Marcus laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Honor? This is
combat. We don't play touch-butt in the park here, old man. We
train warriors. If he can't take a hit, he shouldn't be on my mat."
"It is not your mat," Elias corrected gently. "It belongs to the art.
And a true warrior protects those weaker than himself; he does not
break them to feed his own vanity."
The insult hung in the air. The other students held their breath.
No one spoke to Marcus like that, not even the senior instructors.
Marcus's face darkened, a vein pulsing in his neck. He stepped
away from Leo, who was quietly being helped up by Sarah. "You got
a lot of nerve walking in here and lecturing me. You think you
know so much about combat? Why don't you step into the square
and show me?"
Elias looked at Marcus, then down at his own plain street clothes.
He sighed, a quiet exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of
countless similar encounters. "I did not come here to fight. I came to
observe."
"Yeah, well, observing time is over," Marcus sneered, tossing a
spare pair of sparring gloves at Elias's feet. "Put them on. Or turn
around and walk out the door. But if you stay, you bleed like
everyone else."
Elias looked at the gloves, then back at Marcus. He didn't bend
down to pick them up. Instead, he stepped fully into the center
square, rolling his shoulders slightly. "I won't need gloves," he said
quietly. "I won't be striking you."
The arrogance of the statement infuriated Marcus. The idea
that this middle-aged stranger in slacks and a t-shirt thought he
didn't even need to throw a punch to survive against a prime black
belt was the ultimate insult.
"Your funeral," Marcus growled, raising his hands into a tight,
aggressive Muay Thai guard. "No rounds. Submission or knockout."
Elias simply stood there. He didn't adopt a traditional fighting
stance. His feet were shoulder-width apart, his knees slightly bent,
his arms hanging loosely by his sides. He looked entirely
vulnerable, completely open to attack.
The designated timekeeper, a nervous brown belt, hesitated.
"Uh... begin?"
Marcus exploded forward. He launched a vicious combination—a
left hook followed by a thunderous right cross aimed squarely at
Elias’s jaw. The strikes were thrown with malicious intent, meant to
end the confrontation in seconds.
But Elias wasn't there.
With a movement so subtle it almost looked like he had merely
shifted his weight, Elias slipped precisely an inch outside the arc of
the hook. As the right cross extended, Elias simply pivoted on his
heel, allowing the punch to sail past his ear, cutting only empty air.