The gym. It was like church to Rhia. Do enough squats and it is like Catholic mass. Just add a shot of wine and you have the Saint Schwarzenegger's Church of the Holy Barbell. It was where RHia came to blow off steam, to clear her mind, to prepare for a future meet, or just keep her body hotter than everyone else's. Beauty is pain and no pain no gain. So, gains were beauty...

It makes sense if you don't think about it too hard.

Some bro-scientists disrespect the squat rack. They feel the moon must be in the right phase and they need feel abnormally good to hit leg day. Some would even use the Vernal Equinox as reason to not do legs. Rhia, loved working legs. Squats gave her amazing legs, deadlifts gave her an ass that won't quit. Most importantly though, it made her feel powerful. Being in the squat rack and lifting two plates over the misoginistic meathead next to her who thought he could show her a thing or two about lifting.

When Rhia finished her last set in the squat rack she unloaded the weight and walked on rubber legs over to a bench to sit and drink some water. She wiped her face with a towel to clear off the sweat as some guy who looked like what happens when Quasimodo is the Phantom of the Opera walked in. While he looked... bad... which is quite the understatement, he was dressed oddly. It was like he didn't know how to dress for the gym. Dress shoes with basketball shorts and a tucked in polo. It was like the man had walked into random pile of clothes and put on the first things that fit.

Rhia couldn't help but stare.


((Zek ))

Zek didn’t go to the gym much. He didn’t see a point. He tended to stay in shape from all the running around and throwing things that he normally did on a regular day, and that didn’t include his regular running schedule. Besides, gyms were generally boring - it was so much more fun chasing people or epically evading them throughout the city streets as they cried out to get their stuff back.

But Zek had heard some good stuff about this gym. Apparently they had a virtual reality hookup on one of their treadmills so you could pretend you were running from dinosaurs or lava or several other scenarios, as a way to gamify running. Zek wasn’t big into video games, but he hadn’t ran with dinos in a couple of years and was feeling nostalgic.

Not that Zek had actually gotten to the treadmills yet. All he’d done was change into black short shorts and a spandex tank top the exact same shade as his tongue. After that, he’d been distracted by the small concession area and was currently downing a dragonfuit and chia pet smoothie.

And he had just swiveled around on his stool to people-watch when he saw it.

It was hideous, awful. The sight of it simultaneously made him want to vomit and kill it with fire. But he didn’t have any explosives at the moment and he hadn’t packed his flamethrower that morning, and besides, the smoothie was too good to upchuck.

So he locked sights on his target. That grotesque abomination. He bounced a golden light off the floor and a weight machine vanished. He threw another ball, this one scarlet and shouted, “Yo! Fashion victim! Duck!” And the light streaked overhead until the moment it appeared over that stupid woman on the bench who swapped his brain with Catbird that one time and he’d vowed to make her life miserable if he ever saw her again or failing that do his best to erase her from existence or murder her or give her a wedgie or something in retaliation he wasn’t really sure what he was just making this up as he went along and suddenly turned into the unvanished weight machine.

Which started falling.

Leg day makes walking harder than normal. Almost like someone turned up the gravity. Normally sitting down for a few minutes will alleviate the issue. Sometimes, adrenaline can overcome it for you sooner.

Rhia heard a voice that she couldn’t quite place. When she broke her stare to see who had called out, she saw that rude bouncer from the club. The one who just wouldn’t let her be even after she swapped him and the gryphon boy. He had just thrown something overhead and…

Weight machine. Weight machine?... Weight machine!

Rhia shoved herself off the bench and jumped for all she was worth away just before the machine made its triumphant return to the floor.

Stumbling back to her feet, Rhia turned to face the guy. ”Hey! Asshole! What the hell? You could have killed me!”

The Quasimodo of the Opera seemed to perk up some and turned from Rhia to the man who she was yelling at. From the one who kept staring at him to the one who had called him a fashion victim. Several other patrons started to inch toward the exit. A few of them looked from Rhia to the fallen machine to the man. They clearly wanted to help Rhia but were unsure of what to do about a guy dropping weight machines.

