Blake had decided to become stronger and where else would one do that, if not of an island full of hard working Karate masters, like the ably named Karate Island. Everyone there had a distinguished air around them, even the person bringing the young Kuja girl a set of steamed buns, filled with minced meat and pumpkin pieces. It was her favourite snack and helped her regain strength between training sessions.

In the previous days she had settled in near a dojo, properly rented a place to stay and properly got permission to study at the dojo. She had been impressed by the hard working nature of the people, it somewhat reminded her of her childhood, the few bits she still remembered from before her time as a slave. At first she had to spend most of her days just doing chores, something the proud girl struggled with at first, but soon she discovered that even the master of the dojo did his best to help out. All together it felt refreshing! There was no one she wanted to kill, lots of people equally strong and just day in and day out hard practice, till she could hardly move any more.

It was rare to find a break in between basic practice and stamina building. In total there were only two breaks, each one hour long, one after the morning practice starting at noon and another after running exercises, which started depending on how fast one finished and was followed by actual karate training. The start of each day was at seven in the morning and the end at nine at night.

The break Blake was taking on the bench of the restaurant across from the dojo, was the one before the endurance training, which meant it was close to one hour after noon. The main goal of the break was to eat a little and refresh herself with some apple juice and water, before the master made her run a random amount of circles around the town. Other students had said there was no system behind the amount he picked for everyone, others even said he just used dice. Blake felt more like it was made to fit the person's general strength and in between give them shorter days to rest a bit. Her previous days had gone against that believe, each day she been running longer and more circles, as if the master wanted to keep her away from the practice after it. She began to wonder if he was hiding something, but the best she could do was run and as long as that made her stronger she was happy with it.

Thinking about it she finished her pumpkin bun and stretched a little, before she finished the last sip of her juice. She then got herself another bottle of water, which she tied against the back of her waist, so it did not get in the way of running. Then it was already time to meet with the master to find out how much everyone in the dojo was going to run. All students lined up, everyone of them with a bottle tied to them and in light clothing. The only one that did not follow this dress code, even if she had to run for hours, even if the sun was at its highest point, she still wore a white, long sleeved, hooded shirt and a set of matching long pants. The girl felt absolutely not in the mood to wear anything that exposed the scares and burn marks on her body. The only thing different from her usual appearance was that she had tied her hair back.

With everyone present the master started giving out numbers. “Four, Six, Two, Nine, Six.” It seemed as random as always till he reached Blake. “Twenty-five.” For a moment everyone looked a bit shocked, as no one had gotten even more than ten. Even her usual composed and calm face mask cracked for a moment. “Twenty-five!?”, she asked out loud, but the master just nodded and went on with his number game. “Twenty-five?”, she said again unable to believe the man was serious. Twenty-five rounds around town would take her hours, if she was even able to finish it before midnight! Yet the master gave no sign of reducing this amount and calmly disappeared inside the dojo again. It seemed even clearer to Blake that the man wanted her out of the dojo to hide something. It frustrated her, all she wanted was to improve, not run circles around the town!


768 Words

In the end there was no other option than to either leave the dojo or run, still the amount of running just seemed so much that it was hard for her to get motivated and so she started calmly at her own pace. The students that had to do the least amount of rounds obviously dashed ahead, they were excited to finish fast, while the students that had to endure more also took their time. Yet no one had to endure as long as Blake, but she did not want to fall behind the others, so she kept pace with at least the slower members. All the members that were running the long distance were of similar size to her, which made her think about why the master had assigned these numbers. She started to compare the difference in the people. The lead group, filled with the people that ran the shortest, all had rather well developed bodies, but certainly there were a few men and women with similar physic that had to run for longer. Blake herself was not necessary weak, so it was not sorted by just physical attributes.

The next attribute she approached was how long the members had been in the dojo. Blake was the newest member, but she had heard that other people never had to run as much as her. In the group of short distance runners were also mostly members that were rather new to the dojo, with only some long time students. Again it seemed not to be the reason behind the master's decision. She began to believe that he really just picked random numbers as if he was playing the lottery. It just did not make any sense to her.

In the end she finished the first round without finding any similarities in the whole group of either people with only a small number of rounds or a large number of rounds and no how she looked at it, Blake's own number was a huge outlier. After two rounds she slowly noticed that she passed by a number of people that were already showing exhaustion, she remembered that these people had started rather fast-paced to finish their three to four rounds quick. Apparently they had over-paced themselves and now struggled to even finish two rounds. That made her think that maybe the master had some underlying intention, as that he maybe wanted to show his students their weakness or strength? Maybe he wanted to teach these guys of who he knew that they would not be patient to run their short distance slowly, that they needed to learn to restrain themselves. If that was the case, Blake wondered what he wanted to teach her, who had to run the most and made sure to keep the right speed to not exhaust herself early. She was also pretty confident that she would finish it, as she had a good understanding of what she could and could not do. That again made her think that maybe the master wanted her to actually try more than she actually believed to be possible.

