Sylph in “Assisted Compositions” “Just one more, Joe!” “hih… hih… hih…” “Oh. my. God.” “spot… “spot… “SPOT!” Todd tore his eyes away from the impossible woman who was edging her way into the weight room long enough to grab the bar and help Joe rack the weight. “Jesus, Todd,” Joe panted, sitting up from the bench and looking at his friend, “what’s the deal?” Todd, normally a glib and charming young man, couldn’t even find words, so he just pointed. Joe looked. She was what Joe would politely describe as gi-normous. And he would be very polite, because she was easily big enough and, from the look of her, strong enough to squash him to so much paté without even trying. There had been some rumors when most of the new weightroom equipment had been installed yesterday, but it obviously fell far short of the mark. Joe, a star wrestler and one of the best lifters at NYU, had looked at the immense weights being installed and shook his head. He had been certain that there was no one who could possibly require such huge, oversized plates and bars. He had assumed it was some sort of practical joke or something. Now, he wasn’t at all sure. Sylph was a big girl. She hadn’t been properly weighed for years, now, but she guessed that she weighed in somewhere close to three-quarters of a ton. Over the years, this had provided her with some rather novel problems, notably that her weight was too compact and dense for her to stand or move above the foundation level of most residential buildings. Her shoulders were so wide that she had to go through most doors sideways if she could fit at all. There were several places she could no longer enter at all without causing structural damage to the buildings because her chest was also incredibly deep. It wasn’t just that she was big, though. She had to be about the most perfectly balanced mass of meat he had ever seen. No one muscle group stood out as more inhumanly developed than any other, certainly there were no muscle groups that looked as if they received insufficient attention on her magnificent, vibrant form. In fact, the only thing about her that might be considered less than ideal was her height. Granted, anyone that massive would be vertically challenged, but Sylph was actually wider across her shoulders than she was tall. Having managed to slip into the room without too much difficulty-she’s had to suck in her chest, but that was par for the course-Sylph looked around, ambled lightly over to the open part of the mat and started stretching. She was amazingly flexible. Despite having far more muscle than any other five people on the planet, she was far from muscle-bound. It was true, of course, that she couldn’t reach fully across her chest with either hand, but she could do full splits and lay her head on the floor or either quad (her knees were a little out of her reach at this point) and she could reach over her enormous deltoids and nearly to the small of her back. She stretched thoroughly and began doing a slow floor routine to warm up. As she moved with deceptive grace through her routine, Joe and Todd went back to their workouts. Joe shook his head. “Man, how does someone get that huge?” he muttered through his teeth at his best friend. “Serious case of ‘roids?” Todd suggested. He was moderately horrified, although Joe seemed, surprisingly, almost mesmerized. “I don’t think so,” Joe grunted, pushing out another rep. “Look at her again. Her skin’s flawless.” Todd looked. Joe was right. She didn’t even have freckles or teenage acne scars. As he was looking, another couple people entered the gym. He recognized Wade right away, but the girl who came in right after simply took his breath away. The new girl was only a little taller than Sylph, but amazingly trim and tight. Todd realized right away that she was carrying a little muscle in that amazing package, but it was deceptive because she was so well proportioned over all, like an off-season Gioia Mavi, maybe not quite as big. Her long, black hair was pulled back in a pony tail and her workout togs looked relatively new. Her huge black eyes got even bigger as she stared around the gym until she spotted Sylph. Her face broke into a dazzling smile, then, and Todd thought he might die happy right there. She started towards the (much) bigger girl, and Todd was contentedly watching the generous sway of her butt when Wade’s voice snapped him back to reality. “Hey, Todd- quit perving on my friends, would you?” Wade was a couple years ahead of Todd, having graduated two years ago, but they’d been friends on the basketball court, and he could easily get away with this sort of teasing. “Why, you got claims on her?” “Which one?” “New girl, not the ‘roidazon.” Wade frowned slightly. “Man, Todd, you can be such a jerk, sometimes.” “What?” Todd looked at Wade and realized that he was actually upset. “What’d I say?” Wade shook his head disgustedly. “The big girl over there is Sylph. She’s really nice, and it wouldn’t hurt you to try and see past surface appearances sometimes.” Todd opened his mouth to retort, but Wade continued without stopping. “The other girl is Kalida. We kind of grew up together, but I never really knew her that well.” “Dude. Sorry. