The once jovial atmosphere had suddenly been replaced by anxiety and fear.
Izuku, pressed the Omnitrix on his shoulder to forcibly return himself to normal, no sense in wasting the time he could stay transformed after all, especially if this event now had stakes.
He wasn't overly worried about coming last, but he wasn't about to risk that fact without even knowing the quirks he would be up against, especially if he ran out of steam before the end.
"The kid who ranks last… Gets expelled!?" Ochako yelled in surprise,
Izuku wasn't sure what she was worried about in particular, he could already see various ways she could excel at most of the trials they usually did for a physical apprehension test, plus he'd given her a few pointers on work outs that would have helped her greatly, whether she did them or not Izuku hadn't asked, they'd barely seen each other in person since the exam, and she had just moved into her new apartment recently, so he hadn't had the chance to see if she'd had made any improvements.
"This is our first day here! That's just too unreasonable!" She continued.
Perhaps she was worried about the others? A hero did need a selfless heart, so if so, he was sure his friend was on the right path to becoming an extraordinary hero, however, he was sure that people who had passed the entrance exam were more than in shape for this test, plus he doubted Aizawa was actually telling the truth about the consequences, since they were a bit too harsh, even for the best hero school in the country.
Then again, he'd never heard of a Shota Aizawa in the hero circuit, granted it wasn't uncommon for heroes to never divulge their real names in public, but they were technically civil servants, so a quick online search of a hero's name was more than enough to find out their identity, the fact that Izuku hadn't heard of his name, and neither could he place his appearance to a Hero Name, suggested his teacher was an underground hero, and that lot operated under a different modus operandi.
Away from the prying eyes of the media, underground heroes could be a lot harsher with their treatment of villains, and a lot more brutal in their tactics. They didn't have to be kind to civilians either, since they received no publicity to speak of, therefore they had no reason to deal with fans, nor care about slandering from the media.
Izuku had actually taken a rather big shine to underground heroes recently, putting in all that work to help people and receiving zero PR was quite admirable in the boy's eyes, and he wouldn't have minded taking the same path as them, if one day becoming the number one hero was no longer important to him.
Unfortunately, It was very, very important to him, proving that he could achieve something so big as someone who was quirkless, would not only serve to prove everyone who had ever doubted him wrong, something he wished for dearly even though it was a goal that was oxymoronic to his recently found reasons for being a hero, but it would also help inspire other quirkless people to hopefully believe in themselves again.
I was a needed sacrifice of some of his ideals.
For now, however, he had no clue as to the nature or personality of his new teacher, so for all knew the threat of expulsion could be very much real.
In fact, if he thought about it, there was the case of the last two sports festivals having much less hero students than any other year, which, as far as Izuku was concerned, might be substantial evidence on the veracity of the man's threat.
Aizawa looked at the brunette languidly, hiding his face in his scarf and hair, only one lazy eye peeking out.
"Natural disasters, massive accidents, villains, all kinds of calamities can happen when we least expect them. The whole of Japan is drenched in 'unreasonable'. It's our job as heroes to restore reason." The man looked at them once more with his stern gaze, a lazy smile gracing his lips "The next three years will be nothing but hardship. That is the meaning of Plus Ultra. Now then, it's time to step up to the plate."
The first trial was a simple fifty meter dash, the first two students who participated were Iida and a girl named Tsuyu Asui who obviously had a frog based quirk from how she was standing in preparation for her run, although Izuku wondered how much like a frog she actually was, since she looked quite human.
The results came out pretty much as Izuku expected really, Iida had literal engines in his legs so his short time of 3.04 seconds was rather impressive, he could beat it easy with the right alien, and Ingenium, the pro hero who the green haired boy suspected was his classmate's, and probably new friend's, Izuku really couldn't tell with this one, brother was a lot faster, but then the boy supposed the man his classmate's older brother was a pro hero with years more training and experience, plus from what he heard of Ingenium's quirk, Iida could get a lot faster if he had more distance to cover, whilst there was a lot of room for growth, Izuku was now curious as to whether Iida could outrun his fastest form one day.
Tsuyu got a score of 5.58 seconds which was still rather impressive, her using her naturally stronger legs to jump rather than run was a rather ingenious move on her part, but unfortunately she still paled in comparison to the speedster of the class in his natural element.
Next came Ochako's turn, and she reduced the weight of her shoes and clothes to try to shave some seconds off her time, she managed to get an even 7 seconds, which was somewhat of an improvement, but based on the exercises Izuku had given her, which he had taken great care into optimising as well as he could based on what he knew about her bodily composition, which sounded creepier than Izuku meant it.
Clothes couldn't be weighing her down all that much, so most of the time she had shaved off had definitely been from her own physical improvement, which she was being somewhat lax with, but the greenette could now rectify that since she lived much closer than before.
