The trip to Titan's Gym wasn't a particularly long one, but Nico was already getting excited about the prospect of getting to do a new thing by the time they left the office. They no longer ran the training for the Mecha Pilots since nearly all of the ones aboard Absolution were Androids, and the Regiment Commanders took care of the training.
They had made themselves redundant to the fun parts of the job while being stuck with the last unavoidable bits of paperwork that no leader could truly escape without their chosen delegate taking over the factual control of the group.
The pod took them straight to the edge of the city, through the winding paths of the designated transit routes, and dropped them right in front of the nondescript warehouse, with only a simple digital sign in the window declaring the name of the business.
Unlike most Gyms, this one didn't have a row of mirrors on one wall or windows all out the front to encourage people to come in using the sight of their members. The manager had kept it as a basic warehouse and even covered the lower row of windows that would usually light up the office space.
It was a very different experience than other places that they had seen, and they hadn't even stepped foot inside yet.
The moment they did, with an excited Nico in the lead, the gravity flipped around, pointing to the wall on their right and reducing by nearly fifty percent.
Nico just went with it, flipping around to stand on the wall and then waved to the manager on duty.
"Good morning, my name is Nico, and I am here to try your exercise obstacle course." She called out to catch his attention.
"Excellent, you even landed on your feet. I am Titan. Welcome to my Gym." The small lizardman greeted her.
He was teal blue and looked a lot like the iguanas Max knew from back home. Even his head was the same shape, but he was bipedal, with four-fingered hands and opposable thumbs, plus what looked like a prehensile tail, so he shouldn't have any issues getting around.
"In any case, the first run-through is on the house. It's how we tell who is a good fit for our facility and who just wants a new experience. You're humans, so there is little risk of injury while you navigate the course, but do be careful. Since you don't have tails to catch yourselves, it is possible that a poor angle and missed grip might lead to drops of over three metres." He added.
"That's fine. Both of us are augmented. A fall of three metres won't injure us even at multiple times standard gravity." Nico replied with a smile.
"That's incredible news. My species evolved to be able to drop from trees in extreme winds, so we are quite durable, and the gravity control features that come with the 3D Pool design worked out quite well once they were modified to cover an area as large as the warehouse." F
Modifying the billiards table isn't a big issue. In fact, the original design would do an entire sports arena so that hundreds of games could be played at once. It just used a significant amount of power, so this gym manager's bills were not going to be cheap. That was likely why he had picked the most affordable location he could and didn't modify it to draw in more customers.
There were already a couple of other members working their way through the course, and the sign warned them to keep away until the course was completed unless they were taking it as a team. That way, the safety risks were minimized, and there wouldn't be obnoxious late joiners messing up someone's workout.
And it was designed as a workout. The interior was entirely moveable, so once a rung on the ladder was grabbed and released, it would fall free on one side, so you had to climb with only your hands in the variable gravity and other creative tricks to burn maximum energy.
The Pilots would love this place. They worked out religiously, but the same routines got old after a few years, and this would be just the change of pace that some of them needed to keep their motivation up.
"Alright, you're up. Let's see what the augmented humans have in them." The lizardman called out loud enough that the others in the gym could hear him and would know not to bounce through the middle of the course on their way to start their next rep.
"We will go separately, so we can compare." Nico decided without warning, then pushed Max forward. She didn't get tired, so it would be a poor demonstration of what an augmented human was capable of, but Max did, so she volunteered him.
Max moved into the course and began to climb the ladder. The gravity shifted to pull him backward so that he would be using the ladder like monkey bars, but behind him was a spinning whip, so if he wanted to save his legs, he had to hold himself in a plank position while he moved up the rungs and onto the next platform.
There the gravity turned to a normally crushing three times standard, but all he had to do was open the door upward to move to the next room, not a major task for someone of his strength.
After that started an agility course, where he would have to hop from rolling pad to rolling pad while any off-center force made them spin under his feet. With a series of agile leaps, he was near the rope climb when again, he hit a gravity pocket which brought him up toward the platform above him.
Instead of trying to grab the spinning cylinders as his orientation shifted, Max waited the extra second and drove off the platform toward the ropes, and then caught them before he fell, as he left the gravity well and began to careen toward the ground.
With that over, he got to the collapsing ladder, an easy feat for him, he thought. But they also collapsed if you held onto them for more than a half second, and the third one almost got him as he was assessing his route forward.
When Max swung over the last of the trip hazards at the end of the course, all of the regulars were there to cheer him on, and the gym manager was blinking so rapidly that Max almost thought that he was an aquatic species who was drying out.
He wasn't. That was just his species' way of showing happiness. He was overjoyed that the humans not only enjoyed his course, but they were good at it, too, if Max was anything to go by. That secured his opinion that moving here had been the correct choice.
"Now, Subcommander Nico is a Cyborg, so the exercise part of the experience doesn't mean much to her, but I think that she will enjoy the gym as an obstacle course as well," Titan explained to his regular customers.
"Oh, that is fun too. Sometimes I skip the arm parts on my second repetition so I can work more legs." One of the patrons agreed.
He definitely didn't skip arm day often. Or leg day at all. Compared to Titan, the gym owner, he was an absolutely massive specimen of their species.
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