Chapter 17 - Preparations

Since Garrick had ended up coming home, Dinah had cooked and forced the two children to join while asking Garrick to join, who agreed since he was hungry.

The family of four sat at the dining table designed for six people. Garrick and Dinah sat at the opposite end of the table, with Theresa and Hitoshi sitting closer to Dinah across from each other, leaving the two seats next to Garrick empty.

He didn't seem to care as he absentmindedly ate the food in front of him, his mind somewhere else. Theresa ate like there was no tomorrow, while Hitoshi played with his food, having the same absent-minded expression as his father.

No one seemed to care about the awkward situation except Dinah, who found it difficult to eat. "Ahem!" She cleared her throat loudly, snapping the father and son out of whatever they were thinking so deeply about and causing Theresa to turn to her with a full mouth. "So, how was everyone's day?" She asked, wanting to start a conversation.

She stared directly at Garrick, telling him to answer. Wanting to get it over with so he could return to his office, he replied, "It was usual."

"Same." Hitoshi said with a low voice.

"Shame." Theresa repeated with a full mouth, even though she didn't know what Garrick said since he spoke in Japanese.

And the table returns to normal. Smiling, Dinah turned to Theresa. "How was it the same? You just moved to a completely foreign country." She smirked, "And I remember you crying about---"

Theresa slammed the table, swallowing what was in her mouth, before replying. "I met a father I never saw before and a half-brother I never knew existed, then broke down crying about moving. Then you took my phone, and after I asked for it back, you forced me to fix my things in my room." She glared at her mother, "Is that what you want to hear?"

"That's terrific!" Dinah smiled, clapping her hands once and snapping Hitoshi, who had fallen back into his thoughts, to reality. "My day was fun. Dressed up. I said goodbye to my girlfriends..."

She continued rambling on about how her day had been. Everyone returned to what they were doing, the father and son letting their thoughts take them away and Theresa eating like an animal.

Her narration froze as she noticed they weren't paying attention. Sighing, "It seems like I am the only one trying." She mumbled, which no one else heard, as she returned to eating in silence.

They quickly finished their meal, and Dinah sent them away, saying she would clean everything up. Since she didn't have her phone or laptop, Theresa went to sleep, Garrick went to his office, and Hitoshi went to his room to continue whatever he was doing.

When she finished the cleanup, Dinah headed upstairs to Hitoshi's room, knocking on the door. It didn't take long for him to open the door, barely wide enough to see who was on the other side.

"It's me, Dinah." She introduced herself in Japanese with a wave and a smile, "Can I squeeze into your room for a sec?"

Hitoshi was weary of her. After all, she was a woman he only met today and the mother of Theresa, who he hates. And what kind of woman comes to a boy's room at ten o'clock at night?

He opened the door and let her in, despite his thoughts. His room was dimly lit and gloomy, with a circular bed in the center of her room with an ornate headboard and purple-blue sheets, a computer table, and posters that seemed to have been recently ripped out of the wall and then thrown to the ground.

Dinah looked at one poster, smiling. "Hypnotic. I guess you just found out he was your father." She turned to Hitoshi, who had the door closed behind him and stood wearily by the door. "No need to be shy. Have a seat."

He decided to listen to her, as he concluded that doing whatever she wanted was the most effective way to get her and her daughter away.

Sitting on his circular bed, he looked at her. "So, my name is Dinah Fernsby. I am 37 years old and was born in..." She noticed his face that screamed 'just get over it,' and cleared her throat. "I know we just met today, and we never knew each other existed until now, but I will try my best to be the best mother."

Hitoshi resisted the urge to scoff. 'Good mother. Right. Look what Theresa turned out to be.' He thought, keeping his face straight.

"I know what you might be thinking, but Theresa has been on her own for most of her life. I kinda had some things going on, and then moved on to be a hero, so..." She paused, sighing, "She hung in the streets of Corpus Christi."

Quickly catching herself, she smiled, "But don't worry, I am better now and will try to set her on track and be a responsible mother to you." She saw that Hitoshi didn't believe her and knew there was nothing more she could say to make him. "Well, I heard your finals for your elementary school are coming up, and you are preparing for your U.A. entrance exam."

