Power Quaking - Chapter 8.1

"Get Up! It's Grinding Time! Get Up! It's Grinding Time! Get Up! It's Grinding Time! Get Up! It's Grinding Time! Get Up! It's Grinding Time!"

Jin Bubaigawara's eyes snapped open as the voice of his life coach thundered from his the phone sitting on his night stand beside his bed.

It was just a cut off audio clip he took from a video on Wetube and made it his wake up alarm for his phone. He'd made it an ingrained habit nowadays to listen to his advice.

It was thanks to that young boys videos, he'd managed to turn his life around and actually make something of himself after all.

"Ah, that feels good!" Jin groaned as he sat up in his bed and stretched out his arms, "Shit this sucks I wanna go back to bed, I'm so tired."

As always his mouth moved without his input and said something completely counterproductive to what he'd said previously.

But with practiced ease, he ignored at and shuffled over to side on the edge of his large and soft king sized bed and stretched out his legs. The first stretches of the morning were important for the day after all!

With that done, he jumped out of bed and dropped down onto his hands and feet and began his morning push ups. Not only would it get his muscles revving, but it also perfect for clearing his mind.

Just a simple five sets of fifty, he could do more of course, but it wasn't optimal to push himself to his limits from the get go after just waking up, this was just his starter course for the day!

Once that was done he stood up, wiping the sweat from his brow, before holding his other hand out. A clay-like substance formed from his palm and erupted into sludgy pile that then quickly rose up and formed into a perfect copy of himself.

"Can you get breakfast?" he asked his clone.

"Of course I can, you go have a shower dumbass," his clone snorted at him, "Can't show up to work smelling a bum." he added, before walking away and making his way through the apartment to the kitchen.

Jin rolled his eyes. Such an attitude he had. But, it was far better than how things were before. Where he couldn't even make copies of himself anymore because of the trauma he'd put himself through.

Entirely his own fault and something that would have no doubt crippled him for life or put him down a seriously bad path, if he hadn't come across the Wetube channel of the future top hero in training Imperial!

Nostalgia got the better of him while thinking about it and Jin made his way over to the desk where his high tech computer rig with multiple screens was set up. He booted it up, smiling as it finished in just a couple of seconds and he brought up his browser and went straight to his bookmarks and clicked on the top one.

The title of the video was simple, 'Let's Talk About Quirks - Am I Lucky?'

It was a video Imperial made early into his Wetube career when a lot of haters were lambasting him and saying he was just lucky to have such an amazing quirk and he wasn't anything special without it.

Complete and utter hogwash, Imperial was amazing!

And this video was picture proof of why and the reason specifically why Jin was his number one fan!

He watched as Imperial opened up greeting the watchers, before getting straight down to business. That was something he liked about Imperial, he was a straight to the point, honest kind of guy.

Granted he liked a lot about Imperial but he liked that one a lot!

'So, a lot of you guys think I'm really lucky to have my quirk,' Imperial mused, he was sitting atop an apartment building of some sort, holding his camera in one hand. This was before he'd gotten his awesome drone camera after all, 'And you're all correct, but not for the reasons you might think.'

Kano gave the camera grin, 'I've given you guys a basic overview of my quirk before, but not really got into the deeper parts of it, I didn't really wanna go into the weaknesses of it and all that after all,' he laughed, before shrugging, 'Well as you know it's called Power Quake, and it causes quakes anywhere I want. But, it's a bit more complicated than that. See, it's a super enhanced version of my mothers quirk, the ability to attract small things. In my case, the range is massively enhanced and at the very same time, it also pushes at the same time. Now, a lot of you are probably wondering what the big deal there is, but the fact of the matter is, my quirk targets the smallest things of all, the atoms and such that make up everything, and it reflects back on to me. This means when I use my quirk, it's pulling on the very bits that make up my body, my bones, my muscles, my organs. And when I first activated it, Power Quake almost killed me. It ripped apart my bones, my organs and my muscles and then squished them all back together. I was saved by luck because a passing hero saw it happened and we were close to U.A, where that hero rushed me to and got me healed by Recovery Girl, but even then, it was pure luck I managed to hang on long enough to get there.'

He paused then to let his words sink it, and the sheer weight of it always struck Jin. Like near all children who awakened their quirks, Imperial awakened his when he was just four years old. That meant, as a four year old, he the agony of his entire body being torn apart seam by seam.

And yet, to this day, he stood tall and proud, he'd never let it keep him down!

'It didn't end there though,' Imperial continued shaking his head, 'After all, what kid has control of their quirk at that age, after just awakening it? And worse was the fact my quirk is almost always passively in effect to a small degree. So even after Recovery Girl healed me, my body began to break down over and over and over again. Even her quirk only goes so far, even if I had a regeneration quirk on top, it wouldn't have saved me in the end. Luckily for me, there's a certain awesome hero out there who has the ability to negate quirks with his own. I'm not gonna tell you guys who he is, cuz he prefers not to have eyes on him, but both him and Recovery Girl saved my life. I spent three months with them both at U.A as a toddler then, and those three months were hellish, spend training and bulking up my body constantly. And that wasn't just to handle using my quirk, that was just so I could survive the passive effect of my quirk, not even using it.'