She finished the third round debating if she should run faster than she was to see if she could keep that pace, but she was unsure if she could keep that pace. Calmly she increased it only by a little bit to see how she felt about it. One round at higher pace would not hurt too much and could help to finish a bit sooner.

In general the route around town was not too bad, it took her along multiple fields, through a small forest, which was refreshing as it was colder in the shadow of the trees and over a small bridge, crossing a river, then more fields. The farmers always looked at the runners curiously, unable to understand why someone would do such tiring exercise on a hot day, when they barely got in the mood to work the fields for their living. Blake also found it a bit funny, it was clearly a sign that people either had too much free time, energy or money, when they did not spend their time with work. Blake herself was lucky that she had enough money saved up either from pick pocketing or from the bit of honest work she had done. Thanks to that she had nothing to worry about and could focus on growing stronger, instead of worrying about her survival.

Soon she finished the fifth and then the sixth round, both with a small increase to her speed. As she passed the dojo she spotted the master watching her. He clearly had something in mind, even if he was not telling her the reason, that she had to run twenty-five rounds was a clear sign.


802 Words
1570 Total

Most of the other students had already finished their rounds when Blake felt she still had to run for a few hours. The master was still sitting outside watching, while the students had done repeated exercises inside to learn proper karate. She still was unsure what he expected of her, but she was still running at a higher pace than she had originally planed and after just ten rounds she felt it getting to her. It upset her, she had known the pace to keep to calmly finish the full course, but was taunted by her search for a meaning behind it all. Just the gaze of the master, each time she passed the dojo, made her furious. He seemed to enjoy seeing her struggle to keep her speed up, but even if it became harder to breath and her legs began hurting, she did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her slow down.

The whole exercise had suddenly become a battle between Blake and the man that set the task. The next time she passed him she threw a gaze his way and increased her pace once again. She was going to endure it, she was going to perform above the old man's expectations! The pain was nothing to her, she had suffered worse in the past, even the building heat was just a joke compared to the fire on her back.

Somehow she finished another five rounds and yet the old man was still staring at her with a smug face. Was he happy that the girl did what he had planed or was he mocking her because she had fallen for his taunts? She could not tell. The runners high made it hard to think about it. As if it was nothing she actually wanted to go faster and so she did.

She did not even know how long she had been running when she approached the finish of the nineteenth round. Her whole body started to feel heavy, she had even taken the hood from over her head, because it had become hard to breath. The water bottle she had brought with her had already become empty and discarded along the way. She had not even fully noticed, but she had slowed down a bit, she still was above her original pace, but she was not running at full force either. “Are twenty-five rounds already over?”, asked the grey haired man, while he was calmly sipping on a cup of tea. Blake felt it was hard to even answer him. “Not yet...” She paused for a moment and wiped sweat from her face. With a grin the man looked at her, he could clearly see that the girl had been pushing herself and was close to falling down. It made Blake only more angry and without thinking about it she pulled her hooded shirt over her head, exposing the scares on her arms and allowing a glimpse at the big burn mark on her back, as it was only partial covered by the armless shirt she wore below.

The man seemed slightly surprised as she threw the shirt towards him, tying her hair into a pony tail and taking a deep breath, so she could vocalize her thoughts: “Not done yet, so wait a bit longer master.” Again, she was not going to lose, if anything it was more disgraceful to lose than to show her damaged body. With that in mind she began running again.

The sun had long set and a soft night wind had picked up, but she was far from feeling cold. It felt like she was running in a swamp, but she was not going to let it pull her down. If her legs were heavy she just had to use more strength to lift them, that easy. All the pain just had to be endured and slowly an end was in sight as she passed the old man the twenty-forth time. This time no matter how hard she tried it was too hard to throw a witty comment his way. She knew that even finishing then was pointless as the other students had already finished their training, so no matter how soon she finished it was pointless, yet her brain was far from being able to think about logical things. The whole exercise had brought her past her usual calm and collected self, she was just running because her legs knew how to did it on their own.

The last round was clearly the hardest, the finish felt to come closer, but each meter she crossed she felt like it were still too many before she reached the goal.


785 Words
2355 Total

Each step felt as if Blake was using enough strength to fling her foot up to her head, yet they barely got of the ground. The girl had run for hours and after breaking her limit multiple times she was finally feeling the toll this had on her body. While she had been proud of her fairly steady pace in the beginning and even running faster some sections, she had fallen down to a snail like speed. Her legs felt as heavy as stone, the only cheerful aspect of this exercise was that the end had finally come in sight.

The dojo's master, most likely curious to see where the girl was, after this last round had taken much longer than the previous, stood on the street, waving to her almost as if he was still taunting her to get over there already. Blake felt no runner's high any more, all she felt was pain in her legs and chest together with a great sense of anger towards the man that had set her up for this task. Said anger was the only thing keeping her from just stopping. She did not need a break, she just wanted to finish.

