The two weeks that lead up to the festival had been exhausting.
Not only had Izuku trained himself to the bone, something he usually did anyway, but he pushed himself extra hard this time, all in the name of staying transformed for long enough to last whole events in case they were set to a time longer than his previous limit, which the greenette knew for a fact that most of them were.
He'd finally managed to increase his time to fifteen minutes, which whilst not seemingly much, was a marked improvement from the ten months it took him to get to ten, the new equipment he had made to help with training and integrating various moves from his alien forms into the muscle memory of his regular body did wonders for putting just the right strain Izuku needed for physical improvement onto his body.
With the increased faculties required to use the watch for longer also came the improvements the boy needed to finally manage to increase his body's resistance to exhaustion from constant transformations, the greenette just hoped that with his new improvements and the prolonged rest periods between some events, that he would be capable of lasting the entire festival, if not he could always duke it out with people using his bare fists and self taught combat style.
On top of all his training, he had put in extra hours to help all the people who had turned up to his training club, this involved personalised training regimens for both their quirks and specific physical activities that would help with the use of their powers, which in itself was a lengthy process just to make, let alone making sure people were following his instructions properly and then verifying whether they were having the desired effects and making any adjustments if that were not the case, Izuku longed for an alien that could be in more than one place at once, but beyond storing a large database of DNA, Izuku still couldn't figure out how the watch functioned beyond theories that it mixed a bunch of compatible quirk factors into a single cocktail of powers and then altered him at a genetic level to allow the use of these stable quirk cocktails, Izuku really wished he could find the inventor of his accessory.
Regardless of Izuku's wishes for a new alien, there weren't actually all that many people who had turned up to the club, in fact it was exclusively people from his own class and only those who he had an amicable relationship with
He could understand higher years not showing up, the club having to be opened for everyone in the school for it to even come into the principal's considerations that the club should become official, since they had prior training, and he couldn't imagine them wanting to take tips from a freshman.
Most students from support and business probably couldn't care less about hero training, it was unlikely that they had joined their chosen course for any reason other than the wish to pursue it as a career.
What Izuku really couldn't understand, however, was why the rest of his year had not shown up, general education students were more than welcome, and they could probably use some training since they didn't get special classes like the hero course, but not a single one of them had even shown their face, granted he hadn't gone out of his way to tell them it was a thing in person, but he believed it was sufficiently advertised around the school, it probably just came down to them having a misconception about Izuku's character.
He could see how he could have come off as arrogant during the small interaction he had with them in the corridor, and the boy was slowly becoming aware of the powers of the rumour mill.
His next headache was the other hero course class, truly the club also had the intention of bridging the gap between the two classes, they were all hopefully going to be heroes one day, and having a good relationship with each other couldn't hurt, the being said, 1-B seemed to have formed a strange hatred for him and his classmates over a reason as stupid as them being put in the way of mortal danger at the hands of villains, which was perhaps one of the less stupid reasons someone had hated the greenette, but Izuku still came to the conclusion that they were a weird lot.
Finally, the thing that the truly boggled the boy, the terrible attendance rate from his own class.
He'd gone out of his way to tell them in person, and some of them had even come to ask him questions about it, which he had answered to the best of his abilities despite being less than pleased at some of their timing, yet most of them still hadn't bothered to show up.
Had they not seen how good he was at using the various forms he had available to him?
Surely they could attribute that to him being good at training various powers.
Even if that were not the case, were they not even a little curious as to what the club was like?
Was he just scary or something?
He hoped not.
Either way, the boy had his hands full with the small group of people that actually did show up anyway, so the lack of attendance was a problem he would approach in the future.
For those that did show, he'd trained them to the best of his abilities, and not to toot his own horn, but they were definitely stronger now than most of their other classmates, not quite on the level of what Izuku considered the monsters of his class, namely Todoroki, Bakugou, Tokoyami under the right circumstances, and himself, but they were definitely above the rest of the class, especially in combat.
If Izuku was a betting man, he'd put a lot of money on his class occupying most of the top spots in the festival.
Speaking of the monsters in his class, Izuku looked up lazily at the candy cane coloured boy that was in the process of walking up to him.
"Midoriya," he began, "objectively speaking, us two are the strongest here," Izuku agreed with that statement loosely, without his fire Katsuki was stronger, but all out, Todoroki was in fact on par with all of Izuku's forms bar a few that hard countered him, one of said forms being Ghostfreak, phasing was just difficult to handle, not that Izuku planned to use that form unless he really had to, "but I would still say I'm probably a bit stronger than you," Izuku had to disagree there, but continued listening to his classmates in silence, "think of me as presumptuous, but to prove my strength, I will beat you." He declared demurely.
The room went silent as the class watched the growing tensions between their two strongest students.
Izuku tilted his head at the boy, before leaning back into his chair, he enjoyed declarations of war, it meant people saw him as a serious threat and were ready to go all out to beat him, it was why he wasn't annoyed at the fact he was being called out in front of all his class, making it impossible to decline the challenge, it did get on his nerves that Todoroki probably wasn't thinking of using his full strength when he made his declaration though, on that note, Izuku decided to be a bit of an ass again.
