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The sport’s festival begins and the kid’s plan is finally put into motion. Although, their school principal still manages to throw a curve ball at everyone.
Chapter Foreword: I was originally going to wait until next week to post this but…
I’ve been feeling really down bc of the Raging Dumpster Fire recent news has been lately. (A lot of helpless rage over politics and the pointless cruelty of certain groups I don’t want to give the courtesy of naming.)
But everyone who reads my writing and leave comments always brings me joy. So I decided I wanted to share something happier to bring something good to everyone.
I hope you all enjoy it.
Chapter 18: The Sports Festival (Part 1)
Sleep deprivation probably wasn’t the best way to start the day. But Izuku just- hadn’t been able to sleep. At least, not deeply as far as he could tell. He was pretty sure he’d spent more time laying in his bed and staring at the ceiling than he did actually sleeping.
He was too excited. Too nervous. Too many emotions that he couldn’t put into words.
He was up and dressed before his alarm could go off, to the point of starting everyone’s morning teas before he mother had the chance to start breakfast. He’d made the largest container of his iced Anxie-tea that he’d ever made, stowing it in a thermal bottle to ensure it couldn’t get too hot during the day and packing a lunch for himself in his school bag.
His mother had agreed to wear Duusu’s broach and let both kwami hide in her purse during the Sports Festival. That way both kwami could see the event without Izuku straining his magic by wearing both broaches himself. This was one time where he really wanted to ensure he could give it his all without accidentally sabotaging his own efforts.
He’d planned to wear Nooroo’s broach during the events. Both out of familiarity and to settle his nerves. A competitive event like the Sports Festival was sure to bring out the best and worst of his school mates. And he really didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire of a rivalry boiling over.
(If Kastuki-san saw him, he wanted to have the forewarning the locket would give him about it.)
The entire Midoriya family had arrived at the school early, Eri clutching a crocheted cat toy and wearing Izuku’s noise-canceling headphones around her neck in case the crowd became too much for her. It would be her first time attending an event as big as this.
They had gone to a few festivals before, but UA’s Sports Festival felt much bigger, much louder, than the Tanabata and Omisoka festivals. So they had taken precautions to help Eri feel safe during it all. (And not scared for him during any of the games.)
His mother pulled him into a hug before they parted ways inside the school gates.
“Good luck, sweetie,” his mother whispered, squeezing him tightly. He squeezed back just as tight.
“Thanks Mom. I’ll do my best.” He pulled back and knelt down to Eri’s level to give her a hug, too. She was quick to rush forward and wrap her arms around his neck. “I’ll keep an eye out for you and mom in the stands. I might not be able to spot you, so don’t be sad if I don’t wave to you right away. Okay?”
Eri let out a little hum.
“Have fun, Niichan,” was Eri’s soft murmur. He chuckled at that.
“I will. See you later, Eri-chan.”
He let go, Eri taking their mom’s hand as the two headed for the audience stands. Izuku couldn’t help letting out a soft sigh as they did. He was still nervous, but it felt more… Tolerable now. He could handle things from there. He and his friends had a plan for how to handle the festival. Things would work out.
Okay, now I need to head to-
“Notebook boy!!!” Izuku nearly jumped out of his skin as Mei skidded to a halt next to him, her face flushed and stretched wide with a grin. “I’m glad I found you so fast! Here! Your upgraded umbrella!”
She shoved the new umbrella at him along with some kind of holster bag. She had two more bags thrown over her shoulder, some kind of metal backpack on, and chunky metal boots.
“Powerloader-sensei gave me access to better cloth for this one, once I told him I was making it for you to use during the festival! It’s fire resistant in addition to knife resistant! I added some more of the upgrades we talked about too, and those cool dyes you tried making with your mom. This’ll definitely be a near-perfect multi-tool for the festival. The bag has some of the other… Treats we all talked about inside.” Mei’s eyes and smile gained a wicked glint as she said that. Izuku felt a grin of his own appear, remembering the idea party the four of them had had for small support gear items they could use without hindering them. “I have treat bags for Cheery and Grumpy too, I just have to find them. I wanna give them the chance to look through the bags before we have to be in the stadium and start using them. It’s all been cleared by Powerloader-sensei, before you ask, so none of us are gonna get in trouble for ‘em. There’s a couple note cards inside that’s got everything listed out and how to tell them all apart. Make sure you read it!”
“Excellent! Don’t forget about the other stuff we talked over, Mei-chan.” He happily took both, quickly looping the bag around his waist. (He’d hook up the leg strap once he’d had the time to look through the bag’s supplies.)
She just grinned at him.
“See you at the start line.”
Both of them nodded and Izuku broke into a jog to reach the locker rooms then the waiting room for class 1-I, plenty of time to change to his gym uniform and get his Mei-grin under control before his classmates could see.
“Ah, Midoriya-kun, I see your support friend managed to find you,” Masu commented. “She’d come looking for you earlier.”
He nodded at her. Masu was one of the few classmates who hadn’t made a fuss about him being quirkless. No one tried to knock him around, though there were a few snide comments that slipped out during the start of the school year. It had died down as they all got used to each other, but most of the class had settled on ignoring him when they weren’t working on group projects.
Masu, at least, would be friendly and say hello when he came in and sat at his desk beside her.
“Yup. Sorry if Mei-chan startled anyone.” It was a habit to do that at this point. Masu waved off the apology with a half-smile. She’d bumped into Mei before, so she knew that his friend was just- Always Like That.
He was quick to put away his belongings in the locker and ducking into the changing room to put on his gym uniform. Izuku sat down on one of the benches once he rejoined his classmates, unzipping the bag and carefully digging through the contents. He pulled out one of the cards Mei mentioned, quickly reading through the list and matching it to the small support items inside.
“What d’ya got there? Some support equipment? Are you even allowed to have those, Midoriya?” Bushao asked, leaning around the lockers to frown at him. He tried not to twitch at the tone.
Bushao, largely, didn’t seem to care for Izuku and he didn’t really know why. He wasn’t sure if it was due to his quirk status or if his classmate just didn’t Vibe™ with him. He tended to try and ignore the other boy and focus on whatever he was doing instead of dealing with whatever bee was in Bushao’s bonnet.
