MHA Chaos' Whims Chapter 46: Real Training (Patreon)

I tightened the cloth belt around my waist, Himiko across from me doing the same.

We stood within the main training room of the dojo, the centered, thick matting of the actual sparring area below our feet. With all the choices we had, many uniforms of varying colors stored alongside all the hung up weapons, I’d gone with a sleeveless dark gray Gi with a belt of a darker shade, while Himiko went with a more traditional long sleeved white one with a black belt.

Did we need to wear this stuff?

“It kind of feels like we’re on a movie set or something.” Himiko said. Grinning she raised a leg, preparing a kick with a form so exaggerated it didn’t match a single thing I taught her. She beckoned me at her with a hand while holding it. “Come. Its time the student surpasses the master.”

“You are not ready.” I said, matching her dramatic tone, one arm folded behind my back and the other stroking a nonexistent beard. “To think otherwise is nothing more than arrogance.”

There was no reason not to enjoy ourselves while we were here.

A few more dramatic lines that could’ve been ripped from any number of generic movies and we ended the whole exchange with laughs before actually getting serious.

“If you’re using that, don’t go throwing up on me.”

“That’s not going to happen.” I retorted while undoing the cap on one of the vials of blood I brought with me, the thing labeled A.

“But you looked like you almost did last time.”

“Are you going to keep talking or-“

Himiko abruptly lowered herself and shot forward, while I backpedaled, tipping the vial over, a small amount drunk.

Bland. Just like all the other blood types provided by the school, despite the taste not actually being bad, I could help but find it completely bland.

The sensations were anything but.

Himiko’s charge, fast enough to cross distance faster than I’d been creating it, wasn’t far from reaching me. That slight narrowing of her eyes as she focused on her target. The tensing up of her arm and shoulder as she pulled back a fist. Her center of balance shifting as she finally reached me and twisted into her punch.

I could make out where all her movements started and tell exactly what path they’d be taking.

Stopping my retreat, I stepped aside, watching as Himiko’s punch flew by. Punches, kicks, feints, and retreats. All were treated the same way.

Being able to predict what she was going to do and being able to avoid it was hardly anything new, but it’d never been to this extent before. I could see and understand exactly what she was up to in crystal clear detail.

That detail extended to my own body. From the rhythmic beat of my heart to individual strands of my hair swaying and shifting with every move. I could feel it all, things far louder and far more pronounced than they should be. Even my thoughts, every word like a rumble, were so loud.

Catching Himiko’s high kick, I tossed her by her ankle, watching her twist and tuck her body.

I don’t know if this was some combination of boosted perception and speed, but the end result was the same; it was as if everything slowed down yet also moved just as quickly as usual. It was contradictory but I couldn’t think of any other way to describe the sheer amount of information I was taking in so quickly.

That blood had jolted my brain and every other part of my body awake, a fog I never realized had been slowing me all this time dispersed.

But not for very long and not without consequence.

As Himiko recovered with a roll across the mat, things, for a lack of a better term, resumed their usual speed as she raced back at me.

Even prepared for it and with Iron Mind, I couldn’t help but grimace. My skull and eyes felt like they were pounding, a dull ache overtaking both. My stomach was left doing twists, a distracting sense of nausea settling within it.

Rush slowed, Himiko tapped my chest with the back of her fist, brow raised. “You already burned through that blood?” I nodded. “Your body must be doing a lot with it.”

That was putting it lightly. It was the one thing I could easily get further tested back at U.A. but for the effects to be this pronounced with Iron Mind doing its work, my body must’ve been being pushed to its physical limit in that short burst. To the point of pushing at what Iron Mind could suppress.

How bad would the effects have been without it? It might be worth it to actually focus in on the sensations to better adjust. Aftereffects and short time frame aside, it had possible uses. Being able to match someone faster, even for a brief moment, was the first to come to mind.

Then again, with the new knowledge I was planning to test out, just how many people could be faster than me?

“Want some of my blood?” Himiko asked, neck shown off.

“…Thank you.” Clearing out this bland taste with something actually good would help with this sick feeling.

Katanas, both wooden and real, were stored within this place.

Out in the dojo’s garden, I lowered myself, grasping the cool handle of the wooden katana held at my belt and focusing my eyes on the distant Himiko who stood beside one of the tall trees marking the edge of the dojo's surrounding garden.

I took a breath. Like rushing water, oxygen surged throughout my entire body, a rush of strength that left me feeling light as a feather accompanying it.

Total Concentration Breathing was at the root of all the breathing techniques used in Demon Slayer, Thunder Breathing no exception. Normally those just beginning their training would struggle with just that, training needed to prep their body for it, but, as expected, I had little to no issue with it.

Could I keep it up constantly? Fully stop my bleeding with it? Slow down poisons? I was still testing all of that but that wasn’t the focus right now.

Taking another breath and lowering myself further, that strength flooded my legs.

I shot forward.

Everything blurred around me for a moment, nothing but my goal remaining clear.

I stopped in front of the tree, Himiko’s wide eyes snapping over to me as I prepared another. She barely caught sight of me before I took off again.

Back and forth across the garden. Off the surrounding trees, off some of the statues spread around, and off the dojo’s plated roof. I shot towards and stopped almost exactly where I intended despite the case of tunnel vision blurring my surroundings. All without so much as an ache or flash of pain flaring up, my lungs still going strong too.

