Ellie's Academy - Stress Test (Patreon)

Star gymnast Ellie is summoned by one of the Academy's most notorious Coaches to try out some new specialised training equipment in what becomes one of the most intense and dangerous core workouts of her life...

At over 7000 words, I think this is the longest story I've ever written, and certainly one of the most intense. Thanks again for the support and patience while I've been writing this - it's thanks to the Patrons that this exists at all!

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 A small breakfast and a long session of cardio had made up a satisfying morning for Ellie Watson. A hot shower even more so. It soothed the spots on her wrists and ankles where heavy weight straps had rubbed at her skin, as well as the feet that had hammered the gravel track without hesitation for four straight hours (the following two having been on her hands). Standing with the hot water pouring onto her pale freckled skin she pressed her fingers to the shimmering gold band fitted firmly around her neck. Satisfying, but not hard enough, she decided. It had seemed hard at the time as her lungs burned and her hands shook and her legs cramped, but her recovery time was growing ever quicker. Once her shower finished she only felt the sweet pump of muscles well worked and the familiar hunger for more. The afternoon's training would best be much more intense. This gave Ellie something to think about as she paced into her room and towel dried her hair to keep the red locks from drying wild and frizzy. With care, she tied them into a neat ponytail with a blue ribbon. As a high ranking "gold collar" student of the Athena Athletic Academy she had the luxury of her own room with an en suite, giving her a privacy she very much appreciated. What she was most grateful for, however, was her wardrobe.

 If Ellie could ever have been accused of wasting time, it would be in the minutes she spared herself to pick out a leotard from her healthy collection. It was the sparkling colours and patterns that had first caught her attention as a small child as she caught the world championships on television. What had enthralled her even more was the way the fabric wrapped around the muscles of certain athletes, their phenomenal bodies bulging against the fabric but remaining so graceful and feminine in movements and routines that seemed to defy physics. Now Ellie could leave her childhood idols in the dust, but her love for them, as well as their leotards never faded. A purple, glossy number was her choice for today, with white, frost-like patterning around her neck and shoulders, subtly bejewelled and glittery on the uppermost section. As usual, she had to pull herself away from the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, shaking her head with a smile. Come on. Head on the game, Ellie, she reminded herself.

 Once out of the gold-band dormitories, she moved her attention to the large board on the far side of the path. Nearly twice her height and double that across, it was filled with pins, papers and posters. Some looked professionally printed, some were scraps of paper with scrawled writing. Such boards were dotted around the Academy grounds, indoors and out. They were updated daily, and filled with the various sessions taking place around the grounds, updates, meetings and even challenges and competitions. Some girls also liked to leave messages and notes, most anonymously. One that made her smirk as it caught her eye was simply of a love heart with "L + W" written inside. She didn't linger on it long, as her eyes began to skim for the most brutal looking session available. Fate, it seemed, had other plans.

 "Miss Watson?" a meek little voice made her turn around to find a girl a few years her junior. Only a little shorter but a lot skinnier than Ellie. The black leather band around her neck meant that she was of the lowest ranked group of Academy students and that was as far as most would bother to look. Perhaps some would note the slender frame wrapped only in a thin white leotard, and the way she shyly hid most of her face behind her mousy, shoulder length hair. But Ellie saw more. She saw the blister covered, calloused and torn skin of her hands and the wiry muscle running up her arms which meant that she would be moving up the ranks before long.

 A lot of the more highly ranked students liked and expected to be fearfully revered by 'black collars', as they were called. Ellie did not. "I told you Willow, I'm not a Trainer. Call me Ellie." she responded with a cheerful Scottish twang. The girl gave a start, moving her gaze up to Ellie's face a few moments too late.

 "Oh!" as she squeaked, she really did remind Ellie of a mouse - a small, sharp nose above a little mouth set slightly open and soft features with wide eyes. "Okay - sorry, Ellie." The smaller girl seemed surprised to be addressed by name, but Ellie remembered her well, though they had met only once. She and another black collar, shorter, darker and much more hyper-active, had helped her out with some weights during a session a few weeks ago. Academy students at a certain level often needed help in loading or unloading weights during more advanced training and the black or bronze collars were always the quickest to volunteer or be roped in. As she smiled up dreamily, Ellie had to prompt her to get her to keep talking and she gave out another squeak. "Oh! Of course... I have a note for you. From Miss LaChance." Between her slim pale fingers she held out a neatly folded piece of paper.

