After a mixture of training, studying, and hanging out with his new friends, the rest of the week passed quickly. Which meant now it was time for the anticipated/dreaded sports festival. His plan was to not use One for All and Tanaka refused to help unless there was actual danger. So he'd just do his best and see how far he could get quirkless, but it wouldn't matter too much if he failed immediately since he would be able to get an internship anyways.

They were getting changed in the locker room when Todoroki turned to him. "I'm objectively stronger than you."

Izuku cocked his head in pure confusion. "I guess? I think that depends a lot on how you quantify 'strength'. But also, why are you bringing this up?"

In the background Kirishima called out to Todoroki that he wasn't being manly, but he was ignored by Todoroki as he stared down a very confused Midoriya.

"You have some connection to All Might, I'm not sure how, but that means I must defeat you."

"Wow, ok. There's a lot to unpack there and we only have like thirty seconds before we need to be on the field. Can we postpone whatever this is until after the school event?"

The boy scoffed and began to walk away. "It doesn't matter. I will prove that I'm the strongest between us."

As they started to move towards the field he heard Kaminari mutter under his breath, "That was so intense and weird at the same time."

They marched out to the field where their class, followed by the rest, were introduced by Present Mic and Eraserhead, who were commentators for the festival. It still felt weird that everyone paid their class more attention just because they were attacked. Once that was done Midnight cracked her whip to get everyone's attention.

"Welcome to the first year sports festival! Let's hear some opening words from the president of class 1-A and the student representative of the first year students, Momo Yaoyorozu!"

There was very loud cheering as the quiet and composed girl walked up to the raised platform alongside Midnight and took the microphone as she pulled out a sheet of paper that she read from.

"Hello everyone, I was a bit surprised when I was asked to make a speech for this event since it typically goes to the highest scorer, rather than a class president. As you have likely heard, our top scorer was arrested for attempting to kill another classmate. I know this isn't as exciting or uplifting of a speech as you probably expected, but it's important."

"The student I replaced on this podium was by definition one of, if not the most powerful student of our year. But that wasn't enough. It's not enough to just be strong. He was a reminder that being a hero is about more than just strength and power. It's about using the strength you have to be kind and help those in need. And that is what I hope we all show here today, that everyone competing today will be remembered not only for their ability to compete, but for good sportsmanship and going beyond all expectations. Because that is what UA is about."

She raised a fist in the air and called out along with everyone else in the stadium.

"PLUS ULTRA!"

She gave back the mic and quickly made her way back to her fellow classmates and Izuku heard her mutter under her breath. "Oh, my god, that was so stressful."

Izuku gave her a smile and a thumbs up, "That was great, you did awesome up there."

She smiled as the rest of the class congratulated her as well.

Midnight laughed and smiled, "What a wonderful opener to today's festivities! Now, to get right into the first event. Our competitors will have to make it through an obstacle course, but you better be quick, because only the first forty two will make it to the next round."

He heard Tanaka mutter angrily in his ear. "What a fucking dog and pony show. We could casually stroll our way there and we'd still make it to the next one, but they paint it like it's a super difficult challenge."

Izuku whispered a confused, "What? There's like 200 competitors?" in return.

"Think about it. 42 people pass through, and there are forty hero students plus whatever gen ed kids want to transfer in. Everyone else wants to bow out because no regular gen ed or business student wants to end up in the next round, or god forbid the tournament. You know, the event where the trained child soldiers are explicitly told to beat the shit out of each other."

Oh, that made a lot of sense. Even if there were hundreds of participants, it really changes the stakes if there were as many or more slots than people who wanted to win. So, unless there were more than two gen ed hero hopefuls, everyone who wanted to proceed would be able to without competition. But of course that isn't really said by Midnight or the commentators because Tanaka's take on things wouldn't make nearly as much money for the school.

But regardless of Tanaka's, and maybe his own, feelings on the event, it was time to begin the race.

They were all corralled into a narrow hall that led to the obstacle course. It was definitely more cramped than he appreciated, but it wasn't too bad, you could still get out even if it was a bit crowded and would slow you down.

