The first event was a simple obstacle course around the stadium.
Well, simple in U.A terms, no doubt the school that could erect multiple cities on a whim had prepared something less than child friendly for their students.
Not that Izuku had time to consider child safety with all the kids that were jostling him back and forth in the corridor the race was meant to start from.
Truthfully, he was considering committing some less than child friendly actions himself if someone stepped on his foot or elbowed him in the ribs again.
The race hadn't even started and people were already acting like animals.
Regardless, Izuku needed to consider his options for the upcoming event.
In terms of speed, XLR8 was by far his best option, he could probably finish the race in a handful of minutes if he just dashed the whole way, but then came the problem of obstacles, the speedster was good at barren stretches of land, but as soon as you threw in a wall or a hole, problems started to crop up with running at such high speeds.
Sure he could dodge the impact, but if the wall or hole were big enough he wouldn't be able to navigate past it.
XLR8 could run, but wheels did not help much when it came to jumping or climbing.
If Izuku wanted maneuverability, then Stinkfly was his best option, he'd be slower than XLR8, but he could likely deal with whatever obstacle the school threw his way just thanks to his ability to fly.
Mind made up, Izuku shoved some kid away from him to prevent his ribs from taking anymore damage, and waited for Present Mic to announce the start of the race, hand ready to transform into his desired form.
As soon as he got the green light, Izuku hit the dial and took to the skies, just barely avoiding the sheet of ice Todoroki had covered the floor in.
It was a smart move, but even Mineta had avoided it, so Izuku was unsure, nor did he care, about its effectiveness, as he flew out of the tunnel.
He quickly caught up to the boy who was skating his way into the lead and flew besides him.
"Nice try, but as I told you, you need to stop underestimating your classmates." The greenette said, signaling with one of his antenna to the various people in his class that had avoided or escaped the ice trap and were quickly catching up to them.
Izuku quickly strafed to the left, dodging an explosion that was aimed at his person.
"Don't even think about getting ahead of me Deku." Katsuki growled, sending a few controlled explosions to catch up to the two boys in first.
"I'm already ahead of you Porcupine hair, catch me if you can." Izuku chortled, pulling away from Todoroki, and watching the boy's annoyance grow as Katsuki did the same.
Izuku bobbed and weaved away from the various attacks Katsuki launched at him even as the two chased each other in the air, both boys spinning and moving in tandem to each other in a deadly aerial dance, Katsuki was good, Izuku noted, his explosions serving to both propel him forward and try to knock the boy out of the air.
The boy turned insectoid barrel rolled away from an explosive slam that would have grounded him and lost him his lead before he turned back to his rival.
"Someone's been training." Izuku said smugly, "although for this next bit I'd suggest closing your mouth and eyes."
Before the blonde could retort, Izuku shot him point blank in the face with the disgusting goop that stinkfly could produce, covering the red eyed boy's entire face.
Katsuki panicked, grabbing his face and hitting the floor with a painful looking skid.
Izuku felt a little bad for the boy, the stuff that came out of this body truly had an unsavoury smell and texture, the greenette couldn't even begin to imagine the taste, but he wasn't about to stop and apologise.
Not right when the first obstacle was coming up ahead.
Today had come as a big shock to Shoto Todoroki.
He wasn't even one event into the festival, and already his confidence was wavering.
He was strong, he knew as much, and he'd expected to be the strongest in his year, having come first from the people that had gotten in via the recommendation exam and all, however, he found himself lacking in several aspects as soon as the first day.
He'd come third in the apprehension test, which was a bad start to a long list of defeats.
losing to Yaoyorozu he could understand, she too was a recommendation student and a lot more versatile than him, which was why he was surprised but not angry when she had beaten him in their first hero training, he respected the girl's ingenuity, keen intellect and skilled use of her quirk, as he had expected to since she had come from a rather prominent family.
There was, however, an anomaly he simply couldn't fathom nor could he have predicted.
Izuku Midoriya was a monster, quite literally at times, the boy was seemingly unbeatable, smarter, stronger, faster, he could be it all, but Shoto was sure in a straight out fight, he could beat the boy, his forms were versatile as they were powerful, but the green haired boy had never displayed any form of propensity for performing feats on his own level.
It was within his expectations to have a close race with Midoriya, he wasn't arrogant enough to believe he could outrace someone that could break the sound barrier if he so chose, but the Todoroki had expected that with obstacles in his way, the boy's performance would be hindered enough for him to catch up with his vastly superior output.
Shoto was not in second right now.
In fact, he wasn't even in third anymore, and that was a difficult pill for him to swallow.
