Chapter 23
.:. A New Challenge! .:.
As expected, Friday morning found Izuku and Bakugou swarmed by classmates asking about both the fight and their suspension. Izuku had expected as much, but after yesterday afternoon, he was even less inclined to answer, and the same went for Bakugou. At lunch, Izuku just told his friends, "I have seen things that should not be seen." And then promptly changed the topic.
There was just something about the horrors they experienced that couldn't be put into words. While they had no physical scars from their time with the support department, the mental ones would probably linger for a long time.
On the bright side, the traumatic experience had removed some of the hostility between them. It wasn't all gone of course. A single afternoon wouldn't be anywhere near enough for them to magically get over everything and become friends, especially since they hadn't actually talked about it. There was still a lot that had to be said, years of built-up frustration on his end at the very least.
But after spending hours with Hatsume, with their lives genuinely flashing before their eyes a couple times... Well, it made you appreciate the value of sane people.
They were still tense and didn't talk, but Bakugou didn't seem as irritated as Izuku's general existence as he usually was. They even gave each other little nods as Izuku passed him to get to his own desk, like a weird, moody "hello," before promptly turning their attention elsewhere. Still tense, nowhere near friendly, but much more civil than he'd expected even just yesterday at lunch. So Izuku would take that small victory and relish in it.
Given the last time any of their classmates had seen them together had ended with them fighting, the clear lack of hostility just led to more questions for them to deflect. It made for a very long day on Friday, and then another long day on Saturday despite the school day being shorter than the rest of the week. At the end Izuku was almost glad he was grounded for the weekend, since he could retreat to his dorm room to avoid more questions.
By Monday, interest in their fight and punishment thankfully died down—mainly because Aizawa brought another event to their attention in homeroom.
"As you all know, the Sports Festival is approaching," he announced, which immediately had a good chunk of the class leaping out of their chairs with excited shouts. A quick flash of his Quirk had them immediately sitting down though. Now that he'd revealed it, he'd taken to using it to get the class to settle down. The red glint from Erasure and the floating hair made his glare even more terrifying, a feat they hadn't imagined possible.
Once they all sat he continued. "Our Sports Festival is one of Japan's biggest events. In the past, the world used to be crazy for the Olympics, but with the reductions in scale and population they're a shell of their former glory. And for Japan, one of the events to take the place of the Olympics is the UA Sports Festival."
The brief speech had the class's mood rising again with anticipation, everyone perking up excitedly. Still, they held back commentary as Aizawa continued. "I doubt I need to inform you all of how important this event is. So far we've been easing you into things—"
'That was easing us?!' a majority of the class thought in disbelief.
"—but now it's time to buckle down and focus." He slammed his hands on the desk as he surveyed the class. "The Sports Festival has not just civilians watching, but Pro Heroes as well. They'll be watching not just for entertainment, but to scout students with potential."
That had some of the students start murmuring amongst themselves. "Many Pro Heroes use the Sports Festival to look for potential interns and sidekicks!" Yaoyorozu commented eagerly behind Izuku.
"Yeah, I hear a lot of UA students get scouted by agencies even before graduating!" Tsuburaba said with a grin. "Lots of graduates just skip the job hunt and go directly into work as sidekicks!"
"A lot of people miss their chance to go independent after that and become eternal sidekicks though," Jirou commented.
"Of course, joining a famous hero agency will get you more experience and popularity," Aizawa continued, picking up on the strings of conversation among the students. "Time is limited. If you expect to go pro, then the path to your future will open up at this event. One chance a year—a total of three chances. No aspiring heroes can afford to miss this event."
His voice dropped to become more stern and grandiose as he finished, "If you understand that, then don't slack off on your preparations!"
Needless to say, that set the tone for the rest of the day's conversations.
When lunchtime rolled around everyone lingered in the classroom, eager to discuss the Sports Festival as soon as possible. "Everyone's so excited," Izuku commented as he watched their classmates all break into groups to chatter.
