The torches along the main road had burned low by the time someone dragged the television out.
It arrived on a wooden cart, pushed by two boys who nearly dropped it twice, and it was old enough that half the village had never seen one work. Elder Hagan settled onto an upturned crate and planted his cane between his knees. Farmers stood with their arms folded. Children sat cross-legged in the dirt. A blacksmith still wore his apron, hammer tucked through his belt like he'd stepped out mid-swing and hadn't bothered to go back.
"Turn it up, lad," Hagan said.
The boy at the front twisted the knob. The picture stuttered — snow, darkness, more snow — and then the screen cracked open and static swallowed everything.
Then he appeared.
Tall. Still. A top hat throwing shadow across half his face, a coat moving softly despite no wind. He held a cane loosely, almost as an afterthought, and when his gaze found the camera, the crowd felt it settle on them like a hand on the shoulder.
"Hello, hello there, viewers~"
Nobody moved. A woman near the back gripped her prayer necklace without knowing she'd reached for it. A guard's hand found his spear.
"I have hacked everyone's TVs." A beat. "And I mean... everyone's."
Even here, in a village so remote that the nearest city was three days by horseback, where the most advanced piece of technology was currently propped on a cart, those words landed. The crowd felt the size of the world press in around them. Whatever this man had done, he had done it everywhere, all at once.
"You're probably wondering who I am."
He smiled. It wasn't warm. It was the smile of a man who'd been waiting a long time for this particular moment and found it exactly as amusing as expected. He twirled his cane once and let it rest on his shoulder.
"I am the strongest man alive."
Silence. Pure and total.
The baker's loaf hit the ground. Neither he nor anyone beside him moved to pick it up.
"And I want to be beaten."
Murmurs broke like a wave. The blacksmith's son pulled a fist tight. A cloaked traveler near the treeline tilted his head slowly, like a man recalculating something. Elder Hagan's grip tightened on his cane, not from fear, but from something older and more careful.
The man on screen leaned forward.
"It has been, what, a month since the Supreme Council officially recognized me as the strongest? And let me tell you." His voice dropped, not to a whisper but to something almost intimate. "It has been boring."
Nervous laughter scattered through the crowd. Warriors straightened without meaning to.
"I won't reveal myself. I won't say where I am. But here is all you need to know."
He looked directly into the lens. The effect was immediate, half the crowd took a step back without realizing it.
"Whoever defeats me, kills me, or makes me surrender will be rewarded. One trillion gold. The finest sky ship in existence. Mythical weapons. Magic scrolls containing spells that died with their last users. And best of all —" His grin widened. "The power to carve your own domain from this world."
Silence. Then chaos.
"Is this a trick?!" a merchant shouted.
"He's mad," someone said. "He has to be mad."
But some people in that crowd went perfectly still. The ambitious ones. The hungry ones. The ones who heard opportunity where everyone else heard lunacy.
The man straightened. Composed again. Unhurried.
"Invitations have been sent across all worlds. Know this, if you accept: the Supreme Council will come for you. But that's fine, isn't it?"
He chuckled, the sound lingering a moment after it should have ended.
"Anyway. I must go." He tipped his hat. "I wish you all luck."
The screen went black.
Silence.
Then, from the tavern, a crash of a fist on wood and a roar of laughter: "A trillion gold?! A sky ship?! I'M IN!"
The village split in two, those trembling and those grinning, and both sides felt, in that moment, that the world they'd woken up in that morning was already gone.
---
In the small wooden house on the hill's edge, the television had gone dark.
Half-eaten plates sat on the table. A single candle burned low. On the floor, with his legs folded and his enormous ears angled like antennae picking up a signal, sat Eleo, eight years old, a bunny kid built like a question mark that had recently learned to throw a punch.
He was not, technically, supposed to be on the floor. He'd migrated there sometime during dinner without anyone commenting on it, pulled toward the screen by the same gravity that had pulled half the village into the square. In his lap was a crumpled sheet of paper covered in badly drawn stick figures, each one labeled in careful, deliberate letters: ME and STRONGEST GUY and, at the bottom, in the largest handwriting, I WIN.
