"Wait – no!" Mai screamed and grabbed Ai as the rest of the first years broke into action.
"Here we go." Okanate used her Flexifingers quirk to rearrange the tip of her finger to be long and pointed, kind of like a pin, and, reaching behind her back, popped all three of her balloons.
"Wow would you look at that; we have our first elimination people!" Present Mic's voice announced across the stadium.
"Oh no I'm out of the Sports Fest," Okanate said apathetically and, with a good-natured wave at the twins, walked up to the students' stands.
"Alright let's get to safety." Ai grabbed Mai's wrist and dragged her towards the wall, dodging an autonomous arm, a burst of fire, and a whip-like dragon tail along the way. There were plenty of other students seeking refuge there hiding their backs via the wall, but there seemed to be a truce among them to not attack one another for the time being.
"This is it." Ai was grinning from ear to ear as she arranged her blood packs so they'd be ready to drain in an instant.
"Are you sure you even need that?" Mai asked. "I think you have enough energy right now as it is."
"But I could get more energy," Ai laughed. "And then I'll be twice as unstoppable."
"Thaaat's probably not a good thing."
"Oh pish-posh it's entertaining." With the look in Ai's ruby eyes, Mai wouldn't be surprised if she started running up and down walls after a good bit of blood.
Mai looked out at the mayhem of students. "Like we need more of that."
"Come on, I'm not going to wreak havoc now." Ai rolled her eyes. "Where's the fun in that? No, we're going to wait until the optimal moment."
Well, that actually made sense. Assuming Ai had a finite amount of chaos she could cause (even though Mai sometimes doubted it was the case), it would be better to wait until a singular person could be more than a drop in the bucket. Ai wanted to optimize the ratio of chaos she could cause to the chaos the group as a whole was causing, though there was another variable Mai didn't know if Ai had included in her plan.
"But uh, Ai, you do remember we have minimal chance against the trained students, right? I mean, we don't even know their quirks."
"I'm not holding out until the last minute, Mai." Ai kept glancing around the field and up at the students' stands. "Just until the hopeless ones have been taken out, which is probably about half of us. If you and I are having trouble staying out of the fray before then I'll make my move when two-thirds of us are still in the running. Remember, we made a pact to watch each other's backs."
"Wha – when did we agree to that?"
"When we were born, probably." Ai shrugged it off, still grinning. "Don't worry, once I get in the fight you can do whatever you want."
At this point they were the only ones left on the wall. Most of the others had decided on a strategy and joined the action and the rest were easy targets who had at this point been eliminated. It seemed even having the twins appear prepared kept anyone looking for easy pickings away from them.
"Anything you can think of to stay safe for the time being?" Ai asked.
"You mean you didn't think this through?" Mai demanded. Well, Ai did put quite a bit of strategy into an event neither of them were invested in, but she was still treating it much more flippantly than Mai ever would. Mai groaned and accepted her sister's plan. "Ughhhh fine. We don't know what the other students can do, but they don't know our quirks either. As long as we act confident and look like we're executing a strategy we might avoid some trouble."
In another minute the initial round of eliminations had tampered off and the competitors started being smarter in their plans. One guy with electricity buzzing from his fingers considered approaching them, but after Ai loudly confirmed Recovery Girl could regrow kneecaps and wildly threatened to take a bite out of him while swinging her belt around and displaying a blood pack, he thought better of it. There was another girl controlling some red vines who came close to them, but when someone else popped one of her balloons she ended up chasing that person instead.
"Alrighty." Ai stretched out her back. "I think the current chaos is pretty segmented." She pulled out her first blood pack and considered it a moment before drinking it all, deliberately spilling it all over her mouth and torso. She then unpinned her hair and ran her bloody fingers through it, leaving streaks of crimson as if they were highlights in her pale blonde hair. Watching her, Mai couldn't help but chuckle. It was funny to think back when quirks weren't the norm, their ancestors probably struggled with the macabre aspect of their blood-related quirks, especially having to consume human blood to activate their power. If they could see their descendant now, Mai wasn't sure if they'd be proud of how the times had changed or embarrassed at how casually Ai treated her quirk.
"Let's do this!" Ai exclaimed and started sprinting towards the heart of the action, the blood in her hair causing it to look like a fierce war banner.
"It looks like another competitor has entered the fray!" Present Mic announced.
Mai just shrugged and decided to watch the show.
The first run just broke up a lot of battles, but on the second run Ai ran in circles screaming like a pterodactyl and waving her arms, shoving and punching whoever happened to be in her way (which she made sure was just about everyone). Even with her vocal alert, there were still a handful of students taken off-guard who ended up having one or two of their balloons popped by her. Soon the smart ones used those moments to eliminate people distracted by Ai, though, this would not bode well for them, as she would then go after the eliminator. Draining another blood pack, she somehow managed to dodge and outrun all attacks, still running like a chicken without its head and screaming louder than a banshee.
