Early Bird Catches a Mentor? (Darren)

This right here was the rather dumb reason why Darren was up at 5:07 in the morning, after completing that punishment run with Eli that was totally for his good and to forge his character, not because Darren had a big and easily assaulted ego.

Either way, Eli went straight back to bed muttering something about Darren being a psycho, and Darren himself decided to use this rare occasion where the martial arts room would be empty to get in some practice undisturbed. As far as he knew, he was the only one to be that early a bird in the whole school.

Well, you learn something new every day, don’t you?

He opened the sliding wooden door to find a blue-haired girl looking around curiously. So much for free, undisturbed practice, he though with a sight of resignation. “Oi, what are you doin’ here that early?” he asked, walking up to the girl until he stood in front of her, doing his best to hide the slight hint of annoyance that persisted on his face. He already knew the answer. “Wait, I know your face. You’re that girl with the free-flight girl. American name, Japanese surname, what was it again… Hoshizuka Kallen, innit?”

He shook his head. “Anyway, that don’t matter. I’m guessing you must have heard I often go here in the mornings if you’re layin’ there in ambush at 5AM.” He peeped through the window. “It’s still dark outside, for fuck’s sake. Fine, I can appreciate the effort. But if you wanna learn something, then learn by watchin’ first. I was going there for my mornin’ routine before I saw your ass in there.” A few months ago, accidentally suggesting he was looking at a girl’s ass with his shit-talking would have sent his brain in the panic, but he didn’t really care for that anymore. He had morning practice to do.

He set down the sports bag he was carrying by the sandbags and fished out a pair of bag gloves, bigger and more padded than match gloves, well suited for relentless pounding on the sandbags. He threw his sneakers to the side and slid on his shin guards instead. Stretched a little, tested his distance with a slow motion jab. Dressed in his black sports shorts and red breathable t-shirt, with the gloves on and the shin guards, he looked like a pro fighter on training camp. “There’s a bunch of free-use gloves over there,” he said, pointing to a box on the floor with his chin, in which were threwn all sorts of gloves of all shapes and sizes, even one clearly not meant to be worn by ‘regular’ human hands.

The first punch he threw showed he did not just look like a pro fighter on a training camp.

The bag certainly bulged and swung impressively, but it wasn’t necessarily the power of Darren’s blows that was impressive. It was the timing and the accuracy with which he hit the bag on the backswing, the justness and snappiness of his footwork around the bag, the variety and speed of his punches, kicks, elbows and knees, flowing smoothly into one another with seemingly no stutter in the transitions, harassing the bag with the tenacity of a really, really, really annoying mosquito.

Ten uninterrupted minutes of that -- and if you ever training on a sandbag before, you know how long that is -- and he finally stopped the onslaught, wiped his brow and said, not without a certain self-awareness of how cheesily faux badass the line sounded: “Alright, all done with the warm-up.”

At the end of his “warmup” -- not that he’d ever admit it, but of course he was showing off a little -- he had just been running after all -- Darren turned around to see the blue-haired girl as transfixed, before she snapped up and awake. “Damn, I thought you’d have taken the hint when I showed you the gloves. Anyway. Yes, good eye, I practice boxing in the Fujikawa gym in Musutafu. It’s a more balanced basis for martial arts than people think it is, really. But you’re right, there’s a bunch of other stuff in here. I pick what works and I tinker. And I practice a lot.” He slapped the bag behind him with the bag of his glove. “Been doing this over a year. Anyway, if you’re here, I won’t turn you down. Go warm up on the bags or something for a minute, I’ll get some shit ready.”

Leaving her with those wise words, he went to the storage room and came out with a big cardboard box, that he set down next to the resting tennis ball cannon. The box was filled with round, transparent plastic drum magazines, themselves filled with tennis balls, with a feeder at the bottom and another slot on top of the magazine. Darren set one up on top of the cannon, tested the rotation of the barrel and armed the feeding system whistling a menacingly innocent tune, occasionally shooting a glance at Karen that meant “stop looking at what I’m doing and keep warming up, you’re gonna need it.”

Once he was done, he called her to the machine with a whistle. “Nice baby, eh? It’s been here since this room opened. It used to have only one barrel, but I got the support nerds to upgrade it. They made the drum magazines too. And look!” He grabbed another magazine and stacked it on top of the other with a click. “The magazines feed each other! Perfect for endurance sessions. Amazing what these support nerds can do.”

He gave her a few seconds to appreciate the engineering and marinate in what was likely a mounting sensation of “what did I get myself into.”

“Anyway, we’re not gonna use it right now. Step back a little,” he continued, and he walked up in front of her and put up a guard. “First, show me what you can do. Do whatever, try to land a hit, use that quirk of yours too if you want, just don’t fucking break anything. If you can land a hit, I’ll lower the speed setting one crank. Ready? Doesn’t matter, go!”