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you liked her,” Todd commented, nodding at Sylph again. Wade decided to let it go. “Well, I’ll admit, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed…” Wade smiled. “Like you could!” Wade shook his head and punched Todd on the arm. “So you really know that other girl?” “Yeah. We were at the opposite ends of our high school, but I kind of remember her. I think I actually tutored her in math a couple of times, but I don’t think she remembers me real well.” “So… could you introduce us?” Todd included Joe in his question, and Joe got up from his bar and came over, shaking out his arms. “I’ll make sure dipstick, here, keeps the filter on his brain/mouth connection,” Joe offered, “but I’d really like to meet them, too.” At the other end of the gym, the girls greeted each other again and Sylph helped Kalida figure out how to stretch out for weight training. It was made a lot easier by Kalida’s natural grace and athleticism, but it was still pretty obvious to Sylph that Kalida had never really seriously seen the inside of a weight room. As they stretched out, Kalida kept looking over her shoulder at the men clustered by the bench press. “Sylph,” she hissed, “they’re staring at us!” Sylph glanced at them and grinned. “Of course they are. You, girl, are probably the most smoking hot example of womanhood that any of them have ever seen.” Kalida blushed red clear to her roots. “I thought they were staring at you.” “Oh, they were. Until you came in, that is. You’re what they call a showstopper!” “Can’t you make them stop?” Kalida grimaced uncomfortably. “I doubt it. I didn’t bring any burlap or sackcloth to cover you in,” Sylph teased. “You might as well get used to it. You’re studying dance, remember. What do you think is going to happen when you go out on stage?” “That’s different!” Sylph cocked an eyebrow and Kalida deflated a bit. “You mean it doesn’t bother you at all?” “To be looked at like a piece of meat on the rack? Of course it does, but that’s just the way men are. You either get used to it or you turn into a hermit. Didn’t you get this in high school, at all?” “Not me. I was tall, but I really didn’t fill out until after I went to Greece. Mostly, I was just the knobby-kneed hockey player from room 3B.” Sylph looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything as the men were on their way over. Wade stepped forward, first, and made the introductions. “Joe, Todd, I’d like you to meet Sylph and Kalida. And vice versa,” he smiled. Todd reached forward to shake hands with both girls before turning his attention to Kalida. “It’s really nice to meet you,” he began. “I think I may be inspired to use a really corny pickup line, but only if you say you don’t mind.” Kalida blushed again and dimpled shyly at the tall young man. Todd wasn’t bad looking, with his sandy brown hair and lively blue eyes, and he had a way of talking and moving that just seemed able to disarm the most tense situation. “You can use it, but I’m bound to tell you no,” Kalida answered teasingly. Todd gave a huge, comical sigh and immediately turned his charm on Sylph. “Can you talk to her, dear lady? I’m afraid her reticence has unmanned me utterly!” Joe punched him on the shoulder and smirked. “Ignore the clown, Sylph. It’s good to meet you. What are you two coming to NYU for?” “Well, she’s here for dance,” Sylph said, indicating Kalida, “and I’m studying visual arts.” Joe gaped at her. “You didn’t get those,” he said, lightly touching Sylph’s mammoth bicep, “pushing a paintbrush.” Sylph’s laugh was like the tinkle of tiny silver bells. “No,” she admitted, “I got these by pushing a lot of lead and iron around, the same way you did.” After chatting for a few minutes, Sylph indicated that they ought to get back to their workouts. “Um, I usually make dinner in my suite,” Kalida offered, “if you guys aren’t too busy, why don’t you stop by and we can talk more then.” Joe and Todd exchanged glances. “I’d like to,” Joe admitted, “but I really can’t. My girlfriend is in town and I promised to have dinner with her and her friends.” “Nothing stopping me, though,” Todd grinned sunnily. “I’ll be there.” While they were talking, the NYU Violets they’d met at lunch came in and warmed up, then started over to the free weights. Sylph got both Wade and Kalida started on some simple exercises, demonstrating the proper way to handle the weights, then went over to greet the football players. Kalida was somewhat surprised to discover that she was actually lifting heavier than Wade, but Wade didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all, so she decided to keep it up. For his part, Wade was impressed by how much Kalida could handle and handle well. He knew a lot of guys who couldn’t bench or curl nearly as much as Kalida was doing now. Wade knew that he could single rep most of the weights Kalida was doing, but that was about it. He watched, entranced, as her shapely arms clenched and tightened into visible biceps and triceps- not huge, but not exactly small, either, and, he was certain, very firm. There was a shout from the squats rack, where one of the linemen had loaded a bar nearly full and then tried to lift it. He’d gotten it off the pegs- barely- but the weight had been probably a good two hundred pounds in