Spar

I had asked for it. I knew that I had asked for it. But damn, I hadn't expected Greave to be such a tough teacher, even if I could tell he was going just as easy on me as he had been going on Allen.

"Right, start off by making two fists," Greave ordered.

I complied, clenching my fingers together into two ball shapes.

"Not quite like that, if you leave your thumbs inside your fingers then you're going to break them, which obviously isn't ideal," Greave said.

I took my thumbs out from inside of my grip, and instead hooked them over the front of my fingers. Not only did it look better, it felt better too.

"Right, good, now take a jab at me," He said, leaving himself wide open.

Having watched Allen and Greave already, I already had a good understanding of what not to do. I needed to keep my jab fast and direct, with no widely telegraphed movements. Not only that, I needed to stay light on my feet somehow.

I let my fist fly out directly in front of me, aiming to catch Greave across his upper right torso. He made catching my fist look so easy that I couldn't help the wave of disappointment crashing over me.

"Right, try again, but do two things a little bit different," He said, letting go of my hand. "First of all, your punch may have been fast but it didn't have any actual power behind it. You need to step into the hit, throwing your whole body's power behind the punch."

He demonstrated what he meant, allowing his body to shift forward and to the right as he threw a quick right jab into the air.

"Second of all, if you're jabbing with your right arm then you need to have your left arm up. It's all well and good throwing a punch, but if you're not leaving yourself defended in a melee then someone else is going to take advantage."

Before he had even finished speaking I launched another punch, leaning into it this time to try and get the most strength into the blow as I possibly could.

With a smirk on his face Greave stepped back, causing my jab to miss, and returned a strike into my own shoulder. I could tell he hadn't hit me as hard as he could have done, but the punch still hurt. That was the point though, it needed to hurt so that the lesson would sink in.

We continued like that for a while. The two of us traded blows, with Greave offering information on what exactly I was doing wrong when I made mistakes.

The moment it seemed like I was getting too comfortable he would switch things up a little. He attacke from different angles, forcing me to defend in different ways. Or he would deflect my blows and return attacks in unique patterns I hadn't seen before.

Eventually, after being struck in the stomach for the fourth time in a row, Greave switched things up and started talking about my posture and movement.

"You're too stationary, too heavy. You need to rest your weight more on the balls of your feet so you can be light and maneuvrable," He explained, resting his weight forward and bouncing slightly from side to side.

I did the same, and it was like a night and day difference. All of a sudden I felt like it was easier to move, I felt like I could launch myself forward and then dart back without having to put as much effort into each thing that I was doing.

From discussions about posture, we moved forward to mentality, which was apparently just as important as the actual movements you were making. If not even more so.

"What do you mean when you say I have to punch through them?" I asked, puzzled by the concept. I wasn't a bruiser, my fist was never going to make it through someone unless I was able to create full power armour, and while my Gauntlet was the first step in that process it was still a long way off from the full deal.

"Well, of course, you're not actually going to be able to punch through someone," Greave clarified, "But if you stop punching at the point your hand hits your enemies body you're going to be doing some pretty limited damage. Instead you need to keep the strike going for as long as you can to push as much force through your arm, through your fist and into them."

I nodded slowly, it made a lot of sense actually. If I stopped my strike early I'd only be imparting a limited amount of the potential energy of each strike. If I kept trying to push my fist forward, then all that potential energy would be transformed into kinetic energy. The only place that energy could go is straight into my opponent.

"How do you know all this stuff anyway?" I asked, it felt like he'd been trained or something, but the only place he would have learned any of this were in the south side fight rings.

He glanced away from me at that, and I knew I'd hit the nail on the head.

"Way back, back when my Dad was still around, he used to fight in the rings," Greave said, his voice strained. "He knew a lot about fighting, and what he knew he taught to me, even if it wasn't enough to keep him alive in the end."

"Sorry, I didn't know," I said, "Losing a Dad… It's not easy."

There was mutual respect in his eyes. Lauren had probably already told them about that part of my past, it was one of the truly defining moments in my life so I didn't doubt her power had been able to pick up on it.

"So uh… who's this mysterious boss of ours?" I asked, the topic was too heavy and it needed to be changed.

"Well, that's just the thing, no one knows," Allen piped up from the sofa.

I felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over my head. They… didn't even know who was ordering them to do things?