“Train me”

I had made a mistake.

I had wrongly believed that this world was the same one I had seen in the anime.

But here, the villains didn't monologue for hours, giving the heroes time to save you. They didn't fight for some noble and obscure cause in which you could find some semblance of truth.

No, the villains of this world - tangible beings, people like me, made of flesh and blood and conscience - were born with power, and they decided to use it to do whatever they wanted, to hell with the consequences.

The villains of this world had chosen to live easy because they could live easy.

I, too, wanted to live life in easy mode.

“Dad, he's barely three years old, you're not really going to-”

Enji raised his hand to silence Touya.

His blue eyes never left my own.

“It will be difficult, Shoto. There will be no mercy for you.”

I knew I was lazy.

In my life Before and in this one, I was a privileged child, born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

But unlike the Before, there might not be enough greenbacks on this planet to protect me if someone with power wanted me dead.

I had money, but I was not powerful. And if you have no power, you are nothing in this world.

That's what the medics had said about the dead-eyed girl on the bridge.

A fate worse than death.

“I don't want you to spare me any pain”

Suffering to become powerful, or suffering at the hands of the more powerful... what a dilemma.

“Why ?”

I paused, my eyes landing on Touya before returning to Enji.
If I told him that I did not trust the boy, he would not understand. He would call me a liar if I explained he purposely left me on the bridge.

But I also knew that he wouldn't train me unless I explicitly told him why I wanted to.

“For there are worse things than death”

A series of emotions flashed across Enji's face. For a brief moment, his shoulders slumped and his face grew an extra meter in length. He looked like he was in pain.

I blinked.

His eyes were icy again, his face impervious like a statue. He was the strong, powerful man whose mere presence had terrified the villains that day.

Enji nodded.

“If you complain, you leave. If you are reluctant to do an exercise, you leave. If you cry, you leave”

I expected no less from my father.

*

The training was brutal.

For the first couple of days, it was so hard to get out of bed that I had to crawl to the bathroom.

My muscles were still hot and sore and I needed a nap after each morning session, but I felt great. I felt good knowing that with each new bruise, each new punch, each new day that passed, I was one step closer to my goal.

Enji was a brilliant teacher.

His instructions were clear and precise, and there was never a waste of energy in unnecessary talk.

He gave the orders, and Touya and I did the work.

In the beginning, the only thing I did was physical conditioning.

Even when he was not around, Enji gave us exercises to do. He would provide us with handouts with the proper way to warm up, and the type and intensity of the exercises that were to be done. At that point, my life was all about running, running, running: Run around the house, run to the hill in the woods, run around the house again. When you're tired, you go treadmilling until you can't feel your legs.

Touya, on the other hand, had to split his time equally between Alter training and hand-to-hand, and on top of that, school.

I spent my mornings training and memorizing the basic katas that Enji had shown me. He said that I was bound to grow as much as he did, and that knowing how to use my legs well would give me a great advantage over those I fought.

It took me a moment to realize that when he spoke to me, unlike Touya, he never said that I had to learn this or that to defend myself against villains. He said that I had to defend myself against 'others'.

From noon until early afternoon, I ate and slept. I slept a lot.

Eating consisted of devouring copious meals prepared by the housekeeper following Enji's detailed dietary instructions.I began to wonder where he had acquired such knowledge, whether it was martial arts, nutrition, or the multitude of other strange and very useful information he possessed: I saw heroes as a bunch of useless people with more or less dubious knowledge in a variety of subjects, but Enji was not like that.

Enji knew what to do, how to do it, and why to do it.

Sometimes, I felt like a soldier who was training for war.

Rei disliked that.

She said I was too young, too small, too weak to start training. Enji told her over and over again that I had come to him, that it was my decision, but she didn't want to listen to him. She had every excuse in the world for my quitting.

“If you won't let me train with him”, I said once, “I'll find a way to train on my own. But I can't promise that I will always return unscathed”

After that, Rei left Enji alone.In the afternoon, I pretended to go on an 'excursion' into the huge park that was our garden. There were acres of forest just for us, because Enji liked to keep his private life private.

It was there, away from everyone and everything, that I did my chakra training.

*

Most of the time when I tried to feel my chakra, I ended up falling asleep.

