The Spy Partnership Institute is a government-independent espionage agency that attempts to maintain equilibrium in the international world. Anonymized contracts are sent in and assigned to highly trained agents to... delicately influence world events. Sometimes, important but dangerous software would vanish from laboratories, or important equipment would malfunction. Sometimes, a flat tire would sideline an important government asset so they could be extracted. Sometimes... a person slept through their alarm because of the nine bullet holes in their head. The medical examiner ruled that death by 'natural causes.'
It wasn't easy or cheap, but for thirty years, the Spy Partnership Institute had its finger on the scale, trying to keep everything in balance in an ever-more-global world.
It was easier than trying to form a burger chain to compete with the big ones. Maybe there was an opportunity to muscle in during the 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack-in-the-Box, but the moment had long passed. The Spy Partnership Institute had already been formed.
And they had nothing to do with that E. coli outbreak.
--
If he pulls your hair... that just means that he likes you.
Geena heard that when she was a child, after a boy had pulled her ponytail and brought her down into the dirt. She ripped the elbow of her favorite windbreaker that day. Her mother couldn't even sew it up because it was made of nylon.
She thought of this incident any time she needed a little bit more angry energy, always useful during her workout. She didn't blame the boy who did it. He was just a child making a foolish decision and acting out as he grew. Sure, he probably did have a crush on her, but she knew he'd regret what he did if he ever learned how hot she grew up to be.
It was that teacher that she still loathed with unquenchable fire. Maybe what she said was true, but why was it an excuse to not do anything about someone deliberately hurting her? With every pump of this chest fly machine, bringing the long metal bars in front of her and back out, she envisioned crushing Mrs. Pimpleworth's head between them like an egg.
The clanging of the machine as she brought her arms back out was an even metronome ringing through the gigantic, well-equipped yet unoccupied gym of the Institute. It would have echoed if the floor wasn't entirely made of interlocking rubber tiles.
The gym, sometimes euphemistically called the 'rehearsal space,' was filled with dozens of different exercise machines. Essentially every form of exercise one could imagine was represented, and agents were encouraged to make use of them as time permitted.
Across from the fly machine, the wall she faced was nothing but mirrors. Before her first workout in this facility, Geena had made sure that the room next to this was not an observation room strictly equipped with one-way mirrors. She didn't know who would want to watch her sneer and pump iron, but she took no chances in case she decided to shed some of her spandex during the long workout.
With the bars open and her arms outstretched, Geena could see herself in the mirror. A woman of above-average height and near-peak physical fitness, Geena's arms and legs were slender, but shaped with muscle. Her abs were defined, her belly-button a tiny flat dot among them with a sparkle from the simple barbell piercing set inside. Her long dark hair was swept into a ponytail, a few strands hanging loose to the sides of her face. Her cheekbones were defined, her eyes blue and surrounded with eyeliner in the cat-eye style, her nose gentle and her lips prominent, and most often curled into a soft frown.
She brought her arms in front of her for another rep. Her raised upper arms encountered her large breasts, pressing them together and deepening the plunging line of her cleavage.
OK. Maybe she understood why someone would want to watch. Her breasts had clearly been augmented; no natural breast had ever formed so perfectly large and round. Geena felt no shame in this. After all... the rest of her had no surgical interventions whatsoever. Her body was the result of lots of hard work, the face... she was just lucky to possess naturally alluring features. Even her eyebrows were naturally thin, though they always seemed to point inward and gave her that 'resting bitch face,' or RBF, as she called it. Maybe that was just her natural disposition coming through.
Female spies had to be attractive. Maybe not for the CIA or whatever, where she understood spies didn't use many gadgets, nor did they draw attention to themselves with 1000cc breast implants. But for the Spy Partnership Institute, it was a necessity. The men employed by the Institute were almost all above six feet tall, broad in the shoulder and at least somewhat attractive. If they did work out, they probably did CrossFit or P90X or Tae-Bo or some other silly trendy workout that involved pushing a monster truck tire up a hill. Some of them had abs, some didn't... but what did it matter when it was all hidden underneath a perfectly tailored tuxedo?
