"The top 42 from this qualifying round will move on! Onto the second event!" Midnight exclaimed, causing the various jumbotrons around the stadium to light up and begin the roulette like process of picking an event.
"Next up is…" the screen settled on two words. "THIS!"
Izuku looked at the words scavenger hunt in confusion.
He'd never seen this event before, and the greenette had watched a lot of U.A sport's festivals, meaning he'd binged all of them, even the ones that happened before he was born.
His confusion was shared by his fellow participants, especially since it didn't particularly sound like a competitive sport, much less one people would enjoy watching, the sport's festival was primarily made for entertainment after all.
Actually, now that Izuku thought about it, maybe U.A made its money from selling tickets to this event, the stadiums were always full after all, it still didn't add up completely but it was better than his running theory that the principal was screwing the economy for revenge against his human oppressors.
"The event is rather simple, sixteen items will be spread around a simulated cityscape, your task is to simply find and keep one of these items on your person by any means necessary for the full duration of the event." Midnight explained, "we'll even provide these nifty devices that will help you track the items." The pro hero explained, as little robots came out from the stadium walls and began handing students circular devices that had a map interface with multiple different coloured dots.
Izuku didn't get one for some reason, he reckoned it was just a mistake on the robots part and would covertly ask Midnight for one later as to not embarrass everyone in front of the crowd.
"Now you may notice that there are only fifteen items showing up on your map, well the reason for that is simple. Item number sixteen is right here." The woman said, holding up a golden laurel wreath, "this is the hero's crown, and of course it belongs to whoever is in first place." The pro then threw the wreath at Izuku who caught it dumbly and looked at the headpiece pensively.
"Oh I am boned." The boy thought to himself, before looking over at his fellow students, Katsuki and Todoroki were glaring at him with an intensity that bordered on murderous. Just his idea of a fun time.
"Izuku over here also doesn't have a tracker, because well, he should know the location of one of the items at all times anyway, the pressure on those at the top is building, but isn't that what plus ultra means?" Midnight smiled sadistically, "the event will last fifteen minutes, and you may only carry one item at a time, quirks are allowed, however, we will be watching, purposely trying to cause permanent damage to your fellow contestants will lead to an instant disqualification, the stage will be set up shortly. Leaving the bounds during the event with one of the items will also lead to a disqualification. You've got fifteen minutes before the event begins, do whatever, but please, do try to be on time."
Izuku started considering his options, well, there wasn't all that many to consider, everyone knew where he was going to be at all times thanks to this stupid laurel wreath he'd been given, his own lack of tracker didn't matter much, since he didn't need to look for items himself, just protect the one he had.
The only way he could think of successfully doing that for fifteen minutes was to run away for the whole duration, he could handle either Todoroki or Bakugou in a fight, he was sure of that, but the chance of him winning against both of them gunning for him whilst anyone else who wanted first place doing the same was not a number Izuku was fond of.
He could go XLR8 and run around, super speed solved a lot of issues after all, especially when it came to running away, but he was stuck in an enclosed area with a tracker slapped to his head, which made standing around waiting to run away at the first sight of danger implausible, super speed meant nothing if he got caught before he could react, Hagakure was around and she was really sneaky when naked, which was really a downside.
Izuku made a side note to help her out with that later.
He could just run for a solid fifteen minutes, but that was horribly inefficient and he could easily get trapped in a cityscape, or forced out of the area and disqualified.
Izuku needed to take a form that was maneuverable and easy to hide.
He had an idea that was super risky because he would basically consign himself to having no combat ability when two combat heavy people were coming for him, but his goal for this event wasn't necessarily to fight, just to keep his item on him for the duration.
After making his mind up, Izuku spent the rest of his fifteen minutes eavesdropping on people's plans, the area they had been moved to whilst the pro hero Cementoss basically built a whole city block from scratch was relatively small, and that made it a terrible place to scheme in.
People had formed teams, which seemed like an obvious option, and perhaps one Izuku should have considered himself, but he wasn't sure he wouldn't be backstabbed, and there were no guarantee being in a team would be helpful, what if only one item was retrieved between multiple people?
Obviously, they would have to duke it out between them to go to the next round.
Sure Izuku felt that he could probably lead a small squad and gather enough items for all of them, but running any kind of operation with two monsters on his ass was detrimental to everyone on his side at best, and he didn't want to drag people in his leadership down with his own problems.
Besides being in a large congregation of items was just painting another target on his back, and he just didn't feel like participating in siege warfare today, he already had that scheduled for next week anyway.
Was Izuku a little miffed that not a single person, not even his friends, even came up to him to ask if he wanted to team up?
No, not at all.
Stupid teenagers that he had trained himself.