“Support students are allowed to use and present anything they’ve invented for the Festival. They’re allowed to lend out their gear to other students to use, though they usually hand them out during the events. There’s no rule against them handing gear to friends before the festival properly begins,” he recited the rules that he had made sure to read up on before they employed their plan for the festival. It had been key to the plans to know if Mei could hand them out beforehand. Carrying everything while trying to find them all amongst the crowds would have slowed her down.
“Yeah, but are you allowed to have them? The teachers aren’t gonna confiscate them before we can head out, right?” There was no concern in his tone. It was more disparaging than any form of worry.
Nagashira huffed at Bushao, breaking off his conversation with Keage to address the other.
“Hey man, lay off Midoriya-kun. If his friend gave him some gear, then his friend gave him some gear. It’s no big deal.” The blonde admonished, frowning in disapproval.
Bushao grumbled, but let the topic drop to Izuku’s relief. He gave Nagashira a nod and a small smile in thanks. The blonde nodded back, picking up his conversation with Keage where he’d left it. A quick, quiet interaction. Something so small and so normal that it still felt strange to him. Izuku was still getting used to being in such an… Amiable class.
He turned back to the bag, continuing with his inspection of the new equipment he had access to and trying to memorize it as best he could before they were told to go to the stadium.
The small speakers overhead crackled to life and the warm voice of their homeroom teacher echoed through the room.
“Attention all first-year students, this is Sunda-sensei speaking. Please gather your equipment, if you have any, and make your way to the stadium following the signs in the halls outside your preparation rooms. You will be called into the stadium by your course and class letter, where Yamada-sensei will announce you over the loudspeakers and radio. Good luck to everyone participating and remember our school motto; Plus Ultra!”
Izuku was quick to stand, hitching the holster bag on properly and snagging his umbrella. He fell to the back of his class, as he often did, letting them all lead the way through the dimmer hallways of the stadium.
(Though it struck him as a little odd that Sunda-sensei was the one making the announcement for the students. The upper years said that Nedzu-sensei usually did that.)
One of his hands lifted to smooth the jacket of his gym uniform, gently pressing the butterfly miraculous into his chest.
Part of him wished Nooroo was in his pocket instead of in his mom’s handbag. The kwami was very good at saying things that helped him feel calmer when his anxiety started to get too strong for him.
He wasn’t in the hero course, but he would still be competing in front of a stadium full of people. Heroes and Sidekicks and parents of classmates, all of them would be watching his year play. Judging them for how they played and what they brought to the table. Judging him as the lone quirkless student in the entire school.
He gave his head a shake, trying to banish the anxious voice whispering at the back of his brain. No one was judging them beyond the teachers. No one outside of his friends and classmates (and Katsuki-san) knew he was quirkless. He was just another student taking part in the festival and that was as far as anyone would be looking. He was going to help his friends do well and have fun. That was his only goal for the day.
Not all of the management students would actually take part in the events. Many of them would actually split off in the halls and go up to the stands to watch and debate with each other about how the students participating would be marketed or how they could have better shown their skills. A kind of skill simulation for marketing heroes later on.
But some of them, like him, planned to take part to help students in Support display their inventions. Or they took part in the first event just for fun.
He watched as most of his class broke away, following the paths to the stands and leaving only a few to make their way to the stadium proper. Izuku let out a breath, the rhythmic tapping of his umbrella on the ground like a cane helping settle his nerves as he followed his participating classmates down the last tunnel between them and the rest of their year.
There were more people than he’d thought there would be. Though whether that was his nerves talking or his inability to imagine what it would be like to be an actual participant in the Sport’s Festival was debatable. It had been one of his dreams as a child, but a childhood dream wasn’t the same as an actual experience. (It paled in comparison. Even if he wasn’t in the Hero Course.)
The stadium was fairly well packed, but most of the people in the stands were either family of students and staff or members of hero agencies. (And a few families of heroes.) Only a few reporters had been allowed in, thoroughly screened before they were allowed onto the campus and then into the stadium. So it wasn’t as packed as he could tell it could have been. It was part of the security measures they’d had to put in for the festival that year.
Logically, he knew there were far fewer people attending than there had been in previous years. But that didn’t mean he was fully ready for the roar of noise and excitement that thrummed in the air as they stepped into the sunshine.
“And now, please welcome the participating students of classes 1-I, 1-J, and 1-K of the Management Course!”
Izuku winced slightly, shielding his eyes against the sunlight with a hand instead of his umbrella and trying to keep his head up despite the way the roaring audience and Present Mic’s voice made his ears ring and his nerves spike.
Nooroo’s comforting words from the previous night echoed in his head.
“Remember Izuku, if you get nervous, just look for Eri and your mother in the stands. Focus on just them and ignore the rest of the crowd. They’re the ones whose opinion matters, they’re the ones you’re playing for, not the rest.”
His eyes scanned the crowds high above in the stands, forcing his thoughts to fade as he skimmed over the faces of the strangers as he looked for his family. An impossibly bright smile splitting his face when he finally found his mother and sister waving at him from their seats.
“Where are you looking?” One of his classmates, a girl by the name of Umanami, asked him. Leaning over to talk to him over the crowd and their teacher’s announcements without having to yell.
“I can see my mom and little sister.” He pointed them out to his classmate, taking a moment to raise his hand in a wave that was just enough for them to see. “They’re sitting in that stand, in the middle area, close to the stairs. They’re sitting by the really tall, thin man with blonde hair.”
Calling the man “thin” was generous, if he were being honest. The man was skeletal, his clothes hanging off of him like curtains. He knew because he’d seen the incredibly tall man before, drawn in by the perpetual dull throb of pain radiated from him. He’d never talked to the man personally, but he’d seen him around campus. None of the teachers felt concerned about him, outside of a dim “Hey, you alright there?” kind of concern, so Izuku assumed the man was either a teacher for a specialized class or worked for one of the agencies that one of the teachers was part of and showed up to help manage workloads for them.
(Maybe he could ask his mom later? She might talk with the man since they’d ended up seated next to each other.)