"And you aren't?" Tsuburaba commented with a grin.
"No, of course I am!" Izuku quickly replied. "It's just, kinda wild to see everyone so fired up about it." Everyone had a fire in their eyes as they talked about it. Izuku was excited too, but it was kind of amazing to see just how passionate everyone else was.
"Deku, Tsuburaba..." They turned at Uraraka's voice to find the brunette with what Izuku could only describe as a demonic grin, a dark shadow over her face as her eyes sparkled maniacally. "Let's do our best at the Sports Festival!"
...Izuku felt sudden flashbacks to his brief time with Hatsume, followed by a flashback to Uraraka at the entrance exam, and promptly took a step back. Tsuburaba did as well, no doubt remembering her competitive streak from back then. With how carefree and friendly she usually acted, they'd both forgotten how vicious she had been about racking up points.
Nearby students also turned to look, wary of the sudden shift as she seemed to emanate a dark aura. "Uraraka-chan, what's up?" Ashido asked curiously. "You don't look carefree at all, even though that's what your name means." In response Uraraka slid a foot out and pumped a fist into the air.
"Everyone, I'm gonna do my best!" she declared fiercely, her eyes continuing to glint in an ominous and almost dangerous way. Despite his initial pang of fear, Izuku could still feel her enthusiasm under it, and he, Tsuburaba and Ashido pumped their fists as they cheered with her. She then turned to face the rest of the room, who looked slightly more intimidated as she repeated her statement with another fist pump.
"I forgot how competitive you can be," Tsuburaba commented later as they headed to the cafeteria along with Shinsou and Iida. "It was like a flashback to the entrance exam."
"She was like that back then, and you didn't warn us?" Shinsou muttered, quietly enough only Izuku heard it. He seemed to still be slightly intimidated by the sudden personality shift, having instantly conceded when she outright told him he was joining them for lunch. Even now he walked a bit closer to Izuku, almost like he was using the other teen as a human shield.
"I can't help it, I'm just so excited!" Uraraka said with a laugh.
"Your passion is certainly refreshing!" Iida said with a nod. "If we're all as passionate as you, this year's Sports Festival should be an event to remember!"
"Yeah, I can't even imagine how the other class is," Izuku agreed. "I mean, with Yoarashi in there and all..." He trailed off, he, Uraraka and Shinsou all adopting haunted looks at the thought. Yoarashi Inasa had already proven himself to be a force of nature in terms of school spirit, taking the statement "Plus Ultra" to heart and embodying it with his entire being. And from what Yaoyorozu said, he'd also placed just behind Todoroki in the recommendation exam, only barely losing, so he must have a competitive streak to match that spirit.
The trio stopped in the middle of the hallway, reaching a sudden realization:
We are doomed if we go up against him.
Iida and Tsuburaba stopped and turned to face them. "Is something wrong?" Iida asked.
"No, everything's fine!" Izuku squeaked, the others quickly nodding in agreement. They would not be the ones to break their classmates' bubbles with the cold reality of what they would face in the festival. Ignorance was bliss and all that.
"We need to be on the top of our game though," Shinsou said, scratching the back of his neck. "The Sports Festival isn't just for us to show off, it's a chance for other classes to try to snipe our spots." The remark got surprised looks from the others, successfully diverting the topic from the (potential) impending doom.
"It is?" Uraraka asked curiously, and he nodded.
"It's happened before. Students from the general education program can transfer into the heroics class if they do well enough. It's also a prime time for teachers to drop hero students who aren't taking things seriously enough."
"Would they really drop someone this early in their first year?" Tsuburaba asked nervously, and Shinsou nodded again.
"Like I said, it wouldn't be the first time," he repeated. "I don't have a flashy Quirk that's good for most fights, so I was looking at the Sports Festival as a back-up option if I didn't pass the entrance exam."