 Ellie rolled her eyes. She did wish that people wouldn't use the new girls as messenger birds, but gratefully took the note nonetheless. The handwriting within was in almost perfect cursive.

Watson,

A new custom Academy training machine has arrived today and you will be testing it out. Any plans you had today are cancelled. Meet me in Room B212 immediately.

- Zoe LaChance

P.S. - Be sure to warm up those famous abs.

 As one of the handful of the Academy strong enough to earn a golden band around her neck, Ellie was no stranger to stress testing new equipment, but a couple of things stood out as unusual. First, in her experience testing something out normally took no more than a couple of hours. Secondly, Ellie had been among the lucky few to have limited exposure to Zoe 'Last Chance' LaChance, an infamously cruel trainer, so it was curious that she should request (or rather demand) her personally. It was the last line that interested her most of all, and led her to believe this was less of a request or order and more of a challenge. Her ever eager abs, so often acting like they had a mind of their own, gave a twitch at the thought.

 Willow let out another quiet noise and shuffled her feet and Ellie noticed her again. Once more it was a moment before the pair made eye contact. "Thanks, Willow. I'll see y'around." she put a hand on her shoulder, "The trick is to not neglect the obliques." she added with a grin after seeing Willow steal a glance at her stomach for the fourth time in the last thirty seconds. "Miss Kent has a great abs session starting at noon, you could still make it if you're quick!" It was hard not to smile as she left the poor girl blushing furiously.

 Room B212 - that was on a basement level, Ellie thought to herself as she took the route to her ad-hoc appointment a fair distance away at a swift jog. Below the ornate ground floor the Academy started to look less like an elite institution for the athletically gifted and more like a medieval dungeon. New students were often terrified by the rumours of screams coming from the underground floors and the stories of horrifying detentions that could go on for days at a time. Older students knew them to be more than just rumours and stories. The heavy wooden door and rough stone steps near the back of the east building did not curb Ellie's pace and the world outside seemed to disappear as she descended the stairwell, fading into an eerie silence. It was cold down here, most notably to her bare feet on the stone tiles but the Academy veteran did not shiver. Not even as she reached her destination, stood before the door and reached behind her head to neaten her ponytail. A rough topography of chiselled muscle rose through the back of her leotard, pinched between her shoulder blades and as her hair swayed it showed the freckles dotting her upper neck. As if her broadened lats weren't enough strain on the shimmering, skin tight leo, she took a deep breath to feel it hug her even more tightly. It felt good. She knocked firmly on the door.

 "Enter!" The cold response was sharp even through the reinforced wood. There was no hesitation as Ellie stepped through and closed the door behind her. The custom built metal rig dominating the small room was almost half as intimidating as the woman stood in front of it. Zoe 'Last Chance' LaChance (though the girl who said that name within earshot of her must have a death wish) earned her nickname as the trainer who dealt with the struggling girls of the Academy. Whether through a lack of talent, motivation or bad behaviour they would end up in one of Zoe's feared classes and once they were, their chances of quitting or dropping out from injury increased dramatically. All that said, the girls who made it through the sessions were often changed in their dedication to their training and the institution. A noble enough cause - if Zoe didn't seem to enjoy it so much, making sport out of forcing certain girls who displeased her out of the Academy. That left a bitter taste in Ellie's mouth as she stood to attention, her chest out, stomach tight and hands clasped behind her back. It didn't show in her polite address; "You called for me, Ma'am?"

 "Quite a while ago now, yes." Zoe stood tall and blonde and beautiful, a soft French accent just noticeable. Sharp features and thin lips, pristinely plucked eyebrows and dangerous grey eyes adorned her modelesque face. Without a strand out of place her hair was tied back in a long ponytail. A career as a model would have been effortless for her but it was clear from a glance that she was not one who favoured the effortless route in any capacity. The woman's body was as ruthless as her attitude. As usual she had her blue Academy Trainer jacket wrapped around her waist to display her upper body and abs. Sinews split up her square shoulders, feeding into arms chiselled from marble. The plain black sports bra barely seemed necessary to support the high, shapely globes on her chest, below which chords and slabs of intricately woven stomach muscles danced in symmetry, down until her obliques disappeared into the jacket arms around her hips. Baggy blue tracksuit pants did not quite hide the thickness of her taut legs, and she wore trainers perhaps even more expensive than Ellie's favourite leotard.