“Aye aye, then shut up and showed me how it inspired you,” he said on a casual smile, the first hints of a half-smile drawing themselves on the corner of his lips.

His guard was similar to a boxer’s, or to a Philly shell guard to be exact: right gloves guarded the chin, while the left one guarded his waist and crotch. To his opponent presented his left elbow and shoulder, and relied on those, as well as his footwork, to defend himself. And, of course, his quirk. Opposite him, the blue-haired girl gathered a red aura around which he assumed had something to do with her quirk, unless he’d found himself facing an actual demon for some weird karmic reason.

Karen, as her name actually was, approached him with a series of feints with her hands, pulling back in the middle of feints. Darren calmly met them with twitches of the shoulder, confident his his ability to roll off her hits and elbow them away; he didn’t hesitate to twitch his left hand either, adding to the question he purposefully left in the air -- whether he was going to counter-attack or not. For now, he let the early bird try and catch the mentor.

Her real attack came in the way of a vicious low-kick to the chin, transitioning off the motion of one of her feints. Her rhythm was good, the attack flowed quickly, but alas, she was fighting Darren, a senpai with a year of experience over her, and that was always going to be an unfair match-up. He quite boringly checked the kick, raising his leg to block her tibia with the thick part of the bone, but Karen was yet to show her true colors as a fighter.

Pivoting off the leg that had just finished kicking, she gave gravity the middle finger and swung around to whip in a nastly left spinning heel kick to the midsection. Once again, even more boringly, Darren calmly transitioned to covering his ribs with a solid block. Much like Feng, this girl had technique, speed and agility, but she lacked stopping power. Also much like Feng, her movement was reminiscent of Autokinesis, although in a different manner; while the chinese girl’s sprung legs reproduced the explosivity of his quirk, Karen’s reproduced its freedom of movement, albeit with a much smoother movement.

“Right, I heard you was a flyin’ girl.” The grin on his face was an order of magnitude less boring than his defense had been so far. “I guess I should strut my stuff then.” On that note, he disappeared.

Well, not exactly, but he was pulled to his right with an urgency and abruptness that made it feel like he disappeared, with only the deep blue sparks of Autokinesis left behind to piece together what happened. Two activations later, he was already taking her back and grabbing her right wrist from behind. “Let’s dance!”

What he called dancing was spinning around with his quirk while keeping a firm hold on his “dance partner”’s wrist before releasing them on a collision course with the tatami below. He did it at speed, but in keeping with his earlier desire not to break anything, he held back, throwing her softly enough that he expected someone with a self-described “true flight” quirk to find back her balance before she’d crash on the ground.

If she successfully managed to land, however, she would find herself face-to-face with Darren, a big smile plastered across his face, and he would throw a lighting-quick kinetic-enhanced jab that’d stop an inch from her face, to test her reflexes. The delinquent was, as you’d expect, on the rougher side of the mentor scale.

Karen had indeed found herself in a spar with UA’s resident speedster; blessed not only with sheer velocity, Autokinesis also allowed for that movement speed to be applied freely, as long as he was not being kept rooted or immobilized by a grab for example -- so in a way, grabbing his wrist was not entirely the wrong idea.

However, though Darren, she should have felt the strength of his grip. There was already a lesson there, and Darren knew no better way of teaching than by example. On their way down, the blue-haired kouhai attempted to destabilize his flight using her own ability, but she was met with quick and precise course-corrections from her senpai, who kept an easygoing smile on his lips and a strong grip on her wrist.

Instead of his planned jab, when they landed, he quickly moved his leg behind hers to hook her ankle and trip her down. Now he knew that this wouldn’t be enough to mow down a flight user, but that’s why he still had her wrist in a grip. With his other hand, he grabbed her by the collar and added his upper body strength and weight to the tripping attempt. He aimed quite simply to fall on her and pin her on her back, controlling the leg he tripped in a judo hold and still pinning her down by the arm with the clear menace of an armbar.

“Wrong!” he said, still on top of her, very aware of how scummily menacing he looked, pinning down an underclassman like that; that was the point. As mentioned previously, Darren was on the rough side of the anime teacher scale, and he believed a good scare made for a good lesson. “Grabbing someone faster than you is a good idea, usually, but it ain’t if they’re also stronger. Strong guys can pin you down like that, an’ you lose your speed advantage. Against a stronger fighter, you should rely on your own strengths.”

He let her go and got back up, save for the wrist by which he helped her up, and finally let go for real. “Got it? Good. Alright, this time I’ll only defend, for real, I promise. Strut your stuff, and keep mobile. Use your strengths, you gonna need ‘em.” The poor girl was given no time to process what just happened that she was already being asked to punch back... And for all his promises of not hitting back, Darren sure liked to twitch his jab hand a lot.