He'd overlooked Bakugou entirely, the boy had a strong quirk, and was no doubt a monster in his own right, but the boy could never imagine the levels the blonde would reach in just two weeks.
He watched as the red eyed boy fell to the ground thanks to the ministration of his green haired rival, and despite the rather fierce impact, he simply wiped whatever that green gunk on his face happened to be, growled and then blasted himself after first place with enough power that Todoroki felt the heat even from the few meters away that he found himself.
If that wasn't enough of a surprise, the boy almost felt himself being pushed out of the way as Iida ran past him at high speed, followed but Uraraka and Asui hopping their way after the bespectacled boy, which was somewhat confusing since the brunette was not part frog and yet seemed to be jumping just as high as their amphibian class mate.
After them came Ashido, who was skating on the ground using her acid, with much more grace and speed than he himself could achieve on his ice, the girl gave the stoic boy a wide grin and a wink as she slid past.
This left him perplexed, he had at no point expected this many people to surpass him at such an early stage, but then he thought back to what Midoriya had told him in the waiting room before the events had even begun.
He wasn't in the top three, not the way he was right now, but even still he refused to use his fire, he didn't need it for this, he would never need it for anything, to win he just needed to get better with his ice, that had always been the case before and that was what he had to do right now.
Todoroki knew he was in good shape, but he couldn't see himself catching up to them just by running, he needed to use his own powers to transport himself just like all those that had passed him or he would be stuck in seventh, and that was only if no one else decided to pull something out of nowhere and leave him even further behind.
The speed at which the boy could make his ice move was much faster than he himself could run, so why not make his ice move him?
He'd done it before, in his recommendation exam, granted that was just a flat track, but it had gotten him a good place there, not first, but no one here had a quirk even remotely as powerful as his opponent back then, so why couldn't it give him first place here?
The boy paused for a split second before a wave of ice erupted behind him.
He'd beat Midoriya and show him he was stronger.
He'd come in first and show Endeavour he didn't need his fire.
He'd show them all he was the strongest.
Staring down at the eight glowing eyes of a zero pointer really made Izuku wonder.
Just how much money did U.A have?
He knew he didn't have time to consider it fully right now, but the sight of multiple, skyscraper sized, battle robots all in one place made the boy once more think about what kind of government grant U.A had, and how he could get himself one.
Izuku strafed to the left to dodge the pursuit of his very persistent rival.
"Right, I'm in the middle of a race," the boy thought to himself, shifting his focus back to where it was needed.
He swung his tail at his blonde haired classmate, narrowly missing his opponent as the red eyed boy performed a rather impressive looking aerial dodge, but that gave Izuku the time he needed to halt his wings and dive bomb down towards the hulking robots.
Had he taken his little fight to a higher altitude than was probably safe?
Well, not for him, he probably wouldn't get put out of business by the fall, if Katsuki hit the floor and gave himself a concussion, then Izuku had simply saved himself from one headache.
W3ell more like passed it on to someone else.
Katsuki, seeing his quarry running away, followed him without a second thought, which was exactly as Izuku had hoped, the blonde was a genius, but whenever beating the greenette was involved, the boy devolved to primal instinct and rage, perfect for fighting, not so much for noticing the hand of an executor class villain bot that was reaching for the boys like a baby wanting it's mother.
Izuku gracefully squeezed between the gap of the colossal fingers just in time.
Katsuki slammed into the metallic appendages.
The blonde growled in annoyance before using a series of explosions to push himself to the side, narrowly escaping the grasp of the rapidly closing fist, the boy spun in the air to right himself and then continued on with the race, unabated by almost being crushed.
In this time, Izuku furthered his lead to what he predicted was a level suitable enough that he would not be caught up to for the rest of the race.
The greenette zoomed right past the head of the robot, his reasoning being it was a lot harder to catch a fly that was right next to your head than one that was buzzing around a few meters away, and he really didn't want to get caught.
Whilst sound, this reasoning was the cause of him getting his various feet encased in ice as Todoroki froze over the entire robot in one go in a rather impress and somewhat scary display, and the boy just happened to be perpendicular to the side of the robots head in order to move past it in the most efficient way.
Izuku cursed his bad luck as he lost his lead, all the while using the large stinger at the end of his tail to try and free himself.
The boy wasn't stupid enough to simply let Katsuki get away from him scot free, and so he hit one of the blonde's palms with his goo, all the while still pickaxing away at his prison.
Losing one of his methods of propulsion so suddenly made the red eyed boy lose altitude momentarily, before he clapped his hands together, burning off the worst of Izuku's green mucus with an explosion and restarting his flight just before he hit the ground.