 Even her cold glare somehow made her appear more beautiful. Many students cowered at that look. Ellie met it head on. "I came as soon as I got your message, Ma'am."

 "Then zat mouse of a black collar dragged her feet. I'll see to her later." she said dismissively - whether a test as to whether she'd speak up, Ellie wasn't sure. Either way doing so would be pointless and Willow herself might pay the price. After a short pause the woman continued, "But first thing is first. Today you are here to be the test subject for the machine you see here."

 At first sight the contraption seemed a complex amalgamation of metalwork with criss-crossing wires and harnesses. Not unlike a number of other exercise machines, both successes and failures dotted around the Academy gyms. At the inviting motion of Zoe's hand Ellie stepped forward for a closer look and began to deconstruct the hectic rig in her mind's eye.

 A central seat - not unlike a large bicycle seat - was the centrepiece. Attached to it was a thick leather harness, a part for her upper and lower body draped by the sides (the specifics of which she could only assume she'd be learning about soon). A thickly woven metal cable fed into a pulley on each side of the harness, on the ground for now, but Ellie noticed several thick clips that would attach the two parts. The cables were fed back through another pulley or two behind the seat to a metal frame that dominated the scene. In the frame was a platform with a singular pole that was taller than Ellie but perfect, she could tell at only the slightest glance, for holding Academy class weight plates. She saw it now. A student would be strapped into the centre securely, the wires would clip on to the front and back of the harness and as weights were added, would pull at a downward forty-five degree angle, wrenching apart the elbows and knees of the lucky girl within and allowing her only abdominal strength to fight back. It was an impressive set-up, Ellie had to admit - even though she had always thought that complicated mechanisms were no replacement for big weights and hard work. Strikingly thick bolts secured it to the ground, giving it the look of a piece of industrial machinery and there was a clear sign of careful craftsmanship in every weld. Only the best for the Athena Athletic Academy.

 Once she was finished studying the frame she looked back to the looming woman. "I get it. I'll need help getting on, won't I?" A curt nod confirmed it, and another flick of the head was the command to take her place. The gymnast obliged as she could, lifting herself onto the black seat and pulling the first half of the harness around her chest, slipping her legs through the second. From there Zoe's rough and nimble fingers were on her, fastening the various buckles and sealing her fate. The top section crossed over her chest and back, a length of leather from the back securing it to the seat. An additional loop secured to each shoulder made tight bindings for her wrists. The lower part was simpler. A loop around each of her thighs and ankles latched together to keep her knees fully bent and one more kept her knees together. These were again connected by one central strap to the seat. The best trainers of the Academy took every opportunity to challenge the students, and Zoe was no different. She was not gentle in her application of the straps. Each one seemed tightened with the intent to squeeze the life out of Ellie, to cut off her circulation and cause pain. Before securing each one Zoe would give a few sharp tugs to squeeze out whatever millimetres of space might remain. The material was new and rigid and bit into Ellie's soft skin where it met the harder spots of her musculature.

 Although it hurt no complaint, no gasp, no laboured breath came from the seasoned gymnast as she waited in position. Only her bottom and the very lower part of her back rested on the seat, her upper body horizontal with her arms tucked behind her head. Her thighs followed the line of her body with calves and feet tucked tightly against them. Once properly tightened the bindings left only her neck and midsection free to move - she could bring her knees and shoulders up and down, curl above or arch back around the seat. For now she held herself straight with the apparent ease of lying on a bed.

 With her spine straight as an arrow both the curves of a beautiful young woman and shreds of an elite athlete at peak performance were laid bare. Ellie Watson's body was the kind of thing new girls at the Academy whispered and dreamed about. What they would have thought to be a wild fantasy until they laid eyes on some of the more exceptional girls with silver and golden bands around their necks. Ten rectangles of muscle marched two by two in symmetry from her ribcage to her prominent outie navel, below which continued an only slightly less pronounced central crevice and additional row of muscle. This procession of peak athleticism became even more spectacular moving outward into the valleys of serratus muscles quivering around her sides, with the look and of interlocking metal chains and density to match. Further down they fed into obliques near as thick as her forearms, bulging upward by her hips, sharp lower cliffs of muscle peeking out from the sides of the sewn-to-fit leotard that looked moulded to her.

