Can you use protected to stop the 2 damage from Nova Blast? Protected says it prevents damage from one action. I'm not sure that you'd want to do this for just 2 damage, but maybe.

No.
As you can see, Protected specifies it only works when the figure is dealt damage. Feedback damage from feats (Nova Blast, Haymaker, Pounce, etc) is not damage dealt, but rather damage taken - or in the new terminology, unavoidable damage. There is no way to avoid Nova Blast damage, except healing it afterwards.

excuse me if I understand correctly, are you saying that if I used Pounce against Nick Fury and he cannot use the Protected because Pounce is a feedback damage?

No, he's saying if you used Pounce against Nick Fury and the Pouncer had Protected it couldn't use Protected to prevent the damage from using Pounce.

Where PW (and consequently NB) is concerned, it ignores feats, powers and abilities of all figures in range so you can't use Protected against it as a target either.

BoT

Actually, from what I understand, Nova Blast ignores all Feats, Fowers and Team Abilities. That means that if you attempted to use Protected on someone when they used Nova Blast, you aren't allowed to do that.

The original question was if Figure A had NB and Protected and did a PWave, could Protected 'cancel' the cost of Nova Blast?
The answer is no.

However: The person USING Pulse Wave can still use their own TAs, Feats, powers, etc. Because they are not in range of the PW (it emits from them, it's not a bomb landing where they stand), they can still use their own stuff.

Protected on the PWer would be its own stuff.

But in a Nova Blast situation, Protected in the Blaster is useless.

The only things that nerf Novablast is Laz pit, Fantastic Four (original team ability, and Suicide Squade because they take effect after the action is resolved.

As far as I know the power "Pulse Wave" ignores feats and powers as well as team abilities. So protected will not work.

Close, bu no cigar. Pulse Wave does not ignore the powers, feats and team ability on the figure doing the Pulse Wave, so that alone is no reason for Protected not to work. The reason is, as I stated above, that Protected only works against damage dealt, while feat feedback damage is damage taken and therefore Protected does not apply.