"Wait, but you scored third on the entrance exam, didn't you?" Izuku asked with a confused frown. The remark had the other boy pausing, expression briefly darkening.
"...Yeah, let's just say that was being in the right place at the right time," he muttered, and shrugged as he continued. "Anyways, I obviously got in, but since teachers have dropped students before, I can't really slack off. It's just a hassle for me though since using my Quirk at the festival means the whole country will know it. We've seen how that's gone with just our class."
"Ooh, yeah, that would be a problem," Uraraka hissed sympathetically, Izuku nodding in agreement. Once people knew about Brainwashing, it was fairly easy to avoid by just not answering.
"Maybe you can sit it out?" Tsuburaba suggested. "You said you want to go the underground route, right? And I mean, Aizawa's an underground hero." He paused and added, "Probably." Another pause, and then he turned to look at them. "Actually, does anyone know who he is yet?"
"He's Eraserhead," Izuku supplied instantly. "I didn't realize it at first, and I mean, he hasn't confirmed it, but after seeing him use his Quirk it's pretty obvious. Eraserhead is an underground hero who can erase Quirks and works mostly at night, and his costume is definitely meant for blending into the dark, except for his yellow goggles, so..." He shrugged. He still had no real pictures of Eraserhead to use as reference, but he'd be shocked if multiple people existed that matched that description.
Now Uraraka paused. "...Come to think of it, he must've been really busy after the initial boom," she said, and that had everyone pausing. With the chaos of all the suddenly awakened Quirks that day, the man probably hadn't gotten any sleep.
After a moment, Iida coughed into his fist. "In any event, I can't support anyone foregoing participation in the festival," he declared. "As Aizawa-sensei said, many Pro Heroes will be watching, and we only get three chances to show our skills before graduation!"
"So make a show that attracts attention from underground heroes, and no one else," Shinsou summarized to himself, and nodded. "Yep. This is going to be easy." Sarcasm had never sounded so palpable as it did then.
"It sounds tricky, but it might not be impossible?" Izuku hazarded, pressing a hand to his chin as he mumbled. "The first two stages of the Sports Festival always vary, but they're incredibly chaotic and busy. While I could usually get an idea of people's Quirks, there was so much going on it wasn't always possible. And a lot of people would try to hide their Quirks until the third round as trump cards, especially if they were first years."
Izuku had spent countless hours sitting at his computer watching footage of each year's festivals, trying to note down Quirks. While it had mostly been for enjoyment, after the boom he'd start using the festival as a form of "training" to further improve his analysis skills. He had notebooks dedicated purely to the UA Sports Festivals, giving each student an identifying nickname and noting their names if the announcer used it.
"I'd usually get the clearest idea of Quirks at the third round. But since not everyone makes it that far, there were some people whose Quirks I never noticed being used. Like, some people went all three years without using noticeable Quirks in any round. A good chunk were probably just subtle enhancers, but I think some of them had already lined up internships, and just didn't really try for the third year so they wouldn't expose their Quirks to the public."
"That doesn't help much with the first year, though," Shinsou pointed out, and Izuku hummed, turning over the various festivals he'd watched.
"Well, they could still line up internships without showing off their Quirks at the festivals, right? So they must have managed to impress heroes anyway. So if you're careful, you might be able to get by mostly on less blatant uses of your quirk for the first couple rounds, or just physical skill, and still impress people that way. Third round would be a little harder since it's always one-on-one matches, but maybe you could fall back on athletics for that part."
Shinsou gave him a deadpan look and held up an arm, poking his bicep. "Fifteenth in the fitness test, remember?" he drawled. "I know the uniform doesn't make it clear, but there's not exactly a lot of muscle here." Izuku thought back to seeing Shinsou in the changing room. A little over a year ago, he would have considered Shinsou's build about average, but compared to some of their other classmates...
