I fell. The cold concrete met my face. No thoughts existed.
Cold concrete.
White clothes.
[1]
“Punch it.”
The same. Every day.
*****
Cold concrete.
White clothes.
[1]
“Punch it.”
******
Cold Concrete.
White Clothes.
[1]
“Punch It.”
*****
Cold Concrete
*****
White Clothes
*****
[1]
*****
“Punch it.”
*****
….
*****
…………….
*****
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*****
Hard. So hard. Move. Gotta move. Gotta move. Gotta… Move…
Punch it. Gotta punch it. Punch it. Punch it. Punch… it…
[1]
“Are you going to stare at the bag all day? P-”
“No.”
“No? You-” He spoke, but I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t see. Body… so hard. I…
I…
Cold concrete. Light. Face.
“Get up. We’re not done yet. You haven’t even punched the bag today.”
“Tired.” A voice said. It sounded tired.
“This isn’t enough.”
“Tired.”
The face frowned. I couldn’t see. Nothing was in focus. Who was talking to me? Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired.
Muffled words. I couldn’t hear them. So tired.
Change. Different. Weird feeling. Like-
“Vega will kill you.”
The words shot down my spine, hitting me like a spark hitting tinder. Seeped in freezing water, like suddenly finding myself in an ice bath. I think I could see fog coming out my mouth. Those words had been said before but… but now I heard and felt them. The Truth of them.
Vega was going to kill me. Even if I saw him with the same level of strength, even with ten times as much strength, he’d kill me. I… I wasn’t strong enough. Not my body, not my form or techniques, me. Mutai. I was too weak. In all the ways that mattered.
“I…”
“Why do you want to kill him?”
“He killed… my family. He… he took them all away.”
“So?”
Something sputtered and flickered inside me. My empty mind blanked harder. I didn’t understand.
“What?”
“So what? He killed your family.”
My heart ached, it hurt, it hurt so much at those words, spoken like they were words from god. The truth in them. The-
“Why does it matter?”
“I- They were my family.”
“And they’re dead.”
That piece of me flickered and glowed.
“What, what are you saying?”
My eyes focused, finally seeing master. His cold blue eyes staring into me. His aura pressing down unto me. His nonchalant, casual expression peering down at me.
“People die, family members are lost. Natural disasters, old age, sickness and disease. What, you’re going to fight all of those too? Tell me how well punching a storm or a tidal wave goes. I’ll personally buy you a beer if you can punch old age, considering. We all die Mutai. Your family died easier and earlier than most. And I bet all of them didn’t even go by Vega. You really never lost a grandparent or two growing up?”
He snorted as if that was ridiculous.
“You want a family so bad Mutai? Just go get another one. Stop pining after what’s gone already.”
His words… casual. Everything about master was casual. Uncaring. Airy. As if nothing had importance. He stuck his pinky finger in his ear, cleaning the wax, seemingly done with the conversation.
He… he…
The spark ignited into something rare.
Rage.
“Fuck. You.”
“Oh?”
I was on my feet, staring into those cold eyes, finally seeing them for what they really were.
Dead eyes. How much did this old man care about anything anymore?
“My family mattered! They were taken from me! By an evil monster! I will kill him!”
He snorted.
“Not going to bring your family back. Not even what they would’ve wanted either ya know?”
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“I don’t care what they want! It’s not about them!”
My words reverberated in the empty room, seemingly coming back and punching me in the face. Echoing the words that had been buried deep inside me all this time.
“Vega… he… he tore me away from my life! From my paradise! I was happy. I had a future! I… I was the real Mutai! And now I’m, I’m, I’m this thing! I know about taxes, I use technology, I feel good in a healing tank and every fucking second of every fucking day I miss what I’ve lost. Every single day since then… has been miserable! He didn’t just kill my family… he took me away from me. He killed the best and happiest parts of me. He ruined my life!”
