Izuku had somehow done it, he'd managed to snatch first place back at the last moment, which, even for him was too clutch for comfort.
His brilliant plan had involved finding Katsuki and then staying hidden close to it, just waiting for the best time to jump out and grab back the golden laurel, this had lead him to being stuck to the side of a building for a good couple of minutes and letting his two biggest opponents duke it out until the item was unattended.
Thankfully it had come just before the end of the game, which had been way too close for comfort, but he'd gotten it in the end, so that's all that really mattered.
That's how he got himself over the fact that a certain blonde probably wanted him double dead now.
As to why he hadn't joined in on the fight, as epic as it probably would have been, the greenette had deduced that an ambush would be a lot cleaner and easier on his body, which had in fact been the case.
It wasn't like he was a couple more seconds away from abandoning all semblance of strategy and descending upon his classmates as a howling fur ball of pure canine fury just to ensure a laurel in front of the entire country or anything.
The world would never know how desperate he had been getting as the clock ticked down to the last seconds.
Unless there were mid readers amongst the crowd, then they would have to be eliminated.
Random thoughts of ruthlessly hunting down would be tattletales aside, Izuku now stood in front of Midnight's stage waiting for her to announce the sixteen winners of this round, not that he couldn't tell just based on who was currently slated or smug, and who was downtrodden, and one blonde that was apparently cursing his 18 generations or something?
"Now then, let's see which one of you lovely virile youths made it through." The pro hero said with a drawl, before licking her lips, the action sent chills down Izuku's spine, but also made his heart speed up a little. The woman was scary, but strangely attractive. This particular pro had always been rather confusing to Izuku's emotions "After snapping victory from the jaws of defeat, with his own jaws might I add, first place once more goes to our very own student representative, Izuku Midoriya!"
The crowd cheered at this declaration, Izuku hadn't done a lot in the last round, which made him a little confused about why the crowd was cheering for him, the festival basically amounting to gladiatorial combat for most viewers and all, but he supposed some people would be rooting for him after his performance in the race, the prestige of continuously being first probably amounted to something as well.
"Following closely behind him, after an impressive display of combat, we have the second and third places from last round, Katsuki Bakugou and Shoto Todoroki."
The crowd cheered again, it was about the same volume as when they had cheered for him, so Izuku supposed maybe they were just cheering for the sake of cheering, he never could quite analyse large crowds correctly. "alongside them are other students from our frontrunners at class 1-A, Tenya Iida, Fumikage Tokoyami, Tooru Hagakure, Momo Yaoyorozu, Ochako Uraraka, Kyoka Jiro, Eijiro Kirishima, Mina Ashido, and Tsui Asui." Midnight continued, "Finally getting some of the limelight, class 1-B's Ibara Shiozaki, Yui Kodai, and Tetsutetsu Tetsutesu. And Last,but certainly not least, the absolute wild card of this event, from the general studies course, we have Shinso Hitosh! These sixteen will proceed to the final event!"
Izuku gave a sidelong glance at the purple haired boy that had made such bold declarations to him previously.
It was quite impressive that he had made this far, which lead the greenette to believe that his quirk was actually something rather useful, but was in fact unsuitable for battling the robots of the entrance exam, which really begged the question as to why he seemed to be so glum about his own power.
"Alright kiddies, come on up here and grab a ball from the ballot box." Midnight said cheerfully.
The winning students went up one by one, collecting a ball and displaying it to the crowd.
Izuku got the ball labelled one, which meant he was going to have to go first, he just hoped he didn't get one of the heavy hitters right off the bat, or he was going to be exhausted for the remaining matches if he even managed to win.
Battle was a fickle thing after all.
As it turned out, Izuku had been worried for nothing, as his first battle would be against the very same boy he had been analysing earlier, he meant no offence but it was clear that Hitoshi was not trained in any form of combat, and Izuku could infer that his quirk lacked offensive powers.
The greenette wasn't about to get arrogant, however, as it was obvious the boy had some tricks up his sleeve, having gotten this far into the competition, but somehow Izuku felt that his first match was going to be a lot more preaching than it was going to be fighting.
Izuku then took a look at the other matches.
Two class 1-B students would be fighting in the second match, Shiozaki and Kodai, Izuku had never interacted with either, so it would be a good opportunity to learn about their quirks before he inevitably fought one of them.
Then it was Todoroki against Hagakure, which surprisingly could go either way, sure the dual quirk wielder was strong, but he wasn't adept at tracking at all, if the invisible girl could sneak up on him and incapacitate him, she could actually win the match, but that was all up to whether Todoroki held back at all, which Izuku very much doubted that he would.
Next was Tenya and Yaoyoruzu, which would likely be a rather interesting match, it'd be the first match involving someone from Izuku's quirk training club, and the raven haired girl was no push over herself.
The match after brought a mix of cold sweat and excitement to the greenette.
Ochako vs Katsuki.
Many would think that it would be a bloodbath, but not many knew that Izuku had been helping his brunette friend with her training since the entrance exam, and ever since the first Hero studies lesson, he'd upped the ante and started to really push the girl hard.
Ochako took to the training like a fish to water, the fighting style Izuku had taught her was up to a rather passable level in only a week, which was actually rather scary, plus all the time they had spent synergising her quirk and her battle prowess into one deadly, physics defying weapon, suffice to say Ochako was a little bit of a monster herself.
