Private Finished Why is this so heavy?

Lately, Alby has been coming to the gym to train at least once a week. In the past he’d been running and doing mostly endurance training outdoors, but recently he figured that perhaps the key to improving his power was muscle rather than stamina. It was only his third time there when he spotted his dragon friend.

“Eein?!” He’d call out to him then walk through the gym to get to him. “Hey- wow look at these!” Alby would look down to the weights Eein was using. They looked heavy, which was to be expected. He went to pick one of them up, but the object wouldn’t budge even slightly. When asked if he even lifted, Alby would try harder, only giving up when Eein told him not to hurt himself. There was something seriously wrong with that weight. He imagined it was heavy since Eein must’ve been using it and he was a dragon, but it was far too heavy for its size. He figured he should eat least been able to push it.

“You’re pretty darn strong, huh?” He’d smile. “Nothing much, I’ve been getting strong, getting into the swing of school here, oh! And I got into this weird situation with this famous man out on campus. You know, the usual. What about you?”

He figured the weight was heavier than it looked, but 500 pounds? He'd never considered that the gym equipment might be magical, but it certainly was interesting. He easily believed everything Eein said, even if his eyes went wide at the mention of the other weight being 1000 pounds.

"I usually train my ability right before I go to bed since I get really tired after using it, right now I'm just getting my body in shape and hoping that helps somehow since my whole body usually feels it when I use my power. Ultimately his focus was on training his power.

"Huh?" Alby would scratch his chin. "Basically an author guy shook me around a bunch after I started asking him a few questions. But the weird part is that after I went to go see him, he was adamant that it hadn't been him, he was pretty convincing too. I still don't know what to make of it."

Alby laughed as Eein flexed, but his face became serious as Eein mentioned doppelgangers. This was the first he'd really heard about that, but from the sound of it, that must have been connected to what happened with Morey.

"Hold on. What do you mean, doppelganger shit? Have there been similar cases happening somewhere?" This peaked Alby's interest. Depending on Eein's answer, the man he'd met up with might have actually been telling the truth when he said they'd never met before.

When asked if he was trying to investigate the rumours, Alby fibbed. "Nah, I'm curious about the whole thing, but getting involved would probably be dangerous." Eein would've probably urged him to stop if he said otherwise.

"Well what do you know, that man must've been telling the truth then." Alby was happy to hear that. It meant the man was totally innocent and he hadn't been tricked. Although, the smile on his face quickly disappeared as he realized how much worse this was. There was something out there impersonating people and there was no telling how long it's been doing that.

It almost seemed like Eein didn't believe him when he said he wouldn't go looking into it. Which was fair, after all he was lying. Luckily, Eein didn't dig into him, instead just giving him a warning similar to Morey's. Alby's response to this was just a soft nod

When the weight was tossed his way, Alby instinctively went to catch it, but as he grabbed hold of it, he suddenly realized it was probably heavier than it looked. To his relief, it wasn't. "I'm from Oregon, if you know what that is, it's in the States."

Alby was surprised to find that Eein came from Alaska. He wasn’t sure why, but he kind of expected him to have come from another unheard of location like the island. “Oh, I’m from a pretty small town called Ashland.”

“How cold was it in Alaska?” Alby didn’t actually know too much about the place and was more or less picturing a frozen wasteland covered in snowy trees. “It must’ve been hard to adjust to this climate.” Alby looked around at the total absence of blizzards.

And then there was the mention of sparring. Alby was well aware that the difference in ability between the two of them was pretty extreme, but that wasn’t about to stop him from seeing Eein do something cool. “They’re close enough, don’t worry. I’m a lot tougher than I look!”