Beside him, in a creaky rocking chair that had survived several wars, sat Grandpa Gou.
Old. Weathered. The kind of face that had seen so much it forgot how to be surprised. He'd been a warrior, once, before he'd decided fishing was more honest work. His hands were folded over his stomach. His eyes were half-closed.
The screen stayed black.
Eleo's nose twitched.
His ears swiveled.
He looked at his paper. Looked back at the screen. Looked at his paper again.
"GRANDPA GOU."
Gou opened one eye.
"I WANNA BE THE STRONGEST."
The eye closed. "Boy."
"I'm serious! Did you hear what that man said?! Whoever beats him—"
"Gets hunted by the Supreme Council." Gou's voice was flat. "And killed."
Eleo blinked. His ears drooped slightly. Then they shot back up. "PFFT. I'll just beat them too."
Gou's rocking chair stopped moving.
He looked at his grandson, this small, ridiculous, completely earnest creature with buck teeth and a hand-drawn battle plan in his lap, and facepalmed so hard the chair rocked backward.
"You can't just beat the Supreme Council," he said, through his hand. "They're the Supreme Council."
"So? I'll train harder."
"They have thousands of members."
"I'll train way harder."
Gou lowered his hand and looked at Eleo with the expression of a man who has been at sea too long and has started talking to fish. "Boy, do you have any idea how strong the weakest member of that council is?"
Eleo tilted his head. "...Stronger than me right now?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so kick their ass"
WHAM.
Gou's fist crashed into his face. Clean, unhurried, the way a man swats a fly he's been watching for a while.
Eleo flew back into the couch. His legs stuck straight up. The crumpled paper floated down and landed on his chest.
He lay there for a moment.
"...What was that for?" he said, from the ceiling.
"You said a very bad word."
Eleo sat up slowly.
WHAM.
This time Eleo moved. Both feet, simultaneously, square in the center of Gou's face. The old man's chair tipped. He slid backward across the floor and came to rest with his back against the wall.
He sat there. Wiped his nose with his thumb. Looked at the blood.
Then he grinned.
"Heh." He looked up at Eleo, who was standing on the couch looking equal parts triumphant and terrified at what he'd done. "You made me bleed." The grin widened. "I'm proud of you, boy."
Eleo beamed. His whole face lit up, buck teeth and all. "YEAH! I BEEN TRAINING WITH MASTER KUMA!"
"I can tell." Gou cracked his neck, climbing to his feet with the ease of a man who'd taken far worse. "You hit like a malnourished squirrel. But it's something."
Eleo's ears twitched. "Wait. What's a squirrel?"
Gou stared at him.
The candle flickered.
He crossed to Eleo slowly, placed one large hand on top of his grandson's head, and patted it twice. The way a man comforts himself.
"Not a single working brain cell," he murmured. "I raised you right, and you came out completely empty."
Eleo gasped. "WAIT. I HAVE A BRAIN?!"
Gou closed his eyes and said a short, private prayer.
He stretched. Joints popped. "Alright. I'm leaving tomorrow."
Eleo's ears dropped. "Already? You just got here."
"I know." He started toward his room. "You've got Abby, haven't you?"
Eleo groaned. "Abby's no fun. She always tells me not to punch stuff."
"Good." Gou paused at the door. "Maybe it'll stick this time."
He glanced back at his grandson, still standing on the couch, crumpled battle plan in hand, chin set like a declaration.
"Get some sleep," Gou said. "Big ideas need rest."
WHAM.
He punched Eleo into his pillow, tucked the blanket up with one smooth motion, and walked away.
From the pillow, muffled: "Whyyy?"
Gou chuckled, already gone. "Told you to sleep."
Eleo lay staring at the ceiling. He smoothed out his crumpled paper on the blanket and looked at it for a long time, the stick figures, the arrows, I WIN in shaky letters at the bottom.