“I see them! Awe~, your sister’s so small! How cute!” Umanami cooed, smiling at the six-year-old she could see waving in the stands and she gave a wave of her own in turn. She gave Izuku a playful wink and a very light nudge. “Lots of pressure to do well, then. She needs to be able to brag to her friends about how good her big brother did in the festival.”
He let out a quiet laugh.
“I certainly plan to try.” He looked back to the front stage as Kayama-sensei started speaking. And felt his heart sink when she announced that Katsuki was the student representative. He couldn’t help the small hiss that escaped him as his former-friend made his way to the platform. “Oh, oh, Katsuki-san is the worst choice for something like this. They should have held a vote among the class reps, not just choosing whomever did best in the entrance exam…”
“You know him, Midoriya-kun?”
“Yeah, I do. We went to the same middle school.” He answered softly, glancing at Umanami. How could he explain Katsuki in a way that wouldn’t sound like he was trying to scare his classmate? “He’s super smart and has a naturally powerful quirk. The problem is that he’s just as… Aggressive as he is competitive. And Katsuki-san is very, very competitive.”
She winced, letting out a small “oof” of her own at that.
Kastuki’s version of the “Athlete’s Oath” just further proved his point, as far as he could tell. He was thankful the blonde hadn’t started swearing into the microphone, but that was a low bar and he knew it. Though he hadn’t been smiling as he’d announced that he would win. There was a seriousness to him that Izuku had never seen before. A quiet focus that hadn’t been around in their middle school years.
That wasn’t the Katsuki he remembered.
Nooroo has said that there was a chance his childhood friend would change in their new school. He was used to being a big fish in a small pond and UA was a much bigger pond than they’d been in before. Seeing so many people with such strong quirks and bright minds, it would make Katsuki reexamine himself and the future he was striving for. He would be forced to grow, if only to keep pace with the classmates he was surrounded by and teachers that would look for the best and accept nothing less from all of them.
He couldn’t help hoping that Nooroo was right, and this was a sign that his former-friend was finally growing past the defensiveness he’d known for so long. If he really wanted to be a hero, a respected hero, then he’d need to grow past it.
The thought lingered in his head for just a moment before Izuku shook it off as he and his year mates were directed to the starting line of the Obstacle Race.
He could ponder the possible growth of his childhood friend at another time.
Right now, it was time to focus on the plan for getting through the Sports Festival. Izuku had come up with the brunt of their plan for the sports festival, using previous years as his outline.
The first event was always some kind of race or obstacle course that divided up into three sections, four if you counted students who decided to use their quirk to sabotage their year mates at the gate.
His plan focused on the four of them working together to overcome that. Several steps (a few of them were more rules than steps) that would get them through the festival and ensure that his friends could all make good showings. He was in management, so it didn’t matter how well he did. But it would matter for his friends, and that was reason enough for him to make a careful plan for them to tackle the festival.
He’d made sure to study past years to build their plan to get through. And now that they were being sent to the starting tunnel, it was time to put it into action.
1) Find your partner and stay by them throughout the race.
The four of them would be working in pairs during the race, to ensure they could all make it through in the top 42. He would work with Toru, while Hitoshi would work with Mei. The focus during the race was being agile and clever, not just fast. He and Mei carried the most support gear, so they would be using it to help get past the obstacles in the race. He had been practicing a lot with Mei’s prototypes to get used to what he could and couldn’t do with them. Hitoshi and Toru had done the same, even teaming up to test things all together.
Toru, because of her cheer-leading skills, was very agile already so she wouldn’t need much help from him for acrobatics to get around the track. Not only that, but she had training with her fellow Hero Course students to call on. It would be the obstacles that would be the most likely to slow them down. But that was why Izuku would be helping. His ability to sense her, which had grown to include the times when he wasn’t wearing the miraculous, gave him a boost with helping her as well.
(Nooroo thought Izuku’s magic was starting to sense her quirk, since light was bending slightly with her invisibility and his magic was a form of light magic. It was a theory that neither of them were very sure of how to test.)
Since Toru was invisible, she would need a bit of help to be notable to the audience. And Izuku’s job in the first event was to help with that.
Hitoshi wasn’t as practiced in all the strength and reflexes he needed, only really taking his hero course training seriously recently, so he would be getting back up from Mei. She knew her tech best, and would be able to haul him along if an obstacle turned out to be more than he’d expected. Izuku knew that, despite the way the two of them play-fought with each other, they could work together incredibly well when they put their minds to it.
Hitoshi’s quirk wasn’t something flashy and easy to show off, so he needed to rely on using skill to show he was worth the transfer into the Hero Course that he wanted. And at least one of those skills was showing he could work with others to overcome an obstacle.
Izuku scanned the building cluster of students, keeping to the back of the crowd as he did. He spotted Toru by a few of her classmates and carefully slipped closer, tapping the end of his umbrella against the ground to get her attention without startling her. He could see her turning slightly, bouncing slightly once she spotted him and hurrying closer without startling anyone around her. Until she had fallen back to stand by him near the middle of the bunched together students.
“Hey. Ready for the race, Izu-kun?” Her voice was light, but he could hear and feel the tremor of nerves to her.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he answered with a smile. He was sure some of his own nerves bled through, but he pushed them back to look up at the countdown on the gate above them all.
2) Avoid the Door Blockade.
The doors always became a blockade at the start of the race. Not because of anything the school did to the gate itself, but because of the way the students always charged the doors the instant the race began. The crowd of people trying to cram themselves through a relatively small gate first always ended in a bottle neck that slowed everyone down.
And, of course, there were the students who decided that the best plan was to sabotage the people behind them so that they could get through first. As one of Toru’s classmates decided to prove.
Todoroki, if he remembered right, gave his own opening salvo by freezing the ground under the feet of the people around him while leaving his own free. Trapping them in place to give himself a head start and slowing down everyone behind the trapped students. A clever and surprisingly common tactic over the years.
He nodded at his friend, flashing a smile that looked more confident than he felt. They had planned for this.
“Ready! Okay!” Toru gave a determined bounce, clapping her hands together, her voice prouder and stronger than she fully felt. His invisible friend leaped, flipping forward so that her feet landed on the shoulders of the students in front of her. She had been a flyer in her old cheerleader team (despite her invisibility), so being able to free-flip her way over everyone while using their shoulders as hand and foot holds was as easy as breathing.