Zek noiseily slurped his smoothie as he watched the weight machine fall and crash and....completely miss the Face Of Evil. Annoyingly, she had detected Zek’s efforts and deftly evaded them and that just wasn’t fair!”

“That was the idea!” Zek retorted in an equally loud voice, smoothie spittle spraying everywhere. Apparently she was dumb as well as stupid and Pure Awful and something something greasy black soul. Anyone with half a mind could see what Zek was trying to do! “And I would’ve gotten away with it to, if it wasn’t for your meddling reflexes and your dodge!”

“Now this time just stand there and get crushed, okay?” After all, that was the least she could do in response to her prior evil machinations and stupid dumb face.

Zek angrily sucked in more smoothly, too mad to enjoy the sudden brain freeze he’d developed (not that brian freeze had ever really had much of an effect on him) and hurled another golden light, vanishing annother weight machine. He repeated his attempt and chucked a fresh red ball over the Blonde Booger’s head before it became the second machine. It, too, began to fall.

Insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That’s why Zek used a bigger weight machine this time.

Zek turned back on his stool and addressed the dude serving food and stuff. “Oh hey, “ Zek said brightly, “This stuff is pretty good. Can I get one of those ginger kale smoothies with the french lemon twist? A small, I don’t wanna overload my taste buds.”

The guy was trying to kill her. That was his goal. Rhia narrowed her eyes at the guy. Yes, she did something that any person would dislike. Suddenly being another person when you didn’t want to be them certainly could make you mad. Rhia understood that. But, that’s the end of it. You get mad, you get over it. You certainly don’t try to kill a woman in a gym with weight machines.

”Look, I’m sorry about it, okay!” Rhia said, hoping to head off another weight machine falling like a piano in a cartoon.

It didn’t seem she had succeeded. The guy wanted her to just stand there and be crushed. Her eyes bulged and she braced herself to have to lunge suddenly in any direction. At the same time, the manager of the gym walked out of his office.

“Bro. Get the hell out of here! I’m calling the police.” The manager said as he inched closer to the exit, a cell phone to his ear. Quasimoto of the Opera seemed to take an interest in the manager as well and moved closer to him. This moved him away from standing between Rhia and the guy who was relocating heavy things into the air.

The next machine fell.

Rhia let out an ”Eeep!” and quickly moved out of the way. This brought her closer to the guy. If she couldn’t talk him out of dropping machines on her, she would just have to swap him. Worst case she could just swap the pair of them but she would rather swap him into someone that was a punishment. Where had that ugly guy that was poorly dressed gone?

His ugliness had moved next to the manager and after a few hushed statements something about “outside matching the inside” he waved his hand and the manager changed. He shriveled and shrank. Large muslces and towering height reduced to match his his inner weakness and cowerdice.

The dude behind the counter was just somewhat slack-jawed and looked awfully nervous. Zek made a face. Why’d they have to stick a new guy behind the counter? They really needed to get someone better over there. “Never mind,” he said and swiveled back around again, sucking in more of his regular smoothie.

Darn. Bimbette was still completely unsquishified. Clearly she had problems following simple commands. Aw man, that meant Zek was probably going to have to work to get what he wanted! That alone was enough for him to ignore her apology. Well, that and the fact that Zek had been sitting on this grudge for months and months and he really hated wasting a serving of ice-cold vengeance.

“Not good enough,” Zek noted. She barely even sounded sincere when apologizing and there was absolutely no drama. But while it was mildly entertaining that she kept dodging his attacks, it was hugely irritating as well. Zek looked around to see if he could speak to a manager but it looked like somebody was already doing that. Good. Clearly Zek wasn’t the only one super annoyed at Ms. Musclehead. That one guy with the unfortunate taste in shoes (they really clashed with his skin tone) was saying something and then the manager just shriveled up on himself.

Oh. Now that wasn’t something you saw every day. “Now that isn’t something you see everyday,” Zek calmly noted. It had been sometime last week when he’d last seen a similar event occur. Of course, this guy didn’t have any rubber duckies, so it wasn’t quite the same.