Then he folded it carefully and tucked it under his pillow.
"When I wake up," he said quietly, to no one in particular, "I'm gonna be the strongest."
Outside, the village was still buzzing, voices carrying through the wood and glass, everyone deciding what to do with the world they'd just been handed. Inside, a candle went out. A bunny kid closed his eyes.
He was asleep in seconds.
---
Morning came the way it always did on Pork Island, salt air off the water, birds going at it outside the window, pale light cutting through the curtains at an angle that made the whole room look gold. Eleo woke up with his face pressed into his pillow, one ear folded under his head, and the immediate certainty that today was going to be important.
He scrambled upright. Grabbed the folded paper from under his pillow. Tucked it in his pocket.
Gou was already at the table when Eleo got to the kitchen, travel bag propped against his chair, eating without hurry. He looked up when Eleo appeared in the doorway, sleep-messed fur, ears at different altitudes, shirt on backward.
"Sit down," Gou said. "Eat first."
Eleo sat. He ate his stack of pancakes in approximately the time it took Gou to finish one. Then he sat watching his grandfather pack the last of his things with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd done it many times.
"You're really going," Eleo said. Not a question.
"Said I was." Gou buckled his bag. He stood, crossed the room, and put a hand on top of Eleo's head. Not a pat. Just weight. "Keep that dumb smile of yours, alright?"
Eleo grinned, because he couldn't help it. "OKAY!"
Gou snorted. He picked up his bag, headed for the door, and paused with his hand on the frame. He didn't look back, just stood there for a moment the way people do when they're deciding whether to say something else.
He didn't. He walked out, and the door clicked shut behind him.
Eleo sat at the table. Outside, footsteps on the path, then nothing. The birds kept going. The light through the curtains shifted slightly.
Then his brain caught up.
"OH — MASTER KUMA!"
He was out the door at a sprint.
---
The Iron Fang smelled like sawdust and old beer and the specific kind of laughter that meant someone was about to do something stupid.
It was the rowdiest establishment on Pork Island, which was less of an achievement than it sounded, Pork Island had three other bars, and two of them were technically the same building. But The Iron Fang was the one with a reputation. The one where strong people gathered, drank, and occasionally resolved philosophical disagreements with their fists.
Eleo loved it.
He burst through the door at a dead sprint, having run the whole way from home, having also knocked over a man on a donkey in the forest (an accident, and he'd apologized, though the man had not seemed to hear him over his own yelling). He weaved between tables, ducked under a tray, hopped a barstool, and landed at the biggest table with both hands planted on the wood.
"MASTER KUMA!"
At the bar, Lucy, fox ears, orange fur, the calm authority of someone who'd seen everything twice, continued sliding drinks down the counter without looking up.
At the biggest table, Master Kuma looked up.
He was a bear. Enormous, broad-shouldered, built like a structure rather than a creature, dressed in a simple kung fu gi that had survived considerable punishment. He held a wooden beer mug that looked small in his paw. Beside him, sipping juice with the focused energy of someone maintaining patience through great effort, sat Abby.
Kuma blinked at Eleo.
"Did you hear?!" Eleo grabbed the table's edge. "The broadcast! The strongest man! Did you—"
"Yep."
Eleo grinned so wide his face barely contained it. "THEN YOU KNOW I'M GONNA BE THE STRONGEST!"
Kuma set his mug down. Calmly. The way a very large person does things when they have decided not to hurry. "Boy," he said, "you ain't ready."
Abby nodded, solemn. "He's right, Eleo. You'd have to be extremely strong."
Eleo puffed his chest. "I am strong! Stronger than you! All you do is sing."
The bar went quiet.
Not dramatic quiet. Just the specific silence that falls when everyone in a room has the same thought at the same time. A single drop of beer fell from Kuma's mug.
Abby's eye twitched.
Her hand shot out.
