I strained, my muscles glimmering with the golden light of the biotic fields littered around the gym of Watchpoint Gibraltar.

Slowly but smoothly, the bar slid up along its tracks.

The room was deadly quiet, the sounds of my strained breathing and the rasp or metal-on-metal being the only things that broke the silence.

Across from me, lounging on some of the other equipment were the only four other women, unashamedly watching as my nearly naked form was put through its paces.

I had finished my initial workout when Gwen had asked to see what I could do. A lot more than I thought I could, apparently.

"So it looks like the optimized muscle expression worked out!" Gwen cheered, good job Mercy!

Mercy blushed, "I couldn't have done it without their technology. The amount of customization that you could get into with some time was amazing."

"Now let's see if those blood flow optimizations worked out! To the treadmill, let's see you run!" Gwen commanded!

Raven watched as I hooked nearly two hundred kilos of metal onto the supports. Pulling myself into a seated position, I grabbed the small toled off the rack below me and wiped down some of my sweat and caught her eye, leaving her to turn and blush.

Gwen laughed and pushed her back, "You're missing the show!"

"It's okay," I reassure her, "I know what I got into, so I don't mind if you stare."

Raven steels herself, her eyes flashing green for a moment, "Sorry, it just felt strange when you looked at me like that."

Mercy nodded, "Felt your heart race a bit? Yeah, I understand."

"It's natural, especially since your physical body is mostly human as far as we can tell." Gwen pointed out.

Raven nodded and sat up a little straighter as I walked over to the treadmill.

Calling the thing a treadmill felt like a bit of an understatement. It was a large square platform on which you could run in any direction and still go nowhere.

So, after clipping the control unit to the waistband of my briefs, I got to running.

The first test was raw speed, so with a hundred-meter goal, I leaned into it and started running at full pelt.

I still hadn't quite gotten the technique down, so it was just shy of twelve seconds later that the buzzer blared and I brought myself to a halt. Oddly enough - while a bit out of breath, I wasn't tired.

"And that's a new record!" Mercy cheered, "Athena, put that down in his file."

"As you wish." responded the AI.

As I stepped into one of the biotic chambers to prep for the distance running test, I called out to my audience, "Hey, want to grab some dinner after this?"

Mercy paused, "What? All of us?"

"Sure! Why not?" I respond, "Get to know each other a bit, talk about things."

Gwen shrugged, "I was sort of expecting that, so sure! Why not."

"Same with me!" Called out Ahri.

As I strut back out to the centre of the treadmill, I turned to Raven, "What about you?"

She shook her head for a moment, "Umm… yeah, dinner! Sounds good."

"I guess I'm fine with it too." Mercy said.

I nod and begin to run with a long, loping gait. "Cool, there's an Italian place not too far from my flat, bit too fancy for the area, but I hear the food's great."

It took several hours for us to simply end the test with "At an average speed of 11 kilometres per hour, Jon gets hungry before he becomes tired."

We took a bit to shower and change but before long, we were all seated around a table waiting for the food to arrive.

"So, now that things have started to settle down, we should probably get around to discussing that particular topic," I say, "Does anyone have any specific plans?"

They all seemed to shrug, "I mean, I know I'm interested, but I haven't really discussed it with the others." Gwen stated.

I nod, "So dating then? No actual relationship until we work things out, but we should be able to get away with getting to know each other, seeing how we mesh. The 'references' I have for each of you don't reach too deeply into your personalities and you know even less about me. We're all very busy but we can spend some getting to know each other."

They considered it.

"That's a bit forward, don't you think?" Gwen commented, "But I've been thinking at least and I can't think of a fairer way to do it."

"We could just share him."

We all turned to Raven whose eyes were alight with pearlescent cheer, as she burst out into giggles.

Mercy rolled her eyes, "Dating around could work."

"Scheduling is going to be a pain. I've got to sell some of that gold we've been prospecting in alt-stralia to build up capital and if that goes through I need to get the bribes going to buy out a decent chunk of land in Niger." I complain.

Raven nodded, "I've been looking into other religions and their emotional control techniques in order to find something that works better for me, especially since my powers have started to settle down."

We all commiserated on our busy schedules, and we quickly realised how busy we were.

My plans were technically the least set in stone, I had another week at my old job and I had to get some gold sold, and I needed to research the right names to bribe in order to buy acres of land in Niger, buy and bribe my way into a lot of land in Niger and then start introducing space-based technologies.

Since I have only managed to spend three days researching Niger, my plans for everything past number two on that list are basically just an idea.

The others had more structured goals. Raven had her travels, Gwen was working with Winston on fully replicating Elizabeth's abilities and both Ahri and Angela were working on a project to see how chakra and life force were related after Hinata discovered the Chakra Fruit and the origins of her own abilities.

So there were conflicts almost immediately.

Mercy and Ahri agreed to split the times that they could get away from their project relatively easily, but it was the confliscts with Raven and Gwens schedules that came up the most often.

Raven, eventually just commented, "I'll share my dates with Gwen and Angela if it's okay with them." tired of the back and forth.

"Those are the only date's she's free ladies." I wince, "Especially for the next two weeks. I've been helping her with the travel arrangements."

Gwen sighed, "Sure, let's go with that. I've got you to myself on Monday."

"And I guess I could swap with you, Angela, and let Raven have hers. She needs some alone time." Ahri commented.

I checked over things and made sure that I had mornings or evenings free as required specifically loading them onto my calendar to make sure.

We left the bar and returned to the base - sans Ahri who was going to bed early, this time in a little bar that I had squirrelled into the plans for the base. More drinks were had and the conversation started up again.

I had already cut Raven off back at the restaurant, but apparently, I hadn't been fast enough on the draw because the alcohol had hit her quite hard.

"We should keep doing this!" She declared, "Like next week? Can we go out for dinner? The other girls are too noisy."

Angela turned to her, "Noisy?"

"Their feelings, they're noisy." Raven said flailing her hands in an attempt to convey some sort frustration, "Like that noise in your ears sometimes."

"And we're quieter?"

"More focused." She said, "Or more in line. It sounds less like a bunch of different noises."

I nodded, "It makes sense, I suppose. The three of us are relatively similar and have similar interests. I'm guessing you don't want Ahri?"

Raven shrugged, "Eh… She's like Yang I guess. Kori and Elizabeth seem to mix well too."

"Sort of expected that." I shrug.

Angela turned to me, "You don't like Ahri?"

"I don't really see anything going anywhere. The fact she's going back into show-business already tells me that she isn't really my type of person, and I think she feels the same way. The date next week is to see if there's anything but it's kind of a long shot." I explain.