Very few people outside the Hero course looked forward to the Sports Festival. It was acknowledged as a venue for the future pros to demonstrate their capabilities and court internships and job offers. Savvy Support students seized the opportunity to do the same, targeting their performances towards the support companies more than the Pro Heroes. Most students were not yet in a position to mass produce or market their wares, so they were also looking for jobs.
For the vast majority of General Ed and Business students the Sports Festival was a waste of time at best, and an opportunity for public humiliation at worst. Every year there were a lucky few who either managed to make such a fantastic showing during the events that they were put on a list of possible promotions to the Hero course; or they were able to find an entrepreneurial niche and make some money serving the needs of the crowds. The UA staff even encourage that sort of commercial activity, though very few students were able to successfully compete for audience money with the established vendors who had won the various service contracts for the event.
Jack had been considering what he wanted out of the Festival. Radiant Innovations had a box every year where senior executives and engineers would attend to scout Support students. But Jack had never been invited to attend. He'd seldom even bothered to watch the media coverage so he had little emotional connection to the competition.
"You basically have two choices," Hinata said. "You can either blow it off and be lost in the mass of mediocrity, or you can decide to finally show your stuff. I know Mom has made you a Hero suit, though she never lets me watch you use it. But even in your normal suit you can do more tricks than half the Hero students can. You just have to commit to winning."
"I'm not sure why I'd want to 'show my stuff' as you …" he replied, only to be cut off with a raised hand.
The young genius pointed out the window overlooking the inner courtyard. The estate was mostly built in a traditional Japanese style. The courtyard included a rock garden, a stream with a bridge, a grassy area with several cherry trees, and other decorative features. It was surrounded on three sides by the wings of the main house. Hinata was pointing to a young woman who was approaching what looked like a backpack half covered with a uniform jacket from Musashi Academy.
"Yes," Hinata urged quietly. "Come on. You can see I've been a bad girl. Just grab the stuff and come lecture me."
Jack silently shook his head. He didn't know what his sister had planned, but he was near certain of two things. First it was a nasty trap of some sort. Hinata had been at war with her nannies since she was five. She had managed to drive twenty-three of them away over the years, mostly in tears, though a few had required actual medical assistance. Yumi-chan was number twenty-four. She was surprisingly young, in her early twenties, and very good at her job. She treated both the troublesome genius and Jack, who only officially escaped her oversite when he started UA, as the mature individuals they usually showed themselves to be – except for Hinata's unrelenting pranking, of course.
The second thing Jack was certain of was that whatever trick his sister had planned with the backpack, Yumi was not going to fall for it. She had been avoiding, or effortlessly disarming, Hinata's pranks for almost seven months. That was the longest any nanny had managed to last by far. His sister assumed that the nanny's small elephantine trunk was the extent of her quirk, but Jack suspected there was more to it coming into play.
Yumi marched up to the pile of school affects with a smile on her face. When she reached them, instead of stopping to pick them up, she swiftly booted the schoolbag into the koi pond. The pack quickly erupted in a fountain of steaming noodles, which would have covered the caregiver if she had picked the bag up as Hinata had planned. The nanny just shook her head and watched the fish begin to feast on the sudden bounty. She turned and walked towards the house, Hinata's jacket neatly folded over one arm.
"I hope that wasn't your real schoolbag," Jack said quietly, fighting a laugh that he knew would infuriate his sister further.
"Of course not, but it was your hidden stockpile of yakisoba," she replied vindictively.
"What! You used my yakisoba stash. Why? It was from Matsuda's," Jack wailed in real distress. His childhood in captivity had left him with few pleasant memories, so he found great joy in simple pleasures, at least those allowed to him by his unique body. Food was one of his favorites. He didn't need to eat and what he did eat was converted completely to energy, so his only limits were logistical, and his only motivations were enjoyment or social necessity. Since arriving in Japan, he had been on a self-imposed quest to find the best yakisoba – his favorite food. "How could you? It was so much better than Chef's."
"I think that's something I'll add to our discussion," Yumi-chan said evenly from the end of the corridor. Hinata realized her effort to implicate Jack had also failed. She just hung her head and walked towards her apartment.
As the nanny passed, she turned to Jack. "I believe Kami-san wishes to speak with you. She's waiting in the Library."
"Thank you," Jack replied. Yumi nodded and continued after her wayward charge.
Kami Kazue was Jack's great-grandfather's executive assistant. She did much more for him than Hideki Shirane, Oba's assistant, did for her. As Executive Assistant to the President of Radiant Innovations, Kami was a real power in the company. She was Kagayaku-san's voice when he was not present. She was also an exceptionally attractive and intelligent woman, which made dealing with her much more pleasant than the alternatives. Every interaction Jack had had with her, and she commonly acted as an intercessor between him and the old man, convinced the golden teen of her loyalty to Kagayaku-san. Jack thought that she was even more loyal than Okubo, the old man's corporate hammer. Sometimes Okubo was sent to deliver messages rather than Kami-san. That was when Jack knew his great-grandfather was particularly disgusted with him.