"YOU WANNA SAY THAT AGAIN?!" She had Eleo's ear between two fingers and was twisting with the focus of a scholar pursuing truth.
"OW! OW! OW!! ABBY, STOP—"
"Abby," Kuma said. "No hurting Eleo."
"I'M NOT HURTING HIM." Twist. "I'M DISCIPLINING HIM."
"Mhm."
Eleo flailed, suspended by his own ear, legs kicking uselessly. "KUMA!! HELP—"
"Nah." Kuma sipped. "You earned this, boy."
The bar erupted. Someone spilled their drink laughing. Abby released Eleo eventually, with the air of a woman who had done what needed doing, and Eleo dropped into a chair rubbing the side of his head and sulking with his whole body.
Kuma watched him.
There was something in the old bear's gaze, not soft, exactly, but attentive. The way a craftsman looks at raw material.
"You really think you can be the strongest, Eleo?"
Eleo looked up.
The sulk was gone. In its place, something else, something simple and clear and completely without doubt.
"No," Eleo said. "I know I can."
Kuma held his gaze for a moment. Then he smiled, slow, broad, a little dangerous.
"Then let's see." He set down his mug. "Training. Now."
Abby pressed her palms together and looked at the ceiling. "Here we go."
---
The clearing held maybe thirty people, Iron Fang regulars mostly, who'd followed with drinks in hand and the anticipatory energy of an audience who knew the show would be good.
Kuma stood at the clearing's center. Relaxed. Mug in paw. He hadn't put it down.
Eleo bounced on the balls of his feet, ears up, tail moving. Across the clearing, Abby cupped her hands around her mouth.
"You can do it, Eleo!"
He turned and grinned at her. "Thanks, Abby!" Then he pointed at Kuma. "Alright, Master! FIGHT-FIGHT—"
"You're more impatient than a starving wolf at a feast," Kuma said.
"Yeah, yeah, enough — BEGIN!"
Eleo charged. Fists clenched, feet churning dust, a war cry that sounded more like excitement than battle fury.
Kuma yawned.
Scratched his belly.
Eleo's fist connected with his chest.
Boop.
Like punching upholstery. Like hitting a very large, warm wall that didn't notice.
Eleo blinked. He looked at his fist. He looked up.
Kuma blinked back.
"...That was it?" he said, with genuine disappointment.
"Ow." Eleo shook his hand. "Dang. You're solid."
Laughter from the sidelines. Kuma finally moved.
BAM.
His paw came down, not full force, not even close, but fast, and Eleo barely got out of the way, stumbling back, heart slamming. Dust where he'd been standing.
He stared.
For such a large creature, Kuma had moved like a thought.
"So," Eleo said carefully, "you're actually kind of strong."
"EVERYONE KNEW THAT, ELEO!" Abby shouted.
Kuma rolled his shoulders. "Let's see if you can dodge the next one."
"Oh, crap—"
Whoosh.
Kuma vanished.
"WHERE'D HE—"
BAM.
A light chop. Top of the head. Eleo face-planted into the dirt so fast the crowd didn't register it until the dust settled.
The laughter was immediate and total.
Abby put her face in her hands.
Eleo peeled himself off the ground. Shook dirt out of his ears. Looked up with the expression of someone who has made peace with their situation.
"HEY! What kind of teacher hits their student?!"
"The kind that teaches lessons." Kuma sipped. "Ready?"
Eleo lunged.
Left. Right. Left. Right. A barrage, every punch he had, relentless, and Kuma leaned left, right, back, forward, tilting his mug slightly to avoid spillage. Not a single blow connected. The crowd went quiet this time, watching.
"He's not even trying," someone whispered.
Eleo growled through his teeth. "STOP DODGING AND LET ME HIT YOU."
Kuma lowered his mug. "Alright."
"...Huh?"
WHAM.
The backhand carried Eleo a solid ten feet before he hit the grass, rolled twice, and came to rest in a bush. Twigs in his ears. Leaves on his face. One foot sticking up.