Honestly, Jin was kind of horrified to know someone he held in such high esteem had to go through so much pain just to survive without even using his quirk as a child.

But despite the horror he felt about it, it always made his respect for Imperial soar high into the sky each time he watched this. And he watched it a lot, it was his main source of inspiration and motivation after all!

'It was a full three years before I'd trained myself up enough to be able to go home, because after those three months, it was time spent making sure I could control my quirk and not hurt anybody else,' Imperial sighed looking up to the sky, 'Three years of constant pain where I barely ever saw my mom or my brother, and the pain didn't even stop then when I got to go home, that was just the point where it was deemed I could endure.'

Imperial laughed and stood up, eyes coming back down from the sky to look at the camera and he smirked, 'So am I lucky? Yes? I'm lucky I survived it awakening, I was lucky I was near U.A. I was lucky my first mentor could keep my quirk suppressed whenever it got out from under me and I lost control, but I'm not lucky to have it just because it's power. I hate this fucking quirk,' despite the venomous words he spouted about his quirk, Imperial merely continued smirking, 'But it's my quirk and my life. Sure I could sit around and feel sorry for myself and probably end up killing myself and a lot of others while pitying myself when I eventually couldn't control it anymore. But I didn't, you know why? Because just cuz it sucked, is no excuse for me to waste my life! I might never have wanted this quirk, might hate it more than anything else, but it's mine, and I'll rule over it, not the other way around. So I throw myself into building myself up day in and day out, that's what it means to take accountability for myself and be a man!' as he finished, Kano's fist erupted with a bright blinding white light as a vibrating rippling bubble of power burst into existence around it.

He really was…so damn cool.

He remembered being struck speechless as he watched it. Remembered the shame that flowed through him when that young boy, only twelve years old at the time talked about his responsibility as a man and how wallowing in his own self pity wouldn't help him.

That time was still a bit of a blur to him, but-

He paused the video and scrolled down to the comments below the video. And there highlighted at the top, was a comment of his own, under BrosephLyfe. Of course at the time his username had been totally different and he'd changed it later, but the comment remained regardless.

It was full of quite a few misspelt words, horrible punctuation and cusses that he really shouldn't have been using when trying to talk to a young boy at the time, and he'd basically demanded what he was supposed to do about his quirk and went into detail about his problems, about how he could never be sure he was the real Jin Bubaigawara.

Imperial's response had been simple.

'Of course you're the real one. Not only you, but all of you and your clones made from your quirk were real. They're all you. If they think and feel, then that's proof enough isn't it? It seems like your clones snapped at you in the end, because you abused them, in that case think about it yourself? What would you have done if someone just forced you to do everything for them while laying on their ass?'

The response on the tip of his tongue at the time had been, 'I'd smash his fucking head in!'

But he hadn't said it aloud or replied with it. Because, he'd realised the mistake all along. It wasn't just him that was Jin. They they exact same as him. They were all Jin.

It wasn't really anything. profound that was said to him, but it had struck him nonetheless.

And it was the turning point in his life, where he learned to take accountability for himself. Where he learned, yeah, his life fucking sucked, so what was he going to about it?

That was his starting point.

It was where he forced himself to stop being afraid of his quirk and faced it head on. Where he turned himself in for the crimes he committed and luckily got away with just doing a ton of community service because in the end he hadn't hurt anyone.

Where he learned from others, followed advice from Imperial and followed him on his life style, of bettering himself.

And after a lot of work, got a great job at a local gym just over a year and a half ago after getting permission to use his quirk as long as it was inside a certain range, like a single building.

At first, he was only hired as a simple Janitor. But, then, he became the single janitor of the entire place and was paid as much as three janitors. And then after he gave some advice to some people working out, the owner of the gym a massive fitness buff saw the effort he'd made following Kano on his own life style and he got hired as a personal trainer as well after getting some personal training himself.

And thanks to his quirk, he could help as many people at the gym as needed while keeping it clean as a whistle! And was being paid the same amount as five personal trainers.

Granted he did a lot more work than five personal trainers, but it was fine. And that was how he was currently making forty five million yen a year now, and why he now had his own three bedroom apartment, nothing like the dingy dives he was used to crawling around in before.

And it was all thanks to Imperial, his life guru!

"Thanks again!" Jin clapped his hands together and bowed his head to the image of imperial on the video on the screen of his pc, "Imperial army for life!" he chanted, before closing it down and grabbing his clothes for the day.

His Imperial Army tank top. His Imperial Army training shorts. His imperial army wrist bands and more.

He owned a lot of Imperials merch and was proud of it!

He even directed anyone who thought his snazzy Imperial Army clothing was awesome towards Imperial's merch stores online!

And with that, he headed for a shower to get cleaned and ready for the day while his clone made breakfast.