Feel it to the core

After a wild fight, we met Aja again. He was shadow boxing in his room. We were just standing in the corner, waiting for him to say anything. “So, here we are, that fight wasn’t a good idea after all,” I said.

Hearing me say that, Aja stopped shadow boxing and looked at me and replied, “Oh, the fight. If I am being honest, you did a really good job at defending yourself. Gravast has never lost to anyone before, you hitting him even once was a big deal. After his father, he was one of the only few people who still practised martial arts these days. Even though many use exoskeletons to fight against him, he still emerges as a victor. Get ready, he is going to be your trainer now. Learn how to harness that power of yours until the big day arrives.”

I felt good about myself hearing that. The guy who fought me will train me, huh?

Xiba was happy about the arrangement. “Well, he did manage to beat you even with your abilities, I think it could really help if he teaches you a move or two.” She said while patting my back at the same time.

Yeah, of course, I thought. “So, where is our guy?” I asked Aja.

“You’ll find him outside near the pits. He keeps on training there most of the day.” Aja answered.

“By the way, before you go, please be serious while training. He takes martial arts pretty seriously.” Aja warned us. “He isn’t short-tempered but he does prefer people who respect what he does,” he added.

“All right, thanks for your help, we should see him now.” With that said, we went to meet Gravast as Aja mentioned, he was on a small ground practising his moves on a wooden dummy. He was hitting it softly, it looked like he was creating waves. He was fully focused on it that he didn’t notice us walking in.

“Ahem, excuse us, we are here to-” He interrupted.

“To train, wait for a minute.” He continued practising his moves on the wooden dummy for a minute and then he stopped. “So, you are ready to free yourself?” He questioned.

“What do you mean by that?” I responded.

“Well for me, fighting is a way of letting my inner self out. If I am angry, I train. If I am feeling bad, I train. When you channel your emotions in the right direction, you can achieve greater heights. It’s the way I set myself free, free from the burden of feeling anything which makes me weak or sets a limit on me. I should rephrase it for you again, what are you fighting for?” Whatever he was saying was making sense to me, maybe that’s how humans can truly achieve the next level Shin was talking about, instead of relying on some fluid which takes away your senses.

What I am fighting for? I asked myself. Wait, what I am fighting for is the same as him, I want to set myself free from this shit as well. I want to die peacefully at least. I thought.

“I am fighting for myself; I am fighting just to live to be honest. I don’t have any big goal or something like that. I just wanna sail life peacefully till I die.” Gravast didn’t react for a brief moment and then he responded.

“I am glad you said that. You aren’t lying to yourself by setting standards influenced by your environment, I like that. Nothing better than an honest young soul, ha-ha.” He smiled, didn’t think he would, I was visualising him differently when Aja described him, I thought.

“Same,” Xiba whispered. Wait, is she still reading my mind? “Hey, how come you still read my mind?” I asked her and then turned my head toward her.

She rolled her eyes as she was thinking. “I guess something still remains unchanged.” She answered.

Gravast noticed Xiba. “So, what about you? Young lady.” He asked.

“Oh me? I am with Edra. I believe in what he does.” Xiba didn’t give much thought to it and answered nonchalantly.

“Incredible, you both truly are a good match. True to yourself and it reflects clearly.” Gravast was complimenting us for being straightforward. I might like this guy, I think.

“Glad to hear that. You heard that, Ed? We are a great match.” Xiba was looking at me with a grin.

“He said a good, not great.”

“I mean, you both are good to fight each other,” Gravast added.

Xiba made an upset face. “Should’ve said that earlier. Well not that it changes anything. Am I right Edra?”

“of course, of course,” I said.

Looking at us Gravast smiled and then he recalled that we never introduced ourselves. He then asked our names and introduced himself as Gravast, nothing more. He didn’t give us any type of backstory or anything, just his name. We told him everything about our history with The Hope and the incidents that took place after that. He was listening to us calmly and he was sympathetic to us as well. He promised to train us in a manner which will enable us to fight multiple opponents at once. The only thing problem was we had a very short amount of time left. We had to learn as much as we could in a few weeks.

He started explaining what he practices and we got to know a lot about different forms of martial arts. He said he combined Wing Chun, a type of kung fu (Chinese martial arts) with his agile type of free fighting style. He was training since he was six years old and never took a break even if he injured himself. During those times he used different types of martial arts training, which were more static and required focus more than explosive strength.

