Irium

"One."

I calm my breath as he does so and close my eyes.

"Two."

I take a deep breath and open my eyes.

"Three."

And with that, the ground shakes. My opponent kicks it once and launches himself into the air through the recoiling force. He makes sure to land on a pole that is one of the dividers between the stands and the field. And this happens while all I can do is try to balance myself on this shaking ground, something a man not standing on the ground doesn"t have to worry about all that much.

"Having trouble there, Irium?" He mocks me while standing on the pole as if he is some kind of ninja. Well, newsflash, dad! You are not a ninja.

b.u.mP! –is the sound of me hitting the dividers on my side, about 60-degrees right from the pole he is standing on. Now that I am close to this divider, I can hold onto it and move freely even as the ground shakes.

"Not bad!" He remarks and stops the ground for shaking, which is obviously what I was expecting he would do. There"s no point in letting the place shake if it serves no purpose, right?

Anyway, he jumps off the pole and lands right in the middle of the field, still trying to act like a ninja.

"There"s no reason anymore for you to keep hugging the d.a.m.n divider, you know?" He says mockingly.

To which, I reply, "That"s where you"re wrong, dad," and take out the nails that have kept the pole closest to me fixed.

"You"re kidding me! You are planning to pick up that pole and use that as a weapon or something?" He says with a smile that tells me he is looking down on me, "That"s hardly going to work."

It"s understandable why he would think that. The pole is twice my size and at least weighs 250 pounds. Trying to swing it at him like it"s a weapon will only backfire on me by making me lose my balance and tripping. However, that"s how he thinks it is. I never said I am planning to swing the d.a.m.n thing, did I?

THUNK!

A voice of someone banging steel against the pole comes. Obviously, the perpetrator is me and the "steel" in question is my watch. The reason I made that sound? Well, it"ll be clear very soon.

"What was the purpose of that sound? You were even smirking when you made it, but nothing seems to have happened." He says as look a bit confused, as he should.

THUNK! THUNK!

"What the h.e.l.l are you even-"

THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

"Alright fine, whatever you have planned it stops now." He says and within a couple of seconds, appears in front of me, and holds my hand, stopping me from banging the pole. "I don"t know what you thought that would have accomplished but it was annoy-"

He is cut-off by something, probably a knife in his stomach. Somehow, the safer end of this knife seems to be in my hand. Oh, that"s right. The purpose of the noise was to draw him in closer because of the irritation.

"That … wasn"t half bad." He says as blood comes out of his mouth.

"I know." I say as I pull the knife out, causing him to yell in pain as I get many steps away.

"Hah! Hah!" While sighing from the pain, he gets up and looks at me as he asks, "If I may ask, where did you get that knife?"

I took it for protection back in Meerut.

"…" Not that I plan to tell him that, for purely psychological reasons.

"Hah!" He says with a smile, "Not answering is a good call actually, son."

I keep stepping back even as I talk to him, until … I reach the pole he had jumped on earlier. And as soon as I do that, I give a good, strong kick to the pole.

It rings. It rings quite well. The only thing is – it shouldn"t ring.

"I thought so." I say, "You don"t seem like one for theatrics. If you were, the whole place would be filled with people instead of just the three of them."

"Okay …? What about it?" He asks with a smirk saying he already knows the answer to that question.

"Hah!" I sigh and continue, "You don"t care about theatrics yet you tried to act like an elegant ninja when landing and jumping off this pole. That made me think this pole was a bit different than the rest. And it is."

Unlike every other pole here that is a completely solid substance, the pole he jumped on earlier is hollow inside. So, if he hadn"t jumped on it very lightly like a ninja would, the pole may have shaken a bit and given me the indication that it is hollow. And him trying to hide that it is hollow is now all the more reason to try to find out what"s inside, isn"t it?

"That was clever." He says with a smirk, "But, do you really think a stab with a knife will be enough to give you enough time to pull out all the nails and see what"s inside the pole?"

No, I did not think that. But, at least that confirms that there is something valuable inside the pole.

"Tsk!" He clicks his tongue as he starts walking towards me, slowly and steadily, while holding his wound in place with his left hand. He isn"t too slow to be honest, at least for someone who has been stabbed.

But, in any case, he is not going to reach me.

"Why do you look so confident, kid?" He asks, not understanding why I am not alarmed by him coming towards me.

Well, there"s the fact that he has been stabbed and is weaker and I match up far better against him now than I did before. And,

"There"s that." I say as the pole I was banging earlier falls, with one end of it hitting his head.

"Did you forget that I had taken out the nails? After you, the only presence keeping it from falling down starts walking towards me, why wouldn"t the pole fall?" I ask, mocking him.

And, by the way, the fact that the pole would fall right on him was certain because of something I like to call headache, but most like to call physics. And with that, I turn my attention back to the pole whose nuts I have already started taking out.

*****