The Intermission Pt7

Once I was finally back home after copious amounts of brief reading with the AR visor, it was only a little after eight at night but my little brother and sister were already asleep. Since they were asleep, I soon found myself up in my room using both my visor and my computer to monitor more than just my own thread with nothing else to do.

Currently, I was less interested in maintaining my thread that had begun to die down a bit after everybody exhausted all of their personal points of interest. Instead, I was going back through all of my clan's different threads and picking out persons of interest. From their profile on the forum one could learn a bit about their gaming, such as their level and if they were in a clan or not.

For those who actually seemed to know what they were talking about in each thread I would reach out to someone like Little Thirteen to see how far out his net was spread. There was no way he and his clan would know about every player in the game, but 'most' players were not out of his reach. If their information came back as good, I might send a clan invite.

Now that my thread was basically running itself, I only had to check back in now and then to check the content for anything that I would be needed for while helping maintain the rest of my clan's threads. Their threads were only a little less busy than my own and they were more than able to keep up with the general needs and reminders after having gone through all of the complicated content early on.

After only an hour of this, I decided to simply pass out early while sending Melpomene a blessing quoted message to collect all of the new posts directly for me that come up. Sleeping in my bed was once again like a gift from the heavens, giving me yet another reason to be grateful for the update.

Pretty much as soon as I woke up, I crawled into my gaming chair and turned on the massage function.

It was so early in the morning that it was still dark outside the window behind my computer but only fifteen minutes later there came a quiet knock at the door. Before I even had time to decide whether or not I wanted to respond the door was quietly opened a few inches and the silhouette of a person peeking through the doorway could be seen.

Normally, one would be disturbed by the fact that something like this was not only happening right in front of them but potentially happened while they were asleep. However, that was my father outside the door and both of my parents have been prone to doing exactly this even while awake or gaming.

"Oh, good, you're already awake," my dad says while pushing the door the rest of the way open and reaching in to flick on the lights. I hissed like a disturbed vampire cat but he simply ignored me and said, "Get cleaned up and dressed, you're coming to work with me."

Work? The gym? TO DO… work?

"Are you on drugs?" I ask with exaggerated laziness, letting my voice drawl and slightly mumble as if I were high or drunk myself.

"Get the hell up and get ready," he casually barks out before simply turning and walking away.

Mumbling and groaning while turning off my chair, I grab a change of casual clothes and tiredly lumber off to the bathroom to get ready for the day before going down stairs. My mom and dad were both already awake and had already prepared some breakfast. Since I had eaten like a pound of rice alone the day before, I could only eat some light eggs.

My father, who really only went to work three or four days a week, would always wake up at the ass crack of dawn and so would my mother. Like an old fashioned family, they would actually spend most of them time in the morning together with the coffee machine in the kitchen while waiting to wake up everybody else. It was something that troubled my life greatly.

After breakfast I spent over an hour in the gym's commercial transport van that could carry twenty people with light baggage before we ever reached the gym. One of the more premium or special services provided by the gym was pick-up and drop-off services. Surprisingly, the van was actually mostly full with people and duffels when we finally parked.

The gym itself was a large two-story warehouse type of building with a domed steel roof. From the outside it was a simple and sturdy brick building painted bright white with a large pair of steel doors for a main entrance. During work hours, both the front and back loading doors would be left open.

Above the front doors was a large old-fashioned enameled steel signboard that stated the family name and gym. The building itself was originally part of a shipping company that used to belong to our predecessors and was simply the one on the front right end of the lot that became a choice piece of corner property after the rest of the land was sold to the city in the past.

However, the one building had once been a few different small businesses before it was finally passed down to my father and became a giant training gym. The inside was fairly simple set up with a clear walkway down the middle about two feet wider than the actual doorways. Most of the floor space in the first floor was open with only support structures around the middle.

To either side of the middle were large locker rooms that could fit one hundred and twenty people apiece for either men or women built our from the side walls to cover around two hundred square and fifty square feet to accommodate twenty shower stalls at the back of each locker room. Built above this with some simply steel beams for supports was the second floor that covered about one third of the actual building.

