Adrian shot up out of bed groggy and out of sorts he looked around his room confused and flinched when the events of the previous day crashed home. It was terrifying and everything after that had been a blur of adrenaline and fear his mind didn't know what to do with. So it'd rightfully shut down.

With the lifting of the fog of sleep, Adrian found he was doing better than he thought. The memory of the fear was there but it was distant like a hazy memory. The sound of hammering reached him, which was probably his father starting a new project to help them survive. A project he should be helping out with. With a determined will and the urging of his bottomless pit of a stomach, Adrian headed down to face the day.

Adrian got downstairs to find a heaping mound of eggs and rice waiting for him. Adrian scarfed it down in record time and wondered where all the extra calories he was consuming was going. His skinny body was still just that, skinny. Knowing the answers to his many such questions were outside Adrian filled a glass of water and carried it out to his dad outside and froze.

Taking up most of the yard was a confusing monstrosity of flimsy platforms, poles, bars and beams with rope connecting some pieces and broken up with wide gaps that had what looked like mud pits at the bottom and were those spikes? All made from bits of wood, metal and the brown rock of their hidden valley. Adrian watched frozen as his father hammered a black case to the wall of what he expected to be end of whatever he was seeing.

With a final resounding hit from the hammer, Adrian's father slid down the wall and jogged to his son smiling all the way. He took the glass from his son's frozen hands and looked upon his work with pride.

“That's beautiful if I do say so myself and you my brave son will be running that till you get that box off the wall. All the while admiring the beauty of it. Glorious.”

The words jolted Adrian out of his shock and he turned to stare at his dad, then back at the monstrosity then back to his dad, anger building within him. Since Adrian had gotten his powers, it seemed his father had made it a daily occurrence to spring some new torture on him. This one was his latest. With a colossal effort to calm himself and avoid exploding at his old man, Adrian asked through gritted teeth;

“Now how do you expect me to do that?”

Without missing a beat his father threw back the rest of his water and pointed to the circumference of the monstrosity. “Well not immediately, obviously. You need to build up more stamina and a bit more strength. So that'll be your running track for every morning and evening for a week and then you get to run it.”

“Oh and uh we're on a bit of time constraint here so you can go ahead and begin now. 200 laps should do for your introductory lap. Good running son. Don't forget to stretch.”

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With that Adrian watched flabbergasted as his father jogged away to his shed to probably prepare more torture he thought bitterly. He stood around for a few minutes out of sorts at the strangeness of the morning and decided to roll with it. He stretched and took off running around the monstrosity marveling at the ease at which he moved.

Before, when Adrian ran flat out, he run out of breath almost immediately and his every footfall on the rocky ground seemed to rattle his teeth. Now though he glided across the ground doing his best to stay way from the mud that covered the ground beneath the course. For the first time in his life, Adrian felt like he could do this all day. Adrian got bored at lap fifty and decided to study the monstrosity.

It begun with a pipe that was sure to get slick when it rained that rose up to a flimsy platform. A set of monkey bars that led to the next platform, and a series of swinging ropes that led to another tiny platform connected to the next with a flimsy rope bridge. The obstacle course ended after the tight rope, obviously because between the wall with the box and the last platform was almost a fifteen metre gap.

Now that he looked at it carefully, it seemed the whole thing had a slightly unfinished look, almost like more things could be added. Adrian forced that thought from his head put his head down and run. Best not to think it into reality. That morning, Adrian found out he could run the two hundred laps without passing out but not without consequences. Adrian walked to the house drenched in sweat and on legs that felt like they belonged to somebody else. He needed water.

His father came to his rescue by coming out with a platter of eggs and rice and sweet life saving water. Impossibly he scarfed it all down and gave some serious consideration to where it all went. Adrian was pulled out of his serious thoughts by his dad snapping his fingers beneath his nose.

“Huh what?”

“I said would you like to see me run the course. It's small for me but I'm sure I could show you how it's done.”

Thinking back on the flimsy state of some of the platforms and staring at his fathers hulking form, it took a while for the words to click and Adrian shot up.

'Oh would I', Adrian thought slyly.

Suitably alert now, Adrian nodded vigorously and followed his dad to the monstrosity and watched his old man size up the thing. With no stretching no last minute advice his father took off and Adrian's jaw dropped.

His father glided up the pipe leapt off the platform grabbed the bars and flung himself to the next platform skipping the intervening monkey bars. With otherworldly agility he blitzed through the hanging ropes barely disturbing them. Like a butterfly touching down, he landed daintily on the extra small platform and flew across the tight rope. He came to what Adrian thought was the end of the course and jumped the fifteen metre gap and then proceeded to sink his fingers into the stone wall hang there like some demonic bat. His father patted the box nailed there and dropped to the ground.

Run complete.

Adrian stared at his father wide eyed mouth still hanging open as his old man nonchalantly made his way back. Adrian swore to himself that day he would learn to do what his father did.

’No matter the cost.'