I was breathing heavily, hyperventilating, staring into a still uncaring face. I’d vented what this was really about. I missed my family… I missed them so dearly. And this was for them but… but… it wasn’t… the only reason Vega had to die. He’d hurt me so bad, that the wound could never recover. Every day was the same damn shit. Over and over again. Of course I’d thought about going back or going to a different island. Relaxing, finding another village like mine, starting a new family, getting away, giving up.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t. It was like I’d been poisoned and even the thought of trying hurt more than anything else ever could. Even dying would be preferable to even attempting that. I’d be spitting not just on my family’s grave, but my own life. As if… as if everything that had happened before was just a bad dream.
What…. What was the point of all of my suffering if I just gave up?
I couldn’t do that to myself. Death would have to come first.
I’d kill Vega, I’d destroy him, rip him apart. Tear him to shreds for destroying who I am and who I was. I’d murder him! I’d tear every single bone from his body till he was nothing more than a stain on the ground, bleeding out. Rip and tear and rip and tear until it was done. I’d-
“That sounds like a you problem.” My master said.
For a moment, my mind blanked white.
The next, I was throwing a punch.
It hit the side of the old bastard’s face with only barely a ripple.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Faster. Harder.” He simply said, as if we were just training.
The rage only grew, like an inferno. How- How dare he! I roared as I waylaid into him. There was no saving stamina, no going steady or slowly, no sense to it. I threw punches as hard and fast as I could, raining blows down onto his stupid, smug, uncaring face. Over and over again! I’d break it, I’d break him, I’d kill him! How dare he say that about my family, about me!
“How dare you!”
“With ease I suppose?”
“AHHHHHH!!!!!!”
I punched and punched, as if he was the same punching bag I’d had to beat relentlessly. It was worse than punching in my dreams, it was worse than any dream I’d had of Vega. I was so weak, his face barely even moved. It was more like I was hitting a steel wall with a pillow than fists that had been training relentlessly.
It was a long time. A very long time. I punched and punched and punched.
The rage didn’t die for a long, long while.
But my mind… my stamina… It couldn’t keep up with the rest of me. I could feel my muscles tearing, feel my bones crack against his face, feel the heat pour through my blood and down through my body, as my lungs pushed air like bellows as I yelled in his face and punched and punched. Over and over again.
“‘Punch it! Just punch it Mutai!’ Do you have any idea how annoying is it to hear that every single day?!”
“Too bad?”
“You’re a terrible Master! You barely say two words and make me work out till I practically die!”
“Not like you’re talking too much either? And besides… I told you to do your best. Not my fault this has been your best.”
“You told me you’d make me stronger!”
“And I have.”
My punches didn’t even slow down as he talked but those last words… my rage practically exploded.
“YOU LIAR! I HAVEN’T GOTTEN ANY STRONGER!”
I threw a punch. It was the same as any other but it felt… different.
I-
“Fuck!” My hand! It, it hurt! White hot agony shot up as I collapsed. And that was like the start of a cascade. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. As if my whole body had locked up all at once. My blood felt like slow moving oil as it coursed through my veins. Even my rage seemed to slowly wither and die, as reality made itself known.
I fell flat on my back, eyes staring up at the ceiling, paralyzed, unable to move. Breathing was painful. Everything was painful. My body felt like it was… cracking apart. No, like it had been cracked apart. What had I done to it?
No. Wait. What, what had I been doing? I had… I had attacked the old man. I had tried to, had wanted to, kill him.
The pain radiating through me made itself known as I screamed a silent scream.
I had attacked the old man and somehow broke my own body apart in the process. Is this really, the height of power? The difference in power? Will I… ever be able to reach such a thing?
I stared upwards, the number floating in my vision.
The same as always.
[1]
Stronger? I hadn’t gotten any stronger. I was still just Mutai. Weak. Doomed. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t stop, but that just meant I was doomed to die. My family… my revenge!... I’d… never get it at this rate. Master would throw me out now. I’d attacked him. I’d be lucky enough to be able to move ever again without that healing tank.
Is this… is this the end of me?
“Congratulations.” Master’s words broke me out of my thoughts. “You’ve finally done it. Only took you… three weeks? Around there. Pretty slow but, whatever. Then again I was starting to think you’d never break through that damn wall.”