He couldn’t help grinning at her as she went, letting her get ahead of him before using the trick Mei had set up for him to use.
Izuku lifted his umbrella, carefully twisting the handle clockwise and pressing on one of the hidden buttons Mei had installed. There was a click as the end snapped open to create a clawed hook and a small bang as it and the cable connected to it were launched and dug into the spot in the ceiling he’d aimed at. Following the habit he’d honed in preparation for the festival, Izuku gave a small tug to ensure it had caught properly before pushing the button a second time. The cable retractor kicked in, yanking him into the air and (more importantly) over the cramped cluster of students.
A quick twist of the handle clutched between his hands made the claw release, bringing it whizzing back to the umbrella and snapping closed as he started his free fall. He rolled forward over his shoulder once he hit the ground, hopping to his feet and breaking into a run to keep pace with Toru.
“Nice move, green boy! That looked awesome!” He glanced over his shoulder at the person who’d called to him, a grinning boy with blonde hair that had a lightning shaped streak of black in it. He was one of Toru’s classmates, Kaminari, if he remembered correctly. He was the one with an electric quirk.
Izuku flashed him a quick grin.
“Thanks!”
He could hear Mei’s maniacal cackling as she rocketed over the field with the jet pack she’d built, radiating delight at how well her invention was working. Hitoshi followed with his own grappling gun, his quiet focus and determination a sharp contrast from the startled and frustrated students behind them. He put a mental pin on all of his friends, tracking their emotions through the course as best he could.
The ground shook as they reached an open space, many of the racing students stumbling to a halt as something loud and thunderous appeared.
Giant robots rumbled into view, blocking the path forward. Zero Pointers were what Yamada-sensei called them over the loudspeakers, mentioning that they had been used during the Hero Course Entrance Exams. They were just as giant as Toru had described them when they had shared their respective entrance tests during a study session.
He gritted his teeth as his eyes flew over the space, trying to find a safe opening through them. This had been part of his rules.
3) Don’t fight anything that appears. Focus on getting past as quickly and safely as you can.
There was nothing wrong with helping people get through, but the obstacles were meant to slow the students down more than anything else. Moreover, none of his friends were built for heavy combat. This was an obstacle built for people who were built to handle them. Falling back and letting their stronger classmates clear a path was the smartest course of action, unless they managed to skip over the robots entirely like their more mobile year-mates.
Todoroki, showing off both his powerhouse status and his fine control, struck again. Freezing the center-most Zero Pointers as they’d stepped closer to the students and running through the opening he’d created between them.
Were it any other time, Izuku would have been vibrating in excitement about seeing someone who’d refined their power and control the way the dual-haired boy had obviously had. Instead, Izuku’s eyes widened in alarm as he realized the angle the robots were leaning.
“NO! Don’t follow him! He froze the robots while they were off balance! They’re going to fall!” He lunged forward, swinging his umbrella around so the handle hooked the elbow of the furthest student ahead of him, a brown-haired girl from 1-B, preventing her from trying to sprint through the slim opening. He raised his voice louder, praying that the students out of his reach would listen. “Everyone get clear, they’re coming down!”
And, just like he said, they came down hard. With at least two students trapped beneath them. Izuku hadn’t felt anything more than shock and frustration, he hoped that it meant the two had quirks that kept them safe.
The girl he’d hooked whimpered at the sight, stumbling back and freeing her arm. Izuku threw an apologetic look at her, trying to check for bruises even if they wouldn’t have formed yet.
“Sorry about that, are you okay?”
“Y-yeah. I’m okay. Th-thank you, I don’t think my quirk could have kept me safe from that,” she stuttered out. (Shock, relief, shyness hitting hard at the end. Genuinely thankful.) He gave her a friendly smile.
“Good, glad I could help then.” He felt a tug on his sleeve, turning to find Toru beside him.
“Izu-kun, come on! I think I can see a path through, we need to hurry before we fall too far behind,” Toru said, her voice excited enough to hide the nerves underneath. He nodded to her.
“Right, lead the way, Toru-chan.” He glanced back at the brown-haired girl peering at them from behind her bangs, flashing a friendly smile at her. “Good luck!”
Above them, he could hear Yamada-sensei and Eraserhead-sensei commentating on the students’ progress. With Eraserhead-sensei rightfully pointing out the lack of hesitation his class had in fighting back against the obstacles. They’d already had their trial-by-fire in the USJ. Robots, no matter how large they were, couldn’t hold up against something like that. While the rest of the students slowed down to figure out plans, class 1-A roared past them with minimal pause, ripping their way through the robots with an efficiency that came from choosing action over nerves.
(He valiantly held back the flare of delight when his own actions were pointed out over the speakers. It was just an offhand comment from Eraserhead-sensei about a management student paying attention to small details about the frozen robots, but the fact that it was pointed out at all made him just a little bit giddy.)
He followed in Toru’s wake, keeping close to his invisible friend as they slipped between their year-mates as the rest teamed up to destroy the Zero Pointers. And they both learned that Mei hadn’t been kidding about how much stronger the new cloth of his umbrella was, when Izuku snapped it open to shield them from stray bits of shrapnel.
They made it through the robots with less fuss than he’d been worried they would face, both of them breaking into a proper run once they made it past.
The route took them downwards, into tunnels beneath the ground and out of the light of the bright sunny day. This was tighter quarters than they usually used during the race. It would make things much more difficult for the flashy, heavy-hitting quirks in their year. It would force them to be more thoughtful with how they used their quirks. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it struck Izuku as odd.
Usually, the Sports Festival focused on large open spaces for the events. It make filming and broadcasting the event much easier, even if it caused more subtle skills of the students to get lost in the fray for the general public.
Then again, there wasn’t a live TV broadcast this year, was there? There was a radio broadcast, sure, but the filmed version of the event was supposed to be released later. That meant… That meant they could break from the yearly formula to try new challenges. To pit the classes against things they normally wouldn’t face.
Which meant Izuku had no idea what might come next. Izuku gritted his teeth, thoughts rushing at a mile a minute as he tried to work out what the obstacle actually was before they reached it.