Zek hopped off his stool and marched over to the manager. “Hey, I’ve got a complaint,” he said, jerking his smoothie-free thumb over at the Ablondeinable Woman. “She’s really awful and won’t let me hit her with large, heavy things. You mind kicking her out or something?” Slurrrrrrp.

That was it. Rhia had apologized and the bouncer boy was now talking to the manager about getting her thrown out. He was the one throwing machines around and he thought she should be thrown out. It was the last straw.

Since bouncer boy had neglected to throw another machine at her, Rhia used the opportunity to hurry closer. Bouncer boy and the lord of uggos were close together. That was good. She just needed to get close and it was go time.

”Fine don’t accept my apology. Hope you like this instead!” Rhia yelled at the boy once she was close enough. She focused on bouncer boy and she focused on two face and his multicolor dream outfit and triggered her power to swap them.

”And this time you can stay like that. So rude.”

The manager started to say something but Zek was momentarily distracted by pointedly ignoring the stuff that Gorilla Girl was now yelling at him. But then his eyes widened and everything went black.

Something was odd.

Little points of light began to appear and suddenly Zek was amidst a sea of stars and a strange creature was floating by. And then everything changed. Suddenly he was seeing himself as if in a gym. Then he was seeing flashes of more strange creatures flying left and right, appearing and vanishing. Over and over this happened, occasionally with glimpse of himself, out-of-body style, throwing his orbs and catching and unleashing the creatures. And there was music, too.

It was a pretty trippy minute or so.

After a final vision of throwing an orb right at himself, he saw a flash of light. And then everything looked normal again.

Except he was now staring at this exceptionally rogishly handsome man in short shorts and a tank top the same color as his tongue and wielding an identical smoothie and wait a second!

Zek looked down. Aw crud, it had happened again. He whipped his head around and nearly killed himself with pain. “Agh!” he shouted. What was wrong with his neck? It wasn’t moving ri---oh yeah. He wasn’t his beauitful glorious self with amazing necking skills.

And it was all that demon lady’s fault.

“AAAAAARGH!” he cried and lurched after her, not even caring who or what saw anything. He just needed to get his hands on her. Lethal peril worked last time, after all.

The swap done, Rhia took a breath. Hopefully this meant there wouldn’t be anymore falling weight machines. Quasimodo was visibly confused and stunned by suddenly being in bouncer boy's body. Bouncer boy...He was yelling and lunging at Rhia.

Rhia deftly moved to the side. The adrenaline had brought back some of the use into her nearly exhausted legs. That or it made her notice their protests less. ”And you’ll stay like that until you learn to calm down! Last time was my fault. This time you brought it on yourself.”

Quasimodo stood looking at his hands. His eyes widening as he looked at bouncer boy lunging away in his poorly dressed and oddly shaped body. That would be a major spanner in his works.

He missed! Argh! Why couldn’t Muscledumb just. Stand. STILL! It would make things so much easier! Especially since this body just felt weird! It was taller, the legs longer, it kept wanting to slouch to one side, it lacked his glorious hair, it probably had a stupid reddish-pink tongue, probably didn’t have a turquise kidney, it’s hands were the wrong size, its feet were just a bit too wide, it’s stomach felt mildly bloated, and he couldn’t be sure but there might’ve been a mild narcotic running through his veins.

Zek went stumbling past the Stupidface and nearly collided into a super buff guy. He immediately threw up a hand to vanish the guy with a ball and get him out of his way. Nothing happened. Then he actually did collide with the super buff guy. Zek went bouncing back an dthe dude didn’t even move an inch. Rude.

Zek stuck out a reddish-pink tongue (he looked at it cross-eyed just to confirm) at the guy and then whirled back to the Human Sweatsock. He waved his new hands at himself. “This is literally all your fault!” he yelled. “I wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for you. Are you dumb as well as stupid?!”

Zek turned and yelled at the guy who now had his super sexy self. “Hey, dude! You with the smoking hot bod! Who used to be me! Think really hard and try to throw a baseball at this chick! Like really hard!”