Troka training

wham

Troka's arms shivered at the impact. He ignored his aching muscles and lifted the hammer high above his head once more.

wham

wham

wham

He'd been hammering away at the rock now for three hours. There was no real reason to it, except that it reminded him of home. It's strange that you can grow up hating something with all your heart and yet when you manage to escape it your body aches for the familiar. Troka was thirty years old. He'd been born on a small moon orbiting a large gas planet in a star system far from Earth's, and had hated every minute of his life as he grew up in the filthy, dangerous mines. He'd been a slave. Worse than a slave, because he hadn't known he was one. He'd thought his life was just down to chance, but it had been organised.

Hate burned in his chest. His next hammerblow split the rock he'd been beating on.

WHAM

Panting, he stopped and raised his head to the blue sky of Earth.

Such a soft world. Light gravity, gentle winds, a comforting sky with a warm sun above, plenty of water and more oxygen than every person on the planet could use at once. No population control on this world. No lung-enhancers. On this world they had food, not the mucky, monotonous algae Troka had grown up eating. And the drink! The drink was something else altogether. There were a thousand types on this world, instead of the one on his home moon. Oh, to have been born here. To have been born to a loving family, to have been educated and clothed and fed and looked after on this warm, comfortable world.

WHAMWHAMWHAM

No point in looking back on the past and cursing, he knew.

Brooding wouldn't change the life behind him, and it would only make the life ahead of him worse.

wham

The hammer was getting really heavy, now.

Damn. In the mines back home he could (and very often did) work for twelve hours at a time, but, as he always did these days, he had been thinking too much and had exhausted himself too quickly. Now he felt like eating, drinking, and napping. But it wasn't time yet. That was another thing about this world. The days (and therefore the nights) were longer here - he hadn't had a decent sleep since arriving.

Stretching his neck, Troka laid down his hammer and began to work the acid out of his muscles.

He often thought of the martial artists on this planet. As a Saiyan on an empty moon he had risen to the rank of mine supervisor, and had instigated the Pits, a fighting tournament for every mine across the satellite in order to get out the natural aggression of their race. The way of the Saiyan was brute strength, stubborn refusal to drop, drawing on anger and hatred and bloodlust and animal frenzy to take one more punch, to throw one more punch, and win. Here, though, the top fighters were often as not thinking men. They didn't throw themselves into the fight without looking at it first. They dind't give themselves to emotion and waste their energy in a useless fight, they observed and marshalled it and controlled themselves, and applied their strength like a lever to achieve the easiest way to victory.

He often wondered what it would be like to fight that way.

A rough, mocking laugh rang around him. He realised it was his own. HIM? Troka, learn patience? Learn skill? Learn reservation? What Saiyan had ever done so?

Sweating profusely, Troka picked up his mining hammer once more. As always, that mocking laugh, his lack of confidence drove him away from thoughts of experimenting with other styles... and sent him straight back to his natural talents. Brute strength and stubbon refusal to die. Gritting his teeth against the ache of his joints and the burning cramp in his arms, ignoring the searing fire in his lungs, Troka lifted his hammer and brought it down on a new rock.

wham

This... was training.

wham

This... was what he was good at.

wham

This...

wham

Felt...

Wham

So...

WHam

Useless!

WHAM

The rock split. Breathless, Troka bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and lifted his eyes to the sky. He made a silent vow then and there to learn all the ways there were of fighting, of training, of self improvement. A man might be made one way, he knew, but he also believed with passion that just because someone was made one way that didn't mean they had to stay that way forever. Only animals couldn't choose.

And Saiyans, despite what anyone else said, were NOT animals!

Resolve sharpened, Troka hefted his hammer onto his shoulder and turned from his rock-breaking. With a deep breath he took the first step of a thousand-mile journey.

He went to seek his future.

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