My Swarm Academia: Call Of The Void

After school, Deku met Kai alone at the athletic field. As before, Kai was there first, and had some time to prepare a little bit of the training routine.

"Are you going to tell me anything about what we talked about before?" Deku asked. Even after more thought, he couldn't figure Kai out. He definitely had a reason beyond just disliking Bakugo to be relentless toward him.

"Not right now. It's training time," Kai said with a wicked grin. "Since it's rather simple, I'm sure you have some routine you are following for training your body. Am I right?"

Deku nodded. Ever since All Might had decided to give him his power, he had been preparing his body to be a good vessel for it.

"So then, something that your Quirk doesn't do so well for you, is likely reaction speed and thinking. If it improved your thought processes as well as your physical capabilities, then All Might would have been smarter. Or at least decisive enough to do something on Tuesday. Therefore, the first thing we are working on is a special obstacle course," Kai finished, gesturing toward the empty dirt behind him.

A few dozen meters there was an improvised flag sticking out of the ground. Other than that, there was nothing to suggest any obstacles were there. The only sign that anything could have been done was that all of the dirt appeared to be recently disturbed.

Deku looked at Kai with doubt in his eyes. Which then turned to suspicion when he remembered who he was looking at.

"Yep. All you have to do is run as fast as you can, grab that flag, and come back to me." Kai had a wide grin on his face. He was looking forward to how Deku would respond to the challenge. "Go ahead. Be careful- if something seems too easy, it usually is."

He turned and sat down. There were machines to test your reflexes, such as those that would randomly drop rods to be caught. However, that wasn't going to be appropriate for combat.

Not to mention, rather than those, it was going to be much more hilarious to watch what was about to ensue.

As Deku hesitated another moment, Kai waved for him to proceed. Fear coursed through Deku as he began to run. No more than a second after he passed Kai, the ground to his left erupted. A Zergling jumped out of the ground at him! Instinctively, he jumped, and again when the Zergling passed under his feet, pushing off its back before the scythes could hit him.

Deku didn't have time to think before another Zergling jumped out from directly ahead of him. This time he went beneath it, sliding like he was going for home base. Picking himself up as he slid, he tried to maintain his speed going toward the flag. Though Zerglings were jumping at him left and right, he was determined to finish the course. That was the only way for him to escape.

With difficulty and a few collisions, he was able to reach the flag. As soon as he grabbed it, things went quiet. He couldn't even hear the zerglings anymore. He quickly turned around and saw… nothing.

The field that he had just run through was the same as before. Rough, disturbed dirt that showed no sign of footprints from him or the zerglings.

A chill went down his spine. So, they can jump into the ground just as easily as they come out of it, he thought. Realizing that they must be leaving him alone because he had crossed the field, he took the opportunity to catch his breath and think.

Deku looked at Kai. He was grinning somewhat maliciously, but his eyes were closed. Whether it was from concentration or he was resting, he couldn't be sure.

The true answer was closer to resting. In the field, and even directly under Deku's feet at this moment, fourteen zerglings were burrowed. Kai's current limit. Kai kept his eyes closed against light to keep the migraine under control.

Additionally, keeping his eyes closed meant that the zerglings' actions were purely on what they could sense from underground. Even Kai was surprised by how much they could sense, and he had been working with them for so many years.

After giving him another moment to catch his breath, Kai had the Zergling under Deku's feet unburrow, throwing him forward onto the field. Unprepared, Deku was only able to dodge the zerglings for a couple of seconds before he fell prey to their tackle attacks. It was all downhill from there.

In the end, it was like a reverse game of whack-a-mole, where the moles were popping up to push back the hammer. Or seals playing with a beachball, batting it back and forth with their heads. Deku was helpless for a few moments, before all of the zerglings burrowed back underground.

Kai got up and walked to where a breathless Deku lay on the ground.

"You know, I think that was rather impressive for your first go. Despite your inexperience with combat, you are quite decisive. How are you feeling?"

"H-how is that supposed to help me?" Deku asked, still gasping for air. He had taken one head and at least a foot into his stomach as multiple hits to his sides and back.

"This goes back to the Hierarchy of Power. After strength is intelligence. A part of intelligence is instincts. They are hard to train, but it is possible. Conveniently, this also gives you the stress of combat without needing to put you in front of Bakago, who will really try to kill you."

Kai reached down and pulled Deku off the ground and led him to the grass.

"So, while you are calming down, let's talk about controlling your Quirk. The first keyword for you is meditation. You are thinking about Quirks as part of your body. That isn't entirely wrong, but you need to think about it mentally and spiritually as well. I am of the camp that believes that the Law of Conservation of Energy means that Quirks are definitive proof of the existence of the soul, at least as an energy form. Since your Quirk isn't morphic, your mental state and visualization will affect your use."

Kai reached down and pulled a pack of balloons from a small box that was on the grass where he had sat before. After blowing one up, Kai grabbed a pin.

"So, so far, this is how you have been using your power," Kai said, popping the balloon. "That balloon was your body. Not good for you." Kai blew up another balloon.

"This is what All Might told you to do." Kai slowly pushed the pin closer and closer until it touched the balloon, which of course popped. Kai blew up a third balloon. "Nice thought, but not gonna work very well," he said as he tied up the tail.

"This is what you did for Aizawa on Monday." Kai turned the balloon and pushed the pin in close to the tail. This time, the balloon didn't pop. However, after the pin was removed, air started leaking out anyways.

"That is a much better answer, but you are still causing damage to your body. Hopefully, you only need to do this when you can get away with being a glass cannon." Kai tossed the balloon aside.

Kai blew up one last balloon. This time, he put the pin back into the box. Then, he pulled out a small bottle that had once held pills. Opening it, he poured a small amount of a fine powder over his hands.

"This is some steel flecks from the support equipment workshop. I decided to clean up for them while I waited on a batch of nitroglycerine."

"Did you say nitro-"

"Never mind that right now, just a personal project/humbling demonstration for Bakago." Kai said, waving him off. He'd finished that project a while back- the Bakugo Box- all the power and more, none of the attitude!

"As your training requires boosting your skill and confidence, his training requires breaking his pride so that he is willing to learn. Otherwise, no teacher, even if God himself existed and descended, would be able to teach him. That is the answer to your question. By the way, never get nitroglycerin on your hands, it could explode, and it just feels nasty. So oily.

"Anyways, I have covered my hands with the approximate mass of a pin, but I think you can see what I'm getting at here." Kai shook his hands and pressed on the balloon. Of course, he was using far more force than he had used when he was poking the balloon with the pin.

"Things really are different when spread across a greater area. I mean, look at me! Every single cell in my body is screaming at me because of last night's work, but after a little rest, you just get used to it because everything is the same.

"So I think that this is how you should be looking at your own Quirk: think about where the energy comes from, isolate a small sliver of it, and dissolve that sliver across your whole body. Start as small as you can, since a failure of control on a small scale is much better than finding out that distributing, say, 20 percent capacity across your whole body is too much and you blow up your entire body.

"Now, let's get you practicing a steady Super Saiyan state. We'll start with just your mental image, since Ayako isn't here yet. After all, she can get you recovered for another run through the course. Then unarmed combat, and another round of mental training."

Kai chuckled. Being a teacher was fun.