Chapter 6

I woke up fairly late, barely in time for lectures. I dressed in a scrambled rush and stumbled out the door with Nat. I must have looked quite a state, arms all over the place, dressed in my hastily grabbed clothing, hair all over the shop.

"You really aren't a morning person," Nat said cheerfully.

"BAH!" I said as I tried to workout which set of arms I could strangle her with.

"Did you remember to bring your gym kit so we can go check out the multi-gym?" asked Nat.

'Was that today?' I wondered. I was drawing a blank on if I remembered agreeing to that.

"You'll have to go without me, no time to go back now. Sorry," I said.

"Well I figured you might forget so I stuck a set of gym clothes for you and a spare towel in with my stuff," she said smiling.

"If you did that, why did you ask?"

"Wanted to see how you would react, to see how anti you are to the gym idea."

"Hmm," she was a sneaky little wench. "How did I do?"

"About as well as can be expected," she said sweetly.

We travelled the rest of the way to the lecture theatre in silence. Nat seemed quite happy, practically skipping at one point. She definitely was a morning person.

We arrived and took our seats and then got on with the business of being students. It was some really boring subject I just couldn't connect with, logic or some such. I took copious notes and hopefully, come exam time, I would be able to piece the thing together. We exited one lecture into another. This was on programming, which was more down my alley. I managed to focus a bit better and came out of the lecture with some new concepts on typecasting and polymorphism filed away for future study.

Then it was gym time. Nat grabbed an arm and marched me over to the university gym. Much the same thing had happened when she decided to join. I had been forcibly dragged along and forced to register and take the mandatory orientation session. I had gone once then never again. I supposed at least now it meant I could go straight in and not have a group of new gym people gawping at my extra arms as we were told how to use the machines. I guess it meant I would have the whole gym doing it instead, but at least I could get on with what ever workout Nat had planned for me in the mean time.

We headed into the changing rooms after paying the small fee to enter and showing our cards. The reception woman glanced at the cards first, then us, and made a strange "wha" sound when she saw me. Luckily this was a reasonably quiet time of day and the changing rooms only had a few girls in them. I only had to contend with their stares as I got changed. The fact that I was getting changed seemed to make the stares longer than the usual glances I got, my naked form holding some fascination for the ladies present, who seemed to want to see how I fitted together. I felt like I was some car wreck and they were all rubber neckers.

Once we were changed into our workout clothes we headed out into the gym proper, where the sight of a six armed girl in reasonably tight clothing once again brought things to a standstill. As Nat and I started doing our stretches to get warmed up I reflected that this was a bit like what Nat went through. I had often noticed that when she entered a room, usually when she was dolled up to the nines, but not always, most of the attention would swing to her. Now I was getting that same effect, only more from looking weird than anything else. Nat was more or less ignored, it was an odd reversal the state of things. I wondered if she found it as weird as I did.

Once we had stretched ourselves out, we began our workout. I had to use a few creative reinterpretations of the exercises to get my full musculature stretched, and my motions on my new limbs were still a touch robotic and required a lot of concentration, but I was improving. I could pretty much manage all the big movements, with some trouble with small stuff, and almost binary control of my digits with grip or ungrip settings, and little or no individual finger control. I was just happy the random involuntary movement was down to a minimum, the odd twitch every now and again mostly in my fingers. For the most part my new arms stayed where they were put.

We did a little cardio to get into the swing of things. The last time I had partnered with Nat I had foolishly pushed myself too hard to keep up. I had swiftly got out of breath and had to sit down to keep from throwing up. This time I was deliberately taking things easy, but even then I was having no trouble keeping going. It seemed my new body was in pretty good physical condition.

After a ten minute run to get the blood pumping we moved on to testing out my body on the various weight machines.

"OK, let's try the bench press first," Nat suggested. "For a basis of comparison, I'm not going to hold back so we know just how strong you are now."

