Capering Puma

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Sensei Capering Puma was my teacher when I was young. My parents wanted me to apprentice to my father and continue the family business, a small pastry and sweet shop in Great Forks. But...no. It's just not what I wanted to do. At all. I wanted a life of action and adventure. My childhood friend Lily and I would often sneak away from home to the nearby tavern and we would listen in awe to tales from the mercenaries and adventurers who would be passing through.

Of course my parents adamantly forbid this sort of thing. They abhorred violence and had a particular dislike of mercenaries as it was men like that who had long ago captured my father and taken him as a slave. So Lily and I decided to take it upon ourselves to train each other and one day seek our own adventures. We would fight and spar with each other, but it was untrained and clumsy. We needed a teacher if we were ever to be great. Again we sought approval from our parents, and hers were as against the idea as mine.

Then something amazing happened. My mother's brother, an uncle I didn't even know existed, appeared in our door one day. I never knew the whole truth of my parents past. My uncle, Capering Puma, had tracked my mother down all the way from Crystal where she had apparently been some sort of wealthy merchants runaway daughter or petty nobility, I was never quite sure and none of them wanted to talk about it. Either way, after hours spent talking in my parents room, the outcome of their discussion was that my uncle would reside with us until he acquired and prepared his own residence in the city. I still wonder why he didn't go back with or without my mom and what was said behind those closed doors. Ah well. That's something I highly doubt I'll ever learn. None of them are exactly very fond of me these days.

Capering Puma it turns out was some sort of weapons specialist back home. My mother did everything she could to keep Lily and I away from him, but living together that was nearly impossible. He would catch Lily and I sparring and would give suggestion to us, make corrections in our stances or techniques. We improved. Our parents disapproved and forbid my uncle from teaching us anymore barbaric nonsense. I was there one day when he leaned in so close to my father that their noses nearly touched. "Stop me", he said, then added something in another language that my father clearly understood. He became pale and when he stepped back I saw fear in his eyes, countered by sheer dislike and malice from my uncle. My father left without a word and my mother and uncle began to argue in their native tongue.

Very soon afterwards, my uncle moved out into his own home, which had a large courtyard. He came and met with my mother, my father would never be in the same room with him after the "incident" and met with Lily's parents. Then he came outside where we were waiting and wondering what was going on and told us that we were going to live with him. He explained that he was starting a dojo that would train both martial arts as well as archery, swordplay and other combat arts in addition to skills to sharpen the mind. We were going to work for him and as payment he would not only provide us room and board, but he would train us as well. We left with him. Happy, shocked, a little frightened and very confused. What just happened? My mother looked like a thunderstorm about to erupt. I had never seen so much restrained rage before. I almost ran when I saw her and wondered how my uncle didn't just explode from the power of her gaze. Lily's parents were huddled together. Crying. Who was this man and what power did he have over these people?

Sensei Capering Puma, as he demanded to be called, was very strict and not very forgiving towards his students and even less so towards Lily and myself. We worked very hard to maintain his home and school and we worked even harder training under him. I came to know him very well. He was arrogant, hateful and was as skilled with words as he was a weapon. He knew exactly what to say to someone to manipulate them and exactly what to say to greviously wound them. He obviously favored Lily as a student. She was smart, she was fast and she preferred his favorite weapons and style, where I was not so smart, I was lazy and somewhat slow and I liked big fuck off weapons instead of fighting with what felt like kitchen silverware in my hands. So he would ridicule me mercilessly. He was cold and calculating. He knew exactly what to say to throw me into a rage and then he would beat me down. Over and over. He enjoyed it. Holding me pinned down and gloating. Then...somewhere along the way, it became something rather different. I was an adult now and I had needs. And it turns out so did he. And so our violent brawls would sometimes lead into violent sex. Yeah, creepy, I lost my virginity to my uncle. How stereotypical can I be, but hey - it worked out for both of us. Lily always pretended not to know and anytime our fighting would take that certain turn for something else, she would pick up on the hints and become scarce.

Sensei Capering Puma had taken two very eager and ambitious children and wrought us into trained warriors. When we left his employ to seek our own careers and adventures, we were ready for whatever the world had to throw at us. Or so we thought. We took with us his lessons as well as a great deal of his arrogance and coldness I guess.

Some years passed before I saw him again. This time in chains. I was working as a hired mercenary for the Guild, which Lily had already joined. I was hired on to guard a slave caravan, pretty average job, but it paid well. My uncle was one of the slaves in chains. The emotions running through me were very confused and complex. How did this happen? When he saw me he begged for me to rescue him. Gone was the arrogance and the cleverness I remembered. He babbled something about my mother, father and a betrayal, that he'd lost everything and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was only half listening, my mind dizzy someplace far away.

I chose to ignore him. I took on his lessons that I had made a part of who I am and I closed my heart to him as I had to most of the world by then. When we arrived at our destination, I volunteered to help with the Guild auction. Amongst the many nameless slaves to be sold, I personally hauled him up onto the stage before the perspective buyers and he was sold. I took him down and delivered him and some others to his new owner. As I guided him my last words to him were, "It's only a job. Just business. Nothing more. Our part in each others lives had come & gone. You shouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That you were only means that this is what you were destined for." I watched as the man who was my uncle, my teacher, my lover, was taken away. He kept looking behind him, back at me with such a look of horror, sadness and betrayal on his face. And I knew he was not the man I had once known. Sensei Capering Puma would have understood and he would have accepted his fate or else defied the gods and created a new one better suited for him. This was just some other mans slave. Nothing more.