The front end of the building contained the upper body and martial training areas to either side of the main walkways while the walls and some kiosks contained well over a hundred people worth of various equipment to each area. In the back of the building were all the various treadmills and 'leg day' equipment in relative privacy.

The second floor was reserved for special services like fitness and nutrition seminars, VIP training, AA meetings, and just one long office space that covered the walkway. However, it was really only in use one or twice a week. Unless my dad just wanted somewhere to be lazy all day, at which time he would come here on a 'day off'.

Because the gym offered twenty-four-hour services, there were already people inside sparring in rings or practicing moves on targets to the left with people just generally working out on the right. My father had four shifts of trainers and supervisors working under him in each area except for the second floor.

Currently, there was only one supervisor for the entire night and two shifts and two trainers for either end of the building. The night shift trainers at the front where a retired body builder and a three 'Dan' black belt in Taekwondo. Since he not only knew them but could also perform techniques on a level that could kill the average person in one hit, he was actually registered as a weapon.

My father actually had him prove it with three different ballistic models and pressure plates. Not only could he crack open a ballistic model skull with a simple side kick but the residual pressure from the plate on the opposite side of the skull read deadly numbers. This guy was the night shift supervisor and martial trainer.

The martial employees on the day shift were also registered as deadly but they got their registration through the gym. The night shift guy had been working here since night shift was opened and it became a requirement. However, he was not actually allowed to teach Taekwondo because of his registry and thus was simply a self-defense consultant and gym supervisor.

Now that we had arrived, though, it was time for the night shift to start packing up.

Even though the customers or patrons or whatever could stay, I was pretty sure my dad usually made them leave anyway because they all left within minutes after the trainers. Once they were gone, my dad brought our a bunch of cleaning equipment from the front side concession area and made me do what I always did when he brought me here in the mornings. Since childhood.

For pretty much as long as I could remember since the first day my father taught me how to defend myself, I had been randomly woken up and brought here to take care of the place. It was not always early in the mornings, either. Sometimes I would be brought here from ten to two at night after I turned nine.

I was not ungrateful for it, though, because it not only helped me get to where I was right now but also because it would sometimes get me out of school. Now, though, I was hating life.

I only really managed to clean the main walkways and sanitize-wipe some of the equipment before more people started showing up and my father took over this part of the job. Only half an hour later he will have miraculously made his way through the entire building while the place set in motion for the rest of the day.

When I was younger I would actually be made to spend several hours a day cleaning the place while it was in use when I was here. Nowadays I only had to do it all every now and then before going into the concession areas. Our concession areas offered several types of local and organic jerky which was also the only thing that I was allowed to eat for free.

Something about the place it came from being part of a charity and taxes covered it or whatever. I never really paid attention to the finer points, I just knew that it came fresh but was never more than three months old in the gym and I was the one who made sure of it. Everything else but vitamin water had been and still was off limits to 'your grubby little hands', as my father had said to me one day.

Since I was the boss's kid I was always treated well by the older teens and young adults hired to work in the concession stands, but now I was mostly just ignored because I both older and younger than some of them. Nowadays when a giant seventeen-year-old pulls out an ancient looked duct taped lawn chair in the back corner of the concession stand, it's not cute but kind of weird.

Regardless of what anybody thought, I had my name written on this same chair in tape since childhood while occasionally adding a new layer of different tapes. There was no way I would ever give up my first throne. If this building were going to suddenly explode or was just burning, somehow, I would not leave it without my chair.

The people manning the morning concession that only offered jerky, various forms of granola, coffee, and 'healthy' frozen breakfast sandwiches were a guy and girl I barely knew. Today, though, I did not even have the time to think about them before my father suddenly showed up and all but dragged me to the back end of the building while only saying, "You've got a new job today."

"But, my concession maintenance salary…" I mumble with mock sadness while quietly following along.

Heartless like a grim reaper, my father simply states, "Grow up."

"Are you looking for a fight, old man?" I ask while looking away to hide a sudden smile.

"You think you can take me?" My dad asks incredulously, almost stopping in the process of leading me toward the middle of the treadmill section. "Fine, you want to put on some gloves so we'll put on some gloves. Just like old times. And just like old times, you gotta work for it!"

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