A Simple Spar

It's been over half a year since I have started training under Master Bang. IT's been very beneficial for me, especially the occasional spars that I'd be able to have with the Master himself.

I was one of the top students under Bang, despite a couple others having trained for longer than I have. Though, there was one student I could never quite get a read on, or beat.

Garou.

He made me feel like I was being stared at by a hungry wolf. Not the weird, sexual way, but like he wanted to kill everyone here.

This strange feeling made me keep an eye on him almost constantly. I would rather not get surprised by some guy for a reason I can't get a hold of. I mean, he almost never talked.

He was the definition of calm and cool, but he also gave off the aura of a quiet kid who's had enough.

He had joined a month after I did, and I was told by Bang that he had already surpassed me in terms of skill with the fist of flowing water, crushing rock. It was like the art was made for him, but that only made me want to train harder.

After a certain point, people stopped wanting to train with me, so I had to ask Garou.

I had asked to spar with him a few times, which he usually rejected, and today I was going to try again. I wanted to get stronger and he was probably my only chance.

I had walked to Garou's usual spot of resting against the wall of the training area. He always had an angry look on his face.

Was this how everyone felt about me?

It didn't matter.

"Garou, you wanna spar with me? Like I said before, nobody wants to spar with me other than Master, so I hope you could assist me." I came off nice, but a little threatening.

The threatening part I did on purpose. I was getting annoyed that he thought he was better than everyone, especially when I have never seen him fight anyone.

"Sure." His hoarse voice, matching his demeanor completely.

I was taken off-guard a bit, since I thought he would surely reject me. The toothy smirk he had though had put me off a bit. I was a little unnerved. He looked like he was going to do something not so good.

"Hey, where's the old man?" Garou asked.

I didn't like how he addressed the Master, but I answered, "He had to go out to deal with a Demon level monster in City B, we are fairly close after all."

A hint of excitement flashed through his eyes briefly that I had failed to notice.

We walked over to a more open area to spar, and were quickly made as the center of attention.

I was well known to be really good at the martial art and Garou was known as a prodigy.

I signaled someone to start the spar between both of us as we both lowered ourselves into a stance. The thing about our martial art focusing on counters, is that whoever attacked first between both would usually be at a disadvantage.

"Alright..." A man with a face that looked a little squished, we called him Sourface, was going to be the one to start the spar.

"3--" Before Sourface could get very far in his countdown, Garou had already charged at me.

His speed was ridiculous, but I haven't been training for nearly 2 years for nothing.

Garou threw out a punch that I assumed was either a bait punch or trying to find out my skill level.

I easily deflected his punch and put a full force punch into his stomach, sending him flying backwards. All that training paid off, as I could send any grown man flying with ease.

Before I could relax back into my ready stance, he had bolted toward me again, at a speed much faster than before.

This time, I made the poor mistake of underestimating him and I threw a punch of my own.

He deflected it, just like I had to him. Instead of sending me flying with one powerful punch, I immediately saw a raging wave of blows collide into me.

He never let up, and I couldn't fight back. Each time I had the strength to attempt to fight back or get out of the relentless combo, he'd stun that part again. I took a lot of blows to the face, which I wasn't happy about.

In fact, I was incredibly angry.

My eyes faded into yellow, and then quickly to orange as my anger spiked.

I felt a sudden burst of strength as I punched his face as hard as I could as revenge for my own. At the same time my fist collided, his body seemed to move as a result of my punch hitting him, but I never expected he would turn it into an attack.

The slice of his hands hit my shoulder and at the same time, my punch sent his head into the ground.

Feeling something wet from my nose, I wiped off what I saw was blood.

Seeing my own blood in what was supposed to be a simple spar, my eyes changed from orange to red and I violently kicked Garou off the ground, into the air. There weren't any kicks in this martial art usually.

I created my own type of this martial art, since my legs were a lot stronger thanks to my core training and lower body training that I wanted to do for a more specific reason than just getting stronger. And I am not specifying it since it's embarrassing.

I switched to a new stance, I put my arms in front of me with one leg behind the other, slightly bent and bobbing slightly.

I waited for Garou to come at me again.

I couldn't see him since I had sent him through the wall. In my anger of him being so brutal I had already forgotten that this was just supposed to be a spar.

I suddenly felt someone behind me and I quickly spun, slamming my heel into the side of whoever was behind me. A blue aura following the slow looking but incredibly fast movement of my leg.

Before I could hit the intended target however, my leg was punched downward, making me stumble. A weakness I hadn't accounted for was that using my legs made me incredibly open to counters.

I felt a punch hit my in the jaw, followed by an elbow to my chest. You'd think that having a big chest would cushion any sort of blows, but it sure as hell didn't. It hurt just as bad, if not worse than if I was hit somewhere else.

A punch to the gut happened, making me cough up some of my saliva. Garou really wasn't holding back, it was like he was going for the knockout, or maybe more.

The battle continued with one trading blows with the other back and forth.

I was much more bloodied compared to Garou. I don't know what it was about his hits, but it tore my skin, which I wasn't too happy about.

Garou may not have looked like he was losing, which he wasn't, but he was definitely hurting. I had gotten a lot of good blows in, but at some point during the fight I stopped being able to hit him. My red eyes only flared in irritation as I was fighting him.

I had lost any sort of form for the martial art, since I was so angry at him.

Then, I felt an explosion of pain all over my body, like I hadn't been fighting evenly with Garou for the past who knows how long.

Everything went black as I passed out.