excess of his best lift, and his spotter missed the grab. Fortunately, Sylph was standing nearby and quickly reached out with her left hand and snagged the falling bar with barely a quaver. “What did you think you were doing?” she demanded, visibly upset. His spotter, Mike Pendergast, the quarterback they’d met at lunch, answered for him as the lineman gulped air with wide eyes. “That’s Damon. He was trying to show off, of course.” “What, for me?” Sylph looked disgusted, now. “I don’t even do curls with this weight anymore.” Mike shook his head, sadly. “Some guys just want you to know they’re strong, you know? I think Damon’s kind of taken with you.” “Oh, good grief. Look,” she called, raising the weight up high at the end of her arm, “I know none of you are as strong as me. Don’t work out to impress me, work out for yourselves.” She racked the weight and began to walk away. “Hey, wait a second,” Damon called after her. Sylph turned and waited. “Just how strong are you?” “Honestly? I don’t really know anymore,” she shrugged. “They don’t really make commercial weights in tons.” “Then how do you work out? And why?” Sylph considered. “Mostly, these days, I work out to keep my flexibility and conditioning. I don’t really lift heavy for me very much, except in isolating specific muscles, and then I use those bad boys over there,” she explained, pointing at the enormous weights stacked in one corner of the room. “Are you serious?” “No one could lift those!” “You gotta show us!” Several of the other linemen had gathered around and were egging her on. Finally, Sylph sighed and walked over to a huge curl bar. She nodded. “Okay, but just once. Than y’all have to go back to your own workouts, okay?” Wade nudged Kalida as Sylph started loading up the bar. He didn’t even try to guess how much weight was on it- it looked like more than a ton, and she kept adding more. The footballers were already impressed as they made out that the plates she was handling so easily weighed 500 pounds each, and she was up to six on a side. Setting the locks in place, Sylph looked around her and realized she had the attention of everybody in the gym, now. “Okay. Everybody stand back. I’ve never actually tried this much before,” she said. A couple of the linemen nudged each other and looked curious or relieved as they wondered if Sylph’s prodigious musculature actually had a limit. Sylph reached down and took a deep breath. She grabbed the bar in a palms-up grip and, panting now, straightened her legs. Her shorts, tight before, simply exploded as her glutes and quads went from huge, directly through mindblowing, and stopped squarely in the middle of oh-my-God, but Sylph didn’t stop. Slowly, with the bar bending nearly to the floor on each end, she stood up straight. Her top, which Wade thought had been loose before, suddenly became glued to her deltoids and lats, and her biceps instantly filled sleeves that could have made the waist band for an enormously fat woman’s dress. Eyes closed now, Sylph lifted the weight straight out in front of her, bracing with her left leg to keep from over balancing. “Right or left?” she gasped, holding the weight straight out from her body in her quavering arms. “What?” asked Damon. “Right… or… left?” she gritted out between clenched teeth. Her trapezius muscles threatened to swallow her pretty head and her pecs seemed to add whole inches as she strained to keep the weight steady. “Uh…” Damon hesitated, then shouted, “Left! Do the left!” Ever so faintly, Sylph actually smiled. Shifting her grip, everybody heard it as her shirt began to split from the collar down to the small of her back. Next, she released her right arm and reached behind herself to help her maintain her balance. Finally, she slowly, agonizingly, curled the weight directly in front of her using only the strength of her left biceps. The sleeve on her left arm shredded and hung in loose tatters around an arm now grown to incomprehensible proportions. Bearing down, now sucking air in short, awkward gulps, Sylph began to strain once more. Her face became a mask of concentration, veins on her forehead standing out against her normally pretty face. The sound of ripping material sounded once again as her left shoulder expanded to absorb the insane pressures being applied against it. Turning her wrist and scowling, Sylph shook her head, flinging sweat in a wide arc. Finally, after what seemed like minutes with no movement, the weight began once more to shift. It moved up. Sylph roared, an amazingly loud sound coming from a woman who seemed to be at the very end of her endurance, and finally powered the bar straight up. Her entire chest blew up like an exploding bomb, blasting the remains of her shirt into little more then memories. Eyes open again, Sylph held the weight there while she caught her breath, then slowly, gently, brought the weight back down to the floor. Slowly at first, then with growing intensity, the gym shook with the applause of the collected ballplayers and Sylph’s friends. “Um, Kalida?” Sylph muttered. “Yeah?” the smaller girl asked, still in shock. “Do you think you could go back to my room for me?” “Yeah, sure. Why?” “I’m kind of nearly nekkid,” Sylph said, blushing, “and I didn’t bring any spare clothes.”