Jolo, Mira, and Atlas t Tongen at a spot he had told them to et him outside the academy. After speaking with them for a while, he asked Mira and Atlas to return to the academy. Jolo told them to relax.
Mira and Atlas didn’t question him, but they wondered why he had asked them to co out of the academy in the first place if he was just going to send them back later. They also wondered what was going on between Jolo and Tongen. Had Tongen found out about Jolo’s ability? Jolo hadn’t told them anything yet, so they didn’t know whether he had inford Tongen about his ability or not.
Back with Jolo and Tongen, they went to Tongen’s house. After a while, they stepped into the yard, and Tongen finally said to Jolo, "I want you to fight without holding back, without hiding your strength. I want to see your full power. I want to analyze how strong you are. I want to know what I’m dealing with. I want to know where I can help you improve, because I see you as my greatest asset. I see you as a very valuable asset to this academy, and I want to see you reach your full potential," Tongen explained.
Jolo didn’t have much of a choice, so he agreed to fight Tongen. Besides, fights like this helped him learn how to face top opponents and gain experience.
They both took their stances, ready to fight, wasting no more ti.
The Weight of Motion
The air between them crackled the mont they faced each other.
Jelo moved first.
He drove his palm forward and Dragon Claw erupted from his hand — a jagged, claw-shaped lance of energy that tore through the air with a sharp hiss, aid straight for Tongen’s chest. Fast. Precise. The kind of strike that had ended fights before they’d really begun.
Tongen didn’t dodge.
He raised one hand and caught the montum of it.
The energy projection slowed — visibly, unnervingly — like a video being scrubbed to a crawl, and then stopped entirely two inches from his palm, suspended in the air like a frozen scream. Tongen tilted his head slightly, studying it. Then he flicked his wrist and sent it rocketing sideways, harmlessly into nothing.
"Interesting," Tongen said.
Jelo’s eyes sharpened — his enhanced vision already reading Tongen’s posture, his weight distribution, the micro-shifts in his stance. He vanished.
Wing Burst.
He reappeared behind Tongen mid-strike, elbow driving toward the base of his skull. But Tongen had already turned — not because he’d seen it coming, but because the montum of Jelo’s movent had announced him. Every displacent of air. Every rushing force cutting through space. Tongen felt it like a hand on his shoulder.
He grabbed Jelo’s arm at the peak of the strike.
And redirected every ounce of that speed back into Jelo.
The impact was catastrophic. Jelo’s own velocity folded back into his body like a crashing wave, and he was hurled across the ground, skipping twice before he planted his feet and dragged himself to a stop. He coughed. His arm felt like he’d swung it into a concrete wall at full sprint.
He used my own strike against .
Jelo activated Skilled Guard. He felt his skin solidify — a slow, dense tightening running from his forearms up through his shoulders, his chest, his jaw. He steadied his breathing. If Tongen could redirect montum, then he needed to take away the montum. Make his strikes short. Calculated. Hard to read.
He fired three Dragon Claws in rapid succession — not at Tongen, but around him. Different angles. Forcing him to deal with multiple vectors at once.
Tongen exhaled slowly.
He nullified the first. Redirected the second upward. But the third clipped his shoulder before he could process it — and for the first ti, he staggered.
Jelo was already inside his guard.
He hit Tongen three tis in close quarters — short, brutal, deliberately low-montum strikes, each one stripped of the telegraphing force that Tongen fed on. Body. Ribs. Jaw. Each hit landed with a dull, real weight. Tongen’s head snapped sideways on the last one.
A thin line of blood traced his lip.
He smiled.
"Good," Tongen said quietly.
He planted his foot and released everything he had stored.
Every redirected Dragon Claw. Every joule of Wing Burst velocity he had absorbed. Every ounce of force from Jelo’s three strikes that he had taken and quietly banked without Jelo realizing it. He had been collecting the whole fight. Like a dam holding back a river, waiting.
He released it all at once — shaped into a single, concentrated wave aid directly at Jelo.
Skilled Guard took the first second of it.
Then it shattered.
Jelo was launched off his feet with trendous, crushing force, the air driven from his lungs in a single broken gasp. He hit the ground hard and rolled, and didn’t get up imdiately. His vision swam. His Guard had bought him life but not comfort — he felt like he’d been hit by sothing the size of a truck.
He pushed himself to one knee.
Wing Burst — he needed distance. He needed a mont to breathe, to recalibrate, to figure out how to fight a man who turned every attack into ammunition.
He activated it.
He moved — and Tongen caught the montum of his escape mid-burst, seized it mid-flight like a hand closing around a thrown ball, and simply stopped him. Jelo hung in the air for one horrible, weightless mont, completely arrested — and then Tongen reversed it.
Jelo ca back faster than he had left.
He crashed to the ground at Tongen’s feet and lay still for several long seconds, chest heaving, fingers pressed flat against the earth. Everything ached. His Skilled Guard was spent. His enhanced vision was still working but there was nothing left to calculate — no angle, no opening he hadn’t already tried.
He raised his head.
Tongen stood over him, breathing harder than before, shoulder still marked from where the Dragon Claw had caught him. Not untouched. Not unscathed.
But standing.
Jelo’s arm shook as he tried to push himself up again — and held. He stayed on one knee, jaw tight, eyes burning with sothing that refused to be entirely extinguished.
"You’re stubborn," Tongen said. There was no mockery in it. Sothing close to respect.
"Not done," Jelo managed.
"Yeah." Tongen reached down and put a firm hand on his shoulder — not cruel. Final. "You are."
The pressure that followed was quiet and absolute. Tongen applied the last of what he’d stored — not as an explosion but as a slow, irresistible crush of redirected force, pressing Jelo flat against the ground until his arms gave out completely.
Jelo lay there, still breathing, still conscious, still furious.
Just finished.
Tongen straightened up, wiping the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. The fight had cost him sothing. He felt it in his ribs, in the throb behind his eyes, in the way his legs wanted badly to sit down.
But the ground beneath him was steady.
And he was still on his feet.
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