 The harness creaked as she flexed to test herself against the reinforced leather. It gave way only slightly as her steely muscles challenged it. For a few moments the muscle fibres shimmering across her body looked impossible to contain, but the moment passed. It felt durable. It felt good.

 "How long will this session go on for, Ma'am?" Ellie asked.

 The woman replied curtly, "Until you fail, of course."

 "How many times?"

 That was the first time she'd seen Last Chance crack a genuine smile. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and the trainer was securing the metal clasps connected to the pulleys. One side attached to a buckle at the nape of Ellie's neck, the one on the opposite side connected between her knees. She stared upward at the dark ceiling, patiently waiting for the trial to begin and hoping it wouldn't be a waste of time. With any luck Last Chance would live up to her feared reputation. An ominous ticking made Ellie's ear twitch, but the source was out of her field of view. "This metronome will keep you in rhythm." Zoe explained over the sharp, two per second beat, "Two ticks up, two down until I tell you otherwise. Use the full range of motion available to you." she put her hand out over Ellie's stomach, and for a bizarre moment it seemed that she might touch or strike the girl. "Begin!" she called sharply before moving back out of Ellie's vision again. But that didn't matter now. Only one thing mattered. The workout.

 Swift and smooth, Ellie's unimpeded movements looked robotic in timing and position but with the flow and grace of a dance, her fiery ponytail shimmering behind her. Her body arched backward into a light bow before curling up, in constant motion. With each movement the machine's configuration of wires fed through the pulleys, lifting and lowering the central, currently unloaded plate, which would barely miss the floor as Ellie's back was at its most arched. The quiet grinding of the well oiled equipment in motion was still louder than the gymnasts steady breaths. The movement looked effortless, rep one as much as rep one hundred just over three minutes later. Nothing impressive fir an Academy student of bronze rank or above. They were trained for much more elaborate movements, harsher weights, or at the very least more reps. At this rate it would be a contest of who would fall asleep first... in these minutes Ellie was still waiting, patiently as ever for the other shoe to drop.

 That shoe dropped in the form of a thick metal plate, released from shoulder height onto the platform at the back of the machine. It screeched down the stabilising pole and clattered as it hit the metal base so loud that Ellie's ears rang. It had to have weighed at least fifteen kilos. The gymnast didn't miss a beat, not letting the sudden jolt and additional weight stagger her timing. But for a blink and huff from her nose, nothing seemed to change - the platform moved up and down, pulled by the cables attached to her just as before. A quick glance confirmed to her that there was a lot more room on that platform.

 "Eyes front!" barked Zoe, of course she was watching her student like a hawk.

 "Yes, Ma'am!" she barked back - not all Academy Coaches expected to be addressed as such, but Ellie knew Zoe well enough. The woman demanded perfection and obedience to an extreme degree even for the Academy, though Ellie respected it. It made for a good challenge, a trial by fire of the perfect discipline she had been honing for years now. What she respected less, was what Zoe did to the poor girls who couldn't live up to her standards. At least right now, Ellie was getting a training session and also sparing some poor black collar girl the woman's wrath. Another weight smashed down beside her, doubling her load with the extra force of landing but this time, the redhead didn’t flinch. She kept up her movements, quite intentionally making it seem like she could not even feel the additional load. As she continued, Zoe added weights with random timing and no warning but for the momentary screech of metal that rang Ellie's ears. While her pace and breaths remained unchanged, the pressure was building. Her leotard felt tight over her sensitive skin, squeezing her as her ab muscles began to swell and pump. There was only so long that she would be able to keep up the air of invincibility, and both knew it. The stack of weights grew past Ellie's bodyweight. Past double it, each applied with all the care of a sledgehammer, eventually dwarfing the gymnast draped over the stand in front of it, lifting it over and over with nothing but her abdominal strength.