Eventually, with the help of Cementoss and some of U.A's trusty helper robots the city block was finished, it wasn't all that big, nine five story buildings, couldn't make the space too big or fifteen minutes was simply not enough time for anything remotely entertaining to happen, all forty two participants were scattered around the edge waiting for the event to start.
Izuku fiddled with his watch, placing it on the correct silhouette and making sure he was ready to transform at a moment's notice.
Finally with Midnight's confirmation the event was finally set under way.
Izuku ran into the city, golden laurel resting on his ears and what he considered a solid plan ready to be placed in motion.
It was rather simple, the greenette found the closest building, picked a random floor and hit the dial on his watch.
He was quickly reduced to a height of six inches, with bulging eyes and grey skin, similarly he felt his intellect swell.
Grey Matter was a fun form to play around in, being ridiculously intelligent had its perks, but also came with the downside of making him reflect on every decision he'd made recently and then having his own mind point out how every action he took had been illogical or could have been more efficient.
Grey Matter truly brought the perfectionist out in Izuku, it was a good form to be in when Izuku wanted to make some quick cash, review an engineering blueprint or interpret research results, but he became a little more than neurotic when using this diminutive form.
Trying his best to push down his niggling doubt, Izuku grabbed the golden laurel that no longer fit on his head, and cosied himself up into the corner of the room he was in, it was strategically chosen to have multiple escape routes so he could run when he was inevitably found.
His plan was just to ride this one out since the few trackers he had glimpsed at were two dimensional, the building he was in would be found no problem, but his elevation would take some time, this building was at least ten floors and Izuku was near the top, he hoped that with everyone fighting each other over the items paired with all the previous facts he mentioned would allow him to play it quiet and only need to move around once or twice until the end of the event.
His plan was pretty good, until Katsumi found him less than a minute in.
"Deku, you managed to get ahead of me last time, but now that you actually have to fight me let's see how far you get!" The blonde growled.
Izuku cursed under his breath as his boosted intelligence got to work discovering what went wrong.
Even if Katsuki had seen him come into the building, he shouldn't have found him so quickly, which could only mean the trackers were much more advanced than he had first thought, perhaps they were equipped with a proximity sensor.
Regardless of what it was, it was complete unfair bullshit.
Obviously U.A was trying to force a fight between those that coveted first place and had made it stupidly easy to track down the laurel.
This simply meant that Izuku's plan needed to be scrapped.
He couldn't stay as Grey Matter either, he was under no illusion that he could beat Katsuki and Todoroki plus anyone else that decided to join the fight for first place all at once in any of his forms, much less as his weakest combat wise.
He'd love to use his advanced intellect to pull a victory out of his ass, but sometimes brains simply couldn't beat brawn.
Could he trick Todoroki, wherever he was at the moment, into distracting Katsuki whilst he made a clean getaway?
Probably.
But he needed to consider that both his childhood rival and his classmate didn't just have strong quirks, they were geniuses in their own right, they had the brains and brawn, and at the moment he was sorely lacking one of those components.
As Katsuki rocketed towards him for the umpteenth and definitely not the final time that day, Izuku jumped from his position, onto the blondes head and out of the open window.
It was a premade escape route that had served him well.
Landing on the concrete of the street below, perfectly fine despite the height, Izuku made a beeline for the next building over, rapidly scaled a few floors up and trapped the golden laurel unde a window before making his escape.
Yes he was giving up his item, but it was the most logical solution currently, he'd be tracked everywhere he went with it on him, and that included the short time he needed to reset the watch and use a different strategy, one that he hadn't even considered before, perhaps thanks to his now advanced intellect he could see that it was a better plan in all aspects.
Hopefully shoving the laurel in a hard to reach place would serve to piss off Katsuki a little, making him unhinged would only help in the long run.
Izuku ran into another building and deactivated his transformation and a sense of frustration washed over him immediately.
Another advantage of Grey Matter was that being so smart detached him from some emotions that he considered useless, like his frustration over the fact that U.A had made it so difficult for him for the sake of entertainment.
Izuku wanted to win, he wanted to prove himself, but the school was making it extra hard for him just because he was trying to do that.
The pressure was needed for his growth, he knew he needed these chances to become more than he already was in order to reach the highest height he could achieve, but giving everyone so many advantages whilst he was forced to survive off of less dug up some old experiences that he perhaps wasn't completely over yet.
Izuku took a deep breath and shoved his qualms deep down.
It was not the time to be moping over how unfair this festival actually was, something that really dimmed his previous love for the event.
The greenette looked down at his watch, thankful that it was ready for another transformation before he started brooding any more.
The school hadn't given him a tracker, so he couldn't find the items easily now, but he'd never considered the fact that he always had a tracker on him no matter the situation.
They'd set him up to be the prey in this event.
Well it was time for the hunted to become the hunter.