When Jack entered the library, he saw Kami immersed in the examination of one of the three original Hokusai prints from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series. He noticed it was Number 5, his favorite. He stood next to her and lost himself in the contrast of minute details and immense perspective.
"I never noticed how the position and curve of the pine tree seems somehow reminiscent of the Great Wave." She gestured vaguely, keeping her hand well away from the print.
"Maybe it's the similar size of Fuji in both?" Jack replied, nodding. They stood silently for several more minutes before she turned to him. At her movement Jack focused on Kami. "Was there a message from Kagayaku-san?"
"There was nothing specific, though I am sure Kagayaku-shacho would prefer that if your name were to come to the public's attention during the Sports Festival, it should be in such a way as to bring honor upon it." Her tone changed from the formal to the more familiar when she continued. "I'm certain that even with the restrictions that you allow to be placed on your quirk you would be able to outperform the vast majority of competitors. If you should unleash your full potential, I'm sure that are none in that school, in any year, that could compare." She laid her palm gently on Jack's chest.
Jack turned to look at the next print in the case. Kami was one of the few people who knew of his origin. His great-grandfather had confided in her, along with Okubo, when Jack had first come to Japan. He suspected it was done in a moment a weakness, a fit of rage that blunted the old man's normal reserved nature.
Kami seldom mentioned it, but Jack knew that she though of him as some sort of advanced exemplar of humanity's future. While it was true that Jack was a product of the future, it might not be her future. Long ago he had decided it didn't really matter. He was who he was and where he was. He would have to build a life from that, not from a metaphysical mélange of wishes and hope.
"But that is not why I wanted to speak to you," she said, walking to a chair and gesturing for him to take the opposite seat. There was a table with a tea set between them. "As you are now in High School and making decisions that will influence your long-term goals. I wanted to take the opportunity to talk with you a bit about those goals and how they may fit with Radiant's plans.
"I wasn't sure that Kagayaku-san thought I'll have a place at Radiant." Jack's voice was flat. This was the first time he had openly acknowledged to her the rift between him and the old man, though Kami was obviously aware of it.
"You are a Kagayaku. The connection is already there in the eyes of the world. The more we can work in concert the better it will be for all."
"That's why I chose the Business track. I want to be of value to the company when I graduate."
"Business is only one path, and one fitting to the capabilities of many. You are special. There may be other ways forward for you." Kami said, leaning closer. But before she could continue, her phone rang. She frowned and looked at it, then stood.
"I am afraid I must cut our discussion short. There is an urgent matter I must address in person." Her face cleared and she offered Jack as special smile. "I would very much like to continue our conversation soon, Jack-san."
"Sure," he replied somewhat nervously. "Whenever."
Kami bowed and hurried form the library. Jack lost himself in the three prints, trying not to consider the confusing meeting that had just concluded. He was pulled from his reverie by Oba's hand on his back. A quick glance at his internal HUD showed only four minutes had passed.
"Jack, there you are," she said, slightly out of breath. "I wanted to talk with you about your containment suit and the Sports Festival. Do you have a minute?"
"Sure." He smiled. It seemed the day for it.
"Good. Let's go to my lab. I want to show you something."
Oba kept a design lab on the estate. It was where she did most of her work. Above ground was a two-story building that was mostly offices and meeting rooms. The real work was done in the five underground levels. Immediately on entering the building she led Jack to the elevator and went down to the lowest, most secure lab where she kept his containment suits.
There were three basic designs of suits. The social suit was the golden shell that Jack wore in his day-to-day life. It was sculpted into the form of a handsome teen and maintained humanlike articulation and motion. It was designed for maximum containment and durability, making any sort of breach highly unlikely. But that level of containment also blocked most expressions of his quirks. The second variation was a suit designed for combat and other harsh uses. While more obviously armored than the social suit, it traded some durability for allowing significantly more quirk usage. It was also built of a quantumly unstable material that allowed him to directly manipulate the matter of the suit with his quirk in numerous ways. The third variation was a suit designed for experimentation. It offered minimal containment, just enough to keep Jack's energy form coherent, but allowed for unlimited quirk expression and control. The lab held several examples of each variation which permitted for constant tinkering on the models' capabilities and meant there were always spares in case of a containment failure.
Oba had a social suit laid out on the worktable. "Ok, you know the UA administration knows a fair bit about your quirks, right?"
"But not my origin?" Jack questioned.
"Right. They know you sought out help from David Shield when your quirks first manifested and that you are a relation of mine and an orphan. David promised to keep the rest of the story secret."
