Just like CR7 said against the mighty Uzbekistan.... "I AM BACK!!!"
Hello there people. It's been a while lol. Sorry for the short break, my summer classes had just started and I had to lock in for a while. But worry not, I am back on updating.
So enjoy.
***
While Momo and Akira were learning the true essence of being a hero from a rabbit who demanded their sweets as payment...
Izuku Midoriya was getting his ass kicked by an old man.
Gran Torino's building was cramped. And in a poor condition. Peeling wallpaper. A kitchen that smelled permanently of sweets.
Furniture that had been rearranged — or rather, destroyed and replaced — so many times that the current layout was less "interior design" and more "whatever survived the last training session."
And in the middle of this apartment, Izuku Midoriya was spinning in circles.
As he couldn't track the old man.
Gran Torino — real name: Sorahiko Torino — was seventy-something years old, barely four feet tall, and moved like a pinball that God himself had launched. His quirk, Jet, allowed him to expel air from the soles of his feet at high pressure, propelling himself in any direction at speeds that made Izuku's eyes blur and his brain stutter.
The old man was everywhere.
Ceiling. Wall. Floor. Ceiling again. Behind Izuku. Above Izuku. Somehow, below Izuku, even though they were on the ground floor and the concept of "below" shouldn't have applied.
WHOOSH.
Gran Torino ricocheted off the left wall, angled toward the ceiling, bounced off a support beam, and came screaming toward Izuku's head like a geriatric missile.
Izuku dodged. Barely. The old man's fist grazed his hair, and the air pressure from the pass ruffled his uniform.
"TOO SLOW!" Gran Torino yelled from somewhere behind him, already bouncing again.
Izuku spun. His eyes were trying to find him... alas, all they could do was try.
It wasn't enough.
Gran Torino came again. From the right this time. Izuku raised his guard arms up, weight centered, the defensive stance that every combat textbook recommended.
The old man went under his guard. A palm strike to the stomach that doubled Izuku over, followed by a kick to the shoulder that sent him stumbling into the kitchen counter.
"You're thinking too much!" Gran Torino called from the opposite wall, where he was perched like a bird on a telephone wire. "Your body is reacting, but your brain is three steps behind! By the time you decide what to do, I've already done it twice!"
Izuku pushed himself off the counter.
He was failing.
He knew it. Gran Torino knew it. The apartment knew it. Even the cockroach in the corner that had been watching the entire session with what Izuku could only describe as judgmental antennae knew it.
The problem wasn't power. The problem was something more fundamental.
In simple words... Izuku didn't know how to fight.
He could punch. He could kick. He could channel the most powerful quirk in existence through his body and deliver strikes that could shatter concrete. But fighting — real fighting, the kind where speed and instinct and body mechanics mattered more than raw power — was something he had never learned.
He threw punches. He didn't fight.
And the distinction was killing him.
Gran Torino launched again. Izuku tracked the trajectory — ceiling, left wall, angle of approach thirty degrees — and threw a punch.
The punch was powerful. Perfectly aimed. And completely useless, because Gran Torino had already changed direction mid-bounce, the air jets on his feet adjusting his vector with a precision that decades of experience had honed to an art form.
The old man's knee caught Izuku in the side. Izuku stumbled. Gran Torino bounced off his shoulder, used the momentum to ricochet to the ceiling, and came back down with an elbow that Izuku barely blocked.
"AGAIN!" Gran Torino yelled. "STOP THINKING! START MOVING!"
Izuku gritted his teeth. His body ached. His lungs burned. And in the back of his mind, beneath the pain and the frustration and the desperate desire to land just one hit on the old man who was using him as a human pinball bumper, a voice spoke.
Not Gran Torino's voice.
Akira's.
It came from a memory. A conversation they had when Izuku was healing from his injuries from the 2 v 2 battles.
"I'd recommend you learn how to fight properly. Not just throw punches, but really understand combat. And more importantly, learn how your own body works."
At the time, Izuku had nodded and forgotten about it. He had intended to follow up on it later on... sadly, he hadn't.
And now, spinning in circles in a cramped apartment while a seventy-year-old man bounced off the walls like a caffeinated squirrel, he was paying the price.
Learn how to fight. Not just punch.
The words echoed. And with them, an image.
A memory from training. U.A.'s gymnasium. Akira and Momo sparring — hand-to-hand, no quirks, just technique. Izuku had been watching from the sideline, notebook in hand, scribbling observations.
Momo had thrown a punch....
Akira ducked.
Not backward. Not sideways. Down. Under the punch, inside Momo's guard, so close that their bodies almost touched. And in the same motion he swept his leg low.
The sweep caught Momo's ankle. Her balance broke. Her weight shifted to the wrong foot at the wrong time. And Akira's foot came up — not a kick, but a push, a redirection of force applied to her planted leg at the exact moment when it was bearing all her weight.