However, the moment Midnight called for the event to begin, he heard a very concerning crackling sound, almost like everything was rapidly freezing. Izuku jumped to avoid the wide area attack that froze nearly everyone outside of the hero course.

Izuku was baffled that not only he did that but also that he wasn't called out or disqualified for that move. This was a race not a battle royale?! Why was he attacking everyone indiscriminately?!

He continued forward at a steady jog and was quickly greeted by the same robots that they faced in the entrance exam. Alright, that was actually pretty reasonable. Even if they looked very scary and dangerous, they obviously had plenty of safety features since there were pretty minimal injuries from even the zero pointer. From what he had seen, the worst injury caused by robots themselves was Uraraka's sprained ankle, everything else had been quirk related.

But then, as if in response to UA finally being vaguely responsible, everything went to shit. And not only did it go to shit, it went to shit fast.

Right as the massive robots took a step forward, Todoroki froze a few of them solid. Off balance and unable to move, the towering machines began to fall. None of the safety mechanisms did much if the inner workings were destroyed by ice and the machine was already toppling forwards.

And that topple was no accident either. Todoroki had aimed the falling robots towards the many students that were not far behind him. Luckily the path was wide enough that most were able to dodge the incoming tons of metal, but over a dozen weren't fast enough or had slipped on the slick ice that now covered the ground. With only a few seconds to react between them freezing and them hitting the ground, the results were devastating.

Tsuyu had been greatly slowed down by the cold temperatures and couldn't get away, but a girl with vine hair managed to pull her and three others to safety at the last second.

But after those seconds that seemed like slow motion, they hit the ground and there were still people underneath.

Izuku, along with most of the competitors, sprinted to the massive robots on the ground to try and help. It turned out that his time at the beach was perfect practice for rescue work, since he had lots of practice picking up very heavy and oddly shaped objects while standing on uneven ground.

His mind was in an absolute panic as he worked to move the metal plates away so they could keep looking for whoever was trapped underneath, Tanaka helping him to rip the steel apart with tendrils of slime. He didn't even know who they were looking for. He had just seen a handful of people and didn't have time to actually recognize who was and wasn't in danger.

Less than thirty seconds after they had started sifting, a shadow was cast over their group and the massive arms of Mt Lady came down from above picking up entire sections at a time and moving them to safer locations.

In his moments of hyper focusing he hadn't noticed that many of the pros watching had jumped down from the stands and were rushing over to help the frightened children. With their help it was cleared away and they could finally see exactly who the victims were and just how badly things had gone.

The first three were a show of true good luck. Kirishima, Tetsutetsu, and Monoma. All three were near each other and all had hardening quirks activated, leaving them safe from harm, even if Monoma was more than a little shaken.

Izuku helped Kamui Woods lift a large metal hand, only for Izuku to nearly drop it as the sentient shadow came shooting out from underneath, lashing out in fear and panic. Tanaka came out of Izuku's throat and intercepted Dark Shadow, helping to calm down the sentient quirk that had thought they were under attack. The same darkness underneath the metal that had caused his fear and rage had also allowed the quirk to protect both Tokoyami and a student he didn't recognize from the business course.

Honenuki burst out of the ground and through a pile of scrap, taking a huge gasp of breath. He was unharmed as well, having protected himself from the falling metal by taking shelter underground and coming up once time had passed and he thought it was safe.

But the last three didn't have a sentient shadow or some other helpful quirk to protect them. One girl had what seemed like a protective shell of mushrooms that helped a little, but weren't much in the face of hundreds of tons of steels, and the other two didn't have anything to help.

So Izuku watched in horror as the three students were carried off the field on stretchers. The mushroom girl had a large shard of metal sticking out of her stomach. A boy with a head sort of like a bell and also from 1-B had his legs badly broken. The third student seemed to be nothing but torn clothes and floating blood as Hagakure was carried off. It was really hard to tell how injured she was, oh god, what if she was dead or dying but he couldn't tell because she was invisible.

