12 Dragon Demon

I moved my body slightly, but in response Dinah shifted her body to respond.

Martial arts were as much a mental game as it were a physical one and being able to read and anticipate your opponents movements and attacks came with experience and obviously required a great deal of talent.

I lunged at her, but she was very quick, and blocked my jab. " You know what, fighting you is really starting to get annoying. I hardly ever land a hit on you and even then you make me pay for it."

"Well, nothing in this life is ever free you always have to sacrifice something to gain something in return." She said as she returned a punch, aimed at my face, which I dodged, grabbing her arm and trying to twist it.

She stepped forward and used her other arm to grab my wrist as she turned and aimed an elbow for my throat, which I caught handily, before jumping away.

I may have superstrength, but the soft spots present in a human body could still be exploited if enough force was applied.

It was a lesson Dinah had reinforced with first hand experience and by essentially beating it into my body every chance she got.

As it turns out getting punched in the throat or poked in the eyes really hurt even with superstrength. I mean Super-boy was half kryptonian and he still got his ass handed to him by Dinah. Just shows how much of a badass she is.

I tried to think about my next move as I planned on what to do next.

She watched my eyes, reading whatever intention she could from me when I punched, she countered with one of her own. When I kicked, so did she.

She started going faster and faster until it was all I could do to keep up. It seems her meta-human status enhanced her physique to some degree, since I didn't think baseline people were normally able to move that fast.

Either that or humans in the DC world were built different. Which would explain how batman and many other unpowered humans still managed to keep up with aliens and enhanced individuals.

I eventually faked a kick, when she connected with my leg however, she twisted her leg around mine, gripped my neck and twisted it.

I fell to the floor and she locked my leg in a submission hold while putting stress on my spine. I could break out of it if I wanted to, but we had agreed before the spar there were no superpowers allowed.

A rule I ended up appreciating since it helped improve my skills and prevented my ears from bleeding when I was subjected to one of her sonic screams.

I tapped out, conceding defeat. She helped me up and smiled at me.

"You're getting a lot better. Dare I say even faster than I did when I was your age."

" When was that 2 years ago? " I scoffed.

She gave me a smile, which made me a bit flustered. Damn, her smiles were deadly.

" What? You don't even look a day over 20 and frankly speaking I'm starting to think that being a Meta-human is somehow affecting the aging process or who knows maybe you just have great genes." I said, off-handedly.

She patted me on the shoulder," You're still a bit too young. "

In response I just sighed. Thinking back to what happened a few days ago, let's just say things got a bit interesting when she revealed her identity to me.

Even though I suspected who she was, I didn't expect her to just come out and say it.

I was honestly surprised when that happened. It seems I had grown on her more than what I have previously thought.

But, I think it may had something to do with her offer to becoming her apprentice.

I obviously accepted since there wasn't any drawbacks to it. I wasn't a weapons kind of guy and I always liked the idea of being able to do martial arts. Most of my powers were magical based and other than getting used to how to effeciently apply them my biggest weakness was my ability to fight and strategize.

Mindlessly punching things could only take you so far.

The only thing she made me promise though was to tell her if I ever planned on teaching someone what she taught me. Her teacher Ted Grant aka Wildcat made her promise the same and now it was my turn to uphold that promise.

" Plus I'm already taken." She added.

" Tell me who he is and I'll fight him. " I said, obviously joking.

" Hey D, so who's the brat? I didn't know you had a sidekick."

I turned glancing over to the side. A few meters away, a man in a suit with blonde hair and a goatee on his face came strolling towards us all the whilst grinning.

Before she could answer I pointed my thumb towards him and asked her. " Who's the goatee is he a member of the remedial team or is he just lost?"

Dinah chortled, obviously not expecting my response and started laughing.

I heard a slight growl from behind me,

"He has quite the mouth on him doesn't he? Maybe you should teach him how to talk to his elders. "

" Sure why don't you come on over here and show me how it's done. Grandpa." I said.

I honestly didn't get how Green Arrow manged to hide his identity with that unmistakable goatee of his.

Putting on a domino mask wasn't going to fool anyone with half a brain. But, then again Superman pulled it off with a pair of glasses and a geeky attitude so perhaps there was something more to it, I for one didn't see it.

" That's it. Someone's gettin an ass kicking." He said

" Ollie..." Dinah warned.