Jack nodded.
"I had a discussion with your principal about your suits and what capabilities would be allowed in the Sports Festival. Normally students are only allowed to use gear they built themselves. This is a nod to Support students."
"Unless the student needs to gear for medical reasons, like Yuga's Sparkle Belt." Jack finished for her. She had a tendency to rehash information of which he was already aware. "That's why I can wear my social suit to class. It's not hero gear."
"For the Sport's Festival, Nezu is allowing me to tweak your normal social suit capabilities just a bit. Nothing like the combat suit, but he's allowing me to increase the responsiveness to gravity manipulation by 18% and the general ductility by 37%. But he is requiring that I keep the phone and network connections disabled entirely during the events and for an hour before, basically the whole day. He also refused to let me add any ports on the feet or hands, so no jets or big blasts."
"Wow," Jack murmured. "What does the 18% increase in gravity control give me in terms of speed?"
"Figure around twenty to twenty-five kph. About as fast as you can sprint. So not really flying."
"Sure it is, just flying real slow. Might give me some advantage depending on the events." Jack replied.
"Does that mean you are going to try to win?" Oba asked. "I know most non-Hero students don't bother. But even limited to this suit I think you have a good chance. If you want to."
"Everyone seems to be pushing me that way. It doesn't really matter if I do well or not, does it? It's not going to effect my future."
"Son, you know you're going to have a great future, no matter what happens at UA. Your family wants you to do this because it would be good for you to really try at something, to not just coast. Your problem is your coasting is better than the vast majority of the people on the planet running their hardest. So, you're seldom challenged, and you've gotten in the habit of going with the flow. Because of the limitations being imposed in the competition, this can be something you can be proud to do well in. To feel a real sense of achievement. I want that for you. I want this to be the first of many real achievements, because you'll be better and happier for it."
"Alright," Jack said. "For you and Hinata, I'll try."
"Good. Now slip into the suit and we'll make some final adjustments. I still think I can squeeze out another 8% ductility."
"… and Business course, Classes I, J, and K! All of UA's first years are here now!" Present Mic's feigned enthusiasm as he got to the tail end of the class introductions was obvious. Walking onto the green field surrounded by his classmates, Jack had to admit he was impressed by the size of the crowd. From the field of the stadium, it looked like half of Japan was in the seats staring at him, waiting from him to make a fool of himself on international netcast.
"I hope this doesn't take long. My brother has a custom action figure stand set up outside the stadium. He got a really good spot near the food stands," Ando said. "He wants my help this afternoon."
"I doubt any of us have to worry about getting past the first round," Nakashima replied jovially. "Which means all our afternoons should be free. Upside!" more English and double finger guns from the class clown.
"I will not go down so easily," Motin growled. "You have never seen what a Russian Bear can do!"
"Just don't get hurt," Takaki warned. "Some of those Hero students look like they can barely control their quirks, and they're not too worried about collateral damage."
"Ha!" the ursine boy barked in defiance.
Jack and the others continued their quiet conversations through the debacle some kid named Bakugo made of the opening ceremony. When the Obstacle Race was announced there was a general moan from the class. Jack and Motin seemed to be the only ones at all interested.
"The only rule is there are no rules? How is that a good thing?" Miura complained as we all started jockeying for position – mostly for the popular positions at the rear of the crowd.
Jack noticed several Class 1-K students were moving away from the field and into the stands. Their teacher had allowed them to forfeit the competition without even trying to compete. Morita-sensei thought giving up without making any effort set a bad precedent – particularly in such a public venue. Would heroes want to do business with people who had shown such public cowardice, as heroes see things? Therefore, she required all Class 1-J students at least attempt the first event.
As the three lights began counting down, Jack saw Yuga, crammed near the front, turn to give him a jaunty wave.
"START!" Midnight called and the thundering herd crammed themselves into the narrow gateway to the outside.
"Polar Bear!" Motin cried in Russian, raising his fists to the sky. In under a second, he had transformed completely to a polar bear – a polar bear cub.
"So cute!" The girls nearby all called out at once and almost buried him under a pile of hugs.
Jack thought he heard the cub growling – adorably – in protest before the golden teen lifted soundlessly off the ground and threw himself into the passage.
He flew over the heads of the crowd, staying near the roof of the passage. Since the crush of runners was slowed by their own numbers, Jack was one of the first out of the tunnel and avoided the area of effect ice attack the lead student released.
"You are not the only one with wings, brother," Yuga called as he flew past, facing backwards, riding his naval laser. A handful of Yuga's classmates joined them in the air. They were making good time until a large robot knocked a bouncing boy for a loop.
Three of the truck sized machines blocked the pathway, with a half dozen or more building sized ones behind them.
"Robo Inferno!" called Present Mic.
Jack smiled and prepared to attack.