Quirkless Volleyball (Adopted)

Chapter 17

"Alright, so what we're going to do," Tiger said to Midoriya, who stood in front of several trees, "is work on your control. You see those trees?" 

Midoriya nodded. 

"I want you to run up it," Tiger said. 

Midoriya blinked. "To run up it?" he asked. 

"Yes," Tiger nodded. "I want you to do this for a few reasons. One," Tiger raised a finger/paw/thing, "is because if you use too much, you'll break the tree. Use too little, you'll just fall onto the floor. Don't worry, I'll be watching you so you won't crack, snap, or pop anything. And third, I saw this somewhere and wanted to incorporate it in your training regime, just for a slightly different purpose."

"So we're not going to work on strength?" Midoriya asked. 

"Think of quirks this way," Tiger said. "You've got your regular body strength. That's good for everyday stuff and to be a suitable vessel for your quirk. Your quirk itself has strength as well. If you always try to punch or kick or fight as hard as you can, you'll run out of strength. You can do this by improving its stamina, which is one of the purposes of this training camp. That's why you have to be careful on how much you put into it, so you don't run out of power."

'Why does this sound so much like something I've heard before?'

"In any case," Tiger went, "Aizawa told me that he doesn't want any more scars on you." He then grumbled, "It's not like I'm that irresponsible when it comes to training." He crossed his arms and pouted. 

Midoriya sweatdropped. 'S-Sure...'

Tiger walked over to the large tree trunk that Midoriya was supposed to run up and patted it. He then leaned on it, his arm straightened. "Now, let's try it. Figure out what's the best 'percentage' to use." 

Midoriya nodded. "Alright." Getting into a running position that could've been used in a crosscountry race, Midoriya activated One for All. 

'I'm going to take it slow and use 4%', Midoriya thought, 'Half of what I can use without hurting myself.'

Green lightning danced on his skin as he started, pushing off his right foot, running at the tree at a comfortable pace. His foot stepped on the tree, one foot off the floor, and made a large dent in it. 

"Gak!" Midoriya let out as he put his other foot back down. Pulling his foot out of the newly made hole in the tree, Midoriya held back a sigh. He was going to need to put a bit less in his run. 

He guessed it made sense. Full Cowl was first at 5%, and even though it's still a huge difference, no matter what, it's still 1% between the two.

"That's alright," Tiger patted his back. "Try again. Put a little less omph in it. Don't use any more than you have to or need to, unless it's an emergency or something important."

"Mhm," Midoriya nodded. Making his way back to his starting position, he stared at the trunk. 

'Should I use 2%? Would that be too little? It's only a quarter of what I can do. Maybe I should do 3%, that would be better. Unless I somehow do 2.5% of this?'

"Any day now!" Tiger teased before laughing. "We want to be able to run up this thing several times in a row!"

'2.5% sounds good enough', Midoriya thought and he started running once more. Once he had reached the tree, he was careful not to step into the hole from before. Pushing on his foot up the almost completely vertical surface, he managed to get several meters above the ground before -

Crack

- his foot made another hole in the tree. Midoriya's eyes went wide as he flailed his arms around, finally grabbing a nearby branch. Once again, he pulled his foot out of the tree trunk and, hanging from the branch like a pull-up bar, dropped down. 

"That worked until I got up there," Midoriya pointed to where the second hole was. 

"It makes sense," Tiger said, "You have to have control over your quirk the entire time. I might not be the best person to work with, usually Pixie-Bob would be coaching this, but she already has to make her way around the emitter-quirked kids as well as Iida. That was a good attempt though, you managed to get around six or seven meters. Let's try getting up to that branch, about fifteen meters."

Midoriya was already making his way back over to the starting line before sighing. This was going to take a while, wasn't it.

----------

After several more slightly disastrous but pretty good attempts that slowly got better as he went along, Midoriya finally managed to get to the goal branch.

"That's it, Midoriya!" Tiger clapped. "Nice, now let's do that again."

Grabbing the branch, Midoriya dropped to the branch below him. Repeating that several times, he made it to the ground. 

"Are you feeling any different?" Tiger asked.

"I feel like my quirk is strengthening, if that's possible. Like if my quirk was..." Midoriya paused, thinking before hitting his fist onto his hand. "Ice cream!"

"I-Ice cream?"

"Yeah, like when you put it in when it's warm it's squishy but when you put it in the freezer, it gets harder and harder and more solid," Midoriya explained, "The freezer's like my control, the better it is, the colder it is and it makes my quirk better."

"I - Alright then," Tiger said awkwardly, "That's because the more you're able to control your quirk, it also helps 'strengthen' it. It's not actually strengthening it, it's making your foundation secure so that you can eventually strengthen it with training. Like... ice cream. If it melts, it's still the same amount than if it were firm. And it's better to eat it when it's cold." Tiger licked his lips for a second before snapping back into reality.

"So by doing this, it'll be easier to train tomorrow?" Midoriya asked. 

"Not easier," Tiger shook his head, "training is still going to be hard. It'll be faster, like how it'll take much less time for someone whose foundation is secure than someone who can't even control their quirk."

"Oh, alright then."

"Is that all the questions?" 

"Yep!"

"Then let's continue." 

Tiger had Midoriya train for almost an hour before Tiger looked at his phone. "Aizawa told me that he wanted you in ten minutes, I assume you know why?" 

"Oh, yeah, I do," Midoriya said. 

"I'm not going to pry into it," Tiger began, "but if you need any help, you can ask me."

"Thanks, Tiger-sensei," Midoriya smiled. 

"No need to call me sensei, I'm not an actual teacher," Tiger waved it off. "You might want to start heading back though." 

"Okay then, see you later!" Midoriya waved before running off.