Uraraka wasn't having any of that though. "Well, if you're aiming to get to the third round anyway, you'll have to rely on more than just your Quirk, right?" she pointed out. "I mean, everyone in our class already knows it, and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple people from the dorms do too. You might be able to catch one or two people by surprise, but you're going to need to work out anyway." She clapped her hands and declared, "So that means we'll just have to go double-time with the training!"
Shinsou startled. "We?"
"Everyone knows training is way better with other people than on your own!"
"Uraraka is right," Iida agreed with a vigorous head bob. "There's only so much you can do on your own. Training with others, even if you don't directly train together, gives you more motivation to do better!"
Shinsou still seemed a bit shell-shocked at being roped into group training, while Tsuburaba perked up. "Hey, you know what would be great for training?" he asked. "A jog by the beach!"
"A jog by the beach?" Shinsou repeated, sounding dumbfounded and obviously still reeling from the turn in conversation. Tsuburaba just bobbed his head with a grin.
"Yeah! I come from Kagawa Prefecture, you know? In this little town called Naoshima, right on the ocean. So trust me when I say, there's nothing more energizing than the ocean breeze!"
"You do raise a good point," Iida said with a nod. "Musutafu is not exactly known for having any beaches, though."
"I know, but there's a couple!" Tsuburaba countered with a grin. "Old man Baru told me about this one awesome beach in particular, he used to visit it in summers when he lived in Tokyo. He said it had the best view, even has a pier with a gazebo at the end where he'd go on dates. Gave me this long-winded story about one of his exes throwing his ring into the ocean when they broke up," he added with a soft huff.
"Well, that's just mean," Uraraka said.
"To be fair, he did dump her for a lawn gnome," he said with an awkward laugh.
"Wait, a lawn gnome?" Izuku repeated incredulously. "How—what—huh?"
"Apparently one time when he got drunk, he decided he loved it and tried to get married to it?" Tsuburaba shrugged. "That uh, was kinda a weird thing to find out about the old guy who half the kids in town call 'Grandpa Baru.' I guess he had some crazy college days. Anyways, I promised I'd visit the beach and send him some pictures, so this is a totally perfect opportunity to go!"
Izuku still had many questions, but decided not to ask them for the sake of his sanity. "Well, I'm not grounded anymore, so I'm free after school," he said, getting a chorus of affirmation from the others. As curious as they all were, they also seemed to decide it was best to drop the subject now.
"So you're all up for going to the beach, then?" Tsuburaba asked eagerly, and everyone nodded.
"I've never really lived near the beach and only got to visit one three times, so it sounds fun!" Uraraka declared. "It's still not warm enough to go swimming, but just working out by the ocean sounds really refreshing!"
"Indeed!" Iida said with yet another vigorous nod. "The beach will lack the amenities provided by UA, but the air should help clear our minds and invigorate us."
They all turned to Shinsou, who looked a bit put out by the attention. "...I have literally nothing else to do," he finally relented with a sigh. "Sure. Why not."
"Great, then sounds like a plan!" Tsuburaba said with a grin. "This is going to be awesome!"
Four hours later, Tsuburaba retracted the statement.
"What happened here?!" he wailed as they all stared at the beach in horror. "Beach" was a generous word to use; the entire area was covered in trash and litter to the point they could barely see any sand. It wasn't just litter like cans and bags; entire pieces of furniture had been left behind. The piles of garbage stretched as far as the eye could see, though at least the pier and gazebo were clear.
"...In retrospect, I probably should've asked which beach you meant," Izuku muttered sheepishly as he took in the sight of Dagobah Beach.
"How does a beach end up like this?" Uraraka exclaimed. "This can't just be people littering!" Shinsou snorted softly and rolled his eyes.
"No, people are clearly using it as a dumping site," Iida agreed with a stern frown.
"Well, you're not wrong," Izuku sighed. "The tides carry trash here from all over, and over the years it piled up so much people just stopped trying to clean it. And after that, people started dumping stuff here."
"How does it get bad enough people just stop trying?" Tsuburaba yelped.