 A loud, long grunt accompanied another deep crunch from Ellie. She scrunched her eyes closed and felt another drop of sweat fall from her flushed nose. She didn't feel it hit her stomach, she only felt the burning hot mass of flexed bricks grinding against each other. Letting the weight down was as hard as lifting it up, as she forced herself to keep it slow, and under control. The weights clanged as she hit the bottom of the rep, found time for one quick breath that pushed every detail of her ripped chest out against her wet leotard, and then gave another flex. "Guuh..." she growled, still staring forward. Her pale legs had reddened now as her whole body heated up and flushed. They were as wet with sweat as the rest of her, shimmering and trickling with droplets that followed the deep valleys of muscle. The pair had been here a long time now, Ellie had lost count of the minutes and reps, which was interesting - normally she was excellent at keeping track. The genius, or brutality of this device was in its hyperfocus on her stomach. Had the weight been in her grip, or on her ankles, her grip or her legs would have given in long ago. With her upper and lower body secured in the tight straps, the entire training session was simply a case of working her ab muscles over and over for as long as they could go. This was possibly more weight than Ellie had ever lifted with her abs, and it was making the brand new, solid metal machine creak beneath her. Once again she curled her upper body up, and at the peak of the movement while she could feel the unyielding weight threatening to rip apart her abs, she grinned, and slowly let it down with a shaky sigh.

 But that grin eventually had to give way. Her controlled, powerful flexing decayed into shaking, jittery and desperate movement. Ellie found herself fighting for every rep, and going through the same slow, brutal struggle every single time as her Coach coldly looked on. She shook, moaned, yelled but didn't stop. Her body was distinctly different compared to the start of the exercise. Her muscles seemed more lean and pumped as the flexed fibres squeezed her pale skin. The same effect, though even more pronounced, was taking place on her stomach. The now seemingly undersized blue leotard caught between every heaving ab muscle, moulding to the deep crevasses between her central ab muscles and even the sharpest cuts of her feathered obliques. Whenever she curled the fabric stretched so far that it looked to be under real strain as her hard working muscles swelled to their fullest. It hurt her body to work with this much weight, not just her abs - her whole body. At the bottom of the movement, she was painfully pulled back, the cushioning of the pad at her back not quite enough to keep her spine from pressing harshly against the metal base. The thick leather straps that had originally been wrapped tightly around her chest, arms, legs and shoulders were now crushing her pumped muscles. The sweat soaking her skin let them move just enough to rub her skin raw, all while digging in harder with every lift. She could ignore it. Push it out. What made her scream for the first time was the inferno tearing her abs apart. Before she had even finished her outburst, another weight slammed onto the stack she was lifting and made her body throb. But she crunched and lifted again. The weights rose and fell. Again. Again. She was moaning, yelling, going faster. Her fiery hair had come loose at some point and was sticking to her face. Her whole body shook, but she squeezed her horrendously sore abs and rose yet again. As she screamed, spittle flew from her mouth and hit her thighs. Ellie was going for broke here and knew it, using this gasp of strength and energy, overloading herself to squeeze out as many reps as she could before running out of steam. She just had to keep the weight moving, keep flexing, keep focusing on her abs as her body curled like a snapping maw. Ellie could feel her heartbeat in her neck, her ears, her head. The weights were deafening, screeching and hammering down with multiple times her own body weight. Again, through the breaths and heat she had no concept of how many reps had fallen.

 It would be nice to say that Ellie fought the good fight, and showed nothing but stoicism in the face of the incessant torture that Zoe called training. But the odds were so comically stacked against her - Zoe held the every advantage for as long as Ellie respected the Academy's rules, and Ellie was a good student. She was a girl who refused to say no to a challenge, and never backed out of an opportunity to train. It took a fanatical kind of boldness to reach the point that she had, with countless hours of brutal training both under the watch of trainers, students and in isolation. Even this, however, worked in Zoe’s favour in her crusade to break the prize gymnast. The limits her body could reach only meant that it was her willpower and mind that had to be pushed further and further in kind, eventually becoming as tightly strung as the chords of her pumping musculature. The gymnast’s discipline only meant that Zoe had all the more control over her.