Her partner had been a boy with a tail called Ojiro, who finished the race faster than Ochako by pushing himself forward on his fifth limb, he displayed rather graceful movements, which Izuku could attribute to a trained martial artists from all the research he had done to perfect his own fighting style.
The green haired boy filed that information away for later, maybe he could ask his class mate for advice on his own skills.
Next was the pink skinned girl and a blonde boy that seemed to sparkle for some reason, Izuku somehow that it was not actually quirk related, and the boy was maybe carrying glitter on his person.
The girl, Mina Ashido, skated along the track using a white secretion from her feet, Izuku was confused as to what substance could remove friction, maybe some form of lubricant, but he was unsure if anything could allow someone to skate on dirt, a question for later he supposed.
The blonde boy literally shot a laser from the belt he wore around his navel to propel himself forward, before crashing to the floor, implying some kind of time limit. Izuku wondered if the laser was purely concussive, and how it could exhibit force against its user without seemingly pushing against anything, perhaps it was pure kinetic force released in both directions, a side effect of the quirk maybe?
Eventually it rolled up to the greenette's turn, and by some twist of fate, Katsuki had been paired up with him.
Izuku looked over to his childhood acquaintance, who seemed to be doing his best to ignore him.
Emboldened by the recent lack of bullying and the fact that he was surrounded by classmates and their teacher, Izuku said something that he never thought he would to his ex bully.
"You ready to lose Kacchan." The boy asked, even going as far as to try to rile the blonde up with his childhood nickname.
Katsuki looked up at him, the fire of anger burning in his red eyes.
"Shut up Deku." He growled quietly, which was not the reaction Izuku expected, nor wanted, but at least the boy had acknowledged him.
"Not feeling the banter?" Izuku asked, when all he received was a sidelong glance and a snort of annoyance, he decided that he needed to get to the bottom of Katsuki's odd behavior eventually, but for now, he decided to focus on his tests and beating his prior oppressor. "Suit yourself."
The boy turned away from his ex-friend and rolled his shoulders, before searching for the form he needed.
In a flash of green light he transformed into a humanoid figure that heavily resembled an armoured velocipede, the Omnitrix symbol was on his chest and he was almost completely black and white apart from the fact that he had five blue stripes on his long black tail.
A blue face with green eyes, black lips, and stripes above and on the right side of his eyes looked over to his partner who looked at him with determination, crossing his arms in front of his face palms facing backwards.
"Don't blink." Izuku taunted before a visor dropped down from his conoid helmet.
As soon as the go was given, Katsuki blasted forward, explosions rocketing from his pams, the kickback and kinetic energy produced lifting him off the ground and pushing him forward with more speed than he could have generated by running, this allowed him to propel himself to the finish line in a little over four seconds.
Katski took some time to congratulate himself on proving his previous theory, this new development should theoretically lead to sustained flight, which was an ability that he had always wanted to add to his arsenal.
He came to a skidding stop at the end of the track, kicking up some dirt, before he looked back towards the length that he had just crossed, fully expecting Izuku to be lagging behind him like the green haired boy usually did, but his expectations had been betrayed as he was greeted by a completely empty track, not even the dust Izuku should have kicked up had graced him with its presence.
He looked over to a sudden burst of red light, which quickly died down to reveal the green haired boy back in his normal form, before his eyes moved over to the robot that had recorded and was now displaying the boy's time.
He clenched his fist in rage as he noticed it was not only faster than him, but it even managed to reach below a second.
Tiny explosions crackled in Katsuki's hands as he realised the gap that had suddenly found itself between himself and Izuku.
He wanted to scream in anger, demand that the green haired boy explain how he'd gotten this strong, where his sudden ability to transform into not one but two monstrous forms came from.
He had to hold himself back, however, screaming and yelling were no longer things he could do safely, since the slime villain incident, he'd taken serious, irreparable damage to his throat, and raising his voice too much could cause serious problems.
He also knew it wasn't something he should do, lording his strength over everyone else, claiming to be the strongest, when some second rate villain had left him powerless and almost killed him.
He'd learned his lesson about thinking he was the greatest at everything.
So he simply glowered at Izuku, stewing in his anger for now, besides, Izuku only had strength and speed, but it seemed to be exclusively one or the other, sure he was stronger and faster than him, but Katsuki could still do plenty of things Izuku couldn't, like fly.
There was no way that nerdy Deku could fly, no matter how well he could analyse a quirk, super strength, or super speed could never translate to full on flying.
Placated by his small victory for now, he wordlessly stepped away from the track to let the next students participate.
He was by no means happy, but he could interrogate his classmate later, when he wasn't being crowded by the other teens in his class for his results, and when the watchful eye of his new teacher wasn't looking at him, prepared for any outburst he may have
'Pebbles.' Katsuki thought to himself, 'They're all pebbles in my path, some of them are just bigger pebbles than others.'