She pointed at her chest with her thumb, a grin on her face. "I may not look like it, but I am extremely smart. If you need any help with any of your school work or need help studying, feel free to help me." She paused before adding, "And I can also teach you some combat training. While I did not teach Theresa everything she knows, I refined her skills to what they are now.

"You will be applying to U.A., the leading school in Japan for heroism, so I doubt you will want to get into the school hero department with your current fighting prowess." She turned to leave the room, "Though there are only ten months till the entrance exam, I can teach you some combat skills. Not enough to reach Theresa's level, but enough for you."

Holding the door handle, she turned to Hitoshi, "If you need anything, just come to me, and I will try my best to help." With that, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

Hitoshi stared at the door for a while before scoffing. "Yeah, right." He mumbled, lying down on his bed. He closed his eyes, deciding not to think about it, and fell straight to sleep.

The following morning, he was awakened by a knock on his door. More like a banging noise, which immediately gave it away as Theresa. "Go away." He groaned, turning to the side.

Theresa, on the other side of the door, didn't hear him as she tried to open the door, finding it unlocked. Pushing it up, she grinned as she saw Hitoshi sitting on his bed, staring wide-eyed at her.

"Your room is as gloomy as you are." She said, looking around the room but not stepping in. "Now," She turned back to him, who had gotten off his bed. "Mom said I should wake you and call you to breakfast."

"No habla---"

"Bababa!" Theresa shouted, cutting him off. "I don't give a shit if you can't understand me. Come and eat breakfast." With that, she closed the door, walking away. "Wired room." She groaned, wondering how he could live in that dark room and sleep without a night light.

When she got to the dining table, her father was already there eating while using his phone. He looked up at her, "Good morning." He greeted her before returning to his phone.

"Yeah. Good morning." Theresa replied, plopping down in the same seat from last night. "Today feels weird. Like it isn't going to go my way." She groaned, slamming her forehead on the table.

"It's just because it's your first time spending a night in your new home." Her mother said, placing her food in front of her. "So, how was your night?"

"I will admit, the bed was comfortable, and I slept like a log." She sighed, sitting up. "But it didn't have the right feel. And when I woke up..." She sighed once more.

"Stop sighing and eat." Dinah turned to Garrick, smiling. "What about you? How was your night?" She asked in English.

"Regular." He replied, not even looking up from his phone. "Nothing different from my other nights at home."

"Is that so?" she asked, sitting across from him. They ate in silence before she asked, "What exactly do you do as the vice-president of HPSC?"

This got Theresa's attention so she listened while still eating her breakfast as he answered. "Criminal investigative, organization of the Provisional Hero License Exam, torture, gang and villain group infiltration, revoking hero license, and many other hero and society related things." He replied, looking up at their shocked faces.

"You torture people?" Dinah asked, squinting at him.

"Yeah. Police only do interrogation, while we do interrogation and torture." He casually said, returning to his food. "I normally deal with the stubborn ones who won't speak. Sometimes we even use their families as a form of torture. Of course, we don't hurt said family..." He paused, "If they are innocent."

"R-right." Dinah stuttered and returned to her food.

"This took a dark turn." Theresa mumbled as she continued to eat. "Damn."

Hitoshi soon joined them, sitting across from Theresa as Dinah quickly went to dish out his food. "Tell me how it tastes." She smiled, "I only recently started cooking, but I am confident in my skills."

He nodded and started eating in silence. It was great, but he didn't need to say it. 'Second time.' He thought, glancing up at his father. It was the second time he had seen that man sit at this table to eat, the first time being last night.

He always spends his time in his office and only cooks when he feels like it, with Hitoshi having to eat takeout most of the time. He wouldn't like to admit it, but he is starting to like Dinah's appearance.

Garrick was the first to finish his food, putting his plate in the sink and leaving it there after Dinah asked him to. He then returned to his office, locking himself in there.

Theresa was the next to finish and quickly stood up. "I gave you your laptop to learn Japanese, not do anything else. So, you better be learning Japanese." Her mother instructed, glaring at her.

"Of course, I will. It feels weird not knowing what you guys are saying most of the time." Theresa said, leaving her plates on the table and rushing away.

