It felt weird coming back to one of his old training grounds.
The forest hadn't changed much since Izuku had last been here, the trees were still the same old immobile greenery they had always been, the small ravine still had the same river, and the broken pieces of logs he had broken so long ago was still lying in it, though now they were rotten and waterlogged.
No, the main thing that had changed was Izuku. Or rather, the fact that he now wasn't alone.
During his training, he had learned to associate the forests with quiet and isolation. Sure, Venom had been with him the entire time, but back then, he hadn't talked at all, and Izuku had for the most part just been talking to himself as he tried to communicate.
Now though, he knew for a fact that no matter what happened, he would never be alone again.
That was both refreshing, and kinda disturbing in a way that Izuku hadn't truly considered before.
Today though, they weren't here to simply jump and run around. They were here too, as Venom put it "Learn the art of war." .
After having made certain no other humans were anywhere near them, it was time to begin.
"So, the first thing you need to know is a bit about Klyntar Biology. Namely how it changes as we go through our life cycle."
"You… You mentioned something about that when you were talking with my mom."
"Indeed. We Klyntar are not like lifeforms based around evolution. We do not age and die from old age. Nor do we die from the lack of nutrition."
"If one were to… Say… Imprison one on a moon in the middle of nowhere space for completely unjustified reasons, and leave that poor guy there for millions and millions of years, said Klyntar would never actually die from hunger or old age. There would always be a chance that it would get free, and could recover completely. "
Izuku very much doubted that whatever it had been that got Venom imprisoned on the moon had been truly unjust. The fact that he had utterly refused to tell him anything about what it was, kinda sold him on that. But he didn't pry either. It was obviously a very sore topic for him, for very obvious reasons.
"However, while we do not age, or die from malnutrition, we do have a life cycle before we reach our mature state. We begin our life after spawning as a relatively weak being, not too dissimilar to how we were when the two of us first bonded, just with a much more active mind."
"After having bonded to our first host for some time, and having absorbed enough energy, we move on to our… Let's call it the Klyntar equivalent of a teenager. Always running around and causing massive problems for the older generations."
There was incredible disgust in his voice as he talked about them like they were the bane of everything good in the world.
"Anyway, their way of acting isn't important here. You're never gonna meet a Klyntar at this stage of their life. What is important, is how they differ from the next stage of development, the adult one."
"At this stage, the Klyntar ability to bond fully to a host isn't nearly as strong and defined as it is for us adults, which also means that they are far less rigid. In other words, their actual strength is Farber below ours, but at the same time they can do things we cannot."
"For example, a younger Klyntar can easily create and crystallize a sharp edge from their mass and hold it without any problem. Thus in battle, they tend to favor stabbing and cutting, while we use power-based attacks."
The image of him forming a giant black katana and cleaving through steel formed inside of Izuku's mind. Then he frowned.
"Wait… Didn't you say that this Ultimate technique of yours was called the scythe? How can that be when we can't form a sharp blade?"
"We'll get to that. Just show some damned patience."
"Anyway, this is not the only thing that separates us from juveniles. They also have a much faster time healing injuries to their host, but also Juveniles aren't able to form teeth. Instead, when they form their head, they instead crystallize jagged pieces of their being into a vague proximation of a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth."
"Okay… That sounds… Even more terrifying than your teeth, but what about it?"
"Well, without teeth, they obviously can't form poison inside their non-existent teeth. Originally we thought that was the only thing that their lack of teeth affected. Well, that and not being able to form additional mouths other places on their host body."
Izuku just sat in silence for a moment, staring in shock before he spoke again.
"Why… Why would anyone ever want to do that? That's horrifying!"
"Oh, don't get your pants in a twist. It's just additional mouths on top of the black suit, not another set from your actual skin."
Izuku relaxed again, the image of body horror of fangled mouths sprouting from his skin leaving his mind.
"As for why, it's pretty good to have if you suddenly get your mouth blocked, and you still need to keep talking."
"But back to the scythe. Long, long ago, there was a Klyntar who thought that our ability to form large, white fangs could be used for other things than simply injecting our enemy with poison."
Down below Izuku's hand, black liquid formed into a long sleek rope of black, then at the end of that rope formed something else, the black taking the form of a long, sleek handle. Then, from the black formed something white, something far more solid than the black mass around it. A long, narrow white tooth, in the form of a scythe blade.
"Thus Luxyrr created this." Venom said with a proud tone in his voice. "The scythe. Sure, it might not have the razor edge of the younger bastards, but when we swing this around with the kind of force we pack in our attacks… Well… Try for yourself."
Izuku stared at the long narrow white blade.
Then, he tried it out, and with a bit of movement, he realized that the whole thing worked kinda like a whip, extended from his arm, just with a sharp tip. Basically, the weapon was like a morning star.
As the weapon flew through the air, Izuku realized that the tip didn't move at random, instead the blade would always turn so that the curved tooth would always point towards where he was swinging it. An advantage of having a weapon that was just another part of him.
He looked around the clearing he was standing in and decided on a massive, thick old tree roughly 9 meters away from him.
Putting his back into it, he made a sideways sweep into the tree with the intention of putting a hole in it.
Instead, the scythe-like weapon slammed into the center of the tree, and with a resounding sound of splintering, it punched into the tree, then just kept going, ripping out the part of the tree that kept it from going.
The end result was that it looked like some big beast had taken a huge bite out of the wood, and with a huge part of the middle of the tree gone, everything above the whole was brought down by gravity.
Izuku stared in shock.
This… was a bit more destructive than he had thought.
"Beautiful isn't it? It's a technique for punching into stone and steel at a range, channeling all of our enormous strength into one breaking point! It's basically like a pickaxe! Sure, it doesn't have an edge, but when using our enormous strength, that doesn't matter! It'll rip the target apart through sheer force!"
He was right. Izuku knew enough about physics to understand the concept of this attack, and the fact he hadn't even put his full strength behind it and still caused such destruction spoke leagues about how dangerous it was.
There was just one single problem.
"Venom… I can't use this in the tournament. At all. If… If I use this against people, they'll die."
"Oh, in the finals? Oh yeah, you can't use this thing in a non-lethal tournament. This is a technique for war. Still, it never hurts to be prepared."
He wasn't wrong, but…
"Do you have any other techniques we can actually use for this battle?"
"Well, we were also planning on figuring out exactly what kind of fighting style best mixes with humans and the powers of a Klyntar."
"Couldn't you… I don't know… Teach me some Alien martial arts?"
Venom actually cackled in laughter.
...
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