Several minutes into Ai's debut, students with speed-based quirks focused their efforts into eliminating her. One managed to pop her first balloon when she paused for another blood pack, but in true Ai form she just looked at him, said "okay", and plowed him over in her second (or maybe third) wind. Her flailing arms were getting more dangerous every drop of blood she consumed, now knocking people over and into one another so nobody could execute any sort of strategy.
Just as Mai was becoming engrossed into it all, she suddenly heard a loud laugh behind her and the unmistakable balloon pop on her back. "Meep!" She transformed and frantically flew away, seeking refuge under the student section of the concrete arena.
There was a nice grip in the students' stands that she could cling to and just wait out the rest of the event as a bat. Mai curled up under her wings in a tight cocoon and sighed in relief knowing it would be smooth sailing from here on out, she just had to watch the rest of the Sport Fest with Ai - unless her sister was in the next event, which would also be cool. Mai tried to use her echolocation to see if Ai was still in the running, but all she could decipher was a bunch of figures moving around. Some were moving fast enough to possibly be Ai, however, there was no way to know for certain in Mai's bat form.
Well, with no way of observing the event and with nobody observing her, Mai at least could get some rest. She probably couldn't sleep while using her quirk, but as long as she focused on keeping it activated while using the mass of noises around her as a white noise lullaby she could at least let the rest of her body have a break. Ah, time to herself, this was so nice…
"And we have our final forty-eight contenders!" Present Mic's voice seemed even louder as it broke through Mai's rest. Caught off-guard, her quirk deactivated and she started falling from the underside of the student's stands.
"No no no no no bat bat bat!" She managed to transform just in time to flap away from the ground and return to her human form for a safe landing. She knew transform quirks were usually only able to be activated for a short amount of time, but Mai had grown up escaping into her bat form so many times she had gotten used to activating it without getting tired, though she sometimes forgot there were limits to Bat Transform.
"And the students moving on to the second round will be," Present Mic continued announcing. "Asamu, Benihama, Chikawa…"
Benihama? That meant Ai must have held out! Mai hurried to where the remaining students were standing.
"Ai! You're in the second event! That's –"
"Mai?" Ai's voice called down from the wall.
Mai froze in her tracks, looked up at where Ai was leaning over the side of the eliminated students' stands, glanced at her back where two round and very intact balloons sat, and stopped. "Oh poop."
"Students, please exit the stands from the first event," Midnight announced as Cementoss transformed the portion of the wall with their judge's stands back into a stage. Most of the students went out the provided back exit straight into the stadium, but some when down the stairs to congratulate their friends.
"Hey!" Mai was suddenly turned around to face a boy with a reptilian face. "So you're the one who kept me from passing this round at the last minute!" Mai didn't say anything and instead focused on the way his forked tongue moved as he talked. "If weren't hiding I'd be the forty-eighth person – I was keeping track the whole time so if you –"
"Oh sure, blame the bat, why not, they're easy targets." Ai swept in just in time to save Mai. "Last I checked it wasn't cheating to hide."
"You don't understand, I –"
"Hey, it's okay Shouka," a boy with weirdly pink skin intercepted him, letting Mai escape. "There's so much more –"
"Mai! I can't believe you're in the second round!" Ai was jumping up and down with excitement.
"That makes two of us," Mai responded. "You know, we could just switch –"
"Absolutely not." Ai cut her off. "You earned that spot and I know you can do it again!"
"And that makes one of us."
"Now you just stop it with your negativity, you know it's not going to help you." Ai removed Mai's remaining balloons from her back and headed back towards the stadium. "I'll be cheering for you, might even make some money with some bets."
"Oh no, Ai please –"
But with a playful wave, Ai was gone.
"Remaining first years, you may now remove the balloons if you haven't already." Now the cement wall had completely been reverted back into the original concrete stage. "Everyone else please go to your class seats to observe the rest of the Sports Festival."
Mai looked around at the students she'd be competing against as the volunteers collected their leftover balloons and escorted the eliminated students out of the arena. It was futile to hope Mai knew anyone here, but as luck would have it she recognized Ai's classmate Shimoue and shuffled towards him.
"Our next event will be a game of Capture the Flag. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is traditionally two sides, each with a flag, attempting to bring the other's flag to their side of the land without being caught. To make things more interesting, we will randomly assign you all to one of six teams with the eight members of the winning team moving on to our final round!"
"Wow." Shimoue's eyes were sparkling in excitement. "A team of eight elite future heroes. I hope I can try my hand against them in action!"
"Each team is represented by a color, which will be denoted on their flag and each player's given headband. If a student is in another team's territory, their headband is susceptible to being broken off by the defending team and that player must retrieve a new headband from his or her flag. The area designated for each team will be marked along the grass while this middle area is free for anyone to utilize safely."
"How did you manage to pass the first event?" Mai asked Shimoue.