Only Dinah and Hitoshi remained, who ate in silence. When Hitoshi had finished, he looked at her and asked, "Can I take you up on what you offered yesterday?" He saw no harm in letting her teach and train him in some combat skills. It isn't like he couldn't just tell her to stop if he didn't like it.

She looked at him with wide eyes, a smile growing on her face. "That's so exciting!" She shouted, standing up. "I will clean this up, so come back in 15 minutes. We can even start today since it is Sunday."

Even though she hadn't finished eating, helping Hitoshi was more meaningful. The boy has been living with a father who neglected him and was bullied his whole life by his peers because of what someone did 13 years ago. Therefore, she wanted to do everything in her power to help him.

Hitoshi returned to his room, noticing the poster he had ripped off the wall still on the ground. Picking them up, he headed outside and threw them in the garbage, then returned to his room and rested.

The thought of his father being Hypnotic still bothered him, but he pushed it to the back of his mind, wanting to forget he ever looked up to Hypnotic.

"Haah." He sighed, lying back on his bed and staring at the roof. "U.A. is in ten months." As much as he doesn't want to admit it, he hopes that Theresa's mother will keep her word--

"So many fucking honorifics!" Theresa's scream came from the room next to his. "San, Sama, Kun, Chan! What next? Oppa?!"

"She is so loud." Hitoshi mumbled, burying his head under his pillow. He wondered why she and her mother's personalities were so different. She was crude, arrogant, short-tempered, and aggressive, while her mother was calm, easygoing, and easy to get along with.

"But then again..." He remembered Dinah saying that Theresa spent most of her life on the streets, so that might be the reason.

Fifteen minutes quickly passed, and he returned to the dining room to see Dinah sitting at the dining table with a smile on her face, a stack of papers in front of her.

"Welcome back, Hitoshi." She greeted, gesturing to the chair next to him. "Have a seat."

And he complied. She then stood up and moved the paper in front of him. Hitoshi looked down at them, noticing the first one read, 'Schedule for the next ten months, down to every second!'

"I made this last night in anticipation of you agreeing with my offer." She grinned, and he finally noticed light bags under her eyes. "And you did." She continued walking around the table, "Everything you would have to do, your sleeping hours, three meals, training, studying, school time, they are all timed out. Of course, they won't be flawless, but we will try to stay as close as possible to the timetable."

Hitoshi was genuinely surprised. He thought she would just half-assed teach him, but the schedule was impressive. It looked like what people in the military are put through, with only 6 hours of sleep and short breaks throughout the day. The weekends were even more packed, and his sleep time was reduced to 5 hours.

He couldn't help but wonder if he could do it or if it was safe for a 14 years old boy to train like this. "Don't worry." Dinah reassured, smiling. "Theresa also had a similar routine, yet she ended up fine."

Hitoshi held the urge to laugh, 'Fine. Yeah, right.'

"Well, I will give you a quick rundown on your training." Dinah slammed the table, causing Hitoshi to jolt as he looked at the woman now standing beside him. "You are a bit fit, maybe due to your constant fighting, but nowhere as close as Theresa when she was only eleven."

"Is that a compliment?" Hitoshi raised one eyebrow, confused at what she was getting at.

Dinah squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic. "It wasn't..." She paused, "Well, training your muscles would take too much time in the timetable. So, we will work with your current build, and I will teach you something that Theresa didn't want to learn because it needed too much brain and not enough brawn."

She moved from behind him to stand across the table, directly in front of him. "I call it Gentle Fist, and the old man I learned it from calls it Way of the Chi-blocking." She smirked, performing a flowing movement with her hands, legs, and body, and Hitoshi could already see it was related to Chinese.

"It is to attack certain pressure points in the body to cause a stunning sensation, disrupt your balance, motor dysfunction, balance dysfunction, involuntary muscle spasms, disorientation, drooling, paralysis, and even loss of consciousness."

The woman kept moving, her movements still flowing like water, changing abruptly to be quick and violent, her hands moving like a blur to his eyes. "And cause internal damage." She stopped and turned to the now interested Hitoshi. "Even the slightest tap with the PERFECT movement, and I will stress the word perfect, and on the right spot can cause a lot of damage.

