Ten-
Tales of Symphonia, Regal
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At first all he could do about it was pace his cell like a caged tiger, three furious strides from one corner to the opposite and back, over and over, until he tired himself out enough to sleep like the drugged on the pallet in the corner. But eventually his intellect (such as it was) reasserted itself and Regal studied his cell with calculating eyes, searching for his distraction.

He still paced, of course. And he braced his legs against the wall one at a time and flexed them, using his own considerable bulk as resistance to build the muscles of his thighs. And he stood in the center of his cell and kicked at the air. And he sat on his pallet and tucked his manacled hands behind his head and did crunches until his stomach ached.

It wasn't until later, when he was doing yet another endless round of push-ups on the cold flagstones, that his fingers accidentally dug into the mortar between one stone and the next and he had his idea.

The first stone was difficult, and his fingers bled by the time he managed to drag it free, but it was a solid twenty-pound weight, flat enough on all sides to balance on the soles of his feet and thin enough to grasp in one hand. And once the first stone had come free the second stone was nearly easy, and then he had two.

They didn't begin to compare to the expensive equipment he'd once owned and thought so little of, but they were still free weights, and when he wrapped them in one of his two thin blankets he could grip them even with his manacled hands. He pried free a third and a fourth, stacked them high, drove himself with them until he reached his goal: sleep.

And then they went back into the floor before the guard came around, and often when Regal's own mounting jailhouse paranoia merely hinted that someone might be coming. They were his secret, and he cherished them. He'd always enjoyed a good workout as a way to clear and focus his mind, and now he enjoyed a good workout for the opposite reason: focusing on the pain in his muscles and striving mindlessly for one more rep made it easy not to think at all.

By the time they came for him, to make their offer, he was a beautiful and gleaming beast behind bars, so self-conditioned not to think that he was barely human at all. They stood outside the bars and spoke and he continued to chin himself on one of the pipes that ran along the ceiling of his cell, his legs folded neatly underneath him to keep his feet from hitting the floor with every repetition.

When they finished and fell silent he chinned himself twice more before unfolding his legs and standing up. "I'll do it," he said, his voice rough from long disuse. Like an animal, he could think only of the promise of freedom before him, of being free of his cage.