Chapter 11: Training time (3)

Nova stood still, watching with a sense of indifference as the floor flashed green. For a moment he thought of moving forward to assault Aqualad as quickly as possible, but thought better of it. From what he had seen in the fights so far, the person who moved first usually ended up losing the battle for one simple reason. They gave their opponent the opportunity to control the tempo of the fight.

It might have seemed counter intuitive that the one who moved first gave the opportunity to control the tempo of the battle to their opponent, but in this case where both of them were relegated to only using their physical might, the one on the defensive was able to reserve more of their energy, react better to their opponents attacks, and would have a much larger margin for error if they made a mistake given that they were focused on defense.

As such, Nova simply kept his eyes trained on Aqualad who had lurched forward as soon as the ground flashed green. He had already noticed that Aqualad wasn't taking the fight seriously but that would be a mistake on his part since Nova had every intention of capitalizing on it. 

In a matter of seconds Aqualad managed to close the gap between them before swinging a punch from the right. 

Nova nodded to himself as he already figured that was going to happen. From the few rounds he had been able to watch, Nova had noticed that Aqualad had a habit of starting off with a right punch which he usually followed up an elbow sweep if it was blocked, or a second punch if it was dodged. Bracing for impact, Nova tensed as Aqualad's punch landed on his forearm as he blocked the punch.

He had expected to be shaken by the punch, given that Aqualad's Atlantean physiology meant he packed quite a punch, but surprisingly the punch didn't seem to do much to him. In fact, Nova felt as if the punch was much weaker than it should have been.

Clearly he wasn't the only one surprised, as Aqualad seemed to pause for a moment, a confused look flashing across his face, before he continued with his attack. Just as Nova had predicted, an elbow sweep was sent to his side and following Robins example he twisted his upper body to the side causing Aqualad to miss his follow up attack and to become unbalanced.

He immediately tried to capitalized on the mistake and sent out a few punches of his own, mirroring Robins first barrage of attacks against Wally. 

Unfortunately for Nova though, Aqualad was made of sturdier stuff and unlike Wally who had been staggered by Robin's salvo of punches, he simply ate the punches and attacked with a swift kick to Nova's side. Unable to avoid the hit, Nova tensed his stomach in preparation of the hit, but once again the kick felt much weaker than it should have been. 

Aqualad immediately pulled back his foot and with a quick backflip managed to opened up a few feet of space between him and Nova. 

"You're a lot better than I thought you would be." Aqualad said as he patted his chest where Nova had punched him earlier.

"I wasn't wasting my time by simple sitting on the sidelines you know. You learn a lot by watching." Nova retorted as he began to circle around Aqualad. 

This time he went on the offensive starting with a few tentative swipes at Aqualad, who batted away everything without much concern. Of course Nova was simply waiting for Aqualad to overextend ever so slightly and his chance came when Aqualad blocked a particular tricky punch, leaving his leg exposed. 

Not missing a beat Nova immediately swung a fist at Aqualad's face, though it was merely a feint, as he quickly followed up when he kicked out at Aqualad's unstable leg. When the kick connected, Aqualad grunted in pain as his leg buckled and he stumbled back, but Nova didn't give him a moments rest as he jumped on his disadvantaged foe intending to land a couple more kicks hoping to take him down. 

Regrettably for him though, Aqualad just barely managed to twist his upper body backward in an excellent show of flexibility allowing him to not only dodge Novas attacks, but to also stabilize himself enough that he was able to use his hands as support to roll away from Nova's follow up kicks.

Once Aqualad managed to scramble back to his feet, the way he looked at Nova had changed greatly, and where before he still seemed to be taking a more relaxed approach when dealing with Nova, now he seemed quite serious.

"It seems that I need to apologize to you Nova, I wasn't expecting you to be so well versed in combat and have been belittling you by not treating you as an equal." Aqualad bowed his head slightly in apology, and while Nova felt an itch to rush forward and attack him while he was distracted, he had a feeling that the others would look down on such actions.