Tanaka gave him some helpful words of encouragement. "Don't worry, that's not nearly enough blood for her to be dead. She's lightly maimed at worst, probably just conked her head and needs to sleep it off."

"But, you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion I think."

"Then she should awake it off instead. I don't know, I'm not a doctor, I'm just saying that's not enough blood for death, so she'll probably be fine."

Izuku nodded and walked over to his friends as the course was cleaned up.

Jiro looked over to him. "Hey greenie. So that was pretty awful."

He nodded silently and sat down next to her. It wasn't clear what they should be doing, so most of the students just started sitting on the field.

"Do you guys think they'll cancel the festival?"

Shoji looked over to her and spoke out of a hand. "Probably."

Tokoyami shook his head. "I'm not so sure, UA is frequently a banquet of madness and may continue unhindered."

Izuku was honestly pretty rattled by the whole thing and didn't realize it until he started hyperventilating. It felt like every time they did a school activity someone got hurt and nearly died, frequently him. Is this what being a hero is? Constant near death experiences for no reason, one after another. Most of the danger wasn't even villains. Sure, school would feel safer without the League of Villains targeting them, but that wouldn't change that a fair amount of the times people almost died they were just doing regular school stuff. Will things just continue like this until they actually do die? Is he going to die as a first year in high school and everything he worked for would be for nothing and he would just be another forgotten name in the list of people who failed to reach their dreams-

His panicking mind was cut off by the feeling of being encompassed by large and powerful arms. His breathing evened out and began to match the slow and steady breath of his classmate.

Kiro snickered a little, "It seems like Shoji hugs are the fastest thing to calm you down."

Izuku blushed and buried his face further into the hug that wrapped around his entire upper body. It wasn't his fault that they were very comfortable and that his arms were perfect for hugging. If anything it was Shoji's fault for being wonderful. Oh no, he was mumbling all of that out loud.

He was met with a rumbling laugh and was released from the hug. "You feeling better?"

Izuku nodded, suddenly feeling far more shy under the tall boy's gaze. "Yeah, sorry, I was just sort of overwhelmed by everything."

Tokoyami nodded. "There is no shame in that. It was all quite frightening and I doubt you are the only one emotionally impacted today."

Their attention was pulled away by Midnight returning to her platform.

"Thanks for waiting, it's time for the next event!"

Jiro raised her eyebrows in surprise, "They're really continuing with the festival like nothing happened?"

Tanaka gave his two-cents as always. "Of course, wouldn't want to lose money over something like injured children."

Midnight cracked her whip once more. "Now! Since Todoroki was the only participant to complete the obstacle course, we'll need to do things a little differently. Those who don't want to continue can drop out now. Students who want to participate come stand over here so we go over the rules of the next event, which will be a cavalry battle in groups of two to four."

Tokoyami looked at his friends, "Well, shall we continue into the darkness together or shall we leave with the rest." He gestured to the large crowd of students leaving the stadium, not wanting anything to do with this.

Jiro seemed to think for a second before responding, "Is it wrong I want to join just to fuck with Todoroki for that shit he pulled?"

"I can agree with that." Shoji looked down at Izuku, "Are you feeling up to another event?"

He nodded, getting his bearings. "Yeah. Actually, I have a great plan if out plan is to just say 'fuck it' and focus on having fun and causing chaos."

So, the big change to canon in the festival arc obviously is that Kirishima and testutetsu weren't the only one's under the falling robots. But that never made sense to me, because that would imply that they were the ones closest to Todoroki (other than bakugou who was flying). And since they aren't exactly the fastest characters I put them in the main crowd rather than separated and the only ones hit by todoroki's attack. And that means that there were actual consequences to actions, because as Kirishima said in canon, that move could have killed someone without a hardening quirk.

Ok, with that out of the way, you may have noticed I've been kinda setting up for Izuku/Shoji. After much deliberation I will be going that route, but it won't be the main focus or go anywhere extreme, just fifteen year old boys panicking over the realization that other boys are cute.