Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, or anything else related to the Dragon Ball universe, or any of its characters. They are all owned by Akira Toriyama.
It had taken him another two weeks to learn how to move to a degree that he deemed as acceptable. He was just over a month into his training now by his count.
The past two weeks had been strange. He had originally expected it to take a lot longer to get to the point that he was at now in his stealth training, based on his previous failed attempts at it.
He was trying to unlearn all of his bad habits when moving around after all. Habits that had been thoroughly ingrained into his muscle memory ever since he had first started to walk.
Well…
Not as thoroughly ingrained as he had originally expected, to his genuine relief.
He had been lucky.
Lucky to start out this type of training at such a young age.
He had only taken his first steps somewhere between three and four years ago after all.
As a result, it was not nearly as hard as it could have been, re-learning how to move, had he started this type of training when he was much older and more used to clumsily moving around like normal people did all the time.
His being so young, meant that inefficient movement wasn't ingrained into his muscles as deeply as it could have been.
He had never been so grateful to be a kid.
He had finally been able to break past the barrier that had been preventing him from making any progress.
The key had been in his Ki all along.
Who knew?
Ever since he had unlocked his Ki, his training had become a lot easier. He was pretty sure that he was unconsciously pumping Ki into his limbs during his movements all the time now. He couldn't feel it flowing through him, so he had no way to be sure, but it made sense. At least, that was the only explanation that he had for being able to do some of the things that he could now.
He was way faster than any kid had a right to be for his age, according to some of the books that he had read in the past on what the body was capable of. At least, he was much faster than a human child anyways. Heck, he was probably faster than every single human on the planet that wasn't a martial artist.
It would make sense that due to his saiyan blood, and Ki, he would be naturally stronger and faster than humans were, but it was still surprising to experience it himself.
Even just over a month ago, he would have never considered it possible for him to be able to move around like this.
He would have never guessed that he of all people had what it took to become a fighter. To gain this level of strength, and so quickly at that…
So much had changed since then.
He could feel the wind on his face from how fast he was moving. It was incredible.
His training worked.
With his Ki unlocked, it hadn't taken long at all for him to start making visible progress once again.
His body had adapted to its new movements after only two weeks of moving around like a yoga instructor all the time.
It was a bit embarrassing what he had to do, but he couldn't deny that it ended up working.
He could only hope that nobody had been watching him. They would have probably been wondering what was wrong with him if they had been.
He had taken his training absolutely seriously, regardless of how ridiculous it probably looked, putting a huge amount of concentration into each movement. Even simple moves like walking.
Especially simple moves like walking.
On more than one occasion, he had spent an entire day just walking through the forest with a look of, what had to have been, utmost concentration, on his face. Listening to the sounds of his footsteps, and abruptly stopping every time he had made too much noise, or made a movement that he deemed wasted too much energy.
He didn't have a designated time for stealth training.
He was always stealth training.
Every time he made a movement, from sitting down, to standing up, or jumping, or climbing, or even collecting berries, you name it… if he moved at all, he was putting forth his best effort to be as quiet, and controlled as possible.
Even at the cost of having to take way more time than usual, to accomplish menial tasks.
It was mentally taxing at first, concentrating all the time like that, but he needed his new movements to become instinctive as fast as possible, so it was necessary.
He was actually getting pretty close to that point now.
It had required discipline that he hadn't realized that he had, though.
He had almost lost his patience with it. But, he would always remember what happened during his first attempt at stealth training when he did, and how he had failed miserably due to his irritation, and then he would force himself to relax once again.
He had seen what true stealth was in that dream of his, and he wanted more than anything, to be able to replicate it.
That was his goal. The first one on his path to the saiyans.
And he had made a lot of progress to that end.
Every day, he got just a bit closer.
He jumped over the incoming log in his path, and winced at the sound of his landing, before immediately continuing his sprint through the clearing.
His soundless sprint.
He had worked out how to do it a few days ago. He could run now at almost top speed with minimal mistakes. He would still screw up occasionally, but it was becoming more infrequent as the days passed. His landings on the other hand, still needed some work.
It had taken hours, upon hours, to create the perfect sprinting posture. Hours of making minute adjustments until it felt perfect, while still remaining silent and efficient.
There were so many factors that had to be taken into account.