"Hence the name I gave it, Gentle Fist." She smirked, "Do you want to learn it?"

"Of course." Hitoshi said, sitting up. He wouldn't need to be brash like Theresa or wouldn't have to take hits, which he definitely doesn't like. It seemed to fit his quirks and his personality well.

Grinning, Dinah bent down and grabbed a stack of books he hadn't noticed before, dropping them on the table with a bang. Hitoshi stared at the books more than 300 pages thick, reading the titles, "Visually Memorable Neuroanatomy for Beginners, Bones: Our Skeletal System, Muscles: All about the Muscular System, Lymphgefäss-System: Lymph Vessel System..." He paused, looking at Dinah. "I... I have to read all these?"

"No." She shook her head, "Only certain parts. Though, if you want to 'master' it, you will have to read and understand the 11 systems of the body." She quoted 'master' as she didn't believe things like martial art have a peak as it is constantly improving. "Well, I didn't need to master it to be this proficient, so you certainly don't."

"I was wondering if I really was going to read all those books in 10 months." He mumbled, shivering at the thought.

"Now!" She slammed the books with both her palms, more excited than Hitoshi. "Let's begin!"

And so time passed. Hitoshi continued to train on the Gentle Fist while also being tutored on his school subjects and preparing for his upcoming final exam and U.A. entrance exam. This includes verbal questions on logical reasoning, reading and scrambled paragraphs, English, statistics, algebra, probability, geometry, trigonometry, scientific knowledge, scientific concepts, and formulating hypotheses.

To his surprise, Dinah was a capable teacher but sometimes talked endlessly on insignificant topics.

On the other hand, Theresa continued learning Japanese, getting frustrated by the three separate writing systems, sentence structures, grammar, and most frustrating of all these things was the hierarchy of politeness.

In the end, she said fuck it and didn't bother with the politeness part of the language and only focused on speaking it and understanding it. If her way of speaking angered others, she didn't give a shit. What are they going to do about it? Get mad?

She didn't bother studying or training for the Shiketsu High School entrance exam, confident in her ability, something Hitoshi saw as stupidity. Shiketsu High School could rival U.A. in prestige, so he was sure that the questions would be almost, if not equally, as hard.

And while studying the last questions of U.A.'s past written test with her mother, he couldn't help but shake his head at her arrogance.

Though the written test wasn't as important as the practical test, both himself and Dinah weren't confident in him getting enough points in the practical exam, so Hitoshi's main focus was to get as close to a perfect score on the written test, which is 100. Still, he decided to also apply for the Department of General Education if his score on the written test wasn't enough.

In the eighth month, Hitoshi moved to his apartment in Musutafu, with Dinah hiring a maid to care for him. Though he was away from her, Dinah ordered him to follow the schedule she had made for the remaining two months. Then, he can return to his normal schedule.

A day after he finished moving, Theresa, Dinah, and Garrick moved to Hiroshima city to another Japanese-style house with a large man-made pond in the backyard.

And so, the day of the Shiketsu High School entrance exam, three days after U.A., neared.

Chapter End~~

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Word Count: 3502

Gentle Fist was inspired by real life Pressure point, and the name was inspire by Naruto Gentle Fist. Obviously.

The first fighting style is a mix of the circular movements of Gentle Fist from Naruto and Water bending fighting style from Avatar, which employs defensive techniques that can be transformed into attacks and counters, in other words, defense into offense, and instead of simply deflecting an attack, the defensive maneuvers focus on control, achieved through turning an opponent's own strength against them, rather than directly harming the opponent.

The second fighting style is basically 8 trigrams 64 palms from Naruto. Yeah, that 'gentle fist' that is beating the hell out of your opponent.

Its already set on Theresa going to Shiketsu High School, but there is a big problem. Fucking OC!!! The only character introduced in year one was Inasa Yoarashi and it is supposed to be the second best hero school in Japan! Wow, they were really thrown under the buss.

I hate making OC's because I have to think of their quirk, how it will shape their personality, how their personality would impact the story and many other shit. And making 18different OC's for class 1 A of Shiketsu High School!? That is way too much for my current writing skill.

So guys, that is a big fucking problem.