The limit

CHAPTER 16 — The Limit

Garpon fighting for real was a completely different experience from everything before.
Not in speed. In intention. Before, he evaluated. Cataloged. Measured with the coldness of someone who has enough time and resources not to need to rush. Now he didn't evaluate. He acted.
The first exchange lasted three seconds.
Garpon went for Marek. Not because Marek was the most dangerous at this moment with his aura nearly depleted. But because he was the core. The point around which the others organized their function.
Zarpon understood it before Garpon arrived. He stepped in.
The impact was the strongest he had received in the entire battle. Crimson concentrated on his right shoulder with a precision aimed specifically at the joint. Zarpon turned with the impact instead of resisting it. Correct technique. But the force was too much for technique to fully compensate.
He fell. Sideways. His right shoulder hit the rock. His breath cut off.
He tried to get up. His right arm didn't respond. It wasn't broken. But the impact on the joint had interrupted something that would take minutes to recover. Minutes he didn't have.
Zarpon looked at the three from the ground. His yellow eyes found Marek's for a fraction of a second. And in that fraction, Marek read something Zarpon didn't need to say out loud.
Keep going.
Marek ignited his aura. What was left of it. Irregular. Dense in some spots and nearly absent in others. Like a flame in strong wind that couldn't decide whether to go out or not.
Garpon watched him.
"Your energy is almost gone," he said.
"I know," Marek said.
"And still?"
Marek didn't answer. He attacked. Not with power. With technique. A low strike to Garpon's left side. The area Zarpon had identified as the point where the armor had the least protective density.
The strike connected. Garpon absorbed the impact. But this time with the armor lacking energy in that specific sector because the core deactivation Arlo had executed was still reconfiguring from the center outward.
The impact was different. Garpon felt it differently.
He looked at Marek.
"You learned where to strike," he said.
"I had a good teacher," Marek said.
Something crossed Garpon's expression. Only a second. Then he attacked.
---
Sira covered the right flank. Without her right arm protected. Moving more carefully than before. Each movement calculated so that side wouldn't be directly exposed to Garpon.
Arlo had left the rock formations with the empty device. No cover. No charge. But his eyes on Garpon's armor as it reconfigured. Studying the reboot process. Each crimson line as it returned. The order in which they did. The time between each section.
He had no more charges. But he had information.
Garpon fired a crimson pulse toward Sira. Not massive. Directed.
Sira moved to the advantage position as Zarpon had taught her. The pulse passed to her left. The rock behind her fractured.
Arlo was eight meters away.
Garpon looked at him.
"You have no charge left," he said.
"No," Arlo admitted.
"Then what are you doing in the center of the second layer with no cover?"
Arlo looked at him.
"Learning," he said.
Garpon looked at him for a moment. Then returned to Marek.
---
The next minutes were the hardest.
Garpon distributed his attacks between Marek and Sira with an efficiency that left no time to recover between exchanges.
Marek took an impact to his right side that made him drop to one knee. He stood up.
Sira dodged two pulses, but the third hit her left leg with enough energy that her movement became irregular. She kept moving. With less fluidity. But she kept moving.
Zarpon tried to get up from the ground. His right arm partially responded this time. Not enough to fight. Enough to sit up. He did. And from there he watched. Not with helplessness. With the specific attention of someone who can't act physically but keeps processing everything he sees.
It was at that moment that Garpon did something none of them expected.
He stopped.
In the center of the second layer. With the crimson burning around his body. And he looked at the team.
Marek kneeling with his aura nearly extinguished. Sira moving with her leg affected. Zarpon sitting against the wall with his right arm partially out of combat. Arlo standing in the center with no cover or charge, studying his armor.
Four people at their worst moment. None permanently on the ground. None giving up.
Garpon looked down at his own hands. The crimson burned. Controlled. Efficient. As it had always burned.
And then it came.
Not as a decision. As something that had been waiting for the right moment to appear.
---
Flashback.
The chara training field smelled of red earth and burnt energy.
Garpon was sixteen. He was smaller than the others. Not dramatically. But enough for the difference to be visible when they were all together.
The instructor had paired them up. Garpon was matched against Keth.
Keth was everything Garpon wasn't yet. Taller. With his crimson igniting with the naturalness of something that had always been there. With a posture he hadn't needed to learn because he simply was.
"Ready," the instructor said.
Keth attacked. Not cruelly. Without thinking too much. Because for Keth, it didn't require much thought.
Garpon blocked the first. Deflected the second. The third hit him in the center of his chest with a force he hadn't fully anticipated. He fell. He got up.
Keth was already looking elsewhere. Not with contempt. With the indifference of someone who had finished something that cost him nothing.
That was what remained. Not the strike. Not the pain. The indifference.
Garpon looked at the instructor. The instructor wrote something in his records. He looked at the other pairs training. No one looked at him. Not with pity. Not with cruelty. They simply didn't look at him. As if what had just happened wasn't important enough to deserve attention.
Garpon wiped the dirt from his armor.
And he decided something in silence.
Never again. Never again would there be anything he couldn't hold. If he had to work twice as hard, he would. Three times as hard. Whatever it took.
Years later, when he was assigned the position of Kratar guardian, no one protested. Not because it was an honor. Because no one wanted it. An isolated post. In a cave. On a planet that wasn't his. Far from important battles. Far from promotions. Far from everything the other charas considered important.
Garpon accepted it. Not with resignation. With the same silent decision from the training field.
If this was the post they gave him, he would make it the only post that mattered. If this cave was his territory, no one would cross it. No one.
Years passed. The warriors he had known were promoted. The battles he might have fought happened without him. His people moved on. And Garpon stayed. Alone. In the darkness of the second layer. With the crimson burning. With the Kratar on the pedestal of the third layer. And with the certainty that as long as that pedestal wasn't empty, he hadn't failed. That as long as that pedestal wasn't empty, he was still something.
---
End of flashback.
Garpon looked up.
The team was still there. Marek with his nearly extinguished aura getting up for the umpteenth time. Zarpon getting up from the ground with his right arm partially recovered. Sira moving with her affected leg without stopping. Arlo studying his armor with the eyes of someone still looking for something.
Four people. Ten years old. Not giving up.
Something moved inside Garpon. Not regret. Not weakness. Recognition. The kind that hurts precisely because it comes from seeing in others something one knows from within.
The fear of being insignificant. That what you built isn't enough. To fall and have no one notice because you were never important enough for it to matter.
Garpon clenched his fists. The crimson intensified.
"I will not be weak again," he said quietly.
Not to the team. To himself.
The crimson exploded outward. Massive. Unstable. With an intensity that made the walls of the second layer vibrate and the crystals of the first layer tinkle from above.
The pressure crushed the air. Sira fell to her knees under the weight of the energy. Arlo activated every regulator on his armor. Zarpon gritted his teeth.
Marek could barely stay on his feet. But he took a step forward.
The yellow aura reignited. Weak. Trembling. Almost nothing. But present.
Garpon looked at him. With the crimson burning around him like a red sun. And he raised both arms.
The energy concentrated above him like something that had been waiting for years to be fully released.
"I WILL NOT BE WEAK AGAIN!" he roared.
And he struck.
---
END OF CHAPTER 16