A/N: I'm back from college hell and now have an entire month of break (yaaaaaaaay). Well, an entire month as of writing this. Probably less when you guys get this. Meh.
xoxoxo
"I promise I'll be careful," I told my mom before heading out.
"And I'll record the whole thing for you!"
"Thanks!" Before I left, Yang meowed and butted her head on my leg. I chuckled and rubbed her head, causing her to purr. "See you later, girl."
xoxoxo
Security was upped for the sports festival. I was mostly fine getting through because I had a student ID, but there were still some precautions. I saw some pro heroes on my way to the stadium, too. Everyone was tense as we changed into our gym uniforms. It was to be expected. Not only was the event televised, but our careers as heroes may have depended on how well we did. No pressure.
"We will be entering the stadium soon everyone!" Iida shouted when we were all in the waiting room. "Please prepare yourselves physically and mentally!"
"Midoriya," a voice that I only partially recognized said.
"What's up, Todoroki?" I asked him.
He glared at me. "You may have your magic and you may have some kind of support from All Might, but I plan to beat you." He turned around and started to walk away.
"The fuck's your problem, Half-'n-half?" Kacchan asked.
"Yeah, what's with the declaration of war?" Kirishima asked.
"Todoroki," I said. He stopped for a moment. "I'm aiming for the top too," I told him. He scoffed and walked away.
xoxoxo
To be honest I probably would have been very nervous if it weren't for Gamer's Mind. There were just so many people in the stands... I guess maybe between the USJ incident and the fact that it was known generally that the discoverer of magic was in 1-A, the first-year festival was the place to be. I made sure to look confident when we were walking in. I even used Hawkeye because I was technically allowed to for what I hoped was added impressiveness. Present Mic introduced each of the classes as they entered the field to thunderous applause.
Midnight-sensei, who was acting as referee, brandished her... whip thing. "Now for the pledge, we have Bakugou Katsuki from 1-A!"
Kacchan walked up to the podium and took the mic. "Gonna keep this brief, 'cause I'm pretty sure none of you are here to listen to me talk. I'm going to be aiming for the top." He looked sternly at all of the classes assembled. "If any of you aren't gonna do the same, you'd freaking better have a good reason." Oh thank goodness he didn't rile up the other classes too much. The people in the stands cheered at his speech, short as it was. I even saw some people from the other classes grinning.
Ding!
A quest has been created!
Sports Festival
The Yuuei sports festival is the biggest event of the year! You'd better do your best!
Completion: ?, Further rewards dependent on how well you do
I figured I'd get a quest at some point... It was interesting that there weren't any losing conditions, though. I guess it'd be a win even if I lost in the first round, though I'd lose out on anything that wasn't the question mark if I did that. Speaking of the first round...
"Give it up for Bakugou, ladies and gents!" Midnight said. "Now, let's get on with the first event!" She raised her whip, and a giant holoscreen appeared in the air above her. It cycled through a few different things before settling on the obstacle race.
"I guess it's going to be an obstacle course," I muttered, grinning. I could probably do pretty well in an obstacle course with my powerset.
xoxoxo
I did a few stretches while we waited at the start of the course. Everyone was in front of a large hallway that looked like it was supposed to bottleneck us if we all rushed through it, which we probably would considering the fact that it was a race.
"Oh my gosh, Deku! What's wrong with your spine!?" Uraraka shouted at me.
"Huh?" I looked down. Oh. My body was twisted almost all the way around. Yeah that probably looked bad.
"Spines are not supposed to do that," Tsu added, a little greener than usual.
"Sorry," I said, untwisting myself. "Forgot how flexible I got from getting the next DEX benchmark..."
"We're starting soon!" Iida shouted.
"Sorry."
The countdown started. "Begin!" Midnight shouted when it reached zero. A low hum came from me as I activated Sonic Aura. Lightning Aura would've been faster, but at the same time it might've hurt someone in the close quarters. It wasn't for long, though. I ran and jumped with all of my strength, landing on a platform made by Halitus in midair. Without wasting a moment, I switched to Lightning and shot forward.
At my top speed, I was easily able to outpace the slowed crowd, dropping back down when I was ahead of everyone. I did notice Kacchan and Uraraka flying behind me, though. Because I was so ahead of everyone else, I was the first to notice hordes of robots waiting on the other side of the bottleneck, with three giant ones in the middle. It looked like they were recycling the robots from the entrance exam. I jumped between a series of air platforms, the final one lining me up perpendicular to the center of one of the zero-pointers. I jumped at it with everything I had, using Fire Dash to propel myself even more. Just before I hit the robot, I switched to Magma Aura for more power and durability and created a lightning-enhanced spiked gauntlet to punch it with for extra piercing damage. I distantly heard Mic-sensei commenting about me.