"I think there was a year with a really bad typhoon?" Izuku shrugged. "It's been like this since before I was born though, so..."
"Well, I guess this place is a bust then," Shinsou said with a shrug. "Can't really train here without risking tetanus and who knows what else." He turned to walk away, but was stopped by Uraraka grabbing his wrist. She stared out at the beach with a heavy frown, clearly displeased at its condition.
"I know we can't really train, but we can't leave it like this," she said. "It's too sad."
"I know it's depressing, but you realize we can't clean this up in a few hours, right?" Shinsou drawled.
"We can at least pick up some stuff!" Tsuburaba countered.
"Would it even make a dent though?" Izuku mumbled with a frown. There was so much trash it actually began to blend together into one, giant mass. "I mean, we could try to clean it up, but it would take a long time... Probably months? And we'd need somewhere to move everything, it's not like we'd be able to drag dumpsters here. This goes beyond regular garbage, I mean, I can see a wardrobe right by the sidewalk. Some of this stuff is so big, we'd need multiple people to carry just one thing."
"...So it'd be good for strength training then," Tsuburaba muttered, and Izuku paused. The other boy had a contemplative and serious look as he looked over the beach. "A lot of it is pretty big, so carrying it would help build up muscle."
"And there's tons of trash, but I bet a bunch of it still works," Uraraka said, a similar calculating glint in her eyes. "We could probably clean some stuff up and resell it, or take it apart and sell scraps to someone! Plus if I use my Quirk to help carry stuff, I could start to extend my upper limits!"
Iida hummed, rubbing his chin as he studied the mounds of garbage. "I normally wouldn't advocate using your Quirk in public like that, but cleaning litter of this magnitude would be a good way to train them. It would double as training and community service. It also shouldn't be hard to find services that would take trash, the main concern would be transporting it to the proper locations. Even if it's for training, I don't think we could carry it the entire way."
Shinsou winced at the mental image. "No thanks, I like having arms," he groaned, a sentiment Izuku could get behind.
"Maybe we can rent a pickup truck service or something?" Tsuburaba suggested with a shrug. "Do big cities have stuff like that?"
Izuku wavered for a second before answering, "Not really, but I mean, I could probably find someone?" He didn't know many people who might have a truck (or any vehicle really, Musutafu had pretty decent public transit options), but he could ask around. "But so just to check, we're going to clean up the beach?"
"Hey, we need to train for the Sports Festival," Uraraka said. "Might as well do a good deed at the same time!"
"We should pace ourselves with it," Iida said. "We'll need more than just strength training. I also doubt we'll finish before the festival, so we should treat this more as supplementary training than the main training."
"Then it's decided!" Tsuburaba said with a grin. "Let's get to work!" He pumped a fist into the air before he and Uraraka raced off to the beach, Iida following close behind shouting they still needed to make arrangements to dispose of the trash. Izuku and Shinsou lingered behind for a few moments as they watched their friends start to pick their way through the piles of trash.
"...We're actually going to be cleaning a garbage beach as training," Shinsou said after a moment. "Not the kind of training I imagined when I got into the hero course."
"Well, at least it will be good for building muscle and stamina?" Izuku replied with a shrug and smile. "It'll be a lot of work, but hey, Plus Ultra." With that he headed to join his friends where they'd already started to gather smaller pieces of litter, and he heard Shinsou huff before following. As Izuku started picking up some cans he glanced at the the others, all of them already getting to work, and felt himself smile.
Cleaning up trash wasn't the most glamorous activity, but everything was more fun with friends.
Actual quote from the chat on Google Docs:
Cocoa Nerd: Do they have lawn gnomes in Japan? I must investigate
Cannibalistic Apple: Baru did. He didn't even have a lawn, he kept it in his apartment
Cannibalistic Apple: The other reason his girlfriend left him was because she was creeped out by it staring
Cocoa Nerd has left