"Hmmm, well you certainly are strong Todoroki, and in the right situation, yeah you probably are stronger than me," the greenette said, before he smirked at his classmate, "but, don't take me so lightly, as you are now, underestimating all of us and holding half of your total power back, you don't stand a chance against me, in fact, you might not even place in the top three of our class right now, that basically puts you off my radar, the rest of us will no doubt be giving it our all to get to the top of this thing, and until you can say the same, you're in no place to be so bold." Izuku got up, which allowed him to surpass his classmate's height, truly he was loving his recent growth spurts, and look down at him with determination. "I'll accept your declaration of war just like all the others that people have sent my way, but know this, you better come at me with your all, because I'm going for it with everything I've got."
With those words the greenette began making his way down the tunnel, present Mic asking for the students to make their way out behind him as he did.
Izuku silently thanked the universe for impeccable timing, the coolness of his exit hopefully boosting the impact of his little speech.
After a few minutes all the classes in the first year had been announced and were standing in formation in front of the main stage, upon which stood the referee for the first year festival, the pro hero Midnight, she was a lot nicer than Izuku had first assumed, being the R-rated hero and all, he was concerned her personality would be much more difficult to deal with, but she was a good art teacher for sure, it helped that Izuku had somewhat of an artistic flare that he liked to add to his notebooks, and not counting some of her more raunchy comments, she was rather easy to get along with, although the boy had felt the eyes of a predator on his figure quite a few times whilst she was in the vicinity, she was easy on the eyes, but that was definitely illegal, his damn hormones didn't know the definition of illegal unfortunately…
The greenette did question letting her be in charge of the school's youngest students during their first appearance on national TV, however.
"Alright, now for the athlete's oath, your student representative is from class 1-A, Izuku Midoriya!"
Izuku gave a tired sigh, he saw this coming, he did get first place in the entrance exam after all, he just didn't understand why the school hadn't told him to prepare anything, maybe another hidden practice exercise about needing to suddenly address the public?
U.A really liked their ruses and hidden exercises.
"Do your best Deku-kun." Ochako said quietly to the greenette, who just gave her a small smile before he made his way to the stage, his classmates handing him quiet support as he passed.
The problem now was what to say to so many people?
Izuku cleared his throat, fighting down his anxiety as he realised the magnitude of the crowd before him, he had realised his seemingly bipolar approach to confidence, small groups were not a problem for him, however, anything he could consider a crowd just got to him for reasons he couldn't explain.
Nothing a deep breath and some good old improvisation couldn't solve.
Hopefully.
"I'll be honest, I don't have much to say here, like many of you, I always dreamed of being a hero, and to be out here today means the world to me, I hope to give you guys a good show, and that everyone participating enjoys themselves." Izuku took a pause for dramatic effect. "That being said, I'm here to take first place, the rest of you can try your best to stop me, it should be quite entertaining to watch."
The whole year suddenly shot up in an uproar.
Izuku removed the microphone from the stand, and walked closer to the edge of the stage before coughing loudly into the device he now held, bringing the crowd's focus back to him.
"Hey, it's rude to interrupt you know." Izuku said into the microphone. "I'm making a point here, we all came here to win, or I hope we all did, regardless, we are here representing our school, and more importantly we are representing all the hard work we put into getting here, whether we come from the hero course, gen ed, support or business, we all had to overcome our own challenges to be accepted into the most famous highschool in Japan, so I don't expect any of you to just roll over and give up, right now I'm representing the year, meaning right now, I'm at the top, but that could change in the blink of an eye, who knows, next year it could be any of you up here instead, that is, so long as you go for it with everything you've got, I hope you guys can show me just how much you want it, surpass your limits whilst trying to catch up to me, or is that not the very meaning of our school motto?" Izuku looked into the crowd of teenagers, hundreds of eyes staring at him with the determination to beat him.
This was the first step of his goal, he was truly awed by All Might's ability to stand above all his fellow heroes, but this was what Izuku thought society needed, a hero that could be chased after, a goal others could aspire to achieve, not a sun that people could only look up to but never touch, but more of a distant mountain peak that people couldn't help but try to conquer.
"Let's give it our best guys, you all know the phrase so don't make me say it alone. GO BEYOND!" Izuku yelled before pointing his mic at the crowd, the boy gave an internal sigh of relief as they replied in unison, that could have been embarrassing.
"PLUS ULTRA."
With that the sports festival kicked off.
AN: I want to apologise for the long wait between chapters, truth be told this is the longest any of my fanfiction has ever gotten, and I sort of burned myself out a little writing it all in a month, so I took some time off in order to stop the quality from dropping, anyway, the sports festival starts now, and I have the whole thing planned out from this point until the summer camp arc, so hopefully my update speed should pick up for a bit.
Thanks for reading.