The zero-pointer fell and I rode it down in the crater I'd punched in it. When it was done falling, I reached out for a bit of the robot's metal hull that was less heated than where I'd hit it and was by the robot's head a moment later. I'd promised myself to not overuse Elemental Embodiment because of how broken Sonic Embodiment in particular could be in a race with how it might as well be a short-range teleport with how it worked, but I was fine with a momentary use of Lightning Embodiment. I used the momentum I somehow still had after downgrading to Lightning Aura to race past the robots. For the most part I didn't bother fighting them. I was just fast enough that they couldn't really catch me, and I guess they were programmed to not chase any students who got through them. I did disable a few for EXP, though, and one robot...
I got an idea as I was approaching a two-pointer. It looked like it would just barely fit. I pointed at it, and Raimon appeared on top of it. He placed his hands on it, causing it to retract its limbs and make itself as small as possible. I opened my inventory, made it go as wide as I could make it, and rammed into the two-pointer inventory first. Luckily I was right and it disappeared in front of me, sucked into my inventory. I'd have to ask about bringing it back out in the middle of a game, but it seemed like a good ace up my sleeve.
I made it to the next obstacle with a huge gap between me and the rest of the contestants. Kacchan, Uraraka, and Todoroki were closer, but there was still some distance between us. I stared at the gaping hole in the ground in front of me, then at the stone pillars with tightropes connecting them. "There is no way they did this without a lot of earth mages," I muttered. "And how did nobody see this giant chasm by the arena? I guess it doesn't matter, though. What matters for now..." I gathered air mana on my back. "Is getting across." Because the sports festival was an opportunity to impress the hero agencies of Japan, I'd decided to not use the same few tricks over and over again. And so the air mana I was gathering formed into great wings of swirling green air. "Halcyon Wing," I intoned. I flapped them once, sending up a cloud of dust before the air stilled unnaturally. After seeing Kacchan use Fire Dash and Uraraka gravity magic to fly, I'd decided to find a way for people to fly using any element. Much like how people with healing Quirks were almost always given priority for medical training assuming they were competent enough for medical work, competent and powerful enough fliers were practically assured to get into hero schools simply on account of how useful flight is in hero work. Having flight as a relatively easily teachable skill seemed like the sort of thing that would be very useful for heroes in general. My favorite of the flight spells I'd made was an air spell, Halcyon Wing. It was a little costly, but it looked so pretty and had the ability to calm the surrounding air.
I jumped as high as I could, then flapped my wings. As a side effect of its air-calming, Halcyon Wing reduced the amount the air resisted my passage, making me fly even faster. A few students shot some generic spells at me, but I was easily able to dodge them. I dropped onto a tree on the other side of the obstacle and undid my wings. They unraveled in a shower of feathers that I grabbed with my magic, causing them to swirl around me. I used up a few of the feathers to chop off the branch I was standing on, then started using bio magic on the branch as it fell back onto the course. It grew into a small tree with an unusual root system, which drove itself into the ground in four parts like legs. I gripped onto the tree's trunk, using a thickened branch as a foothold. Bio magic was really fun once you got used to it. I made my tree walker go forward and, now that I was going slower, started listening to the commentary.
"And Midoriya's still in the lead, now with some weird plant thing!" Mic-sensei shouted.
"That's probably his bio magic," Aizawa-sensei said. "Among other things, he can use it to alter the shape of and control plants. To be honest it just looks like he's showing off now."
"To be fair, isn't that the point of the sports festival?"
Aizawa-sensei shrugged. "I suppose. And speaking of showing off, it looks like Todoroki's using some kind of ice platform and probably ice magic to fly over the chasm. That's certainly one way to do it."
I came up on the final obstacle of the race, the minefield. I'd seen it with Hawkeye while I was flying, which was why I'd made the tree walker. Though I was paying for that now, as Kacchan, Todoroki, and Uraraka were approaching behind me. I lengthened my walker's roots and increased the amount of mana I was using to make it walk, letting it go faster. I also gave it a Speed Up and started preparing a backup plan for when they caught up. Because of my walker's thin roots, it was able to step around the mines, and for the few that it stepped on in my rush, its roots were sufficient enough to not get blown away, which was why I'd used four legs in the first place.
"Damn it Deku, you won't win that easily!" Kacchan shouted from behind me. He and Todoroki were approaching quickly, with Uraraka just a bit behind them. I shot my remaining feathers in front of them, blowing up the mines. They were still gaining, though, so I pushed my walker even faster, then switched spells when they were just barely behind me. Jets of steam burst from my hands and feet, propelling me forwards and blowing the two back into some mines. I hit the ground running, keeping ahead of the others. With the lead I'd given myself, I was able to run to the end without anyone passing me.