 Though legendary even amongst the strongest girls in the Academy, Ellie's stomach was still made of flesh, muscle and blood. It took hours of toil but eventually, inevitably, the mighty gold collar found herself pinned. Her body was painfully pulled back in a deep arch around the stand, which forced a harsh pressure on her back. The thick, strained leather straps had worn sores on her flushed skin, now tighter than ever because of the pump of her muscles. She had her eyes closed tight, teeth bared and gritted as she sucked in small, fast breaths.

 The domineering coach gave the girl less than thirty seconds of reprieve - that word being generous - Ellie couldn't stretch or move to soothe her muscles as she lay bound to the infernal device, she could only take time to mentally prepare herself for whatever was coming next. Her breaths were shallow and quick, with unbidden, desperate moans. With every exhale her twelve pack abs punched the air, with sweat trickling between the carved up muscles. It flowed over the completely saturated leotard and dripped into the growing puddle beneath her. Her flushed chest too, flexed with each breath. The perspiration shimmered and highlighted the separate sinews of the defined pecs that pushed up her breasts. Her arms and legs were being bitten into by the harness, bulging against it and flushed so red it was hard to make out her freckles. The cruel trainer, a practiced expert in breaking down gymnasts, sneered as she reached for the topmost weight plate pulling Ellie down, and lifted it off the machine to lighten the load by a fraction. She then leaned so close to Ellie that she could feel her breath on her cheek. "Up."

 "Hnngh!!" Ellie heaved a split second later, scrunching up her face and gritting her teeth. Her body was vibrating like an overburdened bridge cable that was about to snap. For a few moments she made no progress in her rep, and then Ellie started to scream. Her body curled by the inch. The metal beneath her rattled with her violent tremors. The gymnast was clearly lifting her absolute maximum, even as the strain barely let her draw breath. She squinted and saw her thighs rising to meet her, the agony and relief almost euphoric as she reached the top of the rep and made it especially deep. Then Zoe spoke, and her heart sank.

 "Hold!"

 Ellie's body turned to marble on command, and she winced as she felt her abs grind together over her leotard. The durable material had worn thin, and was wet enough to show hints of the flushed red skin beneath. It sucked in over the separate sinews of each blocky muscle, every one of them under peak load and every one of them sending signals to her brain screaming for rest. But there was no rest. Ellie knew that Zoe wasn't planning to tell her to stop. She hissed through her gritted teeth, shook her head in a wake of sweat droplets and held. With every moment stretching into infinity, she would never know how long she lasted before she started to cry. Sharp sobs soon became full on wailing as the sensation overwhelmed her and tears spilled down her cheeks. The weight inevitably began to tear her hold apart, but even then Ellie worked through the tears to keep the movement to a crawl. The machine too, cried out as though it was barely able to contain the girl strapped to it. It creaked and groaned despite each well crafted joint being brand new.

 Once she was almost pulled down fully, Zoe leaned over her, a blur through the tears. But Ellie heard her clearly - "My my... will I get to be ze one who broke ze great Ellie Watson?"

 Clank. The weights settled back into place gently, and Ellie was trapped again. Her devastated stomach rolled in waves as she continued to sob. For the second time, Zoe took the weight at the top of the stack away from the machine.

 "Again."

 Drop sets. As cruel and painful as they are effective. If Zoe had wanted a shallow win, she could have loaded up Ellie with more weight than a human could possibly handle and watch her squirm under it until she tired out. That was easy, and pointless. Drop sets - removing weight in small increments at the point of muscle failure - allowed the gymnast's body to keep moving, keep working. It kept her muscles at their limit for as long as she had the willpower to push them. Ellie crunched her abs again. She shook her head, "Ff-ahh... hah... hnnnngh!!" her crying turned into a deep, long, shaky groan. The sweat soaked leotard squelched as her abs wrung them out. Her mighty, v-shaped back rose again, lats spread like wings. Her legs rose to meet her, rippling, chorded hip flexors joining into her pumped quads. The leotard looked ever smaller and more revealing as every swollen muscle threatened to burst out through it. Again, Zoe made her hold at the top until gravity and exhaustion wrenched her body apart. Each brick of muscle thrummed with breaking muscle fibres as she still poured her every drop of effort into them. It was torment beyond reason. This was a kind of muscle failure that an athlete could only manage to reach through masterful control of their own body.

