April 2, 2258 — Kurogane Estate Training Ground
Dawn was still soft when Hayato arrived at the training field. The grass held beads of dew and the air smelled clean—just a whisper of sweetness from the gardens. White chalk lines marked the rectangle where the estate's private instructors ran drills. A pavilion stood off to one side with training dummies, cones, and a small stack of wheeled shields. The kind of place built for repetition and punishment disguised as discipline.
Daigo Arashiyama waited in the center, hands on his hips, a silhouette of broad shoulders and a veteran's straight posture. Up close, he looked exactly like his reputation: tall, solid, a scar over one eyebrow and a beard trimmed short. He wore simple training gear—nothing flashy. His presence pulled at the air like gravity.
He saw Hayato, nodded once. "You must be the kid. Hayato, right?"
Hayato bowed stiffly. "Yes. Good morning, Daigo-san. Thank you for coming."
"Daigo," the man said, and the name came out like an order. "No formalities. We'll keep it blunt. Two years since your awakening, right?"
Hayato swallowed. "Yes. Two years."
Daigo's mouth twitched. "Alright then. Let's see how much of that two years is actual grit."
Ryuunosuke and Miyabi lingered by the pavilion, both watching with measured expressions. Mr. Kurogane's face had a look of expectation; Miyabi's expression was more like a worried mother's, hands clasped.
Hayato felt the small rise of nerves. Don't be stupid. This is training. Grounded. He inhaled, then asked in his mind.
System, hand control over. I want to use my quirk myself—no passive management.
[ Passive support disengaged. Control handed to Host. Filters reduced to essential environmental data only. Caution advised: sudden perceptual expansion expected. ]
That was the moment the world tilted in an odd way—no cinematic flash, just a soft hush. The noises at the edge of his hearing fell away so gently it felt like a hand smoothing ripples from a pond. The air thickened with clarity: the tiny motion of a leaf, the slow twitch in Daigo's jaw, a far-off delivery truck rolling on the road like a giant whale through water. Colors didn't get brighter; instead they arranged themselves into slow-motion frames, each detail a bead on a string.
Hayato's breath came shallow. He felt something uncoil inside him and, as if someone had thrown a switch, his domain started to stretch to it's limit.
Two point six kilometers? He didn't think in words so much as in an array of impressions—distance, presence, direction. His domain was far larger than before. The estate, the fields beyond, the municipal scrubland, even the road and the tiny figures walking along it—they all existed as faint pulses in his awareness.
He could feel the entry path of a cyclist in the distance as precisely as he felt the grain of gravel under his shoe. The System's earlier filter—so useful—quietly reduced the flood to a manageable roar.
"System, what exactly am I feeling?"
[ You are perceiving a spatio-temporal field generated by your Speed Domain. Passive radius now ~2.6 km. Sensory feed contains motion vectors, mass distributions, and spatio-stability indices. Irrelevant low-frequency noise filtered. Cognitive load manageable but elevated. ]
Hayato blinked slowly. Okay. Don't get cocky. This is huge, but keep grounded. He focused on Daigo again.
Daigo took two steps forward, measuring. He had the gait of someone who could bend entire buildings in rescue operations—one part raw force, two parts practiced efficiency. Hayato noticed micro-habits: how Daigo shifted his weight before a heavy punch, how his shoulders tightened before a snap counter. These were small things every fighter had; perceiving them felt like reading the margin notes of his opponent.
Daigo grunted once. "Show me what you've got. No posing, no holding back." He dropped into a stance that made it clear he'd rather teach with pain than words.
Hayato didn't hesitate. He tightened his core and moved—but not how he used to when the System held his hand. This time, he let the quirk push perception and motion both. His first strike blurred forward: a straight, hard punch aimed at Daigo's sternum.
Everything around him slowed to the pace he chose. The punch felt short and earth-bound to him, a single simple line; to everyone else it was a jet. The contact with Daigo's forearm landed with a muffled thud that raced up Hayato's arm. The vibration was honest—Daigo didn't flinch spectacularly; he absorbed and redirected.