Darren knew that “but”, for he had uttered it himself so many times before. He saw it sting the girl when he brought up her lack of power, and he could relate. Darren might seem strong when he broke stone slabs and bent bars of bronze and soft metals, but the truth was that among the school’s top students, he was the weakest in terms of damage. Jasmine’s leveling blasts, Tetsuko’s iron-cutting swords, Yumi’s searing thunder, even Elise’s tentacles were all more powerful than his strongest blows. Good old-fashioned strength training only took him so far; just like Karen, Darren instead relied on his mobility and his skill to fight. One of his punches might not compare, but he was fond of boasting that for every hit these “muscle-brained monkeys” managed to land, he’d land five back.

For now, however, Karen was back on the offensive, as instructed, and his grin only widened when he saw her approach him in a zig-zag pattern. It was a less mischievous grin than usual; it even incorporated elements of a proud smile. He used the same exact technique to get close to his opponents, something he dubbed the Kinetic Advance, and seeing it from the receiving end had something really cool about it. More than that, she even did the thing where she varied the speed of her impulsions to keep herself unpredictable!

It was like fighting a mirror image of himself when he first came to the school, if mirrors did genderbending.

He had a lesson to teach, however, he reminded himself as she reached melee range and, after another series of feints, finally began her assault. First came a wheel kick to the head, helped by her quirk, sudden and unpredictable, as she didn’t need the usual wind-up lesser people needed with their slavish obedience of the laws of gravity. As a regular user of the move himself, Darren’s surprise was short-lived and he simply leaned back, letting the girl’s heel whistle a few centimeters from his chin. Her next move came immediately, a liver blow using rotational power to add weight to the strike. Another creative attack. He almost felt bad frustrating it with a simple elbow block, using strength instead of skill this time. Third came a spinning heel, off the rotation of the liver blow, overextended to hit him in the back. He smiled, two sparks cracked at his feet, and he stepped out of range with an activation of his quirk.

“Alri--”

He tried putting a stop to it, but Karen wasn’t done. She came back with a quick literal flying knee to the face, and, almost surprised, Darren put up his guard. The knee never came; it was a feint for a stomach blow, as she flipped her way back down to earth to punch him right above the belt. Darren’s pride protested, but his growing teacher’s instincts were adamant; he had to take this punch. He clenched his abdominal muscles. The blow landed. He grinned and put his hand on her head.

“Alright, Kallen, very well done,” he boomed, unclear if he had forgotten her correct name or if he was doing it on purpose. “I like the cut of your jib, or whatever it is them oldhead senseis like to say. I know what imma teach you. Follow me.”

He walked back to the sandbags, from which their fight had led them away from, hopefully with Karen in tow. “I didn’t think I was that right when I said we had similar fighting styles, holy shit. You use your quirk in all the right ways. That zigzag thing when you keep changing speed, keep training that. That’s your best bet for getting close to the ranged goons. I know its hard thinking of where to activate your quirk next, but be careful not to do the same shit over and over, or you’ll get caught and get your ass handed to you. You don’t want that. Your feinting game is good, but keep working on it too. But, most importantly…”

They arrived next to the sandbags. Darren punched one off-handedly to give his next word more impact. “Power. I know, it’s annoying. Every dumbass around thinks its all about power and nothing else, but it’s about as stupid to try and go without it. You felt it when you landed that stomach blow, didn’t you? Strong people won’t go down just because you land a punch on them.” He marked a dramatic pause.

“Martial arts are all about beating strong people. Technique is a way to do it, but it will only take you so far. Speed. Mobility. All very good things to have. It will get you where you need to be, and pull you out of danger. In fact, it’s probably more important for hero work than everything else. But in a fight, you can’t ignore power. When you fight a villain, you have to put them down as fast as you can.” He demonstrated; all of a sudden, blue sparks coursed his arms and two power punches in quick succession rocked the poor sandbag. “Maybe if you’re very quick, or very skilled, you can put them down too. Maybe you can patiently wait for the counter opportunity while they keep destroying things around them. Or maybe they’re on the run and they won’t stay and fight, and you have to put them down on your own. Or maybe they’ll just ignore you because you can’t hurt them anyway.”

Once again, he punched the sandbag for impact, both literal and metaphorical. The poor thing was not even done swinging that it received another devastating hit, sending it right back to dangling by its chains. “Like it or not, heroes need power. I can teach you that. I can teach you to use the ground to generate power, and I can teach you how to give your strikes weight in mid-air. What do you say, Kallen?”

