I woke up unable to move. I began to panic but no matter how much I panicked, my body didn’t move an inch. There was a herbal smell in the air, thick, and it poured around me in a thick haze. The light around was thin, lit only by glowing moss, as soft croaks were heard. I needed to move, I needed to, it wasn’t safe. I needed to-

  Yesterday’s events swam into me. Slowly, silently, I began to calm down. My breathing evened out as I took deep breaths.

  I was in a village. I was okay. I was safe.

  Yesterday had been strange, emotional. There’d been too much. Too many things. The pain, the-

  The pain.

  I wasn’t in pain.

  I gasped softly. There was always pain. Every part of me hurt all the time. My mouth, my face, my skin, my bones, my muscles, even my blood. Parasites, disease, sickness, torn and broken parts of my body that healed wrong, I was a walking pile of pain more than anything. I just, tried to not let it bother me.

  And now it was gone.

  Tears of relief swam down my cheeks. I had no idea how much pain I was in. Now that it was gone… I couldn’t have stopped myself from crying if I tried. It was gone. It was all gone. I was okay. I was better. I was… I wasn’t in pain anymore.

  I laid there, listening to soft croaks, before I realized it was snoring. There was a frog, probably a frog, nearby. It didn’t sound like my, friend? I hoped we were friends. I had been assuming a lot yesterday.

  How strange… in a way, the croaks caused an acknowledgment of something that I had no other way of knowing. Time. Snoring meant sleep. Other people sleeping meant… it was probably night? Even if they didn’t have the sun or moon, they probably all slept around the same time. For them, even if the sun was up, it was night.

  I had woken up, paralyzed, in the middle of the night. Somewhere with herbs. Somewhere where there was a single soft croaking frog. I’d felt smarter since coming down here, like I’d had too much in my own way holding myself back. I was never stupid but I’d never been that fast with connections. Down here, it was needed if I wanted to survive. I at least needed to think quicker. Or was that part of my power level? Either way, it was a welcome change.

  That's why I realized I was in a healing hut. At a doctor. When I collapsed at the Battle Toad’s house, he must’ve taken me here. Worried about me. Yeah. We were friends.

  I was safe, I wasn’t in pain, and I was getting help.

  Smiling silently, I closed my eyes, and let myself fall back to sleep.

  *****

  I woke up again later, still without pain. Which was good, because I felt like what I’d woken up to would be causing me great agony. Most of my body was numb, in various ways. I could feel things not just wrapped around me, but some things stuck inside me. Forces were moving me about and I could feel that but all I could see was the roof, with a few dangling herbs I hadn’t been able to recognize in the dark. It was brighter now, the moss practically glowing radiantly. Maybe it also had a night cycle.

  I didn’t know what was happening but I trusted I was being taken care of. No doctor worth anything would harm their patients and my friend wouldn’t let anything harm me. Before long, an old frog’s face peered down at me. I tried to smile, only belatedly realizing there was something in my mouth.

  She croaked something at me, her look one of stern disapproval. I nearly laughed, the same look Tuwa once had. I could practically hear the words despite not understanding the language.

  Boy, what have you done to yourself?

  She continued to croak, realized I couldn’t understand her, and turned to bark at a figure nearby. This time, I definitely smiled even if I couldn’t feel my face. It was him, the original Battle Toad. I had to figure out his name.

  Some more croaking was had between the doctor and my friend, along with at least two other types of croaks. Assistants maybe? I was surrounded by at least four different people. My friend looked down at me for a while, rubbing his chin, thinking. Eventually, he nodded and pointed at my eye, making an X with his arms, and blinked it. Then he pointed at the other and made a thumbs up, and blinked it.

  Some gestures must transcend certain cultures. He wanted me to blink left or right for yes or no.

  I blinked yes. He smiled.

  He pantomimed pain, by gripping his stomach and looking like he was going to hurl, then pointed at me.

  I blinked no. He smiled at that too.

  The next question he had to think about for a while, before pointing at his head and gesturing to the whole space around us.

  Do you know where you are?

  Yes.

  He croaked something, receiving one back, and then left for a bit. He came back with a dirty pot made of, rock? And then scrubbed it clean. He pointed at the healers, scrubbed again, and pointed at me.

  They’re restoring you.

  Yes.

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  I assumed he meant healing. I hoped he meant healing. This was a bit much for a bath.

  Some more croaks were had, before they got louder, and angrier. That worried me. The doctor and my friend were fighting. Arguing. They croaked again and again, before something that absolutely sounded like an ultimatum came out of the old healer. My friend’s energy practically collapsed in on itself, as his his shoulders fell. He gave me a weak smile.

  Uh-oh.

  He pointed at the moss and made the strangest gesture I’d ever seen. He swiveled his hand forward and then made it expand. I didn’t understand at all. He then held up his hand with all fingers splayed and pointed at it three times.

  I blinked at him with both eyes.

  He repeated all the gestures, slower, as if that would help me. I didn’t get it, but he was patient, even if his face said otherwise. Finally, I realized that weird gesture somehow represented time. Days. The moss had a life cycle and the glow and lower glow were days. Then…

  Open hand with five fingers.

  Being pointed at three times.