(He wasn’t ready for this. He’d tried so hard to come up with ideas for how to speed through the race, but he couldn’t remember one that used a tight, underground space like this.)
Yamada-sensei’s voice was muffled compared to before, but it still boomed through the tunnel clear enough for the students racing through to hear him.
“So the first barrier was a piece of cake?! Well how about the second?!”
Izuku’s foot came down and the ground gave way, ripping a shout of alarm from him. He felt Toru’s surprise, quickly followed by her iron grip on his arm before they both tumbled down the trapdoor that had opened under their feet.
Wind rushed past his ears, the light around them vanishing quickly as they free fell through the opening. He instinctively wrenched his magic inward, trying to hide his natural glow before it could be noticed by any cameras. (This wasn’t the time to explain why he could glow-in-the-dark despite being quirkless.)
“Izu-kun!”
Toru’s mix of shock and fear kicked him into motion. He twisted as much as he could with Toru clinging to his arm, swinging his umbrella up and opening it over their heads. A button flared the inner-cloth out from where it was tucked inside the umbrella, making it significantly larger than it would have normally been, and he started pushing as much magic as he felt he could get away with to change it into something strong enough to keep them from being hurt by the landing. The combination of Mei’s handwork and his own magic made his shoulder jerk painfully, a small near-invisible burst of light flaring from the object, but their momentum slowed. It wasn’t a proper parachute, though it did well enough.
“Brace yourself!” He shouted. The wind was louder than he would have liked it to be. They would still hit hard, but hopefully not hard enough to break anything.
He wasn’t entirely wrong, though not for the reason he’d been worrying.
They bounced off the ground, the cushion that made up the landing pad surprisingly soft and springy once they hit it.
Toru manged to get herself into a crouch before the hidden ground met them, managing to land without more startled ‘oof!’ at the way it bounced and flexed under her feet.
Izuku’s timing, however, was off. He ended up missing his feet, only one landing on the mat and the elbow of the arm clutching his umbrella slammed down on the flexed knee. He swore in pain from the two colliding, letting go of the umbrella and curling on the mat.
“Izu-kun! Are you okay?!” Toru was immediately fussing over him, pulling the arm she’d been gripping over her shoulder to help him up. He accepted the help, carefully stretching his leg and arm out and hissing at the spike of pain from the action. Nothing felt fractured or broken, from what he could tell in the dim lighting of the tunnel they were in.
Though that certainly didn’t mean that they didn’t hurt.
“I think so. I manged to smack my knee with my elbow despite the cushion the teachers put here, though.” Toru let out a sympathetic hiss. She’s probably hit her own before and knew how much something like that would hurt. “I don’t think it’s anything worse than that, thankfully. It’ll probably turn into a nasty bruise later, but I think Recovery Girl can take care of it easily enough.”
He eased his weight off of Toru, reaching down with a wince and grabbing the fallen support equipment and closing it again. He leaned on the umbrella with his non-dominant arm, the one he hadn’t bashed against his knee, to help steady himself as he walked.
It seemed the reinforcements done to it were going to serve a slightly different purpose for this part of the race. He would have to use it as an actual walking-cane until the pain in his knee faded enough for him to run again.
He looked around the dark tunnels while, trying to gauge where they were. The space was tightly enclosed, gray cement walls and floor, not counting the landing mat, with light strips on the bottom corners floor that offered just enough light to see by and not much more.
(The lights reminded him of the kind of floor lighting used on an airplane.)
“We should move closer to the walls, we don’t know how close anyone behind us was.” He gently nudged Toru toward the walls, trying to get them both out from under the trapdoor they’d fallen through.
He could feel the flares of alarm and surprise from their year mates as they all fell, landing in other parts of the apparent maze around them. No one above their falling spot yet, but it was better to take precautions while they still could.
“Ah! Right. It would hurt if someone landed on us.” Toru let out a thoughtful hum, shifting around to look as well. “It looks like… It might be a maze of some kind? This is really gonna slow everyone down.”
“Yeah, it looks like Nedzu-sensei took advantage of the heightened security to change the formula of the obstacle race this year.” Izuku muttered, frowning in thought.
He hadn’t been prepared for this, the events of previous years always required more space to allow an audience to watch all the students at once. But with a smaller audience this year, they could do split-screens on the jumbo-trons in the stadium instead of only showing the front-runners of the race. Which meant their illustrious principal could throw as many curve balls as he wanted at the students and no one would have been prepared for it.
“The Zero Pointers were a bait-and-switch, then. People would think the race was proceeding as it did every year when they saw them, giving more focus on heavy-hitting and flashy students in the first year. This obstacle would get to throw everyone of kilter when they reached it. Being plunged into the darkness would catch them all off guard and leave a lot of people floundering.”
It was the kind of genius move he should have expected from Nedzu-sensei, but it had slipped past him because of everything else that had happened the past few months. He hadn’t thought about the freedoms the tighter security could have offered to the structures of the events. He wanted to kick himself for not considering what might change if there were less people to keep watch of on the school’s campus.
The principal had gotten one over on him and he couldn’t figure out if he was upset or excited about it.
“It gives a lot of students like us a chance though!” Toru said, getting excited. “This’ll slow down all of the kids with fighting quirks or agility ones and make them all have to think carefully about what they do instead of just bulldozing their way through. Everyone who already does that has a way better chance to do well now!”
He grinned slightly, nodding at her. Toru was right. This would make their odds of placing well in the race much better. And give students like Toru and Hitoshi more chances to show what they could do.
“How should we move forward then, Izu-kun? The Hand-on-Wall trick?” Toru asked, crossing her arms in thought. Izuku shook his head.
“No, we don’t know if there are any island walls in this maze. If we use that, we could end up walking in circles and never notice until the final buzzer rang. Nedzu-sensei wouldn’t just make everyone guess and hope they went the right way. That would easily wreck the time schedule for the entire day.” Izuku drummed his fingers against the handle of his umbrella, leaning against it to take the weight off his bruised knee. “There must be a trick to this, a hidden signal of some kind to help us find our way. We just need to figure out what he used.”
“Maybe we should start moving then? It might not be something we can see while so close to the trapdoors.” His friend suggested.
