always some movement in the beginning of the match. 
This time, though, there was none. I might as well have been wresting an 
iron bar. 

I looked up. Trina had a too-innocent expression on her face, and when 
she caught me looking at her, she smiled at me. "Tougher than it used to 
be, huh? Ready to quit?" 

I tried to smile back, but it was hard, what with all the effort I was 
making. Through gritted teeth, I said, "Not just yet." 

She smiled wider. "OK, prepare yourself! Three, two, one, go!" At the 
word go, my right arm was slowly but inexorably pinned to the table. She 
jumped up, crying "Yes! I always wanted to do that!" 

I rubbed my sore arm. "Jesus, Trina, how strong are you?" 

She sat down on my lap, and massaged my arm. Suddenly, I knew what had 
struck me as strange about her before. There was no "give" in her. When 
I hugged her, or held her hand, or had her sitting in my lap, it was 
like touching a statue inside a silk glove. 

"Come on, I'll show you," she said. With that, she jumped up,and pulled 
me outside. 

"We're alone here -- everyone else went into town to give us some 
privacy. See those ruins over there? They're what's leftover after a 
hurricane came through here a few years back. That's why the lab was 
abandoned." 

We walked over to the ruined buildings, big reinforced concrete boxes 
with old reinforcing bars sticking out from the crumbled concrete. Trina 
hopped up on one decayed wall, and struck a double bicep pose. 

"I love having muscles!," she said. I certainly wasn't going to 
disagree. She smiled, relaxed her pose, and grabbed the end of one of 
the steel bars emerging from the building. "But I like being strong even 
more." 

With that she tugged on the bar, and with a screeching noise, it emerged 
from the wall. Those walls must be in even worse shape than they look, I 
thought. Then my attention was returned to Trina. 

"Check this out!" She held the 6 foot bar out in front of her. As I 
watched in amazement, she bent the bar in the middle as if it were a 
paperclip. "Pretty cool, huh? This is EASY for me!" And she proceeded to 
rapidly tie a knot in the bar, which screeched and groaned from the 
strain. When she was done, she tossed the 70-pound bar in my direction, 
and I just managed to trap it against the ground without hurting myself. 
It was hot from the strain it had just experienced.