For someone my age who needed thirteen hours of sleep a day, the line between absolute zen and deep sleep was very thin.

The first few weeks were an ordeal.

I would sit in the woods in the early afternoon, trying to gain a better understanding of the energy I felt in my stomach. All I had to do was lose control of myself for a second, and the next moment I would wake up, disoriented, as the sun was setting.

When I would think of quitting - and I did many times in the first few weeks - I would think of the little girl lying on the deck.

She looked dead inside.

To me, there was nothing worse than being dead within.

If I were her, I would have preferred to be really dead.

Chakra was a volatile energy, hot and elusive, like a solid that turned to gas when you tried to grab it. It flowed through my imaginary fingers like water that could not get my hand wet.

I started there, trying to make the chakra wet my hand. I had no idea what a chakra was capable of doing to a body.

Six months and three days after my first attempt, I finally got it.

I was in the living room, sitting on the sofa. I was huddled under half a ton of blankets, waiting for Enji to come home for his usual nap.

The comic on the armrest slipped. I tried to catch it.

I think this time, instead of trying to catch my chakra, I pushed it. I have a clear recollection of the feeling of it banging against something, as if it was banging against another inner pool.

In a split second, the comic book was reduced to ashes.

Half the living room was frozen before I even had time to blink.

I will always remember Enji's face when he found me sitting alone in a room where the first half had gone up in smoke and the second half was stronger than an iceberg.

Enji was so excited that he lifted me into the air, his face on fire like Ghost Rider.

“SHOTOOOOOOOO”

I couldn't stop laughing.

“DAAAAD”

I think Rei almost had a heart attack when she saw Enji swinging me in the air in a room filled with black smoke.

When Fuyumi and Natsuo came home from school, they were very excited to see my Alters. They squawked like birds and demanded to see me perform.

I was happy to oblige, as it gave me an excuse to use them. This time, instead of tapping into the chakra pool, I tapped directly into the second pool : a mini-blizzard appeared in my right hand, while a sputtering flame appeared in my left hand.

I tried to concentrate as hard as I could, but I couldn't do more than that. I hypothesized that I had used my chakra to forcefully activate my Alters. The Chakra had acted as a fuel to keep them going as I demanded.

For the first time in ages, I felt happy.

I finally had the thing that could make the difference between life and death : chakra.

Thanks to it and the time ahead, as long as I did my best, everything would be okay.

Touya came home late from soccer practice.

He looked surprised when he heard that I had activated my Quirks, but he smiled and congratulated me.

I don't remember the look on his face, but I do remember that his left hand was shaking.

*

Later that day, Touya came to see me.

“Hey, Sho-sho”

I sat on the wooden steps of the veranda and thought about what to do next with my training. Enji was only able to train me three times a week and only in the mornings. The rest of the time, I was as free as a bird and since I had no school to go to, I had a lot of time to kill.

I would need a clear, rigorous and precise training for the next two years.

Touya sat next to me, but there was enough distance between us that I didn't feel any pressure. I was grateful.

“Listen, for the last time on the bridge...”

He fell silent. His lips were pressed together in a thin white line.

His left hand was shaking.

I wondered if it was a side effect of his Alter.

“I know. I don't blame you”

Anyone in their right mind would put their own lives first in a situation like this. Let alone a child. It was a no-brainer.

“No hard feelings ?”

I wouldn't trust him with my life, but I didn't blame him.

Or, now that the terror was over, I no longer held it against him.

“No hard feelings”

It was the first time Touya smiled at me sincerely.

There was still that strange gleam in his eyes, but I chose to ignore it. I guess he was just a weird kid. There was nothing to worry about.

I looked up at the sky and the stars.

Given enough time, I too could live life in easy mode.

*

Author's note :

And this is the last chapter of my first batch.

I'm gonna publish 4 chapters a week, starting from next week - one monday, one wednesday, one friday, one saturday.

Each week there'll be the possibility to have a double release saturday/a bonus chapter on sunday.

For that you'll need to meet my goal of power stones/likes.

This week, it's 50 power stones that you have to get sunday (as the deadline) if you want a bonus chapter. If you get it, we'll have a double release next saturday.

Hope you're all ready to meet this challenge, and see you in the next update !