I looked up at master, confused, before staring back at my number.
[1]
“Master…” I said, exhaustion coating my words, afraid he’d just kill me right here and now. In fact, I didn’t understand what was happening at all. “I, haven’t gotten any stronger.”
“You know, that damn power of yours to read power levels is weird.” Master said, face casual. I startled. I’d never brought that up before. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious when you don’t wear a Vambrace and keep looking above your own and other people’s heads ya know? Had me thinking I was starting to go bald every time you glanced at me…”
I looked at master’s face and only now noticed, that there was a slight smile on it. That was even more unusual than seeing him frown. Had I… ever seen him smile?
He disappeared. Or at least, he must have, because he was at a different point next to me, holding something sleek in his hand.
“Clearly, whatever weirdness you have has some flaws. I guess it rounds down.”
He strapped something that looked like a Vambrace to my arm but… smaller. Sleeker. More high tech. It seemed to have different menus and settings, looking more modern than anything like my old Vambrace. Master clicked ‘power reading’ for me and the numbers flickered up and down for a while, before finally:
[1.01]
I stared, my pupils shaking, my breathing going erratic, my heart beating like a drum and pounding in my ears. The world fell away as I stared and stared.
For anyone else, for anyone else, this wouldn’t have mattered.
All my life, all of my life, I’d been at one. The weakest anyone could realistically get. There were children born at higher levels of power. Old people who didn’t just die from a body failing them, had a higher level. I was the weakest person I’d ever known or seen. Permanently stuck at the beginning, a curse. An awful, terrible curse of forever being weak in this horrific world.
And now… and now…
“I… grew stronger.”
I grew stronger!
For the first time in my entire life… I’d done it! I’d done it! I did it!
Even if it was only point zero one, even if it was only a one percent increase, even if I had to go through weeks and weeks of intense suffering to get even a little further every single time. I could do it. I could grow stronger. It wasn’t impossible. I wasn’t stuck and broken. I wasn’t doomed. I could… I could do it.
My cheeks felt wet and my vision blurred. Tears streamed down my face.
“I can do it.”
“Yup! It’s actually possible, phew. Was starting to get really worried there ya know?” Master said, still staring down at me.
Oh no. Master.
“Master… I’m so sorry. I-”
“Blah blah blah, if I cared about a weakling like you hitting me a bit I’d be insane. Now,” Master said, before grabbing me and throwing me over his shoulder, causing a very verbal scream to echo out of me from the pain. “Your body practically destroyed itself breaking through that wall. Probably going to take two full days in the healing tank. Well, if we don’t want to risk resetting your progress at least. Don’t worry, it’s got a nutrition and bathroom system. It’s meant to be a medical device ya know? Anyway, after that, we can get back to punching the bag.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Punching… the bag?”
“Well duh. Of course. Now that the training is actually useful, we aren’t going to stop it.
“C-Can’t we do anything else?”
“Hmmm no. You’re not strong enough to do any of the other trainings I have in mind. Not like I have a track in this dojo. No, it’s the bag for you.”
My thoughts filled with the knowledge that not only would I need to spend two days in a healing tank… but I’d be going right back to punching that stupid bag afterwards.
“M-Master! S-surely we could take a break right? I, I’ve been training so hard after all…”
“What do you think the two days in the healing tank are for? I mean, getting injured is a pretty good way to take a break. Oh, but don’t try to do it on purpose you pansy. We’re trying to make you strong here after all. Not that you could normally damage yourself much.”
My soul cringed, hard. Then, did that mean… I’d only ever get a break if I was injured?! I’d have to just relentlessly train, over and over again, only stopping when my body was broken. And even then, I’d usually be right back into it the next day unless I overdid it…
Training till injury, over and over and over again… Forever. Or at least till Master was satisfied.
“Master.”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit! Now come on, faster you’re in the faster I can go and binge some TV for the next two days. Been missing all my favorite shows training you. Sherlock Sluts is coming on and I want to know who killed Patty. It’s the season finale ya know?”
I sighed. Truly… master was an enigma.
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