Against anyone else, apart from perhaps Todoroki, it would easily have been the ever blushing girl's victory, but Bakugou was on Izuku's level, a level which the girl was infinitesimally close to, but unfortunately fell just a little short of.
Simply put, Izuku would be on the edge of his seat the entire time.
Fumikage was fighting in the next one against Jirou, which perhaps wouldn't demonstrate the skills he'd learnt at the club, as unlikely as Izuku had thought it that he'd turn up, he was the only one out of the greenette's usual main friend group that had.
Then it was Eijiro against Tetsutetsu, which from what Izuku understood was basically two identical abilities duking it out until one of their defenses gave out, cumbersome to watch for sure, but it was where Eijiro excelled, so the greenette was curious as to who's quirk was stronger.
Finally, Mina and Tsu would close off the first round, both of them had trained with Izuku, and the greenette was very much aware about both of their abilities, so he was sure it would shape up to be a rather interesting match.
After all the fights had been announced, the festival was put on break for lunch, and so Izuku was rounded up by his friends and they went to find food whilst chattering excitedly amongst themselves.
The greenette could feel some anxiety running through all of them, since they had all made it to the next round, he had the same niggling voice deep down in his gut as well, so he was glad for the distraction caused by their small talk, as he was sure they all were too.
The meal was quick and uninterrupted, unlike their journey back to the stadium, half way through the girls split off from the group for some unknown reason, he'd seen them talking to Kaminari and Mineta with the other three girls in class at one point in the lunch queue, so it was probably to do with that, Izuku felt mischief afoot, but before he could stop it or partake in it, depending on how much trouble it would get him into, the greenette was stopped by one of his classmates.
"Midoriya, we need to talk."
Izuku looked at Ojiro curiously, he'd never really held a conversation with the tailed boy, but he seemed like a decent person from what little the greenette had heard about him, so he had no quarry with him, Izuku was also aware that the blonde was a rather adept fighter, and he would have loved to trade some pointers with him in the finals.
The seriousness in the boy's voice and expression made it clear that this was a conversation that needed to happen in private, so Izuku asked his two remaining friends to go on ahead and save him a seat.
"What's up Ojiro?" The greenette queried curiously.
"It's about your first match, your opponent, Shinso that purple haired kid, whatever you do don't answer any of his questions." The boy explained.
"Is that the condition to activate his quirk? What happens if I answer?"
"I don't know, but I wouldn't risk it, back in the last event, one second I was running around, laurel in hand, and the next I answered one of his questions, something stupid about how long we had left, and just like that it was like I was no longer there, trapped in my own body so to speak…" Ojiro began, "I knew what was happening, but I couldn't do anything about it, I only snapped out of it when someone bumped into me, but that won't happen in a one-on-one situation." The boy gave a sigh as if to calm his nerves. "Just be careful not to fall into any of his traps, okay? You're a good guy Midoriya, and I don't wish what happened to me on anyone who doesn't deserve it. I also wouldn't mind it if you socked him one for me."
With those words the boy left with a shaky smile.
Izuku gave him a few moments so that he wouldn't catch up to him on his way out, the blonde seemed to be rather frustrated, maybe a little traumatised and based on how quickly he'd passed on the information he just had, being alone was perhaps the best way for him to sort out his thoughts.
Having never been on the tail end of a similar quirk, Izuku couldn't fully comprehend his situation, he was empathetic to it all the same, but right now he couldn't help him, and he had more pressing matters to attend to.
His opponent seemed to have some form of immobilization or control quirk, not something that Izuku needed to transform for, but rather he needed to reign in his habit of answering questions, it was a natural human response, especially if his opponent employed some form of dirty tactic which played on Izuku's lesser controlled, hormone fuelled emotions.
Speaking of hormone fuelled emotions, Izuku stopped dead in his tracks as he watched the six girls in his class prancing around in revealing cheerleading outfits.
He didn't know whose idea it had been, nor how they had convinced them to do that, but the greenette was torn between calling them a genius, pure evil, or just plain perverted.
Scratch that he knew exactly whose fault it was.
The boy also realised how pretty all the girls in his class were, but that was filed away for later appraisal, alongside the hypnotic bounce of certain body parts.
He didn't have the time to think of this stuff right now, he needed to kick some ass and hopefully not get murdered by his childhood bully, fighting down his rising urge for a girlfriend was not going to help him in these tasks.
He wasn't even sure how he would go about pursuing a girl anyway.
Rather than that, the boy knew he should be planning for his first match using a skill he actually possessed, analysing quirks and people and countering the hell out of them, most of the time successfully.
The boy could also sense the fact that Shinso was going to need a rather stern, heartfelt speech of some form, well more like Izuku wanted to rant the boy's ears off for complaining about having a 'weak' quirk, the greenette didn't even understand it fully, but he could already see it being implemented in hundreds of life saving ways.
Izuku really didn't want to embarrass himself in front of all these people and national television, so he had half a mind to plan what he was going to yell at the top of his lungs beforehand, he deeply considered writing it down on his arm.
Except he also really wanted to watch the girls dance around some more.
Puberty was a confusing time.
Izuku managed to peel himself away from the enticing scene in front of him to go look for his notebook, taking some notes was sure to clear his mind so that he'd be fully ready for his fights.
On his way the boy idly wondered if hair would be the only purple thing about his opponent by the end of the first round.