It quickly became apparent I had two ways to deal with Azad's sudden new speed and power.

The first was to evade faster and with greater distance than I had done before. To do so would likely entail leaping as high upwards as I could to then attach myself to the ceiling or one of the walls.

That option seemed less in the spirit of what our sparring session was supposed to accomplish, though it may have been the smarter way to handle Azad's attacks.

The second option seemed to me to be way more fun, albeit reckless.

I threw my arms up and decided to take the punches head on. Not only to see what Azad was made of given he had entered into his Tension-state, but also to find out how well the sinew-suit could handle such an intense barrage of metallically-heavy blows.

DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM!

The blows struck with the force of engine pistons, each blow more than enough to kill a regular human being. My sinew-suit-covered arms took the blows far better than I expected; the sinew of the suit sucked up the impact and seemed to spread out the force of each blow across the rest of my suit-covered-body. It wasn't, however, a one-hundred-percent effective means of blocking.

Whilst the sinew-suit itself could take the damage, the real muscle and bone that was me beneath the suit ached something fierce to the point it felt as if I were several more punches away from the bones in my arms breaking. The power-node responsible for the medical knowledge I had derived from Donald's old medical textbooks was telling me with robotic finesse to get the heck away from Azad.

I noticed that Azad was, though he was striking me with such incredible force over and over again, keeping his punches located just to my arms. The repetitiveness of the attack made me aware that he was, also, choosing not to hit me elsewhere; either because he was still testing out how to attack with his new speed and strength and wanted to get a better feel for the new standard he had set for himself, or he was going easy on me and didn't want to land any blow which could seriously harm.

If there was one thing I hated in life, that irked me to no end, it was being given handicaps. I had experienced a childhood of being in the stupid-kid classes; or being the third or second slowest kid in any race at school events. Those kind of humiliations I could deal with, not that I had much of a choice other than to accept that I hadn't been born with a brain or body that could compete, at least in standard school ways to be measured against my peers. What I couldn't deal with was the extra humiliation of others going easy on me. Plenty of times playing video games against my brother (playing his favourite game of Fifa, which I loathed), or during games of chess (briefly when I had joined the school chess club), and any other games, whenever I got a hint that my opponent was letting me do better than I actually was, I rapidly lost interest in continuing.

Any victory which resulted from a handicap seemed to me not worth trying for.

I decided to match Azad's grit with my own. But first what I needed was a means to counter the blows being dealt to my arms.

More sinew! I thought, willing the power to increase the sinew and muscle in my arms.

In response I felt the new bulk building in my arms, and Azad's punches, though unrelenting, softened enough that I was sure I could take many more blows without fear of my real arms breaking.

I created adhesion at the soles of my sinew-covered-feet to give me the extra purchase I needed, and pushed away Azad's latest punch and the one that was set to follow a fraction of a second after.

Azad, taken by surprise by the sudden push-back, found himself on the back-foot.

I dipped to the left just a little, removing the adhesion I had at my feet on-and-off with automatic finesse to give myself free movement when I needed it, but the powerful adhesion when I did. I brought my left fist up to Azad's face and felt the satisfying blow land against his cheek.

Spit flung from his mouth and his eyes narrowed on me, at first showing surprise, then a rather scary focus. He recovered from the blow to his face immediately after.

DOOM!

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CLANG!

DOOM!

CLANG!

We exchanged punches to the face as if taking turns. Every punch of his set my entire body on edge, taking all the thoughts I had about strategy and scrambling my ideas for how to fight back down to giving as good as I got.

DOOM!

His fist hit my right temple so hard the skull-cowl chipped and cracked just a little from the impact.

CLANG!

I hit him cleanly on the underside of his chin, landing my best blow yet, which might have lifted him off his feet from the sheer force of the punch if he wasn't so damn heavy.

Azad sunk down, turned on the ground, and did a sweeping leg-kick. I saw it coming thanks to the power slowing down his movements just enough for me to do something about the attack.

I jumped, avoiding the sweep, only to find Azad springing up and striking me hard with his right shoulder.

With the force of a charging rhino, Azad, yelling, carried me off my feet into the rear wall behind me.

Pain climbed in my back and the tiles on the walls shattered; the wall beneath the tiles crumbled a little too.

I got scared.