"I can change my size proportionally, so I could shrink and hide and grow to defend myself," he said, still grinning happily. "It's been fun seeing how they strategize around my quirk. I wonder if any of them would want me to make some suppor–"
"You will have twenty minutes to complete this event. At the end of the given time the teams will receive points for each flag on their territory, twenty for their own flag and ten for every flag secured from another team." Midnight finished explaining. "We will now distribute the headbands and prepare the area for the second event. While our volunteers set up, I will call your name and you may come up and retrieve the headband Cementoss will pull from this box." She held up the special UA box with a singular hole in the top for Cementoss' hand, meanwhile, some new volunteers came in and somehow, using their quirks, started growing an array of bushes and trees in the grassy area. Since all the students were standing in the flat concrete square, the volunteers were able to establish a faux-forest much more efficiently than the setup for the first event.
"Asamu!"
As the forest grew, some other volunteers began laying out color-coded dividers for each team, stopping just at the center square.
"Benihama!"
The dividers were slightly off-center from the middle area, but Mai figured they had already calculated the fair amount of square area for each team.
"Benihama?"
Shimoue elbowed Mai and she suddenly realized they were calling her. Growing alongside Ai in school she had begun assuming people were looking for Ai when using their last name, and apparently it was to the point where she ignored someone calling by her surname. Mai scurried up the stage and was handed an orange headband before hurrying back to where she and Shimoue were standing.
As more and more people received their headbands and teams, Mai kept tabs on anyone else with an orange headband to see if they were supposed to congregate somewhere to discuss strategy. There was a purple-haired girl just standing around, seemingly waiting for the same thing, a girl with deep red hair and eyes surveying the growing forest from the concrete, and later a blond kind-faced boy standing with who were probably his classmates. The Class 1-A rep who made the opening speech was the first of their team to talk to someone else with an orange headband, but he seemed to know the blond boy outside of the Sports Fest. Not long after that the boy with the weird pink skin Mai saw after the first event received an orange headband and walked straight towards her.
"Hey, I just wanted to apologize for my classmate's behavior earlier," he said before Mai could make a sound. "Shouka's a talented guy, but he has trouble when his plans don't work out and he was hoping to use the Sports Fest as his ticket into the hero course."
"Oh, are you in Class 1-C?" Shimoue asked, eavesdropping.
"Yep, I'm the class rep, and unlike Shouka I'm perfectly happy there."
"Um, could you tell me –"
"Why I'm sticking to General Studies?" The boy finished Mai's attempt of a personal question. "Mostly because we're still fifteen and I have no idea what I want to do for over twice as long as I've been alive. Personally, I find it weird there's really only one department that leaves our career options wide open."
"I – I just wanted you to tell me your name."
"Oh." The boy's skin tone flushed to a darker shade of pink. "I'm Motomizu."
Motomizu, the one with the pink skin and noticeably normal brown hair and eyes. Mai could remember that; the real challenge would be remembering all seven of Mai's new teammates at once.
Motomizu's eyes looked on something and his already dark pink face became closer to a red hue. "Is – is Chikawa on our team?" And almost in a daze, he walked towards the girl still evaluating her surroundings.
It didn't take much longer for all eight of the orange headbands to be distributed and while the teachers continued administering the headbands to the remaining students someone gestured for the orange team to gather.
"Alright Niseyoko!" Motomizu greeted a girl with short black hair and identically black skin. "Class 1-C represent!"
The only spot of color on Niseyoko was her luminescent green eyes. Okay, Niseyoko, who has green eyes, green means go so go ahead and don't mention that she looks like a shadow. Ugh, Mai was never going to remember these people.
"And you're Class 1-C's rep, right?" The Class 1-A representative said, pointing to Motomizu, who nodded. "So then we have me and my deputy class rep, not to mention our classmate Nakatsuka, all Class 1-A –"
"Asami and I are both Class 1-B, and I'm the class rep, Komura," the blond boy said. "I know you're Meotooku," he said to the Class 1-A rep, "and your deputy would then be – "
"Chiwaka," Motomizu finished quietly, constantly glancing at the girl with dark red hair.
Mai just blinked and hoped she wasn't expected to figure out and remember all the names everyone was throwing around.
"Oh right, and you," the Class 1-A rep with combed black hair, Meotooku, said, bringing the attention to Mai. "I think I've seen you before, are you in the hero department?"
"I'm –"
"I've never seen her before, she must be in Class 1-A."
"That can't be right – if she were in Class 1-A, I should know her as her class rep." Meotooku lost all the confidence he seemed to have gained from being in the small group to now look as worried as he seemed when he made his speech. "Why can't I remember her?"
Mai could tell Meotooku was getting frustrated at himself for not remembering a random business student who he recognized from fleeing his classroom months ago, but with all the attention on her she was having trouble settling on the right words. "Marketing – K – business, me – Maihama." Mai could hear Ai's hysterical laughter in her head and cleared her throat.
"I'm a business student from the Management Department; Benihama Mai from Class 1-K."