"AND IN FIRST PLACE WE HAVE MIDORIYA IZUKU!" Mic-sensei shouted. The crowd was cheering for me. I grinned at All Might, who I saw smiling at me in the stands.
xoxoxo
"The next game of the sports festival will be a cavalry battle!" Midnight-sensei announced once everyone was back in the stadium. That was kind of good for me. I'd had an idea for a spell about a week ago that I thought I wouldn't be able to use in the sports festival because it was pretty much only useful on allies. The display changed to show what looked like the points each of the people who made it got, sorted by position. I looked at number one, for the point total I had. Ten million. It looked like there was a bonus for getting in first place, because up until first the points increased by five per position. "Here's how it works! The points of each member of the teams will be added together and put on a headband, which will be worn by your rider. You're supposed to steal those headbands, which is how you get points. Those headbands must be worn from the neck up, so getting a lot will get annoying fast. And of course, the person to beat is Midoriya, with ten million points! Whoever has that by the end is pretty much assured to get to the next round!"
"Oh," I said. Shit. That was not good. I had a giant target on my back now, or rather my forehead.
"You guys will have fifteen minutes to find your team and come up with a plan, starting now. Have fun!"
I gulped. My work would certainly be cut out for me. Even with my powers, the whole "everyone will be gunning out for you if you team up with me" thing sounded like it would make it hard to find willing teammates... I tried a few people, but they all shied away.
"Are you still looking for teammates, Deku?" Uraraka asked me from behind.
I turned around. "Are you sure about this, Uraraka? N-not that I'm not grateful, but I'm pretty sure just about everyone will be going after us because I got first last round..."
She nodded, a determined look on her face. "And that makes it even better! Everyone's eyes are gonna be on our team, so I'll definitely get noticed if I'm on your team!" She seemed to realize how what she said could be taken and blushed a bit. "Not that I don't want to help you, Deku! It's just... you know..."
I smiled. "Yeah, I get it. Come on, I think I know who else we can use." I scanned the crowd for a moment and almost immediately spotted him. I ran over to him. "Iida! If it's not too much of a bother, would you like to be on my team?"
He hesitated for a moment, then gave one of his deep bows. "I'm sorry, Midoriya. It's just... I don't want to be in your shadow for the sports festival."
I nodded. "I understand. I'll go try and find someone else." I walked away a bit.
"How did it go?" Uraraka asked, having just caught up to me.
I shook my head. "Iida didn't want to be in our group. We need to find someone else." I looked at the countdown. Half the time was up already. "And we should probably do it fast."
"Oh, so you need another person?" a loud voice said. "Well that's perfect!" I turned around to see a girl with pink dreadlocks wearing a pair of steampunk-ish goggles on her forehead. Her yellow eyes had crosshairs on them. "The name's Hatsume Mei, and I'm your answer! With my babies you'll be sure to win!"
"What's with the support gear?" Uraraka asked. "Aren't we not supposed to have them?"
"You're a support student, right?" I asked. "And I'm guessing your... 'babies' are support items?"
She grinned wider and got up in my face. "Oh, you're a smart one! Yes, of course my babies are wonderful, wonderful gadgets that heroes across the globe will use! Eventually. And everyone's eyes will be on you, the holder of the ten million points, so if I show off my babies in your team I'm sure to get good rep!"
I smiled, but backed up a bit. "Having some support gear will be awesome." I had an idea. "Actually, I just thought of something. We'll need another person, and I'll probably have to talk to Midnight-sensei about this, but... Hatsume!"
"Yes!?"
"I'll use my magic to help, but we might need to make temporary modifications to your babies, is that okay?"
She nodded energetically. "Of course, so long as you can put them back. I'd also love to see magic being used! I might be able to make even better babies!"
"Good. And I'll also try to teach you a spell I learned recently that lets me see magic, because to be honest I really wanna see that. You might be able to do it relatively easily, if your Quirk is eye-based like I'm assuming." She cackled and nodded. "And finally, how good are you at hacking?"
She rubbed her hands together. "Adopting a new baby? I like the sound of this."
"Isn't it more like kidnapping and brainwashing someone else's baby?" Uraraka asked, poking her chin.
"We've got a lot of work to do," I said, "but if we split up we should be able to get done on time."
xoxoxo
A/N: A bit shorter than the usual chapter, but I couldn't resist the cliffhanger. Anyone wanna guess what's going on?