"Hope you're ready to get our sweat on!" Mari exclaimed, pumping her fists and flexing her noticeably toned forearms.
You nodded in assent. "Sure thing, babe! Been a while since I've been 'in the office'."
Chuckling at your joke, Mari finished getting herself ready for work, while you changed into a more gym-appropriate outfit consisting of a tight white tee and dark basketball shorts.
Your jest to your wife hadn't been exaggeration. Despite co-managing the home branch of Focused Fitness, you didn't spend too much time at the gym in-person. Primarily that was because you didn't teach any classes, unlike Mari and all of the other instructors. You just didn't have a need to work in-person when so much of what you did involved managing schedules, interviewing new employees, handling budgetary issues, and planning new programs and purchases. It could all be done on your computer from home just as easily as at the gym.
Secondly, and arguably most importantly, staying home let you avoid the possibility of...incidents.
Focused Fitness had improved immensely under the management of you and Mari, particularly as far as affected safety was concerned. The old Focused Fitness used to have an almost infamous track record of poor tiny-related interactions, an almost complete lack of affected-sized equipment, no cameras or security technology to keep affected patrons safe, and a 'Tiny Certified Trainer' who spent more time obliviously crushing and smushing her poor students than properly training them. Ellie 'The Crushing-Machine', they'd called her.
But under your watch (and the relocation of Ellie to another Focused Fitness branch...which, admittedly, now reported dangerously high levels of tinies going missing) the home branch of Focused Fitness had prospered fantastically. The incident rate had gone down dramatically, and affected were catered to with care and attention. Entire tiny-only sections had been added to each room, erected high off the ground away from stomping feet. A partnership with Small Wonders had led to the establishment of state-of-the-art affected-sized workout machines through the entire building, alongside micro-zoom security cameras that could track the movements of all affected if one had need to go back and search for a missing patron.
The entrance and exit doors were all also equipped with Tiny Locator Device scanners, or TLDs, an invention of your younger sister Jenna and her Fair Tiny Treatment Foundation. The devices would beep loudly if an unaffected tried to leave the gym with an unnoticed crushed passenger...when the dang things worked. The tech was fairly new, and still quite spotty. Jenna and her team were hard at work ironing out the kinks, determined to launch TLDs countrywide and even worldwide as soon as possible.
Things weren't perfect at Focused Fitness, of course. Accidents still occurred daily, practically an inevitability in a society where half the population was gargantuan, and the other half ant-sized. Some of your more recent hires were also...questionable, at best, but they were damn fine trainers and you'd been going through a bit of a hiring slump, so you weren't in the habit of firing them and being down employees during such a critical period of reputation and growth.
Regardless, it was time to head out, and you and Mari did just that.
Once arriving at Focused Fitness, Mari scooped you back up onto her shoulder and then headed inside with you. She barely made it a few feet before finding her finest employee standing before her, smiling warmly.
"Good morning, Mari." The lovely Lihua Leng said brightly. "Ah, and good morning to you too, Matt."
"Morning Lihua!" Mari grinned.
"Good morning." You added. "Ready for another day?"
Lihua brushed some of her hair out of her face and loosed one of her trademark snort laughs that she was often embarrassed by but were genuinely endearing. "Yeah...I only hope it's a bit calmer than yesterday."
Mari winced. "Tell me about it. We probably spent, what, fifteen minutes fishing those poor guys out of that woman's butt, and the TLD still went off! I'm glad it did, because we almost missed that last kid!" She glanced at you and smiled sheepishly. "A rather bountifully blessed woman's leggings ripped open right down the crack, and she tripped in embarrassment, landing right on a group of teen boys. They all, uh, went straight up, if you catch my drift. We saved them all, though!"
You sighed. "Yeesh. Yeah, let's hope today is a bit calmer."
Lihua laughed again.
