Leo
He was convinced that ample preparation was necessary before the new settlers arrived in his new turf. He had already predicted that it was now a whole new world where some of the old rules would not apply. Like basic human rights, that was obviously a thing of the past and it would be unwise to bank on human conscience and morality in a time of war. Power would be the only thing that could protect a person at that point.
Leo had three things on his agenda. Firstly, he was supposed to train his physique so that his body would absorb more energy within his level or at least ascertain how well his body could store and utilise energy. It was kind of like how two people can be in the same weight class however one is more physically fit and muscular while the other is flabby. The flabby guy expends more energy to produce less results than the fit guy. The efficiency with which he used energy would be determined by his general fitness and muscle tone. He would need to do a lot of physical training while pushing his body to its new limits.
Secondly, he had to train in fighting techniques to be able actually allocate his power efficiently in combat. He possessed no martial art or fighting background prior to the apocalypse and thus was in great danger in the days to come. Fortunately, his brain now possessed the learning capabilities that were thousands of times greater than those he had pre-awakening and he was pretty smart even then. He would then try to find training material online while he was at it. The internet in the house he was staying in luckily was operational.
Thirdly, he had to train his abilities until all of them reached 0.5% at the very least. he had already deduced that they would increase in power and magnitude the higher his fusion percentage reached and thus he was greatly motivated to train each of them extremely well. He was less sure about how to get those trained though but had things he wanted to try out. He was aware that in situations where no clear method or solution presented itself then a lot of trial and error would be key.
Thus, the next day he woke up bright and early and researched a full-body workout for beginners online and noted a lot of key workout positions and training plans that he could sample from. He picked everything from beginner upper body, lower and core training plans. It looked a bit strenuous however he was fully determined to see it through. He did a lot of stretching with some weird positions which were a combination of Chinese Taiichi breathing exercises to free up your body energy and part western and eastern yoga positions.
After the stretches, he actually felt a bit freer and more awake. Then he began with the lower body exercises with a lot of different stretches, crunches and squats. It was all specified numbers that he found online, however, when he finished the workout, he found it weird that he was hardly strained. He wondered about that as he went out for a 10-kilometre jog.
'Hmmm, I barely broke a sweat over that stuff that would have had me wheezing a couple of days ago,' he thought to himself as he was jogging. He realised that he had overlooked the fact that he was an awakened and even a level 1 awakened was significantly more powerful than a normal person. He now possessed the strength and reflexes of a superhuman. That also explained the high levels of detailed information that got transmitted to his brain from his five senses.
This meant he had to create a training regimen that would cause significant strain to a superhuman. "I guess I can be thankful for all the superhero movies and comic books I read growing up till now. For now, I can use captain America and daredevil as the basis for my training at the moment since they seem like entry-level superhumans." He got a dreamy look on his face as he thought to himself, 'I wonder if I can reach Almight levels, or even better the GOAT himself Superman levels once I level up.' His inner otaku and geek coming out in full force which was a welcome change from the brooding he had been doing for the past few days.
He went out in search of somewhere he could do the kind of training he was after. He checked around the small closed community and found that the place actually had a gym. The gym was not bad for amateur boxers and the like, however, he felt like it would not do for his plans. He kept on searching for the perfect spot until he realised that it didn't exist. He realised that his body needed to constantly be in a state of strain in order to overcome who he used to be. He was aware that if he was as strong as Captain America at the moment, then people who were already strong would probably be 10 times stronger than him if not more. Then there were people who had skills that augmented physical abilities like the super strength one to consider.
He opted to create an environment with lots of different heavy objects of different sizes that he would work with and push around to strain different muscles in his body. He got an idea after thinking of the training place Almight chose for Deku, the first ten months he had to get his body ready for his power. He needed to bring lots of metal, be it beams, cars and tyres as well as lots of random things he could carry and push or pull as well as strap onto himself when he did long-distance running. Thus, he started noting the kind of stuff he would use as well as figuring out how he would transport it all. Long story short, he turned what used to be a park in the neighbourhood into a clutter zone full of a lot of heavy metal and cars that could drive there. That would be where his body would be forged.