Daigo countered reflexively: a palm strike to Hayato's chest, a feint, and then a sweep. Hayato pivoted, feeling the air rearrange around his feet as his domain interacted with his motion. He rolled, came up with a low kick at Daigo's side. Daigo blocked with the outside of his elbow, then used that contact to pull Hayato into a clinch.
For a half-second Hayato felt that old quiet panic: I could go farther, faster. He tamped it down, hard.
He could have let the System take over—let it micro-adjust every microsecond. He hadn't. He wanted this to be his.
Daigo worked like someone who'd spent decades converting breath into force. His Force Drive wasn't just a brute multiplier; it was economy. He breathed in a short, rapid cycle, and where his ribs expanded the air became potential. He turned that into shove, into the locking twist that pinned Hayato's shoulder to his ribs for a brief second.
Hayato grunted, felt the restraint, and used his perception to find a tiny opening in Daigo's grip: a slack in the thumb. He slipped, twisted his hips, and drove his shoulder into Daigo's chest. The world went loud again for a moment—the crunch of cloth, a grunt—but Hayato knew he'd pushed Daigo off balance. The veteran didn't fall; he recovered, using that momentum to spin and counter with a low elbow that clipped Hayato's side.
Hayato staggered back, breath ragged. Sweat pricked his scalp. The domain hummed faintly in his mind—an awareness tool, not a power he wanted to waste.
Daigo smiled, not unkindly. "Good. Control is there. Power's there. But you move like a person trying to outrun himself. Too much speed, not enough… frame."
Hayato wiped the sweat from his eyebrow. "Meaning?"
Daigo flexed his hand. "You're accelerating through everything, but you leak energy on the return. You don't keep your center solid. Work your core, control breathing. Also—you think speed is everything. It's not. Speed combined with sudden slowdown breaks people."
Hayato considered that. He'd read about deceleration strategies in combat logs, but never practiced them in real fights. The System had suggested such tests, but suggestion was different from reality.
He asked his mind: System, what limits am I hitting now? How long can I keep this domain that big without shredding myself?
[ Passive enhancement currently within safe metabolic constraints. Your body has been slowly adapting; however, sustained maximum output will accelerate cellular wear and neural fatigue. The System previously limited your output to baseline human ranges to prevent perceptual and metabolic overload—without it you would experience subjective time dilation so severe that psychological aging effects would occur (analogy: "feel" centuries in hours). That was the reason for the prior conservative management. ]
Hayato's eyebrows twitched. That was… way more serious than he'd expected. Then he let out a short laugh. Seriously. I would 'die of old age' mentally if I went full sensory all the time. He felt oddly relieved. The System had kept him sane.
He tested the limit again—this time by trying to slow down inside the domain. Rather than only accelerating, he pulled the field tight in his head, slowing the relative motion of his limbs and Daigo's. For an instant the veteran's foot came at a pace that let Hayato see the grains of dirt shift before impact; Hayato ducked and countered with a palm strike to Daigo's chest that caught the man off-guard. The surprise showed: a micro-stagger.
Daigo whistled. "Alright. Good. That—using slowdown—was smart. Far better than just speeding into people like… fireworks."
Hayato felt heat climb his neck in pride. That was the point. He pushed again—more controlled—and Daigo landed a solid punch to his shoulder that left a ringing ache. Hayato smiled despite the pain.
The fight continued. Each exchange taught and revealed. Daigo wasn't a monster of speed; he was a technician with an enhancer's base. His Force Drive let him build short, brutal windows of force by converting breath into kinetic output, but his real weapons were angles and timing. He used shifts of balance to create openings and then punished them.
At one point Hayato decided to test range. He walked—deliberately—and in the time it took the world to translate his motion, he was near the edge of the training field and then back again in a blink. Not running; walking. He felt exhilaration run through him. If I run— He didn't need to finish the thought.
Daigo clapped once mid-stance, interrupting Hayato's reverie. "You can cross ground fast enough that distance becomes meaningless. That's both advantage and liability. You'll run through things if you're not careful. Also, your strikes hit fast—too fast to hold power if you're careless. Connect slower, then speed up the second you break contact."