  Fifteen days.

  My heart skipped a beat. He seemed to understand I got it by the widening of my eyes. He then gestured to everything and pointed at me and then repeated the fifteen days.

  I rapidly blinked no.

  He grimaced and gave a shaky thumbs up and then fled.

  Wait. No. You get back here! What have you done to me?!

  You’re going to be here for fifteen days.

  No! I didn’t want to, come on! The most I’d ever been stuck in a healing situation was two days and I’d felt like I was going mad! What was I supposed to do for fifteen days?! I couldn’t even move a muscle! Was I, was I just going to have to sit here?! How was I going to use the bathroom-

  No. Please tell me I wasn’t going to be taken care of like an elder that had lost their faculties. I’m fine! No, no really! I’m okay! Just, uh, just, just let me go nice frog people. I’ll get up and be out of your scalps. I’ll just go find a healing tank and be fixed in a day or two. There’s no need for healing! Just point me the way out and I’ll be just fine!

  Please!

  The older frog lady came back and I saw that smirk on her face. I prayed it was one where someone was pulling a prank, but I knew better. I’d seen that smile before. It was the smile a doctor used when they were going to make you suffer something horrible because you didn’t take care of your body right. The same smile Cranky Tuwa would have whenever she gave the most awful, bitter medicine to someone.

  She left my line of sight, but I could still vaguely feel something pushing against parts of me. Healing me.

  I stared at the ceiling, unable to do anything else.

  Curse you Battle Toad! I’m gonna get you back for this!

  *****

  The next fifteen days sucked. They were… not as bad as I feared though.

  Sometimes I’d see the assistants or the old frog appear in my vision. The longer I saw them, the more differences I found between Battle Toad and them. They were sleeker, slimier, wetter, and had more green and purple than him. They didn’t work constantly on me, but just about. When they weren’t eating or sleeping, they were doing stuff to me.

  I was completely numbed and unable to move. Sometimes I’d feel some feeling come back, along with a weirdly sharp pain, before more medicine was added. The medicine mainly featured herbs but there were a few liquids they poured down my throat at times.

  They didn’t have a healing tanks capabilities. They had to actually feed me and give me something to drink. Water was fine but food was all liquid, with hardly any taste. It made my stomach nearly roil in on itself for the first few days, before it adapted. I’d been eating worse, I could deal with an all liquid diet.

  The less said about the bathroom stuff, the better. I was in their debt.

  I had nothing but time as they went about their work so I… reflected.

  I thought about my life, about my family, about everything I’d done since getting here in the sewers. There were so many mistakes, so many ways I could’ve died, so many things I wanted to do.

  I wanted friends, I realized on the third day. Actual friends I could talk to and journey with. For all the horrors of the sewers, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Vega City was still that way but in many ways it was, tainted. It had my family’s killer as the name, it was never going to be somewhere I enjoyed being around. But going somewhere else, laughing and talking with people, as I pursued strength to eventually kill Vega, seemed nice. I didn’t want to be alone.

  Even if the journey was mine to take. I could still meet people, smile, laugh.

  Being truly alive meant striving. Striving was the exact opposite of what I’d been doing. Until Master I’d just been deteriorating. Master… I didn’t know how to feel. He’d nearly doomed me to death. But I couldn’t deny it was necessary. I was so different, I felt so different. I had survived and struggled and fully understood power. I had nearly been eaten by rats, killed a hundred times over, been poisoned and diseased, had to swim in literal shit, had to barely breathe around alligators that could destroy me, survived an explosion… there was a lot. There was a lot that had tried or nearly succeeded in killing me.

  I needed power, not just to kill Vega, but to survive. With it, I’d never have had to suffer like this. To nearly die so much. I could have done so much. I could have lived. It had finally sunk in. I needed power like I needed food or water. It wasn’t a want anymore, it was a very literal need. I had seen power as a goal out of my reach for such a long time… but that was wrong. It had felt like money, in a way. Everyone was desperate for it, wanted it, but it was never equal to food or water. You could, if only barely, survive without money. Trash cans, public fountains, etc. Power wasn’t like that. I’d treated it like that, and paid the price.

  I should’ve treated power like I was starving. I’d have fought fights, trained harder, begged people to train me, done anything for a bit more of it and to break through that first wall. I could have eventually broken that wall on my own, but I hadn’t and wasn’t ever going to. I had never been desperate enough. I understood master’s words about pride and pressure more and more as the days went by. I’d been too lacking in pride to struggle right and not desperate enough in the right ways to try.

  Besides my desperate desires to be moving and training again and my thoughts on power, I thought of family. Remembering the good times, the bad times, the funny times. It was… peaceful.

  No pain, nothing, just laying down and thinking. Any time I grew bored, I simply went to sleep or focused more reflecting on something else. It mostly helped. It wasn’t a paradise but… it was a break. One I dearly needed. It felt like all my problems were melting away to come another day.

  As the fifteen days became twenty and then twenty five, I didn’t worry. I didn’t fight the doctors or the medicine being pumped into me. I waited and prepared. I felt calm. At peace.

  When the medicine finally wore off and I stood, I smiled.

  It was time to go punch someone.

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