That would make sense, if the clues were further into the maze or not immediately obvious from the entrance. Heroes didn’t have the luxury of waiting for an answer to appear and the events were meant to show off heroic skills and traits the students had. The trick wouldn’t be something they could see right away, it would be something they had to keep their eyes peeled for. The question was, which direction should they go?
“Okay, knee-jerk choice then. Left or right?” Izuku couldn’t see or hear anything that gave them a hint about which way to choose, which meant choosing at random. At least, until he could figure out what Nezu-sensei’s trick was.
“Uhm… Left I guess?”
He nodded, and the two started moving.
Toshinori winced as he watched Midoriya’s fumbled landing on the pop-up screen. He could tell the boy had tried to land properly, but he’d been more focused on ensuring his friend landed safely than on keeping his own feet beneath him. He’d swung slightly to the side and ended up falling back into the mat more than he’d meant to, putting his knee directly under his elbow as he landed.
Hagakure had tried to keep her friend from falling, but she hadn’t been strong enough to handle the jerk of Midoriya’s weight nor had she been ready for just how large the trapdoor they’d triggered had actually been.
He’d been worried that the principal had overdone it with this leg of the obstacle course, but he supposed it would still be considered viable for the Sport’s Festival.
The maze would severely slow things down, but Nedzu had wanted to challenge the students in ways he previously hadn’t been allowed. Everything usually had to accommodate the live television broadcasts and the demands of the general public that attended it in person. But without those, he suddenly had more freedom in the challenges.
He knew some of the booby-traps that had been implemented in the maze, but he also knew that Nedzu had included simple ways to escape and direction of which way they should go instead. Not for the whole maze, just enough to direct the students to the right track. There was a method for getting through without running into the traps, but he hadn’t been told what it was. Maijima and Ishiyama had looked exasperated about it though, so either it was something the students wouldn’t normally recognize the meaning of or it used something incredibly obscure but potentially something they could know beforehand.
(His guess was something that used morse code. It was technically something anyone could learn and use, but it usually used English for it’s messages. So it wouldn’t be easy for Japanese students to translate and use to their advantage. Although he could have implemented Wabun Code…)
It didn’t look like any of his students had been seriously hurt by their landings, but he was sure Midoriya would likely be limping for while. At least his friend was able to help him so they wouldn’t fall too far behind their classmates.
Little Eri whimpered.
“Mama… Is Niichan gonna be okay?” He looked down at the little girl beside him, clutching her toy tightly as she looked up at her mother seated on her other side. Her mother looked nervous, but quickly tried to hide it while she comforted her young daughter.
“He’ll be alright, baby. Izuku’s just… Sore from landing wrong. Like when he missed a fall in one of Sango-sensei’s classes. He’ll be okay.” He wasn’t sure who Sango-sensei was, but he could only assume that mentioning the class was giving Eri something familiar to compare it to. A self-defense class Midoriya was in, perhaps?
“I’m sure he will be. Chiyo- Ah, Recovery Girl always keeps track of anyone who gets hurt during the race and helps them feel better. She’s very good at it.” He said gently, hoping his own words helped. Eri seemed like a very sweet little girl, seeing her brother getting hurt was probably more upsetting than they’d thought it would be. The little girl looked up at him.
“Her quirk can fix bad ouchies?” He offered a kind smile and nodded.
“Oh yes, she can fix a lot of- of bad ouchies.” Nothing as bad as his own injury (her quirk couldn’t restore lost organs after all) but certainly something as simple as some bad bruising. And Toshinori was sure Midoriya only had some unpleasant bruises from his landing.
Eri was quiet for a moment. It looked as though she was thinking about something very hard.
“Niichan ‘n Nooroo think my quirk could help fix ouchies, once I get better with it. I’ve been able to help the caterpillars at school get better when they have ouchies. And Niichan says I’ve been doing really good at it.”
He blinked at that.
“Really now?”
“Uh-huh. They’ve been making cocoons, and some of them didn’t look the way Yukina-sensei said they’re s’posed to. So I used my quirk to make them go back to bein’ caterpillars and put them in better spots so they could try again.”
Turn them… Back into caterpillars? He blinked in bewilderment, looking down at the little girl beside him. Just what was little Eri’s quirk that she could do something like that? Perhaps it was just her wording that made it sound strange? An impressive healing quirk could possibly undo something like that to allow a small child to move a caterpillar cocoon to a different place.
“Maybe I can use my quirk to make Niichan’s ouchies better too…” She mumbled, staring hard at the section of the screen that showed her brother’s progress. “I- I can ask if it’d be okay, when Niichan comes out. Right Mama?”
“I’m not sure they’ll let us go see him, sweetie. Only teachers are allowed in the places where the students are right now.” The little girl looked upset at that, hugging her toy tighter as her lip started to wobble.
“I could escort you after the race is done,” Toshinori offered without thinking. The two looked up at him in surprise. He ducked his head slightly. “I, ah, I’m actually considered part of the school’s staff. D-despite being-being All Might’s secretary. I’m sure the other teachers won’t mind if I show you the way to Recovery Girl’s station to see Midoriya-shonen, at the very least.”
At least he hoped they wouldn’t be. Now that he’d offered, he didn’t think he had the heart to take it back. Not with the way little Eri had beamed at him.
He’d have to send a text to Nedzu and hope the principal wouldn’t be too upset with him for not asking before he’d made the offer. If he was lucky, Nedzu would take a break from whatever project had him so preoccupied to send a reply before the race was finished. He turned his attention back to the screens after sending the message.
That was odd. Why did Midoriya have such a pinched expression on his face? Was it something to do with Nedzu’s hint? Had he managed to figure it out?
Nedzu-sensei was messing with him. He had to be. Why else would he have picked this for the signal for which way to go to get through the maze.
The clue to finding their way was butterflies.
Small, yellow and purple butterflies painted on the maze of the ceiling, with some kind of reflective paint that was just enough to reflect the floor lighting. Only visible if you looked up at the ceiling when you reached a crossroad in the maze, and not so bright that you would notice them before you actually looked up. He could very faintly, very very faintly, sense a minuscule amount of magic in the paints used.
