Nurse Kiwi's Quirk had its own limits, and it wouldn't be good for his body to have all of its wounds rapidly healed due to the drain on his metabolism. But still, his body felt much better the next day and he felt that he could move much more freely without constant pain or shortness of breath.
But he was starting to feel a bit more pressured to finish all of his make-up work, as they were coming close to the end of a week and he was sure there would be a few quizzes or tests either today or tomorrow. Today it was much more clear that the boy was bothered by his lack of academic prowess--he skipped lunch entirely, staying in the classroom to work. As a result he was practically starving by dinner, and didn't speak to anyone in the dorms as he was busy stuffing his face. The rest of this night, too, was spent on homework.
Kenichi rejoiced after the free period today, as he had finally finished all of his catching-up. However, his confidence was soon dashed as he didn't perform as well as he would have hoped on the
current school work. His grades were still firmly middle of the pack, but now they were closer to the lower end. He had to do something to get them up, otherwise he felt like the others would only continue to pull further ahead of him.
The sessions with Nurse Kiwi were paying off, though, and now the majority of his wounds had healed. His fractured ribs were basically healed, but he had been told to keep taking it easy for at least another day otherwise the bone might still be too fragile. He finally had the time and energy to try and devote to socializing, but at this point he actually found he felt like somewhat of an outsider. Really his "circle" now pretty much consisted of Fumika, Jett, Haruka, Asuka, and...well, two of those didn't even go to Komei. They would only show up if they had some off-time, and they probably only wanted to spend it with Fumika and Jett, the two people they actually knew. None of Kenichi's friends were going to schools or living in the Hosu area, so all the people he knew from junior high he basically only had contact with through social media.
Still, at least he managed to learn everyone's names. Mostly through listening to conversations and to the teachers calling out roll.
Now that he was on the mend, however, he began talking to Arsenal about setting up those after-school combat lessons. If Yashiro wasn't in position to teach him, he would have to figure out something else...he wondered if he should try to look up a martial arts dojo somewhere...
There was too much homework this weekend, and Kenichi still had to rest. He decided to pack up his things and head back home via train, partially so that his mother could cook his meals and do his laundry (what teenager wouldn't take such an opportunity?) and partially so that he would be able to really relax.
Having finished all of his work, our blue-haired hero did what every growing boy does on a day in which there is nothing to do and nowhere to go--he slept. And slept. And slept. And somehow still slept through the night, once he got back to Komei's dorms that evening.
Frisky and fresh, Kenichi was finally back to his original loud-mouthed self! Whether this was a good thing or just annoying depended on who you talked to, but there was no denying the boy was in much better spirits. He felt like his school work was picking up as well, but part of that might have been because of the gym and other physical classes--he couldn't use his Quirk at full blast yet, but his regular athletic talents were more than enough to perform at high level.
That afternoon, he and Arsenal started their training. The gunner hero himself preferred a rather simple form of martial art--traditional boxing. Focused only on punches and footwork, a boxer could be considered highly specialized. While MMA had taken over the modern combat sports scene, there was no denying that boxers had the hardest punches pound for pound, because that was all they worked on. Their defenses against things like kicks and grapples were very limited, but in a straight up brawl boxing was perhaps the best suited to striking first and striking hard. Using a simplified but powerful style like this allowed Arsenal to train himself for the event of disarmament, without wasting too much time on something besides his primary weapons. And because it was so simple at first glance, it was also easy to learn.
After one final session with Nurse Kiwi, Kenichi was declared 100% good-to-go. That first time around, Arsenal dumbed it down for him. Kenichi learned the basic boxing stance: Front and back heel on the center line. Dominant hand in back--for Kenichi this was the right, as he was an orthodox fighter. Weight evenly distributed across both legs, knees slightly bent. Feet diagonal, little wider than shoulder width apart, back heel raised. Elbows down, hands up. Head behind your gloves, chin slightly down, eyes over the gloves. Relax, and breathe!
From here Kenichi had to learn to move. Step with the lead foot and drag the rear foot, ensuring that the weight is grounded and always ready to attack or defend. He had a few problems with crossing his feet and tripping himself up at first, but soon learned to bounce and weave at an acceptable level. Arsenal forced him not to use his Quirk, so as to get used to the movements in a natural way. To move forward or to the left, Kenichi had to step with his left foot first and then drag the right. To go backward or right, he had to do the opposite. Arsenal was a strict teacher, constantly slapping him on his back or across his legs with a shinai to ensure that he came back to a proper stance after every movement, and finished all steps with his feet at the same distance. They spent at least an hour solely on this, with some light calisthenics. Even Kenichi felt tired, as all his recovery time had left him a bit rusty.
