The white racing boat pierced through the glassy water of the river as the rising sun began to cast a golden glow across the landscape. Eight strong, young women glistened with sweat and powered the vessel with their muscular legs, putting more and more effort in with each stroke. Claire - the stroke of the crew - wore a face of determination as she continued to lay down the pressure, head of the river was approaching and, in a few weeks, months of training would lead up to one six-minute race that they had to be prepared for.

"Yeah girls, there?s the speed we want!" Jay shouted to the crew with enthusiasm.

Jay was a small kid, barely cresting 5'4 which is exactly why he was the perfect size for a cox. While talented in his coxing ability, Jay was actually too light to cox the men's senior crew at university and instead found himself being the perfect weight to fit into the women's senior crew. Not that he was complaining, the girls in the crew took the sport just as serious as he hoped they would, it also helped that they got along well and had become close friends and to top it all off he found a majority of them to be unbelievably attractive, especially Claire, and as the stroke of the crew ­­he spent a lot of time face to face with her.

Claire was absolutely stunning, standing at four inches over six feet she had an incredibly defined body. Her flowing blonde hair led down to her muscular biceps that bulged with each stroke she took, her quads managed to stretch her zootie to its limits. With each stroke she let out a billowing exhale, further proving the effort she was putting into her sport.

"Jay, speed." she demanded between breaths. Jay quickly relayed the information back, Claire responded with a forced nod as she remained focused on her movements. They were almost back to the pontoon, meaning the session was soon to be over and the crew could finally relax.

***

After they pulled up to the wooden platform Jay stepped out of the boat and gathered his coxing tools from the seat, as he turned around, he took a moment to appreciate Claire in all her glory stretching out that tension from the session as she reached her arms towards the sky, making her stature even more intimidating. He looked back down before anyone noticed his stare and walked up to the shed to meet with his coach, Jane Chandler.

"How do you think we went this morning?" Jane questioned as Jay approached. Giving him a quick glance up and down, mostly down as she similar to most people, towered over him.

"Not bad, I think we're in a good spot, but you know, just have to keep up the work. I think Sarah was a bit worried about her back though," He said in reply.

"Mm, yeah we'll see how she holds up over the next few days, anyway I'll talk to the others and see how they're holding up too," her large, calloused hand clasped his shoulder as she gave him a reassuring pat and moved past him to find the others. “See you on Thursday.”

***

Jay leaned against his car waiting for Claire and Bridget to finish speaking to their coach so he could drop them home, the 4am starts were starting to wear him down. As he was beginning to nod off, he heard the crunch of gravel as they approached.

"Shotgun!" Bridget yelled as she ran towards the car, tearing in front of Claire so she could secure the front seat.

"That's not fair my legs are longer than yours and Jay's backseat is so cramped," she complained as Bridget closed the door in front of her. "Ughhh whatever, Jay you should really consider getting a bigger car," she added as she squeezed her way into the back.

"Yeah orrr you could just be shorter," Jay shot back with a smirk as he settled into the driver's seat and pushed the seat back to confine Claire's leg room further resulting in a chuckle from Bridget.

"Jay! Don't make me come squash you little man," she playfully joked, as she began to push back against the seat, easily overpowering his attempt.

"Whatever, I can't hear you from back there anyway," he said with a laugh, "so how'd the chat with Jane go?"

"Well, she thinks we're all putting in the work and we're on track to win buuut there's one problem she has," Bridget replied. "She thinks you still need to lose more weight," this earned her a scowl from Jay, "Hey! Her words not mine."

"Is that bitch kidding? I literally weigh like 50kg I don't have much more room to lose weight," he angrily said back.

"52kg" Claire corrected from the back. "Plus, I have an idea. You know that thing my dad is working on Brig?"

"Uhhh yeah? the remote that he used to make that couch smaller?" Bridget quizzed as she unscrewed the lid to her protein shake and took a swig.

"Yeah that one, but he used it on a mouse recently and it actually shrunk, so I was thinking maybe we could use it on you Jay and just make you a bit shorter and then you'd be way lighter without having to lose any actual weight," she stated matter-of-factly.

Jay sat there dumbfounded, was Claire actually suggesting they use her dads highly experimental shrinking device just so he could lose a few kilograms. "How about no? I'd rather just lose it naturally."

"Come on it'll be so much faster and easier if we do it like this, I promise nothing will go wrong, dad's been testing it a lot and it has been super successful," she pleaded. "It's only going to help us go faster."

Jay considered his options, drop his friends home and then catch up on some well needed sleep or instead go to Claire's house and change his height from very short to incredibly short just so his coach could be happy. He saw the way Bridget and Claire were expectantly looking at him, he did want to win too and being lighter would only help, plus dieting is not exactly his idea of fun.

"Fine, we'll go try it but let's just agree only to take away a few inches at most okay?" He stated.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Claire said happily. "But I can't make any promises about how much we shrink you."

This earned a stern glare from Jay as he death stared back at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Just kidding!" she swiftly added with a cheeky grin.