(So, as of me writing this chapter, the most voted name for Jokara's snake companion is....
Ryujin!. So, from now on, I will refer to his snake companion as "Ryujin")
(Daily Music: Vector to the heavens but it's even more depressing) (Look it up on Youtube)
The day after the attack at USJ, we were in class, and Aizawa said he had an announcement for us all.
(Because Jokara disposed of the Nomu pretty quickly, Aizawa didn't get seriously injured by it, so he's not in bandages)
The Sports Festival. I had seen videos of past ones online when I was researching about Heroes. I would be seriously lying if I said I wasn't seriously excited for it. Sure, I wouldn't be able to kill someone or permanently cripple them, since they were classmates and fellow students.
But those are the only two lines I'm not allowed to cross. The only ones I wouldn't go all out against are Kirishima and Mina, if we ever face off, as consideration for them being my friends.
We were given two weeks off to train or do whatever in preparation for the Sports Festival. That gives me plenty of time to do some things I want to work on. There's one thing that I really wanted to try. If it worked, it could be extremely powerful if used right.
School ended really early, most likely so that we could start training as soon as possible in order for us to have a lot to show off to the world upon the arrival of the festival.
I'm like, 95% sure that a villain could plan against the students by watching the festival and watching their fighting style and observing their Lura, which is really stupid on UA's part, but whatever. That's their problem, not mine.
I sprinted towards the lodge, arriving swiftly.
I got some paper and drew myself a list of things to work on and train
-Speed
-Strength
-Defence
-Agility
-Coordination fighting alongside Ryujin
-Increase bone power as much as possible through calcium intake
-Attack variety
-Physical exercise
-Investigate the effects of my voice upon reaching certain levels of noise (Remember when the whole of Japan shook when he screamed when he first awakened his Quirk, and how everything, even background sounds, muted when he snapped in Classroom 1-A. That's what this is referring to)
That looks like a good list. Well, let's get to it. First though, lets relocate to a quieter and less valuable area.
I went out of the lodge, left a note for my family notifying them that I've gone for training and will return eventually, and went to an isolated part of the forest, far away from anything important that might get in the way of the training.
I decided to lots of exercises first. I hadn't done a lot of exercises, so I couldn't go large from the start, so I stayed to low numbers for now. I had looked up lots of methods for good physical exercises.
- 5 sets of ten push-ups
- 5 sets of 10 sit-ups
- 5 sets of 10 crunches
-5 sets of 10 squats
- 5 sets of plank (Hold for as long as possible each time)
- 2 kilometre run
Getting to it, I began doing the exercises. As I said previously, I hadn't done lots of exercises like these before, so I got exhausted pretty quickly.
Now, I'm sure you're probably expecting me to get exhausted to the point where my body screams at me to stop, only for me to keep going, calling it willpower?
No. That isn't smart in any sense of the word. If you're exercising, and you get very exhausted, that's your body telling you to stop, and you best listen to it. Nothing good happens by ignoring your own body's signals, in fact, continuing exercising even while your body is telling you to stop is a sure way to permanently damage muscles, making your life much worse.
(It's true. There's this guy who I go to a private gym with, he was in the army. When he returned from the army, he started doing lots of exercises in the gym, and kept going way past his body's limit, and ended up tearing the muscles along his shoulder, and for years, it's made it extremely painful for him to even raise his arms. Please listen to your body if you're exercising.)
So, whenever I got very tired, I took a small rest, and continued when I was sufficiently rested. Most of the trouble came from the exercises that focused on things that weren't the legs, as they were my strongest muscles, even more so than other people. But, I knew this was perhaps the most important step of all the things I listed to work on, since the stronger my body was naturally, the better everything else got by default.
I ended up finishing the physical exercises in around 30 minutes, and took a good 4 minute rest before I went on to another step.
The next step I wanted to work on kind of counted for two things, Strength and Defence.
I wanted to try and make a thin layer of bone under my skin to give myself a permanent increase in defence, as well as have much thicker and stronger bones at the areas that I can use to attack, such as my hands and my legs.
I knew for a fact that this would likely require lots of control and precision, so I instructed Ryujin to make sure nothing disturbed me while I tried this out.
I sat on the ground and focused. I pictured a very thin layer of bone beneath all the layers of my skin, adding extra defence to each layer. For the bodies of basically anyone else, this would likely have some kind of negative effect, but thanks to my Lura, no matter what I do with it, nothing bad would happen, either nothing significant or something good, so I wasn't worried about something going terribly wrong.