We use to start our training immediately in the morning, where we mostly focused on increasing our momentum during a fight. The more we trained, the faster we were getting. We were sitting on a concrete slab, drenched in sweat. We weren’t just practising techniques but also getting conditioned to fight under load and stress. Gravast was happy with our progress so far and wanted to share more about the history and techniques of the martial arts he was practising. He sat opposite us on the bare ground and started talking.

“The type of martial art that I use is not supposed to use big movement, and it is the only martial art in the world ever to be invented by a woman. When fighting big or multiple opponents, you need to conserve as much energy as possible to fight for as long as you can. Many people assume using big moves against a heavy opponent will give you an advantage, maybe knock him over faster but that can’t happen always. That’s where Wing Chun comes into play, we focus mainly on controlling our body and balancing it. When the opponent attacks, we remain at our ground and use as minimal movement as possible to counter the attack using their momentum.” Gravast explained in detail.

That was the movement I realised that he was indeed a great fighter, he was passionate about what he did and still kept on educating himself about various other aspects related to his skill.

“It’s enough knowledge for now. Let's do a sparring session, we will see how much you guys really improved.” Gravast said out loud.

Xiba and I were ready to face him, he never fought us one on one, the reason was that we were not at his level. He fought us every day, and whenever we failed to beat him together, he rejected the idea of fighting one on one with him.

It has already been two weeks; I believe we can corner him now. We were training before coming here as well, which helped us learn new techniques more efficiently.

We started our sparring session on the ground where we trained, our strategy was to overwhelm him with our coordinated moves and strength. “let’s do this,” I said to Xiba. “Yeah.” She replied.

Gravast sneered at us, as though he was saying, ‘you are still far beneath me,’ through his expressions. I smiled back in response and started our fight by moving toward him. I knew if I tried any type of fast movement without my partner's coordination, he might block and hit with more force which can be dangerous. I gave Xiba a look, she understood that it was time for the coordinated move. She charged at Gravast and so did I, Gravast took a stance which we knew he would take in order to block us.

What he did not know was that we were not going to use a conventional move. Xiba punched him and he used his arm movements to block her by throwing her at me. As she was coming at me, she grabbed my arm and we locked our elbows, using the momentum, I placed my left foot on the ground and did a 180 turn. Because of our locked elbows, Xiba also tuned 180, facing her directly at Gravast. Even Gravast was unable to block our combined counter, it was the first time after coming to Undergrounds that we were able to hit him. That too straight in the face. Gravast being a very efficient fighter didn’t rush at us.

He got up and yelled, “That’s what I am talking about!” He was hyped. Xiba and I didn’t want to lose the edge we got over him, so we too switched our style. Gravast kept his hands open and used his full elbow to hit me, I not only did block him but also used myself as a decoy to help Xiba get behind him. I got down and landed a punch on Gravast’s face, soon after, Xiba hit him with a flying knee from the back. After that hit, Gravast was on the ground. We didn’t continue further, and Gravast finally allowed us to fight him one versus one.

This time he didn’t spar privately instead, I was fighting him in the pits. Upon taking a gaze I saw people screaming his name, “Gravast, Gravast!” It was all I could hear. He was a great fighter but what made him the crowd's favourite was that he had taken down a lot of corrupt officials till now. Which was the motivation behind joining the underground for everyone here.

“Fighters ready?!” Asked the announcer through a megaphone. We raised our elbows in answer.

“So let the fight begin!!!” He screamed. Unlike last time, Gravast was not marching toward me. I had to make a move first, I thought. “Okay then here I go,” I said to myself as I moved forward.

I slowly started picking the pace and ran towards him. My first move was going to be a low kick. Gravast saw me rushing at him and took a simple stance. As I reached near him, I pushed my left arm at him to divert his eyes and hit directly on his right knee using my foot. He fell to his knees and everyone in the crowd went silent. It was the right moment, to hit him in the head and end this fight, but he somehow leaned backwards as I was drawing my kick at him. He then grabbed my leg and pulled it, which made my legs split. “Ha!” I clenched my teeth. Gravast used this opportunity and kicked on the backside of my neck. He was balancing his whole-body weight on the elbow as he delivered the kick. It was painful, to say the least. He rolled backwards and got on his feet again.

It looked like I was going to lose the fight again, but I used everything I had got to pick myself up before he could make any move. I wanted to knock him in one punch as I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold myself up any longer. It was time to use my final blow.