He used to run with his back, for the most part, straight up and down, perpendicular to the ground. He used his legs to push himself forward, his arms moved back and forth for both balance, and to get a slight boost in speed, and he would always land on his feet heel first, before transferring his weight forward, to his toes, in order to shift his momentum in preparation for the next step.
From what he understood, that was, for the most part, just how people ran. He had even seen his dad run in a similar fashion whenever he had been training around their house. Only, knowing him, his dad had probably modified his posture somehow to achieve greater speed, and to allow easy transition into martial arts techniques, but it still looked very similar.
There was nothing wrong with running like that per se, but it was unsuitable for people who emphasized stealth over speed, like him.
Speed wasn't all that important to him at the moment. He knew that he would get faster in time. But most people practiced running to get faster, not quieter. And as a result, they could afford to run that way.
It was not silent by any means though, so he had to completely change his posture.
He had started with his feet, since landings were the main source of sound in his movements.
He used to take each step in a heel-to-toe movement. It was loud and uncoordinated, and didn't suit his needs at all.
When people wanted to be quiet on their feet, they did the exact opposite. They took each step in a toes-to heel movement. Sometimes not even using their heel at all.
Tiptoeing.
It allowed for greater control, and generated far less noise than regular walking did.
The reason for the difference was actually quite simple.
When someone landed heel first while running, they essentially slammed all of their body weight down at once. This created a lot of noise due to the abrupt deceleration of their body.
At its simplest, it could be broken down into basic force equals mass times acceleration. The second law of motion. In simple words, bigger acceleration, equals bigger force.
Or in this case, sudden stop equals lots of noise.
The force from impact, is directed into the ground through the heel suddenly, where it, in turn, is directed into the movements of the air.
The force is hardly distributed through the muscles properly, and instead, is distributed into the ground, quickly turning into sound.
Then, the person transfers their weight forward onto their toes. Long after the impact sound has been produced.
Noise is generated, and then the weight is transferred.
Toe-heel movements reverse the order of these events.
If they are on their toes, they are able to gently lower themselves down to the ground over a much longer period of time. The force from their impact with the ground is distributed better due to the additional muscles being used.
There were new muscle groups being utilized in the feet, the ankles, and the calves, in addition to all of the other muscles used when running normally.
The body doesn't suddenly stop, when it makes contact with the ground this way.
All of that extra energy that would normally be transferred into the movements of the air, as sound, is instead, transferred into the muscles of the body during the weight transfer.
The person lands on their toes, then immediately starts to transfer their weight to their heel. During this transfer, the body is slowing down in its descent, possibly even to a stop. The main source of noise doesn't occur until the heel contacts the ground, if it ever does, halting any leftover, downward movement.
Long after the body's muscles have already distributed most of the impact, if done right.
A controlled, slow paced stop, over a longer period of time, equals very little, to no noise generated.
The body has to work slightly harder, but most of the sound is eliminated.
Which was exactly what he needed.
So he had to modify the positions of his feet during his sprint so that he always landed toes first every step, then distributed his weight to his heel.
But that created some problems in itself. It was much too awkward trying to run with any kind of speed while on his toes, with the way he used to run, so he had to make further modifications.
He needed his running posture to feel perfectly natural, while encouraging toe-to-heel weight transfer.
His next change came from thinking about a set of stairs weirdly enough.
Walking up a staircase was the only time that it had ever felt natural for him to take each step toes first. In fact, walking up a set of stairs heel first in each step was the movement that felt awkward.
All he had to do was figure out why that was the case, and reproduce it.
A problem which had been relatively easy to solve as well.
If he were to imagine two vectors, one drawn from his tailbone, up, and through the top of his head pointing into the sky, and another drawn in his overall direction of travel, he was able to clearly outline this difference by looking at the angle between them.
It had only taken a quick diagram in the dirt to see it.
When he walked normally, the angle between these two imaginary vectors was almost exactly ninety degrees. It was a bit less than that technically, due to him leaning forward a small amount while walking, but it was close enough for his purposes.
When he walked up a set of stairs however, this angle was much less than ninety degrees. It was actually closer to forty five.
That was the distinction that mattered.
When this angle was significantly less than ninety degrees, as it was on a set of stairs, toes-to-heel weight transfer felt natural, so all he had to do was figure out how to replicate this while he was moving on flat ground.