And she fell.
Learn how your own body works.
Izuku's eyes widened.
YES!
The shout was internal. Silent. But the energy behind it was volcanic... the fraction of a second when Gran Torino's movement shifted from flight to a strike. The moment when the old man's body committed to a direction and couldn't change it.
The moment of vulnerability.
Gran Torino launched again. Ceiling. Right wall targeting Izuku's head.
Izuku didn't try to block. He didn't try to counter-punch. He didn't try to track the full trajectory.
He watched the angle. He read the approach. And at the last possible second, when Gran Torino's hand was reaching for his head, when the old man's body was committed to the grab, when momentum had made the direction irreversible.
Izuku ducked.
Under the grab. Inside the arc. The same motion he had watched Akira perform in the gymnasium.
Gran Torino's hand closed on empty air. His eyes widened with genuine surprise of a veteran who had expected the same pattern and received something new.
The old man's momentum carried him past Izuku. He landed on the floor behind him, and Izuku was already moving.
He bent low. Extended his leg and swept.
The motion was rough. Unpracticed. Nothing like Akira's fluid, trained execution.
But it was there. And it was about to work.
Alas... they were talking about a veteran hero here. A man who had trained the Symbol of Peace. A man who had spent fifty years turning his body into a weapon that could adapt to anything.
No way he would fall for such a basic move.
Gran Torino saw the sweep coming. And he smiled.
At the last possible second, the old man fired his jets. A burst of compressed air launched him upward, clearing the sweep by centimetres. He rose, flipped, and came down on Izuku's back.
Izuku hit the floor, and Gran Torino's foot planted between his shoulder blades, pinning him with a weight that was disproportionate to the old man's size.
"Oof!"
"Well, well, well," Gran Torino said from his position on Izuku's back. "Would you look at that."
He poked Izuku's cheek with his finger.
"Here I was thinking that you were just a blind follower of that brat. One of those kids who hears a strong guy talk and nods along without actually understanding what he's saying."
He poked again.
"But look at you! You can actually use your brain this way too! That was a very good attempt!"
Izuku lay on the floor. His face was pressed against the wood. His back was being used as a standing platform by a seventy-year-old man who weighed less than his backpack. He had failed the technique. He had been pinned. He had been poked in the face repeatedly.
And yet.
Pride swelled in his chest. Genuine, warm, unmistakable pride. Because he had understood something. He had applied something. He had taken a piece of advice from a classmate, connected it to an observation from a training session, and translated it into action in a live combat scenario.
It hadn't worked. But it had been right.
"Thank you, sir!!!" Izuku said, his voice muffled by the floor but carrying the unmistakable enthusiasm of a boy who treated every failure as a learning opportunity and every compliment as fuel.
Gran Torino snorted. He stepped off Izuku's back, bounced to the doorway, and grabbed a jacket from the hook.
"Think about what you just did, kid," the old man said. "That instinct — reading your opponent's body, finding the window, attacking the balance instead of the body — that's real combat. That's what separates a fighter from an idiot puncher."
He pulled the jacket on.
"I'll be gone for a while. Grabbing some grub. Don't break anything while I'm out."
The door closed.
Izuku lay on the floor for another thirty seconds. Then he pushed himself up. Sat cross-legged. Stared at the wall.
That instinct. Reading your opponent's body. Finding the window.
He had done it once. Imperfectly... But he had done it.
***
Later that night, the city was quiet.
Gran Torino had gone to bed hours ago, but Izuku couldn't sleep.
He slipped out of the apartment. Down the stairs. Into the alley beside the building.
He stood in the alley as Akira's words came back.
"I'd recommend you learn how to fight properly. Not just throw punches, but really understand combat. And more importantly, learn how your own body works."
Learn how your own body works.
He kept repeating it. Turning it over in his mind like a stone in a river, feeling its edges, testing its weight.
His body. Not One For All's body. Not All Might's body. His body. Izuku Midoriya's body. The one that had been quirkless for fourteen years. The one that had been broken and rebuilt and broken again. The one that carried the most powerful quirk in existence but couldn't use more than five percent of it without shattering.
He had been so focused on the quirk — on controlling One For All, on increasing his output, on learning to channel power without breaking himself — that he had neglected the vessel. The body that held the power. The machine that delivered it.
What good was a cannon if the platform couldn't aim?
And so he began.
Trying to harness the power of both his body and quirk.
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Whenever i said the most powerfull quirk.. that is in Izuku's pov. For him All Might's quirk is the strongest.
Plus if you want to support me, you can join my P@teron and read up to +15 advanced chapters and support me you can alway join my P@treaon. (Just search up Joe_Mama p@treon on google.)