Kuma stretched. "Welp."
Abby crouched at the bush's edge. "Eleo. Are you alive."
Eleo sat up slowly, debris in his fur, eyes slightly unfocused.
"Yep," he said. "Totally fine."
His legs wobbled when he stood. He stood anyway.
Kuma approached, looking down at his student, battered, filthy, blinking dirt out of his eyes.
"You done, boy?"
Eleo breathed. Slow. In, out.
Then he grinned.
It wasn't a brave grin, exactly. It wasn't performance. It was just him. Buck teeth and all. The same grin from the couch, from the kitchen table that morning, from every morning he'd gotten up before the birds to run laps until his legs gave out.
"Not even close."
Kuma went still.
The crowd went still.
Eleo squared up again, wiping dirt from his cheek. "You're stronger, faster, and better than me at everything. I know that." He stomped one foot, steadying himself. "But I refuse to stay weak."
Silence.
Then Kuma laughed. Deep and rolling, like something breaking loose. He stepped forward and put a paw on Eleo's head, not a pat this time, but a grip. Solid. The way you hold something you're deciding to keep.
"Good answer, boy."
Eleo blinked. "...Huh?"
"You lost." Kuma's grip tightened slightly, then released. "But you ain't broken. That matters more."
Eleo's eyes went wide. "Does that mean—?!"
Kuma turned and walked back toward The Iron Fang, mug raised in a half-salute.
"I'll keep training you."
The crowd erupted. Abby made a sound somewhere between relief and resignation. Eleo pumped both fists at the sky.
"YEAH!!"
"He survived," Abby said, to herself, quietly. "He actually survived."
---
The days that followed had a rhythm to them.
Dawn: Eleo up before light, laps through the forest, back home to inhale whatever was on the stove. Morning: the clearing, Kuma hitting him in various ways, Eleo getting up from all of them. Afternoon: Abby dragging him into town to do something that wasn't getting hit, Eleo getting into an argument with someone and getting hit anyway. Evening: the three of them at The Iron Fang, Eleo eating his weight in whatever Lucy put in front of him, Kuma drinking, Abby keeping her tally in her small notebook.
Eleo got faster. Not fast enough to dodge Kuma, not even close, but faster than he'd been, which was the only measure that mattered. His punches stopped making the boop sound. They still didn't make Kuma flinch, but they stopped making him look disappointed, which felt like progress.
By the fifth day, the rhythm had worn grooves into him.
He lay face-down in the dirt of the clearing, arms at his sides, cheek against the ground, chest heaving. Every muscle felt like it had been wrung out and put back wrong. The morning light filtered through the canopy above him, dappling the dirt gold.
On a log nearby, Kuma sat drinking from an oversized jug, watching him with the calm attention of someone monitoring weather.
"Alright, boy."
Eleo pried one eye open. "Y-Yeah?"
"I'm leaving soon."
Both eyes opened. Eleo pushed himself upright. "WHAT?!"
"Dangerous business. Can't stay forever." Kuma said it the way he said most things, straightforward, no cushion. He stood, and reached into his coat.
What he pulled out glowed.
Dark blue. Swirling with ink-like patterns that moved like something alive was sleeping inside. Eleo forgot he was exhausted. He forgot he was sitting in dirt. He scrambled forward.
"WHAT IS THAT?!"
"S-Orb. Soul Orb." Kuma held it out. "Take it."
Eleo snatched it.
Licked it.
Kuma stared. A bird called somewhere in the trees. The wind moved through the clearing.
"...Boy. What are you doing."
Eleo recoiled. "ACK — it tastes like a sweaty rock —"
"You're supposed to absorb it. Not eat it."
"Oh."
He held the orb between his palms and closed his eyes. It took a moment, then the glow began sinking into his skin, slow and spreading, like ink through water. Warmth followed, deep and settling, like something waking up inside him.
Then the warmth became heat.