After a day and a half spent setting up his personalised gym, he then decided to begin training his abilities. He was aware that psychometry was the hardest to train but it was also much simpler to figure out how to train it. He just needed to go around touching objects that possessed great emotional value to people in order to get a read on various feelings. The more sentimental the better. Psychometry was greatly tied to feelings and emotions as well as visions. He started gathering any and all objects that gave him vibes.
There were a lot of teddy bears involved. 'just great, now I am going to have a lot of creepy dolls around my house just staring at me all the time, 'he thought bitterly as he dropped a stack of stuff, he had found to help his training. he went into his room and used the computer to search up all the beginner guides to self-defence he could find. He even found a crash course into taekwondo, wing Chün and Taiichi. Normally a human is incapable of self-teaching martial arts however that only applies to non-superhumans who also don't happen to have a supercomputer for a brain.
He only needed to invest a little amount of time to ingrain the techniques into his body. Since most fighting is muscle memory while muscle memory is a near subconscious control of the body by the brain, he would just have to memorise all the techniques he wanted and then practise them until they became second nature.
He found that those three techniques were integral to the fighting style he wanted to possess, taekwondo would give him a very fast and mid-range fight style with ease of flow that would pair perfectly with his skill to sense danger. It would be his main fighting technique when in random fights and group fights. It would allow him to have more reach in a way.
Wing Chün was for when things got up close and personal and he needed to switch from kick dominated fighting to punches. He was fully aware of how incredibly fast and deadly it was when used by a master from Ip Man to Bruce Lee. He would use this in fights where he had to save his stamina while still taking down his enemies.
Last but certainly not least was the origin itself, Taiichi. This would be his defensive martial art as well as his solution to enemies who were more physically stronger than him. He had considered Judo and Jiu-jitsu but had settled on this one because of its rich history as well as potential. He realised that the chi aspects were now a realistic concept what with the seal being removed on the life energy of the human body and the planet.
He had chosen his fight styles and would now just have to practise the movements until he didn't even need to devote 0.0001 per cent of his brainpower to perform them. In the process of memorising and analysing the different martial arts, his hyper cognition had actually reached a higher fusion level of 0.09. This resulted in a slight improvement in his processing speed which made him smile.
Hours later around 8 pm on the second day of his training, five days left until the new settlers arrived, he finally began his first attempt to push psychometry. He sat on his bed and had a teddy bear, a worn tee shirt and an old book in front of him. He first put his hand on the book and felt a shiver go up to his hand as he felt different things from the book. It was a jumble of different feelings that were extremely vague. It felt like trying to tell what colours were in a rainbow room when there was not enough light to make them out. It was difficult to focus on anything.
He finally turned his attention to the tee shirt. It was a standard black rock band shirt with a band name on its front, 'Wilting Sound.' Weird name to be honest. He touched it and focused on it and finally felt a slight connection. It was like hearing someone talk about someone they knew very well. You learn all about the person from them that it feels like you actually know the person. But you don't actually know them, what you know is only the version of them you were told about. So, he only felt a vague connection to the teenager who owned the shirt that was limited to the times he wore it. He felt like he saw how much the guy (yea it was a guy) loved to play the guitar. How he loved to discuss songs with his bandmates. They were distinct feelings that were sent through his fingers as they rubbed the fabric of the shirt.
'Hmm, that was pretty cool. He seemed like a nice guy. I wonder what happened to him,' he thought as he looked at his fingers the shirt now left lying on his bed. He processed what he had experienced. It was not really a vision since he did not even know what the owner looked like but he felt the feelings behind memories he made. He felt how happy he was when he made music. That was pretty beautiful and Leo wondered if he had ever felt love and passion for anything in such a strong way.
He pondered for a few more minutes in silence digesting it all and then shifted his eyes to the final piece. The bear. It seemed pretty standard with faded fur and one eye looking like it might pop off any moment. He exhaled in preparation for the rush he felt and then touched it gingerly. It was an entirely different experience. He felt fear. Gripping, crippling fear. A very strong emotion as he saw a vision of a little girl hiding under her bed as her bedroom door was banged on loudly, a muffled voice yelling, "Chrys open the damn door."