And it didn't take him long to recognize that all he had to do, to do this, was lean forward a good amount while he was running. That way, from his perspective, it would seem like the ground was slanted upwards like a set of stairs.
In fact, all he had to do to notice this, was look at the picture that he had drawn, and then tilt his head a bit.
Basic relativity.
From his new point of view, it would seem as if he were constantly running up a ramp, or set of stairs, rather than on flat ground, when in reality, all he was doing was looking at things from a different perspective.
The angle in question would be decreased below ninety, by lowering the angle of his back, rather than by raising the angle of the ground.
So that's what he did.
And it worked.
All he had left to do, was leave his arms outstretched behind him to prevent himself from falling forward onto his face, due to his forward lean.
Tilting forward didn't change the direction gravity pulled him in after all, so he needed his arms behind him to act as a counterweight.
It felt completely alien at first, trying to get all of the minute adjustments and balance issues down, but after a few hours of practicing, it got easier, and he eventually settled on a posture that felt right.
It was the one he was still using even now.
He would never recommend running like this to any ordinary person, however.
There was a reason why you didn't see professional athletes running this way. A good reason. It was because it sacrificed a lot of speed. If he didn't have access to his Ki, he never would have tried to learn how to run like this, even if it was quieter.
This method of running was not ideal for a regular person. Not even close.
It was however, ideal for a person who didn't have to depend on their muscles alone, to get faster. He would eventually be using his Ki to not only make up for any speed loss that running like this caused, but to completely eclipse anything a normal person could ever hope to achieve with muscular strength alone.
The speed loss from his posture would eventually be negligible when his Ki was reinforcing his movements, and he would be left with all of the stealth and control benefits that nobody else had.
Those weren't even the only advantages either.
Since he was landing toes first every step, and because he was leaning forward so much, it was much easier to make abrupt changes to his direction of travel. He was always in a position during his run that was able to transition into a leap, at a moment's notice.
Due to his posture, it felt as if he had more 'access' for lack of a better word, to the muscles in his legs, allowing for greater balance too.
His profile was smaller, which would hopefully make it harder for him to be hit by attacks.
Since he wasn't swinging his arms back and forth all the time, he would never find himself in a situation where his arms were in a bad position to defend himself. If he were ever attacked while he was running, it would be harder for him to be caught off guard as a result.
Granted, he would concede that most of these advantages were so minimal that they wouldn't likely save his life anytime soon, but they were still valid reasons that made sense to him.
It was a bit harder to abruptly stop though.
In his old running posture, he could just dig his heels into the ground to abruptly slide to a stop. He couldn't do that anymore as easily, since he was landing on his toes first, and leaning forward.
But he could redirect his momentum elsewhere incredibly quickly due to the same reasons. He would have to rely on that instead. It's not like he couldn't stop anymore. It just took a fraction of a second longer than it used to so that he could get into position.
He was also technically more streamlined and aerodynamic…
But those were benefits that wouldn't actually be noticeable until he was fast enough for air resistance to play a factor in his speed.
He wasn't anywhere near that fast yet.
His dad probably was, and the saiyans on their way probably were, but not him. Not yet.
But he was well on his way to becoming silent now.
Or as silent as he could possibly get anyways.
After zigzagging between a few bushes in his path, he frowned.
That was another thing that he had learned recently that bothered him. He was well on his way to being able to move properly all of the time without thinking about it, but he still wasn't truly silent. He was much better off than he used to be sure, but he was quickly approaching another barrier in his training that he had only been able to see coming, recently.
And he hated those.
He could control his own muscles almost perfectly now, but there was still a limit to how quiet he could get, moving as he was.
He could still hear the rustling of the grass as he ran, and the sound of wood if he ever stepped on a tree branch, or a log. He could be as silent as he wanted in his own moves, but as long as he made contact with the ground, he simply couldn't be perfectly silent like the saiyan in his dream had been, no matter how much he trained.
Even if he had perfect movements, with no energy waste, as long as there was contact between himself and the ground, there would be noise. Not because he wasn't distributing his weight properly, but because the things that he touched, moved.
That was simply the nature of energy transfer between objects.
It was physics. And no one argued with physics, especially not, him.
He simply couldn't silence the environment around him as he traveled through it, even if he was silent himself.
It moved when he did, and when it moved, it made noise. The environment didn't care about his attempts at stealth.