The heat became fire.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"
Eleo hit the ground rolling. His body felt like every nerve ending had been replaced with a lit match. He flailed. He twitched. He made sounds no bunny kid should make.
Kuma sipped from his jug.
"Oh yeah. Should've mentioned. It hurts."
"YOU FORGOT TO MENTION IT HURTS?!"
Abby had just walked into the clearing. She took one look at Eleo convulsing on the ground, looked at Kuma, and pointed.
"What did you do to him."
"Gave him an S-Orb."
"You gave him a legendary artifact like it was a piece of fruit?!"
"Yep."
"WITHOUT WARNING HIM?!"
"...Nope."
"ARE YOU A RESPONSIBLE ADULT?!"
Kuma tilted his head thoughtfully. "No."
Eleo stopped twitching. He lay spread-eagle, staring up at the canopy, panting, fur ruffled in seventeen directions.
"...I think I saw my ancestors," he said.
Kuma crouched beside him. "You'll be alright, kid." He patted Eleo's head once, twice, the same grip as before, the same quiet weight. "That orb won't make you strong. Not now. But someday, it'll matter."
Eleo stared at the sky. "Does it give me... super strength?"
"Nope."
"Speed?"
"Nope."
"...Heat vision?"
"Why would a bunny need heat vision."
Eleo sat up slowly. His ears were bent at different angles. His fur was a disaster. He looked, in every possible way, like someone who had absorbed a legendary artifact without reading the instructions.
"So I'm still weak?!" he wailed.
Kuma stood. "No. You've got potential."
Eleo stared at him. "...What does that mean?"
Kuma didn't answer. He just turned toward the path that led to the docks, and started walking. After a moment, Eleo and Abby followed, and the three of them moved through the trees in the direction of the water, the orb still glowing faintly under Eleo's fur like something new taking root.
---
The sky ship was massive.
It floated above the dock like a held breath, dragon-winged, dark-hulled, engines humming with a low vibration Eleo felt in his back teeth. The sails caught wind that didn't exist at ground level. The boarding ramp extended down like an outstretched hand.
Kuma stood at its base, travel bag over one shoulder.
Eleo's ears had been drooping since they'd left the clearing. He looked at the ship. He looked at Kuma. He looked at the ship again. He was doing the math on how quickly five days had gone and arriving at an answer he didn't like.
"You really gotta go?"
"Yeah." Kuma studied his student, this small, battered, completely undaunted creature who had been knocked into every surface the clearing had to offer and kept getting up grinning. "But I'll be back."
Eleo forced the grin. It was mostly real. "Better be. By then, I'm gonna be the strongest. I won't lose next time."
"Looking forward to it." Kuma glanced at Abby. "Watch over him."
Abby sighed the sigh of someone who has accepted a difficult but necessary fate. "I know, I know."
He ruffled her hair, gentle, quick, then turned to board. Halfway up the ramp, he raised one hand. Not looking back.
Eleo waved both arms like he was flagging down a ship at sea, which, technically, he was.
"BYE, KUMA!!"
"Come back in one piece!" Abby called.
"You bet," Kuma said, and walked up and was gone.
The ship lifted. Eleo and Abby watched it climb, growing smaller, until it punched through the low cloud and vanished, leaving only blue.
Eleo stood very still.
Then he collapsed.
"ELEO?!" Abby dropped beside him.
He rolled onto his back and groaned. "...That orb still hurts."
Abby stared at him for a long moment. Then she sat down in the dirt beside him and looked up at the empty sky where a ship had been.
"You're hopeless," she said.
Eleo stared up too. His hand found his pocket, and the folded paper inside it, the stick figures, the arrows, I WIN in shaky letters at the bottom.
"Yeah," he said. He was still grinning. "But I'm gonna be the strongest anyway."
Abby didn't argue. The sky was very blue, and her best friend was lying in the dirt next to her, ears bent sideways, absolutely certain of something that made no statistical sense whatsoever.
She'd learned, over years, that certainty like that was harder to argue with than logic.
She just hoped it was enough.