The fear she felt became his own as he soaked in all her anxiety. She looked to be 6 years old as she hid from her father, Leo knew somehow. The pounding finally ceased but she did not come out from under her bed and squeezed the teddy bear tightly in her embrace as if it was a lifeline. The image faded as Leo dropped the bear. Tears filled his eyes as he felt both the residual fear Chrys felt as well as grief for a little girl he did not know. He realised that his ability might show him things he was not prepared to know at that moment.
He wondered silently (his still eyes stinging from tears) whether it was worth it. Then a vision of his home in ashes passed through his mind and a wave of rage came washing through him. A single-minded obsession for power and revenge, fully extinguished his doubts as he came to terms with the implications of that particular skill all for his ambitions.
His mind made, he checked his new fusion percentage for psychometry and found it had risen to become 0.05%. it seemed that the emotional outbreak that he got from Chrys was quite powerful. he was pleased by that result and then he cleaned up after himself. He felt tired after repeatedly using his ability. It was a sort of exhaustion that came from his core and he heeded the signs and went to sleep.
The next day he went researching for methods to improve brain potential and found three keys methods. Learning, meditation and reading. Learning was dependent on developing new skills like language or even learning how to play instruments and the like. Any new piece of knowledge would push him to a higher level of brain potential. The more technical the learning experience the better the effect.
Meditation was good for developing an active and powerful mind. It would also be useful after sessions of training in the other two ways. He would meditate at every opportunity he was free until he even learned how to meditate in his sleep. It would also promote his visualisation skills so that he could better create and run simulations in his head. This would be helpful when doing probability analysis models in his head.
Reading was pretty basic since the more extensive his reading then the more information base he would possess. He wanted to read up on all the medical knowledge he could find and fully develop the perfect understanding of how the body operated down to the molecular level. He had figured out that by fully understanding how his body worked and what biological processes did whatever for his body, he would be able to improve his training as well as fighting potential. Control was key. He wanted to reach a point where he could control his own healing speed in case of injuries.
His goals were extremely large however he was not deterred by the prospect. He seemed to be developing very stubborn and obsessive willpower which would be one of his greatest strengths as well as a powerful weakness for him in the days to come. He did a lot of reading and left the computer after thoroughly reading up on muscles and exercise as well as determined how to train his intuition.
He had searched up on the internet and found a sports shop large enough to sell what he needed at the moment. He found a place that sold a tennis ball machine with adjustable speed for his training. he found 15 of them in the stocks with 5 of them being the specific brand he wanted. He loaded all of them in a truck and rode over to the local basketball park where kids in the community used to play. He set the machines within a 10-meter radius of him and turned them on remotely to test out his reflexes.
He was fast enough to dodge the machines with his heightened speed and senses just barely. The machines would send 15 balls hurtling towards him at different moments and he would need to perfectly order his movements so that he dodged them and thanks to his hearing and sight he was able to avoid getting hit nine times out of ten, which is quite impressive however it frustrated him. He was extremely strict.
That was not the limit of his madness though, after determining that he was not yet physically fit enough to improve the dodging rate to 100% he finally took out a blindfold and covered his eyes. He then activated the machines with seconds apart remotely and then began the true training for intuition. It was an ability that was useful for prediction to a certain degree however he wanted it to fully become a sixth sense that was like spiderman's spider-sense. He, therefore, tried to dodge the balls whenever he felt the danger sense. He could not even dodge them 1 in 100 times but he did not let that dissuade him. He kept at it, trying to dodge and getting hit. The machines were close enough that being hit left a sting on his body that felt a little like a bee sting.
He finally stopped after all the balls were out of the machines and he collected them slowly but carefully without missing a single one and finally called it a day. At the end of the day, his intuition had risen to 0.2 % which was surprising to him because he did not really dodge anything. It confirmed that it was the properly trained method for him to push intuition forward actively. The problem was that most of the skills were not action-oriented thus training methods were not clear.
He had now found the perfect ways to push each skill with 4 days to go until when he expected the new settlers to arrive, he was now more efficient and equipped to be ready. He went to bed confident that he would achieve the short-term goals of 0.5 and amateur martial art expertise. He would be ready if there was anything that Chrys's vision had taught him it was that humans could be just as evil as the monster that took his mother and his home from him.