Summoning the last strength from her body the Kuja finally reached the man. “I finished”, she said gasping for air and fell down on her knees. Yet she smiled as she was looking up at the dojo master. “I still don't know...” She had to pause just to catch some air. “... I don't know why you made me run this much.” Rewarding her effort the elderly man held a bottle of water before her face, which she took without hesitation and gobbled down as if she had travelled a desert for years. Never had water been so tasty to her.

It took multiple minutes till she was able to move again and sat down on the ground properly. In the meantime the master had brought her hooded shirt and placed it over her sweaty rapidly cooling down body. Finally after she had some of her strength back she came back to the previous topic: “I want to know. No one else has to run this much, so why do I have to?”

The master did not ask right away, instead he sat down next to her, leaning against the wall that surrounded the dojo and watched Blake quietly a bit longer. “Did you want to show me my limits, or did you want to show me how to pass my limits? Do you want to hide the practice after the run from me, or do you think I don't need it?” Blake voiced all the different reasons she had thought of during her run. “Do you think I am not strong enough to learn, or do you want me to just give up and leave?” With a mask of calmness on her face she looked over to the old man, awaiting an answer to the question that had tormented her.  

The master threw another bottle of water to her and watched her empty that one just as fast, then he smiled and finally opened his mouth: “Does it matter? You do what you think is right anyway, right?” With wide open eyes Blake stared at him. What the heck did the stupid man mean by that? She had come to the dojo to get guidance, to get help to improve. Partly she had run because she did not want to lose to the geezer, partly because she wanted to get stronger. “What kind of stupid reason is that!?”, she yelled and slowly got up to move over to him. “You clearly had a reason to make me run twenty-five rounds around town, so tell me!” But he just chuckled lightly as he was looking up to her. “You have a strong will, so it would be silly of me to try and hide anything from you or force you out of the dojo, because as long as you want to you will stick around. Your will alone is enough to keep you running for hours, if you set your mind on it.” Relaxed he placed his big hand on the girl's head and stroked her hair gently. “You are impressive.”

Blake meanwhile had finally given in, she had not even enough strength to be angry any longer. The man had been right, it had been her strong conviction and willpower that had kept her on her feet this long, but even that had finally run out and she finally passed out standing.


769 Words
3124 Total

The next day every part of Blake's body hurt. She would have understood if it was just her legs in fierce pain, but it had crawled up and taken control of her whole body. Even just washing herself in the morning was a struggle, but it felt incredible good to feel the cold water run over her body, before fighting with her clothes. Just getting her pants on took her fifteen minutes. Somehow she managed, just how she managed to tumble down the stairs and crawl her way back to the dojo for morning practice, where the other students looked at her rather surprised.

Because it had been too difficult Blake had skipped to put on one of her usual hooded shirts and everyone was able to see the scares on her arms and the burn wound peaking out from underneath the sleeveless shirt, but she did not care, even if she could barely move she wanted to take part in the training as much as possible. As her master had said, her willpower was enough to get her to do something, no matter how painful or embarrassing that was. The master seemed to see that differently, as soon as he spotted the shaky looking girl on her feet he stepped in to stop her. “You must have missed that I gave you today off.”

Blake just stared at him with a rather empty look in her eyes, then just let herself fall backwards into the grass. “So I got out of bed for no reason...” Chuckling a little she just remained laying there till another younger student came up to her and placed a pumpkin and meat bun and a pot of tea next to her. Apparently by the order of their master. Like this Blake actually got to recover some strength and watch her fellow students exercise. Sometimes just watching was good too.

Later after the master assigned the students their running he sat down with Blake to continue with his explanation from the previous day. “You know you are far stronger than the other students, which is why I thought best would be to just strengthen your body and spirit even further.” Blake just listened while chewing on a new bun, which she had gotten herself in between. “I feel like there is not much I can teach you, but I hope while you are here you take the things you need, everything else you can just discard.” He laughed out loud and gave Blake a pat on the back. Blake calmly turned to him and swallowed the last few bits of the bun, before answering. “That was my plan anyway.” Both smiled at each other, then Blake got up and bowed deeply. “Thank you master, I think I learned a lot.”

The old man just laughed again and told her to raise her head. “I don't want someone stronger than me to bow to me.” Blake looked at him surprised. It was true, she had seen herself as stronger than him, but she had not expected the man to see through her. “Would you let me a spare with you before the others are back?” Without being able to deny the man this little wish Blake just nodded and stretched a little, her body was still sour, but in good enough condition to move. Both closed the big wooden doors to the dojo and lit some candles. Should Blake win she did not want to ruin the master's reputation in front of his students.

Later that day Blake finally felt like putting on her shirt again, there were some new blue marks she had to hide. The old man really had no sense of holding back even against an already hurt opponent. Following she began to pack her things, there was something she had heard from the man, something that would lead her to more strength than any simple practice or exercise, something that was more exciting than just running in circles around town too.


673 Words
3797 Total