Geena had the attractive part nailed... but she was tired of getting missions where she was simply the eye-candy to distract someone while the man did the mission. She was good at distraction, no doubt, but she craved a mission with more action in it. Something where she'd actually get to use these muscles for something. But she couldn't get TOO burly, of course, because then some men would no longer find her as alluring, and she would be a less effective decoy. There were plenty of men who would think her current level of physical fitness already detracted from her looks, all of them barely able to peer past their beer guts to appraise her fitness so callously.
Clank, clank, clank. She exhaled on every raise, and slowly opened her arms with every descent.
That's why she was here, continuing her nearly-daily workout... all by herself. All the men were probably spending their times in Props, playing with all their electronic gadgets and such. To be fair, using those little electronic drones took a lot of finesse and practice... something she never had time to do because she spent all her off-time working out to try to stay competitive with the men. But of course, they got more of the missions because they had a wider skill set, because they didn't need to spend a Saturday morning working out. They probably hadn't even gotten over their martini hangovers from the night before.
Clank, clank, clank. Her reps got steadily faster, as a new river of frustrated energy burst forth. She could probably beat any of those idiots in a fight. They'd underestimate her and she'd strike them where they were weak. And yet... she still had to get stronger...
Geena was frustrated with the knowledge that there was only so much exercise her body could benefit from before it became pointless. She didn't want to go down the path of destructive exercise that was co-morbid with eating disorders. Then again, she almost never indulged in any food that wasn't nutritious and filled with protein. But perhaps that was just a different manifestation thereof, where she was avoiding a sweet and likely harmless dessert as an obsessive avoidance.
Clank, clank, clank. She had maybe a hundred more reps to go... just keep pushing.
--
The automatic doors leading into the gym pulled open with a sudden release of air, like opening a jar, as dry and chilled air passed out the doorway for a few moments. Someone had entered the gym and was walking this way. Geena could see them approach in the reflection.
It was Rebecca.
She called herself 'Bec,' though Geena would hesitate to say that's what friends would call her. It just took less time for everyone to say. Bec was every bit as lean and fit as Geena... maybe even a bit more. Bec was about five-ten with short clipped dusty blonde hair. Otherwise, Geena and Bec looked similar, even down to the eye makeup. She definitely hadn't stolen the look from Bec, but she had never seen Bec without it, either. It was just a 'tough girl chic' style choice that fit their faces very well.
Bec wore a skintight blue and slate-colored spandex outfit. The booty shorts wrapped tightly around the appropriate area, but not as tightly as her top. Bec had opted for even larger implants, and not just because she was taller and slightly wider of shoulder. Her breasts just looked ridiculous, two big balloons that seemed to defy gravity and very likely kept her from seeing her feet as she walked. That never seemed to cut into her confident stride, however.
The only thing that did... was seeing that the gym was already occupied.
Bec paused for only a moment as she saw Geena in the reflection, sitting in the fly machine. There was a gentle curl of one side of her lips, like she'd accidentally walked in on her grandfather stepping out of the bathtub. Unlike that scenario, Bec marched forward, unperturbed, towards the long rack of dumbbells that sat in front of the mirror wall.
She didn't stand directly in front of Geena, but stood diagonally from her, right where the fifteen-pound hexagonal weights were set. She gripped one in each hand and lifted them above her head, moving effortlessly from bicep curls to overhead presses, her hands turning the barbells as they passed her ears. As she lifted these weights, her torso was as stiff and still as if she was curling two pencils.
"Aren't you going to warm up?" Geena asked from her chair, not slowing down her workout.
Through the reflection, Bec momentarily glanced at Geena before returning her gaze to her form. "This IS my warm-up." She controlled her breathing, only speaking as she pushed the dumbbells upwards. "If you want to use those little... pink ones at the end, they're all yours. I don't need them."