I then manifested the layer around my while body, and I could instantly tell my body was much more durable than before. Next step.
I pictured the bones around the area of my arms and legs to be thicker and stronger. I then manifested the image, and I instantly felt the aforementioned areas become stronger. I'm pretty sure that as of right now, without using Earth stance or any speed to enhance my strength, I could permanently dent a solid cube made completely of steel.
Next thing I wanted to work on: Agility. Sure, I was fast, but I wanted to be agile enough to manoeuvre through nearly everything as well. I didn't know lots of ways I could train this, so I came up with a makeshift one: I would have Ryujin attack me, and I had to dodge his attacks with the least amount of movement possible. He had permission to use sneak attacks as well. I wanted this to be legitimately difficult, otherwise I would learn nothing.
For the first 45 minutes, I got close to being hit many times, and actually did end up being hit my times. However, after those 45 minutes, changes started visibly happening. I was dodging every time, with less movement every time as well, and eventually, I dodged while moving so little, even someone with a Lura specifically for perception probably would think I hadn't moved an inch and that my opponent had missed, instead. For now, this is the best I would be able to do for Agility.
(Please tell me some ideas on ways he could train agility. Keep in mind, agility and speed are different things.)
Next, Speed. I didn't know any way right now to increase my natural speed, so I was going to try and refine my Lightning stance to increase the multiplier to speed that it gives me.
(Please also give me some ideas on how he can increase his natural speed)
While I was at this, I was going to try and refine all my other stances, since I might as well. There isn't any kind of super "comprehension" that I used to refine the stances, I just fixed some really obvious flaws that were in them that I didn't previously have time to fix. Improving my stance's stability is an example, as well as making sure that each stance felt right as I was looking for changes I could make to it.
This was the easiest part so far, and I got an easy increase in multipliers too. Now all my stances increased their respective focuses by a multiplier of 15.
Next: Improve coordination with fighting along Ryujin. This was something I really badly wanted to get good at, because it would make the both of us so much more deadly than we already were.
We devised a way to do this. We would ask Pixie Bob to use her Lura to make earth creatures for us to fight against. Sure, we could easily defeat them already, but we weren't looking for that, we were looking to make it so that we covered each other in our every move.
I quickly ran to the lodge and told her about what I wanted to do. She was really happy about how seriously I was taking my training, giving me a big hug.
I loved my family.
She agreed to help me and Ryujin, and joined us at the desolate spot we were training at before. She summoned an earth creature resembling a tiger.
Me and Ryujin instantly jumped in. For around 50 minutes, we weren't that great, but we were improving, steadily. When 50 minutes had passed, we were at the stage where we could react to each other's moves and cover each other, meaning we could basically engage in infinite combo attacks, not giving our opponents time to react or try and fight back.
I was satisfied for now at the way that was for today. I had two weeks to train, after all, so this much improvement on day one is already great. I gave Pixie Bob a hug and brought her back to the lodge before returning to this spot.
Last written thing to work on for today before I try out something I've had on my mind for a while. Attack Variety. So far, I was purely close range, no long range capabilities. I had an idea for something that could be a good ranged attack. Two, actually.
Let's try the first one. I pictured small, sharp tipped bones ejecting out extremely fast out of my fingertips. I then manifested it.
The small, sharp bones shot out of my fingertips at the speed of sound, possibly even higher, and travelled through the air, until the pierced straight through 5 trees before finally losing enough momentum and falling.
Bone bullets.
Good to know that idea worked. Now, let's try something else.
I got the inspiration from inspecting the surprisingly effective spike defence of porcupines online.
I imagined sharp bones shooting out of the entirety of me body fast enough to actually shoot off. I then manifested it.
Bones shot out of me at speeds even faster than my bone bullets, and covered almost the entire area in what are essentially bone javelins with speed above the speed of sound and extreme piercing power.
Great, both moves are a success. Now, let's try that thing I've been thinking about the possibility of.
I grabbed the closest animal near me that wasn't Ryujin. It was a rat. Oh well, it would do.
I focused extremely hard, and willed something to happen.
Eventually, a tiny bone spike came out of the rat's back. Success.
Looks like I can control the bones of other organisms as well.
Oh, this will be fun.