Waking up at 4:30 AM for the first time in a while, Kenichi practically sprang out of bed. He had to take it easy this morning, so with his breathing mask on to cancel his Quirk he called it quits after only 50 jumping jacks, squats, and pushups. There were no situps or other core exercises, as he didn't want to push it too hard on his ribs just yet. After this he went on a short run, just doing a mile in around eight minutes--an easy pace even without using his Quirk at all.
For the rest of the time he had until he needed to shower, dress, and get breakfast, he practiced moving in the boxing stance and looked up videos on the internet of other people teaching the basics of boxing. As a result he saw a lot of stuff being recommended about other martial arts, but he didn't want to try learning it on his own without a proper instructor. Martial arts was one of those things you couldn't really learn, or master anyway, from a book or a video. Or at least it had never seemed that way to Kenichi.
During free moments during the day, or walking between classes, Kenichi would suddenly start shuffling and weaving every so often. It earned him some stares from the others, but truth be told it wasn't just because he was devoted to learning. Kenichi, as someone book dumb, had finally started getting "smarter" in a physical way--learning a martial art seemed to click with him, and he found himself constantly thinking about it. A few times it even got him in trouble for daydreaming.
That evening, Arsenal introduced him to the bread and butter of the boxer's arsenal; the jab, the straight, and the cross. Starting from a relaxed position, he had to exhale as he threw the punch and tighten his fist and muscles at impact. Then, releasing that tension, he had to bring the fist back just as quickly as he had fired it. The trick was to utilize his entire body weight without falling off balance. A few times, Kenichi started to get frustrated, but Arsenal kept assuring him that skill and experience could only come over time. The most important thing for the bluette as a beginner was to learn the proper punching form. He had to repeatedly stretch his fingers as far as they would go, widen his palms, then slowly curl the first four fingers inward. When they were tightly curled he then wrapped the thumb underneath them, and flexed it so that the tendons of the wrist and forearm would be engaged. Then, using the first two knuckles of the hand as his striking point (Arsenal confessed he actually used Karate for the basis of this form, as he claimed it felt more natural to a Japanese man) Kenichi was told to line up the entire surface of the arm, from the top of the fist to the elbow, and brace the punch using his back muscles, not his shoulders.
After adding pivots to his stance and movement, learning to make 45 and 90 degree pivots as well as full 90 and 180 degree swings, Kenichi had to practice all of the movement techniques he had used thus far along with the actual punches. The focus was not on speed or power, but form and technique. Kenichi started to get impatient, but knew this was still the easy part. It wouldn't be hard to persevere if he just kept at it.
Wake up at 4; 75 pushups, squats, jumping jacks, and 25 situps. His ribs protested, but it seemed more like they were stiff rather than any leftover injury. Another run, this time at a 6 minute pace for the mile. Without using his Quirk it was enough to leave him sweaty, but ultimately still not too hard. Now his boxing practice included the basic punches as well, and as he shadow boxed he timed himself using his phone to get a sort of High-Intensity-Interval training session going.
Kenichi seemed to have healed, for the most part, not just physically but mentally. He no longer found himself thinking so much about how helpless he had been during his kidnapping. Or about how weak he had been to get captured in the first place. How unHeroic his actions had been. How badly he had hurt those Villains, and whether or not they deserved it. Thanks to his school environment, his friends and classmates, and his newfound training, there was too much on his mind to bother with all of that. And without that weight, he pressed forward enthusiastically. He still had to dedicate a lot of his free time to studying, but steadily he began to see improvement without realizing it. He had begun climbing back to his starting point, in the upper half of the middle pack.
Arsenal's next lesson focused on combining the jab and cross into the traditional one-two, doubling up on the jab, and then combining those two combinations. Once Kenichi seemed to be getting the hang of that, for the first time the pro-Hero introduced bagwork into their training. Now that he had an actual target, Kenichi was more than eager to begin pounding away--however, Arsenal had to repeatedly remind him not to forget his technique. Without the proper form, not only would he risk injury, but also tire himself out far faster. Maximum power for minimal effort was the pro fighting mantra. To help with this, the teacher brought out an unusual training tool--a couple of plain wire coathangers. By pulling the triangular part out of shape a bit, he created a target area. Kenichi's objective would be to throw his punches through the empty space, and then pull them out, without ever actually touching the wire. They did this until Kenichi felt like his shoulders were starting to fall out of socket, and he was drenched in sweat.