Hayato nodded and began to focus on the thing Daigo said: slow entry, explosive exit. He practiced in micro-exchanges—feint slow, blow fast; blow slow, accelerate out. Each minute of sparring was a lesson etched into muscle memory.
After several minutes — long by Hayato's internal clock and shorter to the others — Daigo pinned him in a classic judo style roll, then used the grab to flip and hold Hayato brief and tight, a controlled restraint not meant to hurt but to teach the sensation of being overrun.
Hayato accepted it. He felt his chest thrum. He could have activated the system to break free quickly, but the taste of resistance was more instructive.
When Daigo let him up, his breath was heavy and his smile was real. "Not bad for a kid."
They sat on the grass for a few minutes, stretching. Daigo offered a water bottle. "Two things," he said. "First: work on the back, the spinal bracing. When you stop or slow, your spine needs to stay locked so energy doesn't leak. Second: train deceleration like you train acceleration. Most speed quirks teach people to go fast—few teach you to arrive."
Hayato listened, noting every word.
He took a long drink and asked the System the question he'd been circling the whole time: what exactly were his active options beyond this passive domain?
[Active Ability 1 — Limit Break: Temporarily amplify domain range and manipulation strength beyond current limits. Duration short; cooldown long. Side-effect: forced quirk dormancy for a period proportional to amplification used. Monitor biomass and neural strain. ]
[Active Ability 2 — Forced Extension: Override cooldown to use domain during Limit Break dormancy at the cost of severe physiological and neural damage. Potentially lethal if used recklessly. ][Note: These are core applications discovered by System extrapolation. Host can create additional active techniques through deliberate experimentation and refinement. ]
Hayato's stomach tightened, these abilities sounded rather grim. So I can push beyond this, but the cost— He ran a hand over his face. The reality was sober. If Limit Break gave him a short window of near-godlike ability, the price was steep. And Forced Extension? That was desperation-level.
He looked at Daigo, who was gathering the few cones and flipping a wheeled shield casually. "You know what limits you'll have. Use them wisely and train to overcome your limits."
"Understood," Hayato said. He meant it.
Daigo paused, the veteran's face softening for a second. "One more thing—growth. Your body will fill out more. Strength comes with size sometimes. Don't be upset if your training has to change as your body changes." He checked Hayato's posture. "You'll get stronger. Just don't be impatient. Strength isn't only muscle—control is the real ticket."
Hayato shrugged. "I'm fine with that. I'll just keep practicing. Everyday."
"I believe that," Daigo said. "We'll keep this up 'til I'm convinced nothing out there can catch you off guard."
They stood, shook hands. Ryuunosuke stepped forward, the pride on his face plain and the worry softened by relief. "Good work, son."
Miyabi hugged Hayato, whispering, "Be careful, okay?" Hayato hugged back, smelling faintly of his mother's lavender.
That night, the routine reasserted itself. Hayato studied advanced materials—high-school level and above—into the night, cross-referencing combat dynamics and biomechanical studies. The System recorded metrics from the fight and fed him a prioritized list.
[ Focus Areas: Core stability drills; breathing coordination with Force-Drive-like resistance; deceleration muscle groups (hamstrings, glutes, lumbar stabilizers); interval training for recovery during high-speed output. ]
Hayato made a plan, scribbled drills, and lay awake a while thinking about the feel of the domain—how large it had been, how precise. He smiled to himself. The world felt broader than ever.
This is just the start, he thought. If I train like this, I'll be ready for whatever happens before the main story starts.
He let that small, dangerous confidence settle into his bones and, for the first time in a long time, let his breathing slow on purpose. Tomorrow, more drills. More reading. More incremental edges.
And so, the days blurred into routine—training, study, refinement. Each sunrise stretched his domain a little wider, each night etched new lessons into muscle and mind. Time moved fast, but not faster than Hayato. And with his 14th birthday drawing near, the calm before the storm was ending.
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Author's Note: Some of you might think he's a bit weaker than expected right now. Well, news for you — after this time skip, he's going to be stronger than you anticipate, so don't be shocked by the contrast. Just accept his strength.