" Let him do it. Way I see it I've got nothing to lose. If I win then everyone will know he got his ass beat by a 16 year old kid, on the other hand if I lose everybody will find out about how he beat up a defenceless minor. I'm sure the public would love to hear all about it, am I right Mr. Queen?"

At his slacked jawed expression and his incredulous look I couldn't help keep it in anymore and started laughing.

That seemed to shake him out of it and to my surprise Dinah was laughing along with me.

" Gotta admit he's got you there." Dinah said.

"That's what I get for dealing with brats." I could hear him grumble.

Dinah sauntered over to him and layed a kiss on his cheek. " Aw don't be like that, so are we still up for tonight?" Dinah said.

' Damn lucky bastard.' I thought.

Noticing my sour expression, he gave me a smug look and while looking at me said. " Don't worry about it baby, it's going to be a night to remember. "

Tch. Smug bastard, I wish I could wipe that smirk off his face. Why are all the pretty girls in this universe older than me?

Not to brag but I was pretty handsome. With my Euro-Asian features and my height of 6 feet I wasn't really lacking in the looks department. Problem is, after training with a knock out like Dinah on a daily basis, most girls my age just lost their appeal.

Dinah had curves for days and seeing her all sweaty and panting after a particularly tough workout...

Snapping out of it I shook my head to clear off those thoughts.

Realistically speaking I knew I had no chance with her I was way younger than her and lets not forget she was already in a committed relationship.

On the other hand doing a bit of flirting here and there was just harmless fun as long as it wasn't taken too far.

There was a thin line between coming off as creepy or just being plain obnoxious, nonetheless I still wanted to sharpen my game.

Let's just say living in a hospital for most of my life wasn't exactly conducive to a healthy social life.

Frankly I needed all the practice I could get.

The couple left for their date, while I stayed behind to practice with some of my talismans.

I was practicing switching between forms using the monkey talisman.

Although I was aware how similar this talisman was to Beast boy's powers. This talisman's power wasn't restricted to only its user, technically speaking I could use it on anyone, which was a considerable advantage.

Theoretically speaking all would one have to do, is turn their opponent into a fish or something and watch them as they flailed to death or turn someone into an insect and step on them.

The only disadvantage I could see was that you had to make sure the transforming ray hit your target, which was easier said than done.

Unsurprisingly most people tended to dodge when they saw a ray coming towards them, so unless they're caught off guard or already bound in some way it wasn't as useful as I initially imagined.

Transforming into birds was easy and most felines and canines were okay. Bugs were too weird since things got a bit unclear and it got too hard to focus, which I'm guessing is due to their short attention span.

There were tons of other animals I could transform too but they were either too exotic or too inconvenient to be useful in the field.

I did discover that turning into an elephant or a gorilla somewhat boosted my strength a bit, but as a consequence my agility suffered.

Not to mention it also made me a bigger target. Having said that I understood that were bound to be some tradeoffs when physically transforming into something with different physical dimensions and body parts.

The only thing left to do really, was to test if I could turn into mythical creatures.

The first creature I called upon was the Phoenix. A mythical creature that was practically immortal and had fire related abilities.

I focused on a mental image of a Phoenix, the closest thing I had was the depiction shown in Harry Potter and I finally called out its name. "Phoenix"

I knew I didn't have to speak to activate the talisman but I found speaking out my intent made visualization way easier.

A beat went by and I could feel I was still in my human form. Although disappointing it was somewhat expected, it would have been too broken if I could turn into a Phoenix.

Just for the sake of being thorough I tried a few more creautres like, a unicorn, griffin, peaguses, chimera, Manticore, baslik and cerbaus.

Now that was weird. I knew for a fact that Hades had a cerbaus somewhere in hell and while the other creatures may not exist in this universe, a unicorn for example was basically a horse with a horn. I guess this was the limit of the monkey talisman, for now this would have to do. I could still test its limits in the future and if I ever happened to meet animals from other planets I could see if I could transform into them, but for now I still had one more creature to test.

From the show the talismans powers originally belonged to Shendu a dragon/Demon sorcerer. I secretly hoped the talisman could allow me to turn into a dragon since they belonged to him, but things did not just happen because of wishes and dreams.

Although Dragons as well as demons existed in the DC universe, the same was true for the other creautres I tried to turn into.

Nonetheless there was only one way to find out. I took a deep breath and focused on what I wanted and spoke. "Dragon", right before I blacked out.

(Chapter End)

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