4:00 AM. 100 squats and jumping jacks, 50 situps, and 30 pushups because his arms were
screaming. He knew he'd have to give himself some rest and not push so hard, after going for a while without working out the way he usually did. He took it easy on his run today as well, sticking to the 8 minute pace, and tried to eat protein heavy at breakfast so that his muscles would have plenty of fuel to rebuild themselves. Though he took it easy, once again he found himself shadow boxing, ducking and weaving his way through the halls between classes or in the sparsely populated classroom during free periods. People would probably be asking him about his new lessons by this point, and he was only too happy to talk and talk and talk...probably to the point that they'd be sorry about asking.
Arsenal's next lesson took his muscle fatigue into account, and focused on learning a single new punch, the hook. Along with this Kenichi had to do several footwork drills using a speed ladder and a jump rope. He was quickly getting faster and more coordinated, as his talents of physical coordination, balance, and fitness were starting to meld with the training.
Kenichi's application for an early-riser's gym pass had gone through, and now he once again had access to full set of weights and equipment. He still wasn't using his Quirk yet, but after a short warm up with very light weights he tried out his current one-rep-max. Before the days of Quirks and quickly-adapting human bodies, the records for youths in Kenichi's age bracket for weight-lifting on the Squat were about 250 pounds or lower. Kenichi's Quirk was a mutant type, meaning that it was always active as he couldn't "transform" or otherwise deactivate his lungs. So he had grown up getting accustomed to having a greater level of oxygenation, a stronger heart, and muscles that pumped up stronger and held out longer against lactic acid. With this kind of "evolved" body, and a lot of intense training over the years, Kenichi had pushed his one-rep-maximum to an even 300--impressive by anyone's standards.
He powdered his hands. He tested the bar, the weights, and the mat. He took up his stance, kept his feet flat. He made sure his form was as close to absolutely perfect as he could get it. He loaded up the weight, already feeling the strain as his feet practically sank into the floor. He squatted slowly, his buttocks trembling as he stopped perfectly even with his knees. Then he inhaled--not to activate his Quirk, but to prepare. His breathing mask did its work, limiting him to only his "human" strength, not his "superhuman" power.
He
pushed.
Joints popped, bones creaked, muscles
strained. Sweat broke out in beads, veins stood out like steel wires, skin flushed red with pumping blood. His calves bulged. His thighs flexed, muscles showing through his compression shorts like they had been carved from marble. His core tightened. Even his glutes twisted tight as a coiled spring.
The bar went up. At full extension he held it for several seconds, letting out a long breath. Then he dropped it to the floor, 300 pounds of weight landing and bouncing on the rubber mat with a loud crash. Almost ripping his mask off, Kenichi let out a whoop of triumph and pumped his fists!
His lesson with Arsenal once again focused mostly on footwork, and then adding the hook into his other combinations. They took it easy, since it was the last day before the weekend, but Kenichi wanted to push it even further despite Arsenal's protests that he needed to give himself time to rest.
Since he needed to let his arm muscles rest, Kenichi slept in on Saturday and then, around 8 in the morning, set out on a long but easily paced run. With his mask on, he kept a steady range of 8-10 minutes per mile and ran several blocks. Using his phone to measure his distance, he finally turned around for the second half after five miles. A full ten mile run left him feeling like his legs were made of jelly and his lungs were on fire, but after taking the mask off he quickly recovered thanks to his super lung capacity. He decided to get his homework done early that day so that it would be out of the way, and then spent the rest of the day working and rewarding himself in spurts. He would clean his room a bit at a time, then watch a movie or a TV show he had been wanting to catch up on. Then he would do laundry, and chill out with a video game. The biggest event of the day was a trip out to the nearest grocery store, to find the ingredients he needed to make meals. The plan was to make himself a few healthy pre-and-post workout meals that he could keep in the dorm fridge--although he would strictly label them so that hopefully other students wouldn't steal them.
It would probably be a very unusual sight to see Kenichi of all people in the dorm's kitchens that afternoon. But soon the smells of things like grilled chicken with bell pepper and onion, baked salmon with lemons and butter, and steamed carrots with broccoli and cucumber filled the lobby. Looking like the Main Character of a completely different manga with an apron around his waist and a headband keeping his blue locks out of the way, he divided his specially crafted meals into calorie-specific portions and sealed them in a variety of vacuum bags and plastic dishes, then started slapping sticky notes on them.