He steadied the swinging bag with the same hand that punched it and gave the girl his best attempt at a warm smile. The sparks in his eye however didn’t lie. Surprising as it was, giving how he usually carried himself, Darren had been discovering himself a real passion for teaching. At first, he only did it to get himself more strong opponents to have fun with; over the last year, however, he caught himself feeling proud about people who weren’t himself, which, to the narcissistic delinquent psychopath, was new. Some could argue that he was only interested in teaching because he liked feeling better than everybody else, and there would certainly be weight to their argument. The facts stayed, however, that Darren had just found himself the perfect trainee and he was more eager than ever to teach her everything he knew.

He brushed off the bluenette’s comment with a shrug. “Nah, it’s fine. The sooner you turn into a proper sparring partner, the better for me,” he said with am impish smile, pointing at his head to underline his advanced intelligence. Leaving her to wonder just exactly how uninterested his teachings were, he quickly transitioned into the lesson.

“Okay, number one most important shit. Stay grounded.” He let it hang in the air for a second. “Don’t look at me like a fookin sardine, think about it. If you don’t have to, don’t go up. It’s fine down there too. First of all, if the other guy don’t know you, you get the element of surprise, he don’t know what your quirk is, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna happen if you fly in T-posing through the window. If they do know you, they’ll try to figure something out to keep you grounded, and you’re gonna wanna know how to handle your ass down there. One time in junior high I fought some dude from another school, and that dickless bastard had one of his flunkies melt the asphalt with his quirk. Shit was a tar pit, I was up to the ankles, those assholes ruined my shoes too. Point is, they ganged on me and I had to fight off five dudes while I couldn’t lift a fuckin toe. That’s where I got my first scar on the right shoulder!”

He was embellishing a little. In truth, it was three dudes, and he got his ass kicked. The scar thing was true, though.

“Anyway, what I mean is just because you can’t fly don’t mean you always have to go up in the air. You can fly on the ground, though. Watch.” He grabbed one of the sandbags and dragged it into a more central position to the metallic sound of the chains and the grating of the ceiling rails. Once in position, he confirmed once more that she was watching and demonstrated. “Watch the legs,” he said.

The blue sparks that came on when his quirk was in use started coursing his legs, and an instant later he was circling around the sandbag at speed, peppering it with jabs all the while, quickly changing directions. He stepped to the right, an actual, proper step, before suddenly being pulled to the left by an activation of his quirk, circled for a while, stopped, went again, feinted changing the direction of his rotation, kept going, changed for real, turned back the other way, turned again, and finally feinted going left and right with small activations, like a metronome gone crazy, before finally spinning on himself and delivering a straight lateral kick of the rotation, sparks cracking decisively through both legs and shoulders.

“See? You don’t have to fly up. Flying to the side or flying down is good shit too. Thing is, you can feint like a motherfucker. You can actually step in one direction, no fake or nothin’, and just completely go the other way, and if you do it right there’s no way to read that but guess. That’s because you’re on the ground. The ground helps you change direction. Use it to your advantage. Don’t think of usin’ your quirk as going into flyin’ mode. Learn to fly on the ground.”

He gave her a second to digest all that. If she thought he was done blabbering about the ground, though, she’d be sorely mistaken. “Next, power from the ground. You probably heard a teacher or two say some shit like borrowing power from the ground. That’s a nice way to think about it, and it’s also completely fookin wrong. It’s the other way around. When you do a straight punch,” he demonstrated in slow motion, insisting on the step-in and the moment of impact, “which muscle do you push with the most? The legs. You push against the ground, so that there is a solid base behind your punch, so you’re not the one that gets pushed off by your own attack. That’s the whole idea. You want to push against the ground at the same time as you’re pushing against your opponent when you hit them. That’s what i mean by flying down.”

Once again, he demonstrated a straight punch, stopping at the point of impact. “That’s gonna be your first exercise. You should be able to concentrate your quirk in only one part of your body. From that position, you’re gonna wanna push against the bag as you’re pushing down on your back leg with your quirk. Once you can do that shit easy, you move to an actual punch, and you do it at speed. Bam.” He showed her once more, pushing down on his right leg in a shower of blue sparks as his fist rested against the bag. It did not look like much of a push, the sandbag nonetheless swung rather impressively. He did it again at speed, and this time his fist flew like an arrow, or more accurately, like a ballista bolt, despite the sparks once again being located entirely in his leg, crashing into the bag with much more impact this time.

“Remember that. Push down, as you punch the sandbag. That’s the first step for any of the stuff I’m teachin’ you. If you can’t do that, you ain’t never going to master mid-air fighting. I know, it’s counter-intuitive, but trust me, I know what I’m doing.” Darren grinned in a way that wanted to be reassuring. He then stepped away from the bag, invited the girl to go at it with a gesture, and crossed his arms to observe her performance with his best judging look.