He was, as far as he knew, the only student in the school who knew of magic. Let alone had a connection to butterflies in his natural magic. He could feel himself sweating as he stared up at the tiny paintings that curved around the corner of the ceiling, showing them which way they needed to go.
It might not be that, though. He argued in his head, trying to keep the nerves off his face. Everyone in 1-A saw my butterflies at the USJ. And it wasn’t like they made a rule about not telling anyone about the butterflies they saw, even if only a couple students saw Eraser Anansi being created from them. He could have decided to reference it to give them all something easy to recall to get the hint.
His logic was probably right. After all, he looked and sounded older as Sasakia. It was part of the magic he applied to the disguise! At the very least, he looked old enough to not be a high school student.
(But also, this was Principal Nedzu he was talking about. He was the smartest creature in the world, a genius among geniuses. There was no way he would use something like this on a whim. There had to be a meaning of some kind to the choice. There had to be.)
“So, we just need to follow the butterflies?” Toru asked. Izuku wrenched his attention away from the ceiling, trying to hide his inner turmoil from sight.
“I think so. There are a lot of stories about messages and paths being shown by birds and butterflies, I guess Nedzu-sensei wanted to make a reference with them. It would be something a lot of people would have come across at some point growing up.” Getting singled out by their principal was probably just his anxiety talking. His brain making things up because of his nerves.
“I guess that makes sense. Not everyone knows a lot about codes and puzzles, so something simple would work well enough. And with USJ, a lot people know that something happened with butterflies…”
“Putting them on the ceiling keeps them from being too obvious. And most students would either be looking straight ahead or at the floor where the lights are. Nedzu-sensei always has to look up to make eye-contact with others, this is definitely something that would occur to him to use that he knows other people wouldn’t think of.” Most people only look at their eye-level or lower when trying to find something and rarely thought to look someplace high-up to find what they were looking for. It was often why people would completely miss something on the top shelf of a bookcase even if it was out in the open. “Let’s go then, we’ll need to start moving faster if we want to make good time. We don’t know how big this maze actually is.”
“How’s your knee, Izu-kun?” She was worried. Neither of them had expected to get hurt during the race, even if they’d both known it was possible.
He hummed, gingerly putting his weight on it again. There was a dull throb but it was tolerable enough.
“I think I can jog on it now. I don’t think I can do a full run yet, but I won’t be slowing us down as much anymore.”
“Okay, let’s hurry!”
They broke into a light jog, both of them keeping an eye on the halls and the ceiling.
He’d kept it to himself, but the delay of the maze was actually very concerning for his plans. They needed to do well, yes, however… Doing too well would be a problem. There was a reason he’d made the fourth rule of the plan what it was.
4) Don’t get in the top ten.
It was a strange rule, for sure, but it was one he’d made sure they all knew. Simply because of the issues it would give them later on in the events.
It was tempting, so very very tempting to try and get into the top ten. Especially first place.
Getting it meant attention. Notice. Everyone would be looking at you and what you could do. Bragging rights and glory all wrapped up in one package, even if it was just for the first event of the festival. But that made it just as, if not even more, tempting to get. It was the reason so many others in their year would be gunning for it. Why students like Todoroki and Katsuki would be hellbent on getting it.
The problem with doing that came from how the second event was usually structured.
Getting in the top ten usually came with a curve ball of some kind. The second event made those top students into targets for the rest of the top 42 to focus on. It was a trend that had spiked much higher ever since Nedzu became the principal of UA.
(Duusu thought that, in a bizarre way, it reflected the attitude about the popularity charts for heroics. If you were number one, everyone would be looking to unseat you and take the role themselves. He couldn’t say she was wrong.)
The second event was a team activity of some kind, usually one that required each team to earn points to qualify for the tournament bracket that always made up the third event of the Sport’s Festival. The other students were granted the most points if they bested the top 5-to-10 of the race, putting a target on their backs and making it much harder for them to pass the second event. A lot of people forgot about this trend, though it had been part of the structure of the Sports Festival for years.
Slowing down, no matter the real reason for it, wasn’t a bad thing for them.
They just needed to be in the top 42, not the top 10.
Izuku could faintly sense the rest of their year, several people a head of them, but far more people behind them. He couldn’t tell who was who, but he had a feeling that Katsuki was one of the people ahead. His quirk allowed him to be far more mobile than people realized, even in a tight space like this. And the paint of the butterflies would reflect the light from his explosions fairly easily.
The tunnel started to brighten, either they had brighter lighting in some places, or there were openings ahead.
Based on the flares of excitement from the people ahead of them, he was guessing the latter. But there was also a lot of frustration bubbling up soon after. It seemed the exit of the tunnels may also be the final obstacle of the course.
“Izu-kun! I see an opening!” Toru’s voice was bubbly with the excitement she felt, drawing a grin from him. “I think we’re almost out!”
“Fantastic!” He put in a burst of speed, ignoring the painful twinge from his knee. (He hoped there would be a break between the first and second events. He really wanted to check with Recovery Girl about his knee…)
The tunnel opened up to-
“A climbing wall?”
At first glance, it looked like a climbing wall but done with jagged bricks and planks randomly sticking out instead of the standard grips found on casual climbing walls. There was a large mat at the wall’s base, much like the ones they’d all fallen onto at the start of the maze. To catch anyone who fell off, if he had to guess. The bright sunlight streamed down on the gaggle of students that had escaped the maze, the distant roar of the crowd could be heard far above them all. It sounded like the wall lead right into the stadium itself.
Izuku’s eyes quickly scanned the area, and the students both at the base and on the wall itself. There was a pillar of ice that streaked up one side, proof that Todoroki had already found his own way out. But the ice was too cold and painfully jagged for anyone else to use it, though he could see some people trying to use it anyway. Some other scorched patches had likely been left by Katsuki-san’s ascent up.
He caught Toru’s arm before she could race ahead and try to scale the wall.
“Wait. A normal climbing wall was too simple for UA. There’s probably going to be a trick to this.” This was the next obstacle, he was sure if it. She stepped back, scanning the wall with her own eyes to try and spot what was going on.
A student screamed in surprise, the platform they’d been standing on retracting back into the wall and they scrambled to keep their grip on the stonework. Toru let out a gasp.