Even at 48, Lihua looked like she'd hardly aged a day since your own days of coming to the gym with Mari for a workout in your twenties. The Chinese girl was honestly like a goddess of chastity and beauty, radiating an innocent aura of happiness and sincere care. You'd hardly met a more selfless woman in your life, and Lihua was still to this day the ideal image of an affected caretaker. She was also, quite frankly, the dictionary definition of thicc, her plus-sized weight distributed in all the right places to boggle the mind from sheer curvaceous overload. She carried an intimidating weight with her, but thankfully her body confidence and self-esteem had improved immensely in the past decade or so, and she was no longer bothered so much by people staring at how tightly her ill-fitting tanktop and practically-painted-on leggings hugged her incredible proportions.
Lihua was, in essence, the co-co-manager of Focused Fitness, working almost on equal footing alongside Mari and yourself. She was the head of all affected-focused classes and programs, while also still teaching the Zumba and dancing classes. She also loved to organize holiday events to hold at the gym, like her yearly Halloween and Christmas parties that drew almost everyone in Oakland to attend. Of course, Lihua always made sure to prioritize the safety and comfort of the affected guests, her warm heart filled to the brim with doting on affected.
You were about to say something else, when movement from your peripheral vision caught your eye. Turning, you took a deep breath and mentally steeled yourself as the two most problematic members of your fitness instructor staff sauntered into view.
For a moment, the two girls who approached looked like just one girl holding a mirror by her side, as the two giantesses were practically identical. And yet, the girl on the left's light-blue attire and the girl on the right's fiery red attire served as a clear tipoff. That, plus the mole under the girl on the left's right eye, and the lack of a mole on the girl on the right's face. Still, it was obvious for anyone to see that the girl's were identical twins, and uncannily identical at that.
They were Fariha and Saira Bhavsar, aged twenty-five, and they were an unending source of exhaustion for you and you specifically. Fariha covered yoga and meditation classes, and Saira covered high-intensity training programs.
Fariha, the girl on the left in the light-blue sports bra and compression shorts with the mole under her right eye, was the younger twin. Saira, the girl on the right in the fiery red sports bra and compression shorts, was the older twin. Physically, they shared everything in common. Richly dark-brown skintone, silky-smooth black hair worn in the same long ponytail style, and piercing brown eyes. They also had the same stunning curves, possessing immense size in the chest and rear, yet lean stomach and toned abs, and softly muscular arms and thigs and legs. The perfect picture of twin divinities of fitness.
Their personalities were quite similar too, but they diverged on a single, critical point: their attitude towards tinies.
Fariha and Saira were the youngest of six children, and their four older brothers were all affected. Growing up with all the benefits of 'youngest child syndrome', Fariha and Saira spent their childhoods domineering over their tiny brothers, always getting their way in whatever circumstance came up, no matter how unfair towards their inch-tall siblings. While thankfully not growing into entitled and spoiled brats, Fariha and Saira each developed negative traits because of this.
Fariha found constant amusement in teasing her tiny brothers, and that carried into the present day. She was relentless in teasing and toying with affected patrons in the gym, and especially with you. Never sadistic, or outright malicious, but far too frequently for your liking, and her teasing often led to unintended trouble (like her stepping on you playfully, but not peeling you free from the floor before another woman came by and plopped down on you for a three hour yoga session).
Saira was on the opposite end, but no better than her twin. She came to be exhausted by so many tinies in the same household growing up, and still viewed affected through a lens of exhaustion and annoyance. She had a tendency to completely tune out tinies, not doing a thing to be careful around them, and if she did find a crushed affected, she'd simply shrug and move on, or roll her eyes and 'attempt to help' so badly she'd just make things worse.
Again, they were exhausting. But, good at their jobs nonetheless, so employed they remained.
"Hey boss!/Sup boss." The sisters said in sync, Fariha with a wink and Saira with a groan. You gave them a half-hearted wave in return.
Mari looked at you again. "Anyway, Matt. Guess I should tell you what's up for today, huh? Basically, today, I need you to..."
1) "...cover my weightlifting class. Just, you know, guide the ladies and encourage them, okay?"
2) "...give our new affected patrons a tour of the gym. Keep them out of trouble, hun!"
3) "...shadow Fariha's yoga class. Make sure she's giving our patrons a good workout!"
4) "...shadow Saira's Intensity X program. Make sure everyone's sweating like crazy!"
5) "...clean up the locker rooms. Not super fun, I know, but you're the best man for the job, babe!"
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