 The two continued in kind, and it was paradoxically far more brutal than when the trainer was simply adding extra weight. This time, Ellie was being held at a ruthless, constant breaking point. It happened repeatedly, it became almost mindless as Ellie could only moan and groan and flex. After a mind-breaking eternity, Ellie twisted her head slowly to the side and blinked away the sweat and tears. She took as deep a breath as she could manage to push back the blackness encroaching on her vision, and could make out that the rack beside her was now empty.

 The feeling was indescribable - her body felt like it was made of steel, dense and hard to move. Thickened with pumped, carved muscle and yet so weakened that she couldn't stop shaking.

 A glint caught her eye through the blur and she saw it, a chilled bottle of water in Zoe’s hand, held tantalisingly close. To Ellie, a lifeline that her every survival instinct desperately craved. As planned, Zoe caught the brief glance. A quick gesture first made it seem like she may actually put it to her lips, but she shook her head with a truly evil smirk and dropped the bottle to the ground.

 "You get water when we're finished. We're finished when you say..." the next word dripped from her lips with nothing less than bloodlust: "Mercy."

 In her years at the Academy, Ellie had failed more times than she could count. She had puked, screamed, passed out and broken down - sometimes all in the same day. Never had she asked for mercy. As her head spun, her lips and voice cracked, her muscles and body felt torn apart, she wanted it. Ellie wanted mercy. Needed it. 'One more rep. Then  you can stop.' - her hazy mind bargained with her traumatised abs. It worked. Her chest touched her thighs in a movement as deep as her very first rep, before she collapsed back down,  arching deeply around the back support. 'Again. One more. Then it's over.' the same voice lied to her again, and it went on. 'Five more.' - 'Just ten more...' Ellie was sobbing again. Maybe she'd never stopped.

 Not that the girl could process her surroundings, but her trainer was now glowering with sheer hatred - jealousy and admiration amplifying her spite tenfold. For Zoe, whose career and pride had been built on breaking people down, the way this girl defied her had been a thorn in her side for years. Now it was more a blade ripping into her ego. The beautiful, delicate features of her face had hardened into an expression that betrayed the person beneath.

 Lost for ideas, she bared down on her would-be victim. "Faster!! Faster!!" Zoe howled so furiously she sounded breathless.

 The muscle fibres of her abs in splinters and breaking further to keep moving even the modest load they were now tasked with, Ellie could only choose between breathing and reps. She chose reps. Pumped veins snaking along her stomach showed even through her leotard almost as firmly carved as the muscles beneath them. Her ponytail had long gone, her saturated mane of orange hair curling in all directions. Her body shook like it was no longer her own and Ellie wept. The athlete's brain could no longer process why she was doing this, only that she needed to keep going. Time no longer existed, it could have been minutes or days. As she further broke down, Ellie's body would only get half a rep under her own bodyweight before collapsing back to the bottom - the bottom being much lower than it had been at the start. As her muscles could no longer support her, her resting position was a deep, agonising arch right around the small, worn pad at her back. But she kept returning for another rep.

 Zoe leaned forward, adrenaline blinding her, and didn't have a thought about the consequences she'd face for killing a student. She raised her arm and with a finely honed brutality for destroying bodies, drove her elbow down into the centre of Ellie's hypertrophied stomach. It felt and sounded like hitting a truck tire, only a demonic level of pump protecting the unprepared girl from having her spine crushed. There wasn't the ab strength left to curl up to protect herself so Ellie only weakly thrashed against the bindings rubbing her pale skin raw.

 "You thought there would be no punishment for bad form?!" Zoe sneered, a small sense of control returning, but the breathlessness in her voice betrayed a complete lack of composure. Not that Ellie could tell at this point. On the next rep she made it all the way to the top, and didn't question why Zoe hit her again anyway. Her world exploded once more, every nerve lighting up with a pain and exhaustion she could no longer comprehend.

 Her cracked lips slowly pressed together and she sounded...

 "M-m... m..."

 "Miss LaChance!" a sharp, loud voice came from what seemed to be far away, but was in fact the nearby door. Zoe spun around with all the aggression of a lioness being interrupted during a meal, but the intruder didn't flinch.

