The Hero's Stand

18: 'Personal' Training

I completed my 100th push-up for the day with a fresh line of sweat dripping from my forehead. I had worked myself to the bone non-stop for a whole week and a half in order to maximise my chances in the sports festival. Most of my training had focused on honing my reaction times and combat skills as well as developing my muscles so I wasn't always relying on Star Platinum to fight.

That wasn't to say that Star Platinum had not been being trained as hard as possible too. I had set a personal goal of trying to up my maximum time stops per day to 17 or to increase the duration of my time stopping by a second. Both of these would give me an edge in the upcoming sports festival, with the latter being the more desirable target.

The problem with trying to train an ability you can only use 15 times a day before passing out is that, well. You can only use it 15 times a day without passing out.

This meant that physical training took priority as passing out from using my time stop too much lost me about eight hours to a day's worth of time that I could have used.

There was also the issue of my strategy to address. My more observant classmates will know how I handle fights now because of the amount of times I've done it in front of them. I needed a fresh new way of handling things that wasn't just to punch it really hard.

And my big issue was range.

Star Platinum could only move at maximum strength when it was under 5m away from me. That included through walls and in rough environments. Usually I'd flick metal balls to compensate for this but they were not allowed in to the sports festival. My conclusion was that if only a small part of Star Platinum were to exit that radius then I could maintain maximum power for even longer.

This begged the question of how flexible Star Platinum was. And by that I meant how far can it stretch?

It was a ridiculous question, sure but an important one non the less. It turned out in the end that the answer was very far.

Star Platinum could extend any one of it's fingers out to a maximum of 15m in a straight line and any one of it's legs/arms up to 10m for a short time before it hurt me like hell. Still enough time to get a weak kick in.

That solved that problem I guess.

The next issue I was to address was my pain tolerance. I felt it necessary to be able to take at least a few strong blows from my classmates if I was to win the sports festival. For this I'd need a sparring partner though. That and Recovery Girl.

I was sitting on a rock training Star Platinum's extend moves by using them constantly without stop and trying to hold them out for as long as possible. So far I could manage to extend it's leg out the full 10m for a kick that was nothing compared to my full strength but still packed a punch. The downside to using this ability was that it pulled the muscle in the respective body part it was used in.

My phone rang as I was doing this and I reached my hand into my pocket to get it, only to have each finger make a cracking noise that did not sound healthy.

I must have still pressed the pick up button though as Ururaka's concerned voice sounded from my pocket.

"Are you okay Deku?" She asked in response to my cry of pain.

"Yeah. I've just pulled about every muscle in my hands, wrists and calves but otherwise I'm doing just great. You?"

"That sounds nasty. We should meet up at recovery girl's office to get you seen to. I'll tell you about how I'm doing later."

"Sure" I sighed "I think I'm done training for today anyways. I'll be right there."

I walked back home and informed my mother that I'd be out for the rest of the day and she told me to be back by 6.