Nick had returned to Los Angeles after that debacle against the Creeoer, he used up all of his vacation hours to relax and spent time with his family. It was something he hadnt done once in this new world, the last time he even hung out with the family he got shot dozens of times!
Hanging out with his family had saved them from being poisoned by Edward Kim in their sleep last time, that was why he decided to hang around the family more.
His belief was that his curse drew others bad luck to himself, meaning that if something bad were to happen to a family member, it would instead happen to Nick, or at least it would drag Nick along and allow him to help his family.
He decided that staying away from hunting Anomalies would be for the best, the less he interacted with Shield/Hydra the better. That being said Nick knew Anomalies would find him due to his curse but still, he refused to actively hunt them down anymore.
Grabbing an egg from the fridge, Nick walked back into his childhood bedroom, which had been converted into a storage room, and sat down cross-legged with the egg in hand to begin his training.
From what bit of knowledge Nick knew about Chi in the Marvel world, it was like a more primitive and less efficient form of magic. It relied on the body's own life energy instead of ambient energy in the air or drawing upon a god like being for power.
Chi was undoubtedly weaker than magic, but that was fine with Nick as it had some benefits over magic. Magic required time, talent, books, resources, and intelligence, while Chi required mostly just training!
He didn't need to spend years learning incantations, rituals, and spells. He just needed to learn how to control his Chi and he'll be able to perform supernatural abilities.
The main problem of Chi in marvel wasn't the difficulty in learning it, everyone could learn it, the real problem was the amount of Chi
A normal human could learn how to manipulate their own Chi to increase their body's abilities, but not by much. A human would need to gain a large amount of Life energy to reach the level of Superhuman.
He knew there was a superhero named Iron Fist who was a martial artist that defeated and absorbed a dragon's life energy. He channeled the dragon's Chi into his fist and legs to perform powerful attacks with glowing yellow limbs. Those effects required having a dragon's level of Chi, the average human could never hope of reaching that level of strength naturally.
With enough Chi/Life energy, one could boost all of there body's abilities to the superhuman level. Even a natural healing factor could be increased to the superhuman level, even allowing for immortality if you had an enormous amount of life energy.
It took some studying and testing but Nick realized Chi worked perfectly with his absorption ability! The stronger the creature he absorbed the more Life Energy he'd get from them, and the stronger his Chi would become!
It turned out that the creepers Life energy powered his telekinesis, thats why he could only used it to control his truck and alter his throwing stars flight pattern. Meanwhile Nick could make actual object's float, it was because he added the Creepers Life Energy to his own growing Chi.
Some marvel characters used Chi to perfom magic like affects similar to the Creepers Telekinesis, like being able to control insects, project lightning or create forcefields strong enough to block bullets! They could also infuse it into weapons, swords, arrows and even bullets could be infused with Chi.
That was just the stuff from Marvel he remembered, Nick didnt know if other fictions that also have Chi/Qi/Ki were included in this mixed up and mashed together alternate world of fiction.
Nick only knew of one location that he could be taught about Chi, the Sorcerers Sanctuary in New York. That place had to have known about Chi and could able to teach him, but he immediately dismissed that idea without hesitation.
The whole point of the Ancient one and the sanctuary is to protect the natural order of the world and save it from mystical threats, he doubted she'd be happy about Nicks arrival in this world. He still worried that one day someone from the T.V.A. would show up to prune him.
He knew the Ancient one would see right through him with just a glance, she'd probably realize he didnt belong to this world and might even learn about his absorption ability!
This left Nick with little choices as going to her wasn't an option, he also knew of an assasination group called the hand who also used Chi.
This meant the only two choices he had were to either kill one of the Hand Ninja and absorb their body to gain Chi Manipulation, or simply learn how to harness Chi by himself.
The choice was rather easy for Nick.
'The Hand is a clan of ninja with thousands of Peak human and Superhuman people that travel in packs, they know magical abilities and are trained ruthless killers! I aint fucking with them or else they'll kill my whol family. Self taught Chi it is'
Nick didnt tell Holly or his superiors about The Hand, the last thing he needs is for Hydra Agents to learn Chi and end up killing Captain America when the time comes for the frozen WW2 hero to eradicate those neo Nazis.
While Nick didnt know how much life energy or how to properly train it, the creeper had enough of it for Nick to actually feel it coursing through his veins, its what powered his telekinesis after all! The more Chi he had, the greated the affects of his Telekinesis.
It was thanks to this Telekinesis ability that Nick had a slight cheat code when it came to learning about Chi manipulation.
Closing his eyes, Nick activated the Telekinesis abilities of the creeper and felt the Chi flowing into his hand, activating the Telekinesis ability, and that ability flowed into the egg.
The white oval slowly began levitating off of his hands and into the air, his body was being sapped of energy the longer it levitated.
Nick actively felt his chi coursing through his body and into his hand, the energy came from every inch of his body from his toes to his scalp. He focused intensely on the pathways it used to move throughout his body, etching them into memory.
After a minute of Telekinesis, he stopped and let the egg drop into his hand. He was tired but he had to focus with the memories of the pathways still fresh in mind..
He knew the pathways and he felt his chi, he just had to bend the energy to his will!
Time ticked by, sweat began pouring off off nick and soaked his bed. He had been going at it for hours and had to reactivate his telekinesis to remember the pathways, even with the cheat code he achieve zero progress in controlling his chi. He did managed to learn how to speed up his Chi flow however!
Speeding up the flow of chi in his body caused Nick to radiate a large amount of heat but more importantly, the small cut that he got from shaving earlier had been healed up slightly! He'd figured out how to slightly increase his Healing factor temporarily!
It wasn't very useful at the moment, he used up a lot of Chi just speeding the energy up in his body and at most he could heal a small cut. But the more creatures he absorbed, the better it would become!
While he found an application of Chi, he still had no real way of moving it around his body. Let out a sigh, Nick shooked his head and opened up his eyes.
He was just about to give up for today when he spotted something on his shelf. It was the bendable Mickey Mouse crazy straw he got from his 12th birthday at Disneyland, he'd seen it thousands of times as he walked in and out of this room but now his eyes widen in realization.
'Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way, no matter how much i force it, the Chi wont move to my will or divulge from the pathways. So what if instead of manipulating the Chi itself, i manipulate the pathways it moves through!' Instead of controlling the beverage in the straw, Nick would just bend the straw itself!
It'd be like trying to control the water in a stream, instead of magically trying to manipulate the water turn to the right, you'd instead just dig out a new path for the water to flow right!
Putting the idea to work, Nick was shocked at the instant results! He had thought deeply about multiple new branching pathways flowing into his fist when he suddenly opened his eyes!
Down in his right hand, Nick saw a very faint but noticeable orange glow eminating from it! With his concentration broken, the orange glow of his fist dissappeared along with his new pathway.
'So that's the trick! The body has permanent pathways for your Chi to flow through and allow you to live, but you can create temporary pathways for your Chi to flow into with deep focus.'
Unlike the Iron fist who's hand glowed an incredibly bright yellow energy, Nicks hand glowed a dim orange color. Nick lacked both Life Energy and experience to reach the iron fist level, that would change with time and absorptions.
His Telekinesis ability was crucial for his quick understanding of Chi, he was basically given a high level Chi technique, allowing him to reverse engineer it to learn the basics.
Learning this rudimentary control over his Chi took just one day, he still had another thirteen days before he had to get back to work!