"Inner Beauty"
By: Sgiwy

	Sharon walked through the lobby of her apartment building, and hit the 'up' button on the elevator. "This place is quiet during the day," she thought, stepping through the sliding door. Her office building had been shut down due to a power outage, and all of the employees had been sent home for the rest of the workday. Which left her with an entire afternoon ahead of her.
	Hitting the button for her floor, the doors closed and the elevator hummed to work. Sharon noticed a piece of paper taped to one of the elevator walls:

"Attention residents: the exercise room is now reopened after extensive remodeling. Amenities now include new, larger weight sets, more treadmills, and a wall-length mirror uncovered during the restoration and original to the building. Enjoy!"

Sharon had never been a big exercise guru, due to her slighter build, and hated going to the gym if there was anyone else around. So she simply never went.
	"Well, I do have the whole day ahead of me, and this place is deserted right now," she thought, exiting the elevator. She unlocked her apartment, and closed the door.


	Sharon walked into the exercise room on the top floor of her building, now dressed in her only sportsbra and spandex shorts. Last time she had been in here, while looking for an apartment, the walls had all been white drywall. The restoration must have removed the drywall, and left whatever was behind it. Three walls were now brick, with the fourth, along the length of the room, being an 8' tall mirror.
	With no one else there, Sharon scanned the weight collection, and began her workout. After thirty minutes she had used every machine, and was already tired. Wiping the sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand, she stood up and walked to the mirror. Up close, she noticed that although the mirror went the length of the thirty-foot room, there didn't seem to be any lines in it- as if it were one piece of glass. "Wow, impressive," she thought, smiling at herself.
	Sharon took a good look at her reflection. Thin arms, skinny legs, no butt... nothing to complement. She brought her arm up, and flexed. Even tensed, her bicep barely rose higher than normal. "I bet I just set records in this gym- for least amount of weight moved," she sighed to herself, "I wish I had some muscle."
	The mirror seemed to shimmer a moment, and Sharon looked around, her arm still raised. "Weird," she thought. Then she looked at her reflection's bicep. It was slowly massing to the size of a baseball. Sharon quickly looked back to her own, which was still mousy. She tensed harder, and her reflection's bicep grew to 16"- like a softball! She reached across to feel her own bicep, and her hand went almost all the way around her arm. She looked at her reflection, and the hand only covered the top of the muscle!
	Sharon raised her other arm for a bicep flex, and thought about having it match the other. It complied, and soon she saw a version of herself with a pair of strong-looking biceps, still slowly growing next to her reflection's head. Sharon looked at her own arms- still the same, other than a tingly feeling from tensing so hard.
	"I wonder what I'd look like with big powerful muscles all over the place?" she thought, and her reflection complied, morphing into an impressively muscular bodybuilder. The thighs stretched the spandex, deep creases in the muscle becoming clear. Calves began to poke out behind her lower legs as they swelled, so Sharon turned one leg and stood on tiptoe to get a better view. The muscle responded by doubling its size.
	Her reflection's abs gained unbelievable definition, looking steely-hard and beginning to cast their own shadow. Sharon turned sideways, and admired her reflection's swelling buttocks, now twin globes of bulging muscle. In profile, she noticed her reflection's chest swelling as well, as muscle pushed and supported her breasts under the now-straining sports bra.
	Sharon brought her eyes back to the biceps of her other self, now peaked near the top of her head. She tore her eyes away from her reflection, and looked disappointingly at her existing body. Nothing had changed, only a slight ache from tensing her muscles after the workout. Her reflection frowned back at her. "I know if I had muscles like that I could lift a lot..."
	Sharon walked over to the barbell set in front of the mirror, with her super-muscular reflection doing the same. She hadn't touched these weights earlier because some macho-man had left 300 pounds on it, and Sharon didn't feel like taking them all off. She gripped the bar, and seeing her reflection's body behind it, she knew if she had muscles that large this would be a piece of cake.
	For some odd reason, she actually began to try lifting it, and although her slight arms in real life looked comical next to all that weight, her reflection looked right at home. The bar rose quickly over her head- in the mirror AND in her own hands! Sharon gasped, covering her mouth with her right hand- and her left still easily supporting the 300 pounds as if it were no more than a plastic model, not even tilting in the slightest.
	The surprised amazon reflection did the same, muscles glistening in the light. Sharon spent a couple surprised minutes, admiring both herself and her reflection's ability to manipulate the weights like toys- holding them up by mere fingers, standing on one leg, standing on her tiptoes! While her reflection's muscle groups swelled as they were called on, Sharon couldn't help but notice that her real muscles barely flexed and yet could still do the same thing. She even doubled the weight on the bar to 600, and barely noticed a difference. Other than she was beginning to get aroused by the thought of super strength.
	"I wonder if my reflection- or me- is capable of something truly 'super'..." Sharon bit her lip, and tried to bend the steel weight bar! Although she tried her hardest, the muscles in her reflection had stopped growing due to approaching unwieldy sizes. Her amazon self could not grow any more, and the bar did nothing [other than holding on to the 600 pounds, of course].
	"I wish her muscles were super-strong for their size, like mine. I wish I were Supergirl!" Sharon whispered to herself. The mirror shimmered again... and now her reflection's clothing morphed into a short red miniskirt, revealing the monstrous thighs even further up her legs. Her reflection's top sprouted a red cape, and a large 'Supershield' now stood proudly upon her breasts.
	The barbell in her reflection's hands bent immediately in two, like soft foam, creating a large squeal of a noise. But Sharon had forgot to look back at herself, because the noise came from the steel in her own small hands! She smiled at her Superwoman-amazon reflection, and dropped the ruined weight set with a crash. Putting her hands on her hips, her reflection was her perfect vision of superstrength and power, muscles still bulging everywhere. Sharon couldn't believe it was real, but somehow she had all of that strength and power inside herself, too!
	"Power..." she thought, "what about SUPERpowers?" Sharon saw her reflection slowly rise above the ground, and felt her own feet lift off the floor. Winking at her reflection, she raised a small arm above her head [while her reflection's head did the same, there was a huge bicep nestled in her ear], and streaked through the ceiling and into the stratosphere.


	Helen walked into the renovated weight room, admiring the upgrades since she had last worked out. "Hmm, the flyer didn't say anything about a new skylight," she thought, looking at a punched hole in the ceiling.
	She walked over to admire the uncovered mirror, and stumbled on something on the ground. It was a heavily-loaded barbell twisted into a U-shape. Looking back at the mirror, Helen thought, "Somebody would have to be superhumanly strong to do that! I wish I were..."
	The mirror shimmered a little.