And he couldn't get around that unless he didn't touch the ground at all somehow.
And he couldn't not touch the ground, moving as he was now.
That was the next obstacle that he had to overcome.
He needed something more added into his movements in order to take the next step in his stealth training.
And it just so happened that he had a brand new idea to do just that.
In a sudden bout of inspiration during his sprint practice a few minutes ago, he had come up with one of his greatest ideas yet, if he did say so himself. At least, it would be one of his greatest if it worked out the way he hoped it would.
It was currently untested though.
He broke into the fast approaching treeline, still at a sprint.
He had been practicing his running technique for the whole day so far, ever since waking up.
Just like yesterday, and the day before that.
He was much faster now than he had been when he was first dropped out here by Piccolo, but he still wasn't at the point where his new sprinting method surpassed his old one in terms of pure speed. It was just more efficient and controlled.
If he stopped focusing on keeping his exact running posture, he could definitely run faster than he was now. But that would defeat the purpose of his training.
His new method would catch up in time, he was sure of it.
If he kept making progress at the rate he currently was, and if his new idea worked out, he wouldn't be surprised if he doubled his speed by next week…
And eliminated the last traces of noise in his movements.
It was an interesting idea.
It was completely theoretical at the moment, and he hadn't even attempted it himself yet, but he was currently on his way back to his cave so that he could.
He had immediately stopped what he had been doing and started sprinting to his cave the moment he finished thinking through his idea.
He would always travel to his new home whenever he started working with his Ki. It always tired him out unbelievably quickly when he did, so he would always practice near his cave. That way, if he ever overexerted himself, he could just fall asleep on the spot.
It had happened before…
He smiled.
It was finally time to create his first legitimate Ki technique.
He had played around with his Ki a few times over the past few weeks, running a few basic experiments, attempting to make a few energy balls and whatnot, but he hadn't really done anything significant with it yet. He had been too focused on his stealth training for that.
That, and his stamina was still much too weak for him to succeed in doing anything even remotely impressive.
His new idea was unlike any of his previous ones though.
This was the first time where his Ki training, and his stealth training, would intersect with each other, and he couldn't wait to try it out.
It would train everything all at once if it worked. That was what made it so brilliant. It would increase his stamina, his Ki reserves, his control, his stealth… everything. All at the same time.
It would be an ideal situation for training, and he wanted to incorporate it into his training plan as soon as possible.
Jumping over another large bush in his path, he paid extra attention to his landing, to ensure that it was silent.
He had, roughly, a fifty percent success rate on these.
He landed, satisfied, before continuing on.
Frowning, he spared a glance down towards his legs.
He was starting to feel the burn in them again.
His muscles were still slightly adjusting to their new movements. As a result, they were getting sore before he himself, tired out.
He was only a few minutes out though, so it hardly mattered.
In fact, the infamous tree that had caused him so much confusion was just up ahead.
He used the tree as a sort of marker now, since he recognized it so easily. Whenever he saw it, he knew that he was close to his cave.
It was the same tree that the black figure had been walking behind in his dream, a while back.
His thoughts quickly changed directions.
Yes…
The dream.
At least, that's what he wanted to refer it to, as.
Perhaps experience fit what had happened, better.
He still had no real explanation for what happened that night, despite all of the time that he had spent thinking about it. He hadn't had another experience like it since then, either.
No more vivid hallucinations, no more black figures, or eerily quiet surroundings… it was like none of it had ever happened at all.
If it weren't for one specific detail, he would have written the whole situation off as just that. A dream.
He had searched through the whole forest, but no matter how hard he tried, he still never found his sword again.
At this point, he had pretty much given up hope of ever finding it again.
He had gone as far as trying to track down that foggy clearing with the strange looking trees again. He still vividly remembered what his surroundings had looked like when he dropped his sword in the dream. But, as he expected, he never saw any location even remotely similar to it during his search in the forest.
He had never seen a place like it in his life. Not even in the forests around Mount Paozu.
It made him wonder how his subconscious mind had come up with it if it was a dream.
And he still wanted to believe that it was.
It just had to be.
And that, some animal had to have just stolen his sword in the middle of the night, ignoring all of his leftover food in the process for some reason.
It was the most likely scenario that he could come up with, but it was still riddled with problems.