She went first. lifting what seemed to be a colossal amount of weight, I followed and found to my surprise I could lift it fairly easily and could push things a little higher than Nat. We continued this testing and I found that like Nat, I was probably equivalent to a very strong man. I wasn't super human exactly, and I had the advantage of 3 sets of strong arms so I could probably exert a serious amount of force if need be, but I was probably stronger than most of the people I would encounter in day to day life.

This gave me a nice boost to my ego. Then Nat executed pay back for me besting her scores by having us do a proper workout. I felt like I had been through a mangle by the end of it. I didn't think I had pulled anything, but I was unused to that sort of exercise. Even with my MORFS tuned body, it took its toll. I found it a bit annoying that it took me three times as long on the arm exercises as Nat, as I had to do each set of arms. I did suggest I cheat and use all my arms at once on the same weights, but Nat vetoed it. Our activities brought even more stares as they saw these two girls, one fairly small and curvy seemingly with no muscles to speak of, lift more than some of the large blokes were doing, seemingly without breaking a sweat.

We had a nice hot shower afterwards, the warm water doing wonders to sooth my abused muscles. After that we redressed and headed over to meet with Shaun and Caitlyn for lunch. It was weird. Though I felt totally zonked out of my mind, I felt really good. Must have been the endorphins or something.

We arrived in the cafeteria and spotted Caitlyn and Shaun waiting for us.

"Help me Caitlyn, she's trying to kill me with exercise," I said, slumping down into the seat next to her.

Caitlyn laughed and gave me a kiss on the cheek, "Ah poor baby. Did you wear her out in the gym, Nat?"

"Bah, more like she wore me out! It was great! I hardly ever find a partner I can go toe to toe with," she said grinning, giving Shaun a kiss and sitting down.

"You should have asked me," said Shaun flexing a biceps, "I could've kept up."

"Oh I doubt it. She's a lot stronger than she looks," Nat said.

Shaun snorted a little dismissively looking at me, "I suppose she's got three times the muscles of a normal person, but she doesn't look very strong."

"Oh, appearances can be deceptive," she said then leant over and whispered something in his ear.

His eyes went wide. "WHAT! You're kidding." Nat shook her head, "Bloody hell! She's stronger than most of the guys on the team, and you kept up with her?"

"Yeah, like her there's a lot more to me than meets the eye," Nat said with a grin.

Shaun sat there looking a bit shocked, then leant over to Caitlyn and said, "We're dating super heroes."

"Oh I already knew she was super," smiled Caitlyn, putting her arm around me. "I just didn't know she was super strong as well as super sexy."

"Well right now I'm super hungry, so I'm going to get some lunch. Anyone want anything?" I asked with a grin. Shaun and Caitlyn shook their heads.

"I'll come with," said Nat.

We walked up and joined the queue. I was quite hungry, not the least since I had missed breakfast. I was eyeing up the menu with interest.

The campus cafeteria had a sandwich counter that did mini baguettes, and a proper kitchen that did cooked meals. I had been tempted by the sandwich line, which was shorter, but I felt I needed something more substantial.

Nat went to join the sandwich queue, obviously after the quick fix.

As I waited in the queue, shuffling slowly forward, a voice from behind said, "Hey check out spider girl!"

"Man what a freak!" said another voice.

I turned and saw two guys slightly older than me staring at me. I turned back trying to ignore them.

"Wow, she's a fox, though," said idiot A.

"Yeah, imagine what she could do with all those hands. Bet she likes it as freaky as she is," said idiot B.

I gritted my teeth and tried not to let it bother me. The line slowly shuffled forwards towards the food. I was really quite hungry now the scent of freshly cooked food drifted on the air making my stomach growl. There was a commotion in the line behind me several people saying "hey" or "watch it" or "there's a line here you know" a few moments later there was a voice behind me.

"Hey spider girl!" said idiot A. I ignored him, hoping he would go away.

"Hey, 8 limbed freak!"

I clenched my hands into fists and tried to resist turning around.

"Hey you!" said idiot B, then someone poked me hard in the back.

"Ow!" I exclaimed. "That hurt! Leave me alone!"

"Come on, sweet cheeks. How about a little massage or summit?" said a leering Idiot A.