Because I felt Azad's controlled way of fighting shift into a reckless intensity.

I did what I could, throwing down punches to his face to get him to relent.

Instead he pried me from the wall and slammed me into it again. More pain in my back.

His right hand, which felt like a hot iron, gripped my left wrist, pinning it against the wall.

Got to get out! I thought, desperately.

With my free arm I struck down on Azad's face with the full force of my elbow. He took two of these blows before deciding he couldn't handle the third.

Yelling, he squeezed my left wrist hard enough to almost break it in spite of the sinew-suit's protection. He yanked hard and pried me from the wall, lifting me up over his head.

If I had let him carry out the manoeuvre as he intended, he would have brought me down to the ground as if to slam me like a hammer.

Instead I did two things rapidly, which I wouldn't have been able to do if not for the power speeding up my thought processes to keep up with the pace of the fight.

The first thing I did was reduce the sinew that was at my left wrist to give me the room I needed to get free of Azad's iron grip. That in itself wouldn't have been enough, so I also used the power to create a slickness like dish-soap over my sinew-covered wrist.

His throw instead became a means for me to escape.

I twisted my body through the air and then, upon landing on my feet, slipped my wrist out of Azad's grip.

But I didn't have to relent.

I created adhesion in my feet again and with the full force of what I could muster in the sinew-suit at that moment I leapt back at Azad, bringing my knee up to his chin.

Azad saw the attack coming, and brought both his hands to the attacking knee, taking the force of it well enough to render the attack inert.

The spirit of the fight overwhelmed me. Before I could think better of doing so, I increased the sinew over my right arm to a degree I hadn't done before, then with all the force I could muster I brought my fist cleanly against Azad's left temple.

CLANG!

The blow caused his eyes to roll in his head and his body to go limp. He went falling sideways to the ground, the momentum from my fist pushing him down further.

Another CLANG! Followed by more cracking tiles followed as Azad hit the ground, head-first.

I landed on my feet and stood over Azad, and immediately regretted how hard I had hit him.

I crouched down, taking hold of Azad's shoulders.

"I'm sorry!" I said in a panic, "Azad are you—"

"Hahahaha!"

Azad was laughing, though his right temple looked dented like steel; showing a mixture of wet-looking silver and gold which, it seemed, was also his blood.

"You're okay?" I said.

Azad sat upright and brought a hand to my shoulder.

"I'm fine," he said, "That was a great attack!"

I couldn't believe it. Just how tough was Azad's new form that an attack like that hadn't rendered him completely unable to move?!

"Hold on," he said, becoming serious.

He patted my collarbone and I eased back.

Azad stood up and saw to entering into a power stance. The heat and sparkles that rose off him stopped, returning him to his new normal self without the tension-state in effect over his body.

He breathed a sigh, and put a hand to his dented and bloody right temple.

"I'm sorry, man," I said, "I didn't mean to get carried away."

"Nah," said Azad, "It's good. I got carried away too slamming ya into the wall. You fought back with a warrior's spirit."

Azad threw up a hand and I readily accepted it, the sound of metal and squishy sinew clapping loudly in the swimming pool area space.

"What do you say we call it for today?" I said.

"Yeah," said Azad, "All this fighting's got me hungry."

Azad put his arm round my shoulder on our way out of the swimming pool area, brushing off some of the tile debris from before in the process.

"We should get back to it after lunch," he said.

"You're joking, right?" I said.

"Yeah," said Azad, "That's enough for today, lol."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"You know," I said, grinning, "I thought of a good superhero name for you."

"Oh yeah?" said Azad.

"How about 'Clang!'" I said, "You know, cos' that's the sound your head makes when it receives one of my right hooks."

Azad chuckled, "If I'm Clang," he said, "Then you're Slip."

"Slip?" I said.

"Slippery git," said Azad.

"I dunno," I said, "Think my last punch might'a given you brain damage."

Azad eased away from me and threw up his arms, throwing playful jabs.

"You wanna go again now?" he said, grinning.

I threw my hands up in mock-mercy, "Nah, nah," I said, "On second thought Slip don't sound so bad."

We both started laughing, then, without meaning to, winced from the pains we both felt all over; I felt a pain in my arms and back in particular.

This, of course, only made us both laugh harder.

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