"I'll be treating this spar seriously from now onward, so be prepared." With that Aqualad once more took on battle ready stance, his emerald green eyes gleaming coldly as he focused all of his attention onto Nova. 

The sudden intensity served to slightly unnerve Nova who hadn't expected to suddenly face a serious Aqualad. Sadly, though Nova had been holding his own relatively well so far, under the serious attacks of Aqualad he was soon overwhelmed by his superior skills and ended up on his back at Aqualad's feet.

A circular hologram of a trident appeared over Aqualad's side of the ring to show that he had won the round. 

"That was pretty good. You did a lot better than I thought you could and even managed to surprise me a couple times. Your movements are still quite amateurish and could do with some work, but overall you show a lot of promise when it come to hand to hand combat." Aqualad looked down at Nova who was panting and trying his best to catch his breath while laying on the floor. 

"A word of advice though, I think that you are thinking about your actions too much. I will admit that you surprised me at first by being able to keep up with me, but once I realized that you were predicting my movements based on things that I had shown in the previous spars, it was easy enough to throw you off your game." He offered Nova a hand and dragged him to his feet before turning to go back to his starting position on his side of the ring.

"Stop thinking so hard about the best way to handle a situation, and just go with the flow. This is supposed to be a friendly spar, so there is no need to think about every single action you take. Just have fun with it."

Nova stood on his side of the sparring circle, mulling over Aqualad's words as he prepared for the second round. It was true that he had been thinking a lot of what he was supposed to do next while fighting Aqualad. He had been so focused on wining the fight that he wasn't even sure if he had enjoyed the spar at all. That's what he was supposed to be doing here right? 

He was supposed to enjoy the spar and become closer fiends with the others. Since that was the case, it might be beneficial to listen to Aqualad's advice.

While Nova and Aqualad got ready for their second round, Superboy, Robin and Kid Flash stood over by the console watching everything that happened with looks of surprise on their faces. 

"Still think that Nova has no combat training?" Asked Robin who kept his eyes trained on Nova who was once more getting into a battle ready stance.

"Okay I admit that he surprised me, but he said it himself. He was watching us spar before hand and was simply using the moves that he saw us using." Argued Wally who also kept his eyes trained onto Nova.

"If that's the case then he's even more of a monster than I thought. Being able to pick up on and utilize our moves after only a couple hours of watching us spar isn't something that a normal person can do. Not to mention that he was able to make Aqualad get serious like that? He's definitely got promise that much I'm certain of." 

"Don't you two thinks it was odd how easily he took Aqualad's punches and kicks? He packs quite a punch when he's ready but Nova shook them off like they were nothing." interjected Superboy who hadn't said anything and had been carefully watching the fight between Nova and Aqualad. 

"Obviously Aqualad was going easy on him. No matter how you look at it, he's not going to go full power in terms of strength against the new kid. That's how you end up with broken bones and fractured ribs, trust me I should know." Responded Robin, as he thought back to the time when he had challenged Kal to a spar and ended up in a cast for a few weeks.

"Yeah, Kal knows how to tone down his strength when dealing with people who aren't as sturdy as him. He's using skill to take Nova down, not brute strength." Wally added as he assured Superboy "Besides, if there was something odd about it, then I'm sure he would have said something to us by now."

Superboy nodded his head and the three of them went back to watching the spar, though Superboy still couldn't get the look of confusion that would flicker across Aqualad's face from time to time out of his mind. 

The others might not have realized, but given how often he had had to reign in he strength in the past, Superboy knew what it looked like when someone held back. And while there were a lot of times when Aqualad had held back his strength, there were a few times in the fist spar when he had definitely attacked with more power than necessary. The only problem, and the reason for his confusion was how easily Nova seemed to able to take those hits. 

Meta humans were supposed to be sturdier than regular humans that was true, but even then unless it was a meta with some sort of physical enhancement ability, it shouldn't be so easy to take on Aqualad's hits. Which immediately brought to mind a very simple question.

Why was Nova seemingly able to withstand those hits with relative ease?