Repeated uses of the basic First Form wouldn’t be a problem. Precise and all my prior training were helping out.

Crouching down at the edge of the dojo’s roof, I focused on a line of trees far ahead. Took a fresh breath. Then shot forward.

This time I pulled the katana from my hip, and slashed, my normally cool energy turning to arcing shocks that left me feeling invigorated as it raced through me.

One, two, three…

I cut through over a handful of those thick trees before I came to a stop in the air beside the final one falling over. Thick arcs of blue electricity continued down the arc my katana had been following, the wild bolt striking the next tree with such intensity that it burnt clean through several behind it, trails of dark smoke left rising into the air.

BOOOOOMM!

The ground rumbling sound of thunder only reached my ears after that electricity dissipated and I hit the ground.

That was all Thunder Breathing with just a wooden training weapon. If I used Ratio? Threw Enflame into the equation? Stacked on Removal? Used my quirk? What was stopping me from taking down anyone and anything dangerous before they even knew I was around? How many people could do anything about this if they were faced with it head on in the first place?

Rising to a full stand, I looked down on my legs. They were still steady, but I was suddenly a lot more aware of them.  I guess I couldn’t use it back to back like that without any effect, but I could already tell I could keep this up for a long time before that became a real problem.

I lowered myself again, preparing another breath.

How well could I handle Godspeed?

I was using less energy than usual.

Idly using one of my shadow hands to feed Himiko, we sat on the few steps leading from the garden up into the dojo, my head in her lap. Turning, I looked over to the much larger shadow hand hovering over the garden’s pond, the entirety of it enveloped in hot orange flames.

While I had a strange awareness of each one, Precise having made it all the easier to make use of that to better control them, I didn’t feel much from them. Where they were in relation to me and pressure when they hit something summed up all the information that connection fed me.

Fortunately, that connection was still enough to meet Enflame’s requirement, the hands and everything they touched all valid targets for the flames. The two would play off each other well.

Precise was going a long way to minimize it, no doubt one of my best rolls already, but I still had a problem.

I had a bit too much I wanted to test out. Now that wasn’t really what I’d call a real problem; it was the best kind of problem to have if you asked me, but I was on a bit of a timetable and had to keep certain things in mind.

I wasn’t concerned with my energy restriction. The amount of it I had completely dwarfed how much I started with but, without fail, a full night’s rest always brought it back up to full.

Stamina and endurance were my main problems.

If don’t know if it went for every ability that came from the Gacha, but my current ones came with virtually no strain on my body, all completely dependent on the energy used to power them. The one that got closest to going against that was Shadow Hands but that was only when I was using them to go against a massive amount of weight and even then, the increased pressure of their presence didn’t leave a lasting strain on my body as far as I could tell.

Thunder Breathing, all its forms, and the Total Concentration breathing that came bundled in were game changers but pushing the limits of what I could do with them was harder on my body than anything I’d done so far. Not even my quirk compared to it. Stacking other things I could do like Removal only made it worse.

Bringing up a leg, I pressed a hand against my calve, a bit of pressure temporarily relieving the throbbing pain that had it in a chokehold. My chest wasn’t much better, my actual lungs feeling as though something had given them a beating I couldn’t do anything about.

“Told you, you should’ve taken it easy.” Himiko said, messing with my hair before presenting her wrist to me.

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to hold off.” I said, Himiko raising a brow. Her blood was how I got so much training in leading up to U.A. after all, but this was a bit different. Typical muscle strain, bruises, cuts, maybe a dislocation and fracture in my fingers; all that Karate focused training resulted in minor things my quirk didn’t require much to heal.

Bouncing back from extensive use of Thunder Breathing would demand far more.

“I don’t want to end up too tired tomorrow.” I said. We still had all of Sunday and with everything I was planning between my summons and seeing just how much I could combine with Thunder Breathing, I was fixing to hit the physical limit of Iron Mind. For now, I was just going to power through the strain to make sure I could fit all that in without being fully bogged down by exhaustion before we had to head back to school.

Healing could come after.

“And you call Tsu the weird one.” Himiko said, a smile slipping into place. “Come on, let’s go test out that hotspring inside. I’ll give you a massage while we’re in there.”

“Do you know anything about massages?” I asked while sitting up.

“Don’t want to help me learn?”

“I didn’t say that.” I said, standing up alongside her. “Since we came here to train, I might as well learn how to do that too.”

“Pfft, perv.” Himiko teased, looking over shoulder as I followed her into the dojo.

(A/N: No idea if patreon always had a divider option but I will now be retiring the good old XOXO for them. Tragic but I like the look of the dividers more. If we stick with it depends on well it translates to the readers perspective though. Let me know if you have a preference.

Anyways, like I said, Katsu has made some cracked rolls. Thunder Breathing allows the use of Total Concentration Breathing which he can train himself to turn into Constant Total Concentration Breathing among other things if he takes the time. Lowkey, brother is now stepping into the same problems of writing a speedster. And this all without him using that Gene Seed ticket. Even without his speed, his physical related stuff is all just stacking on each other.

All this time I've been wishing for fancy stuff but the Gacha has delivered us peak physicality.

We'll be getting more detail on the dojo realm itself but, naturally, Katsu is more focused on testing himself.)