 Another Coach. Her short, stocky frame didn't get in the way of a towering presence. Dark hair, pale skin and high cheekbones, eyes almost black.

 "Your night training group has been waiting for you for an hour." she said firmly, "We can't bring the whole Academy schedule to a halt just because you underestimated a student."

 "I-"

 "Or overestimated yourself, perhaps?"

 The statuesque blonde beauty, once so composed and dominant, looked like she was about to throw a tantrum. Her shoulders were hunched, she ground her teeth and her wide eyes bulged. Frustration, humiliation and failure were not feelings that she had a lot of experience with. It looked like the thought of throwing a punch came to mind in one, brief moment but some semblance of sanity stayed with the woman, and she stormed away, shoulder checking Beth on the way past in an interaction that had all the force of a car crash.

 Beth watched the defeated woman leave with more satisfaction than she considered appropriate for seeing another coach taken down a peg. She waited until the sound of stomping faded, before turning her gaze back to fully appreciate a sight that could only be seen in one place. The Olympus for the elite beyond the elite. The place for young athletes willing to be forged through blistering heat and unyielding pressure into diamonds or else be expelled as broken failures. The Athena Athletic Academy.

 The monstrosity of willpower and muscle strength was all the more shocking for the fact that she remained a stunningly beautiful gymnast. The gold collar’s skin shone with sweat like oil from a figure competitor. It threw every jagged line of definition into deep focus. Muscle ridges glimmered in the light as her body heaved and writhed, and with the slight sparkle of her leotard it gave the impression of a literal glow. A level of unbelievable muscle pump had her chest, thighs and arms bursting against the rough leather harness that creaked and whined, looking ready to snap at any moment. Her feet were pointed and toes curled, knees bent to leave her flexing calves boring into her hamstrings. Her fists were clenched hard enough to turn her knuckles white and send a network of veins springing up along her forearms. As core focused as the workout was, the downright reckless level to which Ellie had pushed herself had left her whole body cramped and in agony. Her mouth hung open, eyes shut, head lulled back. The freckles normally dotting her face were almost hidden by her deep red flush. She was panting and shuddering as much as physically possible while in her arched position and it threw her staggering muscles into new freakish shapes with every moment - none more so than her abs. The dome protruding upward with heaving bricks of muscle had started to wear at the leotard covering it. The material had thinned and split from a combination of friction, stretching and impacts and now showed hints of the skin beneath. Veins, sinews, muscle all artfully carved onto the girl’s frame. They patterned every spot from her rib cage down along her tight waist and to her shapely hips. They were abs that encouraged awed whispers even amongst other elite students - and that was without going through hours and hours of torturous work.

 On her approach, Beth scooped up Zoe’s discarded water bottle and touched it lightly to Ellie’s lips. Despite the awkward positioning, she drained half of it in moments before pulling away. Beth unscrewed the top and poured the rest over the girl’s face and chest. It was as welcome a refreshment as the drink, even the lukewarm water a blessing to her overheated skin. “Now, Watson.” the trainer turned her usual authoritative timbre to the redhead and drew out her words, “I believe you were about to say something to Coach LaChance?”

 Once more, Ellie pursed her lips, her eyes refocused and she took a breath before speaking, hoarse voiced.

 “M-more…”

 Beth nodded in response wordlessly moving around the machine to take a discarded weight plate. With a rattling screech that was all too familiar to Ellie at this point, the weight was back, and pressure on her endlessly suffering abs intensified yet again. Ellie took it in stride. Her abs flexed so hard and suddenly that Beth could have sworn a mist of sweat shot up from them -  but that was surely no more than a trick of the light from her glittery leotard.

 A few minutes of rest and half a bottle of water were enough, just, to keep her moving. Her body was built for endurance and conditioned to make the most out of the smallest opportunity. Metabolic efficiency to the extreme was trained into her every fibre and she was determined to work until every last gasp of energy had been drained. The coach saw this. She wasn’t needed here.

 “I’ll send somebody up in a couple of hours to let you out of that thing.” Beth told her, heading for the door. She didn’t turn around as she left, but added, “You should be just in time for your dawn legs session. Don’t be late.”

 The reply of “Yes, Ma’am.” was muffled, as Ellie already curled upward, her face to her quivering thighs.