"With a happy ending?" asked idiot B, winking at his friend, which caused them both to burst into hysterical laughter.

"Fuck off," I said and turned back to the front arms crossed in front of me.

One of them grabbed me from behind. "Oh don't be like that, foxy freak. You'll enjoy it once we get going."

"Let go of me!" I shouted.

"Get your stinking hands off of her," said a very annoyed sounding Caitlyn.

I turned and saw my little redhead, hands on hips, her face a picture of rage, tail whipping about.

"Yeah? What's it to you, red?" asked idiot B.

"That's my girlfriend you are harassing. Now take a hike!" she said defiantly.

"Girl friend..." said Idiot A eyeing me and Caitlyn up, then elbowed his friend in the ribs, "Dude, 8 limbed lesbian and her cat-girl girlfriend, that is so hot!"

Caitlyn didn't look amused. By this point Shaun had come over as well, and was standing to the side of Caitlyn looking angry. "You leave her alone or else," said Caitlyn.

"Or else what, wildcat?" said Idiot A with a dismissive snort.

Caitlyn stalked up close to him and then in a quiet voice said, "Or else I do this," and slammed her knee into his groin. The guy collapsed on the floor howling in agony.

His friend stared at him in shock, then shouted, "BAD KITTY!" and went to take a swipe at her.

I grabbed his arm, stopping its motion. He struggled in my grip for a while, then tried to swing his free arm at me, but I grabbed that, too. Then I hit him in the stomach with one of my spare arms, knocking the wind out of him before I pushed him away. Shaun caught him and threw him on towards the exit. I grabbed the other guy and tossed him over to Shaun who bounced him in the direction of his friend. The two of them paused for a bit, then hobbled out the door, obviously having had enough of a beating for one day. A few of the queue clapped at that, which made me blush. Caitlyn took a bow.

She then walked over to me and asked, "Are you OK sweetie? They didn't hurt you, did they?"

"No, I'm OK" I replied. "Thanks for the rescue you guys."

"Any time," said Caitlyn and gave me a big kiss on the lips, which caused someone in the queue to whistle, making me turn yet redder shades.

I turned back to my queue and waited patiently to get my food. After a lot more shuffling, tray pushing, and paying, I returned to our table, tray in hand. This was another time where having additional hands was useful. I could hold my tray securely and then grab stuff without having to find space to put it down. I was the envy of all the other dinners attempting to balance their trays one handed, or use a knee while they got cutlery, or drinks, or any other item where the canteen lacked a place to put the tray down.

I sat down next to Caitlyn and tucked in. "What are you eating?" asked Caitlyn.

"All day breakfast, with extra black pudding," I replied, "Want some?"

"How can you eat that stuff?" she asked, making a face. "It's fried congealed blood?".

"It's tasty, besides I eat meat, so it seems a little hypocritical to rule out other bits of the animals just because of what bit it is. If it wasn't tasty, then that would be another thing," I said between bites.

"I suppose that makes sense," said Caitlyn, looking doubtful.

"She's just trying to get you onto salads so you don't lose your figure," teased Nat.

"After the workout you gave me, I think this little fry up is the least of my worries," I said with a grin.

"Maybe I should fatten you up. Then no one else will want you, piggy," Caitlyn poked me playfully in the tummy.

"Oink!" I said.

I polished off my lunch and was beginning to feel a bit more human. I sat sipping my drink while the others finished their meals. Then we decided we would take advantage of the nice weather and sit out in the quad, a grassy rectangle outside the student union. We disposed of our rubbish and headed out into. We found ourselves a nice spot and sat on the grass together enjoying the sunshine. It was the sort of day for a picnic. If we didn't have lectures later I might have suggested it.

"I love this time of year," said Nat, who was stretched out on the grass with her head in Shaun's lap.

"Yeah it's sunny enough to be comfy, but not so hot it's unpleasant," Caitlyn agreed. "Plus, the insects haven't yet got to the point they are bothersome."

"Yeah the early flowers are out and the nights are long enough to be out and it's still light," said Shaun.