Juoku

Just Don't Change

"Again."

A cross into a jab, a bat heeded his ajahn, smashing his power fist into one open-pawed glove and then near his mentor's body, only being met with a tight block.

"Now the thigh."

The young nak muay did as instructed, now going back to a simpler jab-cross chain that followed up with a kick just a tad lowered compared to the hips as wonted and regular targets. Quickly, though, the bat found himself squinting as his snout caught a cautionary bop as his master's stocky frame moved in past his kick and faintly ghosted a jab. Before the boy had hardly realized it, he was not only corrected, but put in a situation of being simultaneously cornered.

"And quit lowering your hands!"

Kyrat found clear incentive that way to take a bit more action, a fiery smile only belonging to a Boy Scout barreling over his face—Saeng knew well that, even though the boy wasn't nearly as imposing in external frame as him, he still packed a strong punch. Of course he'd know that. He's trained him since five.

Saeng derived from a sault of a stern pumas. Combine that with an array of questionable choices from growing up around adults that unfortunately were able to make decisions on their own, and that led to him going from a stoic and passionate cat crowned by solar halos whenever he fought on the streets, and you would get him—the same Saeng that went to the military the second he turned eighteen.

A single takeaway from all of that was to never believe oneself to be only useful in one thing. Saeng had taken time too late to figure that out.

Kyrat would not be next.

...

He wouldn't have been.

...

Lovey-dovey Thai buzzed from the puma's cellphone as an alarm, its sample being a ripped piece from an 80s song known for its usage in young souls courting one another even while not knowing what they're doing. Saeng had used it to... well... it was even a tad embarrassing for him to admit it now.

5:00 AM

Warm in the comforting sheets, the thick, black-hided big cat groaned while stretching not at all dissimilarly to a newborn. Even while starting to push fifty, some things just don't change.

Once catching more consciousness, Saeng sensed the lack of a familiar additional weight on the bed that was always in his massive grasp.

Rey was gone—off to deputy duty. Jason already was hitting the gym for his forthcoming bout; something about another snot-nosed up and coming rookie who came from... Saeng couldn't remember. Didn't matter to him much, either. As a step-father, there was honestly very little for him to care about. Still, no harm could've been found in just wanting a wholly content family.

Three martial artists, three martial arts.
Saeng religiously practiced Muay Thai.
Jason pompously worked into Boxing.
So what did the deputy do?

He did enough to have a roof over their heads.

Saeng finally grasped at that dingy phone just on the nightstand beside him, its only telltales being the sound given that everything was still illy lit. Whirring, faint ambiance of the heat conditioning of the house soothed the Thai's mind, but he had to remember that he didn't wake up this early to stay comfortable.

Comfort didn't bring results, work did.

Being a teacher of the eight limbs hardened his demeanor to something nigh-stony. At times he could even be mistaken for being sixty from how early he consistently got up. Judging on how he was rather calm starting from the last night he has with his fiancé, however, there could have been equal mistaking for him to be thirty, maybe. Who cares? Most thought he was washed up with a gone history.

A thankful pray to the sun for rising after the moon had been felled and quiet meditation checked off, the older cat had already gotten his time-tested bones moving; he taught kids at the orphanage he worked at for free the basics of Thai life and its ultimate root, Muay Thai. Saeng stood with a frame befitting someone who once took up being a general with national strife and regal pride seeded deep in his heart. The puma had to be at least a whole foot taller than most—at least! And his forehead had as its cape a distinctively set scar of a story he never told, his neutral gaze hardened as well as authority-demanding. Perhaps even respect-inspiring.

Every student saw that in the early-morning routines he presented to the orphans with expectation of them to follow. It wouldn't take long until dawn had bled itself into birth. Saang had on only his signature yellow-colored shorts. Maybe that was just a Hasekai tradition.

"Again!"

Saeng ordered as the "school" beat the air in sturdy, desperate practice, quickly diverting his diminutive stare of pupils barely larger than dots over to some mist behind him.

Footfalls, and ones that were unmistakable. Harsh, earth-trembling ones. Only those ones had weight behind them like the ones the general possessed.

Black spots, gold sclera, dark pupils, an unkempt mane were the fellow muscular behemoth's person. The second dark-colored cat wasn't a puma, but something of a sabertooth offshoot. Tattered rags and a black headband acted as a makeshift halo.

Two halos befell  under the morning sky, but where were the wings?

"Don't tell me you didn't expect this?" the baleful sabertooth asked with clear degradation, almost amused at the younglings behind Saeng. Was that a Finnish or Russian accent?

"I didn't want to," the puma confessed. A wave was all that would be required to have the kids scurry in retreat back to the orphanage.

The sabertooth bellowed in hard humor, winging his arms in an almost DIY stance, as if he was just some kind of street fighter a decade and then some out of his prime.

Meanwhile, the ex-general picked up a much tighter, more rigid posture and guard.

"I thought you were a champion?"