“Izu-kun! The stones! They’re all moving!” His eyes widened.
They had to climb a perpetually changing wall? That would slow everyone down even more.
“A pattern, there has to be a pattern to it,” he muttered, eyes scanning over the moving stones. “Machines and people can’t work completely at random, even when they’re trying. There must be some kind of rhythm or pattern to the changes.”
Both of them were quiet, watching their year mates struggle to race up and climb as fast as they could.
“Izu-kun, do you think Mei-chan made your grappling hook strong enough to handle both our weights?” Toru asked, something thoughtful and determined in her emotions. He glanced over at her.
“Probably, yeah. Mei-chan used really strong cables and motors, despite their size.”
“Okay, okay,” Toru said softly. “I think I have an idea to get us up without stressing out your knee and elbow too much.”
He shook his head slightly at that. It really didn’t matter as much if he did well or not. He was in management. It was his friends who needed to shine during the festival, not him. He could make his way up on his own even it would him much further behind them.
“Toru-chan, you don’t need to worry about getting me-“
“Nope! Don’t you even start Izu-kun!” Her voice was sharp, the spike of disapproval instantly silencing him. “We made our plan so we could all do well. Not just me and Mei-chan and Hitoshi-kun. You’re getting included too! You’re gonna do well and show off how awesome you are.”
He dipped his head, feeling himself getting misty-eyed. (He was still so quick to get weepy when people said nice things to him.)
“R-right. So, uh, plan. You have one?”
“I think I’ve figured out the rhythm. The lower half of the wall has a different one from the top, which is why everyone is falling so often the higher they get.” Izuku tried to follow along, eyes flicking between the top and bottom halves of the wall to see what she meant. “The bottom half is following a faster rhythm than the top. I think we can use your grappling hook to skip it, and I think I’ve figured out the one the top is using. If you follow where I tell you to go, I think I can get both of us up really fast.”
He nodded, following Toru’s lead as she carefully directed him on where to aim, and firing exactly when she told him to. The motor pulled them both up, launching them over the heads of the other students and against the moving wall. He quickly hitched his umbrella to loop on Mei had included in the holster bag for it, grabbing on and getting a footing as quickly as he could.
From there, Izuku followed the rhythm Toru counted out loud, trying to keep close as she swung from hold to hold up the wall.
(No thinking for this one, he just had to focus on moving up the wall and trust Toru’s lead. He knew she wouldn’t lead him wrong on purpose.)
It felt like a blink of time between when they landed and when Toru was helping pull him up an onto the flat ground at the top.
Then they were running, nether doing more than throwing excited grins as they sprinted into the open light of the stadium.
“And in our Fourteenth and Fifteenth places respectively are Students 1A-16 and 1I-18!! Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is the first time we’ve had a management course student place in our top 42! Your memory’s better than mine, Eraserhead, has this happened before?”
“Hm. Not the first time UA’s had it happen, but it’s been a couple decades.”
Toru whipped around and snatched Izuku up in a bone crushing hug, radiating excitement and delight.
“We did it, Izu-kun! We did it! We placed in the the top twenty!” Her voice was loud in his ear, but he didn’t care. He hugged back just as hard, swinging her up and laughing from the excitement and joy he could feel penetrating the entire stadium.
They did it. They did it!
He let go of his invisible friend and twisted around to scan the audience, looking for his mother and sister. Eri was standing in her seat and waving excitedly at him (and use using the shoulder of the tall blonde man to keep her balance) while his mother was crying beside her.
He waved back, his cheeks hurting from his own smile.
So far, competing in the Sport’s Festival was just as amazing as he’d imagined it would be.
(Now, hopefully, there would be a break long enough for him to see Recovery Girl before the next event started…)
“He’s… He’s young.”
“Tragically, they alwaysss ssseem to be.”
A pause, then a sigh.
“At least I know who to reach out to now.”
“You already knew. He told usss himssself, after all. When will you be able to sssend the offer?”
“In a few more days. Then we’ll be able put it into motion.”
“Good. That will give the ripplesss time to sssettle down.”
“Yeah. I-I really hope this plan works.”
“If it doesssn’t, we have plenty of time to try again.”
“I know. I know we do.”
Afterword: Oh wow, I wonder what that could be about? Such a mystery. (I can’t help seeding future things, it’s fun.)
Now some random writng notes!
Bushao is an oc to help fill out the management class roster, since there are only three students actually named in canon. His name is a (slight) misspelling of one of the many words for “rude” in Japanese. Specifically the word “Busahō” which, when brought into English, would get translated as words like: impolite, uncivil, discourteous, unmannerly, or contemptuous. I may tie it into his quirk later, but for now it was just about how he handles Izuku. He doesn’t really think badly of Izuku, he just isn’t terribly welcoming to him. I’ve been half-joking in my head that he’s Pulling Pigtails without realizing it himself. XD
Since Izuku doesn’t really have Katsuki to compete against in class, I needed to make someone else that Izuku could pit himself against. Because canon gives me the impression that Izuku (like his og rivals) needs a challenge to really push himself with, someone to butt heads with and compete against to motivate himself. So Bushao gets to be Izuku’s Management Course rival.
Also, Izuku tends to refer to his teachers by their hero-names unless they otherwise tell him to use a different name. Especially if he doesn’t actually know their real names, or is trying to hide that he knows their real names. Which is why he refers Hizashi, Nemuri and Iki by their names while still calling Shouta by his hero name. They’re the three teachers he interacts with in class, so he’s more familiar with them and okay with calling them by their actual names. He knows Shouta’s real name from his Sasakia work, and he’s been told it by Toru, but he won’t actually use it until Shouta tells him to. It’s a respect/familiarity thing for him, as well as trying to keep the habit for when he talks to him as Sasakia.
He can’t slip up and use the wrong name if he only ever used the “Proper” name for the hero! Forgetting, for just a moment, that Shouta is an Underground Hero and not a Limelight one and knowing his hero name is actually unusual for people. But he’s already known as a hero fanboy, so it’ll still probably end up slipping under the radar anyway.
Wabun Code, for anyone wondering, is a form of Morse Code designed to work with Hiragana and Katakana instead of the English Alphabet.