He had briefly considered that it might have been Piccolo, but he couldn't think of a single reason for Piccolo to take his sword back, after giving it to him only a month ago.
He was missing something in his theory, but he had no idea what it could be.
It was a mystery.
One that he both loved, and hated, since he still couldn't solve it.
He ran passed the tree in near silence, only sparing it one final glance as he did.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts
He was nearly home now.
He could feel the wind that brushed against his face from his sprint, increase in intensity slightly, as he broke away from the treeline, out into the wide open clearing leading up to his cave. The wind created a constant, low pitched, whoosh in his ears as he sprinted through the open clearing at a constant pace.
It was early afternoon, judging by the position of the sun. He still had a few hours left to spare, before he had to go out to get his dinner.
A few hours that he was going to use to experiment.
He came to a stop in front of the cave entrance.
He really hoped that his new idea worked.
He heaved a sigh of relief as he collapsed back down onto the cave floor after another exhausting attempt, at his new technique.
He needed to take another quick break before he tried that again.
He still had a hard time trying to reconcile just how weak he was now. He had seen himself destroy mountains in the past, but something as seemingly simple as this, was giving him way more trouble.
His stamina still needed a lot of work.
His breathing and heartbeat were through the roof. He couldn't remember a single time that he had ever pushed himself this far physically, in his life.
His eyes were watering from the strain.
For a few moments, he had even idly wondered if he was going to throw up.
The feeling had passed though, thankfully.
It would have been annoying, having to clean up puke from his cave floor…
He closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing, but failed to do so.
He felt like he had just ran a hundred marathons with his dad on his back.
His dad after finishing an all you can eat buffet. Honestly, he ate way too much sometimes…
He shuddered at the imagery, before starting to laugh.
His lungs were burning.
He had so much more respect for people who trained like this all the time. Planning to get stronger, and actually training to get stronger were totally different things.
They were worlds apart.
It probably didn't help either, that this was his first time, pretty much ever, where he had trained himself to exhaustion.
His stealth training wasn't actually too physically taxing, all things considered. Not when compared to this anyways. It was much more mentally taxing instead, with all of the focus that was required.
But he was used to that.
He could focus on things and concentrate for long periods of time pretty well, but this physical conditioning thing, was brutal.
He could almost feel his blood, churning around under his skin, as his heart frantically tried to keep up with the demands of his body.
But there was an upside here.
Underneath the layers, upon layers, of exhaustion that consumed his whole being, there was a new feeling.
One that he could really see himself getting used to.
The feeling of being right.
His idea worked after all.
He couldn't sustain it for very long yet though. Due to having such small Ki reserves.
But they would increase over time, especially if he kept up this type of training.
After taking another moment to rest, he shakily managed to climb to his feet, heart still speeding out of control.
He needed to try it out at least once more before he collapsed.
Getting into position, he stood at attention, on unsteady legs. His feet were side by side, in slight contact with each other. His back was straight, and his arms were at his side.
He took another deep breath, before closing his eyes once again, and repeating the same technique that he had been practicing over and over again, for the past few hours.
He concentrated, and drew on his Ki, a process that was beginning to get almost instinctual now, before slowly directing it to his feet.
He felt the familiar tingle and pressure build up in his feet, before he forced it out, directly into the ground.
A moderate breeze picked up in the cave, and he felt the strain on his mind intensify as he materialized his energy into the surroundings.
He tried to mentally 'grasp' as much of it as possible, and collect it all, in the space directly underneath his feet.
He visualized the shape that he wanted his Ki to create, and 'pushed' all of his manifested energy into it.
His feet slowly rose off the ground.
Immediately, he felt his body begin to protest, but he pushed on, through his building exhaustion.
This was the solution that he had come up with for his stealth problem.
Levitation.
He had noticed in the past that his Ki felt almost like a solid, when packed into a sphere. He liked to compare it to a water balloon when it was like that.
A water balloon that was much harder to break than usual. Depending on the density, and amount of energy, pumped into a ball of Ki, he could change its durability.
So after a bit of practice, he figured out how to make his energy thin enough to not burn himself, or the ground, when he used it, but still thick enough for him to be able to stand on.
It seemed almost counterproductive at first glance. Practicing with his Ki so that he could make it weaker, rather than training it to be stronger…
It was far too weak to be used in an actual energy attack when it was this thin… but that was ultimately, the point.