Meanwhile, the greenette realised he was falling, Todoroki having seemingly frozen the robot while it was off balance, a brutal but effective move, the boy was good, Izuku had to give him that.
Not good enough, however, as Izuku freed himself from his unwanted attachment hit the ground, and he quickly returned to the race, he'd deal with the chunks of ice stuck to his legs later if they hadn't melted off by then.
Izuku shot after Katsuki once more, hoping to make up for lost time during the second obstacle, but unfortunately it was was nothing to write home about, sure a massive hole was a problem for someone who couldn't fly, hence why Todoroki had fallen from third place in exchange for Ochako who could basically simulate flight by turning off her personal gravity, which made crossing the chasm much easier for her than it did the heterochromic, who had to resort to building ice bridges across the gaps, not that her lead had lasted long once they reached the other side, Todoroki's ice was fast, very fast.
Izuku also filed away the stray thoughts about how the hell the school had built such a big hole in so little time and without anyone noticing to the back of his mind.
As mentioned, however, the obstacle proved to be rather lacklustre for the two boys in the lead, and Izuku hadn't been able to take back first place.
The last obstacle was a whole other story, a minefield filled with simulated explosives, paint ones with a little bit of stunning concussive force mixed in to be precise, definitely something Izuku could use to regain his lead.
Katsuki had taken to flying much closer to the ground than when Izuku had been leading their little dance, and the greenette could see that the red eyed boy was straining his quirk to keep up his flight speed, Izuku knew there was a limit to Katsuki's flight, since it was created with what basically amounted to a smaller version of a rocket booster in each hand, not particularly something Izuku would suggest a person hold with no wrist support, and the blonde seemed to be approaching his limit, as impressive as going all out for as long as he had, all Izuku had to do was give the boy that little extra push and the blonde would have to run the rest of the way, giving Izuku plenty of opportunity to take the lead.
This in mind, the greenette began taking potshots at the mines directly in front of and below his opponent.
It really helped that said mines had their locations well marked out for him.
The greenette did have to give his rival one thing, his reaction time was simply monstrous, as the blonde had been able to dodge a few of the rather violent paint explosions, but eventually the boy was hit full on with a pink splatter, which knocked him out of his flight.
This allowed Izuku to take first place just meters away from the final tunnel.
Then he got hit by a mine.
He didn't step on one no, he got hit in the back with a live mine that exploded and covered his entire form in pink.
The boy turned back to see Katsuki, similarly painted pink, crouched down in front of a mound of displaced dirt, fingers brown with the evidence of his crime.
Izuku had expected him to run after him, not stop and sabotage his chances of victory, what kind of lunatic would dig up an active bomb just to make sure they won?
Todoroki was coming towards them on his ice, speed faster than either of them could run, and with his wings weighed down by paint, and Katsuki's hands shaking uncontrollably, there was no way the two were going to fly out of this one.
Without a moment of hesitation, Izuku hit Katsuki in the face with goo as revenge before skittering as fast as he could to the finish line.
He could hear the blonde swear violently and the rapidly encroaching sound of an ice wave just a few meters behind him.
He could see it though.
The light at the end of the tunnel.
The finish line.
Todoroki almost overtaking him on his ice.
Izuku jumped onto the ice wave Todoroki was riding and harshly tail slammed the boy off and against the wall.
Todoroki looked at him incredulously, as if not expecting Izuku to be so blatantly violent, he was also sure he had snuck up on the boy who hadn't turned his head to look behind him once.
That expression was wiped off his face by green goo.
"What?" Izuku questioned, "did you think you snuck up on me or something? Your ice is really loud and I have three hundred and sixty degrees of vision, ice for brains." The greenette said rather smugly.
The gloating would have continued if Izuku didn't hear a yell of Deku echo through the tunnel, he reapplied Todoroki's face mask for good measure and ran towards the exit.
"And the first one out is none other than the representative himself, Izuku Midoriya!" Present Mic yelled, signalling the end of the first event for the greenette, who had transformed back to his normal form as soon as the race was won.
"Following closely behind are Shoto Todoroki and Katsuki Bakugou, in second and third place respectively."
Izuku looked at the very pissed and somewhat green faces of his classmates who had just left the tunnel.
They had declared war on him after all, of course he was going to hit them in the face with goo, the greenette hoped they wouldn't sulk over what amounted to him spitting in their faces multiple times and come for revenge.
Who was he kidding, his ass was grass if the next event was anything remotely more violent than a race.
Izuku also noticed how pink Katsuki was, and then proceeded to look down at himself.
He hoped U.A had skimped out on the waterproof paint to pay for that hole.