PROPERTY OF KENICHI. FOOD THIEVES GET PUNCHED IN THE DICK.
Once again, Kenichi spent a lazy Sunday like any self-respecting teenager. But this time, not only did he sleep, he gave himself a cheat-day from his usual strict food maintenance. He toured the local shops around town, since he hadn't really done anything like that since coming to Hosu, and learned about some of the local area specialties. Sugary treats like crepes and snowcones were consumed and savored in as large an amount as his meager wallet would allow.
Back to the grind. 4:00 AM. 30 squats with 150 pounds on the bar, in 3 sets of 10. HIIT with the jump rope, 30 seconds fast 15 seconds slow for 5 minutes, one minute rest, then another 5 minutes. Another 3 sets of 10, this time benchpressing another 150. One mile run in 6 minutes, followed by shadow boxing.
School went normally, though Kenichi was slightly depressed after getting back a paper from the previous week that he hadn't done too well on. But he didn't stay down for long, instead determining that he
would find some way to stop being such an idiot, even if he had to do something stupid to do it!
That afternoon after classes, Arsenal put him through the wringer with a review of everything they had learned and practiced thus far. Though the teacher wouldn't say it as he didn't want his student to get too big an ego, it was surprising how quickly Kenichi was picking this up. It was certainly due in part to how eager he was to practice outside of their actual lesson-times, but also Kenichi just seemed to have the raw talent for it. He wasn't a thinking man's type of Hero--he had good instincts and a good feeling for people, but delicate strategies were probably never going to be his thing. He did, however, have sheer physical prowess and the type of coordination that lent itself well to straight up physical confrontation. He could be the kind of Hero people really liked to watch on TV--the ones that went in swinging, openly fought the villain, and won with a flashy punch or kick just like the old Kamen Rider shows.
After their review, Arsenal introduced Kenichi to the uppercut. A punch that could be extended or compact, used at inside or even middle range. Rather than using his arms, back, or shoulders, Kenichi was told to use his legs to pump the punch upward, driving all his weight through the bottom of his foot like a gazelle jumping high. During their practice, Arsenal introduced Kenichi to doing combinations with hand-mitts...and made the mistake of not being quite fast enough to catch an uppercut on target. It didn't make contact of course, Arsenal's instincts were much too well honed for that. But he felt the wind, the cold sharpness of Kenichi's fist as it went by, and for an instant the boy's body was frozen at full extension. It looked just like a professional boxer, and practically made the instructor shiver with the thought of what might happen if that had actually connected while Kenichi was using his Quirk to enhance his strength.
4:00 AM. 100 situps on the incline bench, 25 pullups while wearing a weighted vest of about 20 pounds, 3 sets of 10 reps on the lat machine using 150 pounds on the cables. Another session on the jumprope, keeping a medium steady pace instead of alternating between fast and slow, three sets of five minutes. No run, but instead a lengthened session of shadow boxing and footwork drills on a set of empty tires he laid out in the gym. He was really starting to feel the flow of the combinations now, and he could feel the air thrumming during his jabs and crosses.
But the newness was starting to wear off a bit, and Kenichi's focus wavered. This probably wouldn't be unusual for any kid, after all disciplining oneself was one of the hardest things for those his age to do. However, Kenichi was no stranger to the drag of working out all the time--he had been doing it for years. But his driving factor in that was preparing himself to be a Hero, or at least to get into a Hero school. To eventually take revenge for his father. Now that part of that had been accomplished, now that all the excitement of being kidnapped and visiting friends in the hospital had worn off...now he was starting to drift. Was he making any real progress? Was anything about him changing? It felt like he had been breaking his brain recently with his attempt to boost his grades, had that done
any good thus far?
Arsenal would no doubt notice it that evening, and as a result decided to teach Kenichi a few more new things so that he wouldn't feel so bored. The kid had demonstrated enough work ethic thus far that it probably wouldn't be any problem to go ahead and start him on something new even if he didn't have the earlier stuff down to an "expert" level yet. So Kenichi learned the overhead right, a much heavier swing meant to combo with an uppercut, a type of mid-punch between the upper and the hook called a smash, and a specific method that could be added to several punches, the corkscrew blow. Learning these new things rekindled Kenichi's spirit somewhat, but he still went to bed feeling...unfulfilled, for some reason. He stared up at the ceiling for quite a while before finally drifting off.
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