He was essentially standing on a ball of his own Ki. One that was transparent, and harmless, due to how thin it was.
One that he could pump more energy into from his feet, if he needed to, or if he wanted it to expand.
The ball of Ki was even weak enough to leave the ground completely unscathed, despite resting on top of it.
His 'technique' produced the same effect as standing on an invisible air mattress, and then inflating it.
The 'mattress', was his mental manipulation of his energy, forcing it into a specific shape, and the 'air', was his Ki.
He manipulated his Ki to not be able to escape the 'mattress' under his feet, and he controlled his Ki flow to inflate it.
Pumping in more, or less, as needed.
However, due to the fact that he was incredibly new to this 'technique', and was still pretty new to Ki manipulation in general, his energy was constantly escaping his control, and producing a noticeable breeze in the air.
A breeze that he would eventually have to find a way to get rid of, if he wanted this technique to actually help him.
It wouldn't be very stealthy, running around with a massive blast of wind flying around everywhere he went after all…
The energy loss also forced him to have to constantly pump more energy in, so that he could replace the energy that was lost.
That was the reason why he was so exhausted at the moment. He was wasting far too much energy.
Something he would have to fix.
The more energy that he pumped into the 'container' he stood on, the higher he could levitate. The opposite was also true. However, changing his altitude also required him to control the shape of the 'container' with his mind. He was essentially standing on the 'container', and riding it up and down like an elevator.
So naturally, there was a limit to how high he could travel off the ground like this. Eventually, if he tried to go high enough, the 'container' would become too big for him to be able to focus on properly, and it would break apart, even if he had enough Ki to fill a 'container' that big.
But it didn't matter in the end.
He wasn't planning on using this technique as a method to fly. Heck, he still had no idea how he would even do that. He couldn't think of a single mechanism of using his Ki to allow himself to just take off and fly around like he had seen Piccolo do earlier.
It just didn't make sense to him how Piccolo was able to do that.
He was going to end up learning how later though. Possibly from Piccolo himself, though he would prefer it if he managed to figure it out himself before then…
Instead, he was going to use this new levitation technique on an incredibly small scale.
He would learn how to control his energy better, so that he could prevent any noticeable wind from being generated when he was using the technique. And he would have it active every time he took a step, so that he could remain just a tiny amount above the ground. Enough to prevent contact, but not enough to be noticeable to other people at a distance.
He wouldn't touch the ground, so no noise would be generated when he took a step.
Stealth problem solved.
Once he mastered the technique, it would produce the same effect as running around everywhere, in a pair of giant shoes made out of foam.
…
Or… like a magnet, hovering above another magnet of opposite polarity.
That analogy probably fit better.
His Ki would be in use all of the time, so he would increase his reserves a significant amount by the time his new technique felt natural.
This technique also required a good amount of concentration to keep active, so he would be training his energy manipulation as well.
Learning this technique trained nearly every aspect that he currently deemed valuable enough to train, in preparation for a fight.
That was why he had plans to practice this new technique as often as he could, even at the cost of draining himself of energy completely, potentially multiple times per day.
Until he was able to use this technique indefinitely with no effort, or strain, he would be practicing it constantly.
Just like his movement training.
And if what he was currently feeling now was any indication, his life was going to be exhausting as a result, for the foreseeable future.
But he was determined to see it through.
His concentration finally slipped, and the ball of Ki underneath him disintegrated, causing him to fall the tiny, less-than-two-inch distance, to the ground.
Immediately, he dropped to his hands and knees, and started taking deep breaths.
He wasn't used to using his Ki like this at all yet. He had used up almost all of it during his practice session, and was exhausted as a result. Sweat was pouring off of his forehead, and falling in drops onto the ground underneath him.
He could barely even keep his eyes open anymore, he was so tired. Both physically, and mentally.
Dropping the rest of the way to the ground, he slowly rolled onto his back, still struggling to breathe.
He decided right then.
He was just going to lay here for a while.
Maybe take a nap.
Then when he woke up again, he'd go find something to eat.
It took him almost ten minutes for his breathing to get back to something even resembling normalcy, and when it finally did, he passed out soon after.
Soaked, exhausted, sore, and lying in a pool of his own sweat.
…
He was way too tired to care.
A/N: Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors, as I have no beta reader at this time.
- LeviTamm