Chapter Nine

"The Sports Festival?!"

"As many of you are undoubtedly aware," Aizawa said, "the UA sports festival is a crucial step for your career …"

Katsuma listened carefully to what Mr. Aizawa was saying, about how being scouted could be a huge boon for getting internships and therefore gaining experience, chances for training, and opportunities to network. All of which could and would contribute greatly to their futures as pro heroes. He briefly glanced around at his friends and found Eri and Satsuki patiently listening, and Kota very clearly not, his chin in his palm as he waited the speech out.

Right. They probably knew all of this from their hero family members. Froppy would have definitely gone through the sports festival, as would Lemillion. He wasn't sure if the Pussycats had gone to UA, but they had worked closely with the school, and even past that they were smart enough to see the merits.

Katsuma shook off those thoughts and resumed his listening, committing everything he could to memory. He'd watched the sports festival for the last nine years — including two years with Deku and his class — and so he had an idea of what to expect. By which, of course, he expected it to be physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing to the max.

Their class, and Class B, would have two weeks to prepare for this thrice-in-a-lifetime event.

He'd have to keep up his training, maybe even increase it if he could without burning himself out. He also couldn't help but wonder what everyone else would do to train …


Katsuma noticed a lot more people watching him and his classmates over the next few days. Some he vaguely recognized from Class B, others were from different courses. Particularly the general studies.

"If they have a good enough showing at the sports festival," Satsuki explained to him when he brought it up at lunch on the third day since the announcement, "then they can transfer into the hero course."

"And anyone who embarasses themself can get transferred out to make room," Kota said darkly.

Katsuma felt his nerves skyrocket at that news, his heart pounding in his chest. How could he face his dad and sister, or Mr. Deku, if he lost his place in the hero course? His breathing began to speed up. Was he having a panic attack?!

"Katsuma?"

Eri's voice cut through the haze and Katsuma realized she was gripping his hand. He swallowed and and screwed his eyes shut, shaking his head before opening them again to find his friends looking at him with concern.

"Dude, I didn't mean to freak you out," Kota said levelly. "I meant other people, not you." He shrugged with a very strained smile. "And hey, it's not really common anyway. I mean, you have to really screw up to get transferred out-"

"I don't think that's helping, Kota," Satsuki said firmly, glaring faintly at him.

"It'll be okay," Eri told him. "Remember, I saw you at the entrance exam. I know you've got skills."

"And you won the battle trial for your team," Satsuki pointed out.

"And you didn't do terrible in the Quirk test thing," Kota added dispassionately.

"R-Right," Katsuma muttered. Then he took a breath and said more firmly, "You're right. We've all got this!"

"Maybe we should all train together?" Eri suggested.

"Are you kidding?" Kota said. "We'll be going up against each other, too, ya know."

"We can still train on our own," Satsuki added. "But Eri's right. Group training can be a huge advantage."

"Whatever," Kota sighed.

Katsuma's spirits were higher through lunch, but he still felt nervous. His Quirk wasn't combat-oriented, he knew this and had worked to circumvent it. But compared to so many other people in their class, and presumably in Class 1-B, he wondered if it would be enough. What would his wooden escrima sticks do against them all?

"Hey, Katsuma?" Eri asked, in the hall as they returned to class.

"Hmm?" He looked up at her from his feet, noticing that Kota and Satsuki had pulled ahead a bit. Or maybe Eri had fallen back to walk with him.

"You're worried that your Quirk won't help," Eri said, a statement and not a question. He felt himself blush and nodded. "I get it," Eri said easily, her smile turning a little sad, and she reached up to tap her horn with a finger. "Mine won't help much, either." She smiled. "That's what our gear is for, right? Who else in our class has support equipment yet?"

Katsuma smiled at her in thanks. "Honestly, I just wish I had a long-range option," he admitted. "Like your capture scarf."

They walked in silence until they neared the classroom, but before they could enter, Eri stopped him with a hand at his elbow. "Why don't we make that happen?" she asked.

"What?" Katsuma asked, perplexed.

"How about a trade," Eri said with a sly smile. "I'll teach you how to use a capture scarf if you teach me how to use your kali sticks." She arched an eyebrow in challenge. "What do you say?"

"I say," he said with a small returned smile, "that I prefer 'escrima' over 'kali' sticks." He laughed quietly as Eri puffed out her cheeks in a pout. "I also wonder if that can help either of us in less than two weeks."

"Maybe not," Eri admitted. "But we don't have to stop. Even after the sports fest, we can help each other be our very best, you know?"

"Okay," Katsuma said, turning itr over in his mind as a smile slowly grew. "Yeah, that sounds really fun!"

"Good," Eri said decisively. "Sometime next week?"

"Saturday evening, so we can sleep in after," Katsuma suggested.

"Deal," Eri said, and they shook on it.


As the days passed, every student put their all into preparation …

Eri kept her breathing even as she ran along the sidewalks of UA, music coming from her earphones as the city's horizon slowly turned pink. She mentally reviewed her upcoming day, from class and standard training, then two hours with Recovery Girl and Uncle Aizawa to practice her Quirk, an hour in training ground gamma to practice her parkour, then dinner, homework time, and sleep.

She pushed aside the melancholy of not seeing much of her friends outside of class, but resolved that everyone had decided to take days to train on their own and develop any skills they were keeping secret even from each other.

With that in mind, she upped her pace and kept running.


Hane Toreka whooped with joy as he plunged through the air, having jumped from the highest fake building in the training ground. As the ground drew nearer, pairs of wings appeared on his wrists, ankles, hips, and the backs of his shoulders and he swept from the fall with mere inches to spare.

"Closer next time," he promised himself, flushed with adrenaline. "I'll brush the ground without a single scratch.


Yayoi resisted the urge to transform into his golden form — as he preferred to call it, no matter that styleless naysayers called it "brassy" or "bronzy" or whatever — as he pushed his reps at the weight bench. His muscles were not just for show, and greater strength in his base form translated to a greater gain in his golden form.

Images of Togata and her little group flashed through his mind, the students trained personally by heroes with their little healing hanger-on, and he pushed himself even further. He was determined to show them that he would stand tall and proud with his strength.

He would show the world.


Tetsu Shirundo focused on his feet, maintaining the magnetic pull they were exerting on the ground, his position unwavering. Anyone who tried to move him would shatter his legs before moving his feet. Then he focused on his hands, a separate magnetic force reaching out to iron weights across the gym. He grit his teeth as he split his concentration, habit screaming at him to magnetize his entire body, but he refused.

He'd need every trick he could get for the festival.


Tategami roared as she ran over rooftops, bounding with leonine grace that belied her lion form's heavily-muscled build. She leapt and slammed into a concrete wall, her claws digging in for a split second before she pushed away and higher into another wall, slowly making her way upwards until she reached the height of one of the fake buildings, sliding to a stop on the gravel of the roof.

She returned to her human shape and clenched her fists against the satisfying thrum in her arms.

She would not disappoint her class.


Kota snarled against the burning in his arms and shoulders as he blasted as much water from his hands as possible, the recoil threatening to push him over if it didn't snap his ligaments first. Then he felt a shift in the pressure and cut off the flow, letting his arms fall with a gasp of relief to find a car some yards away sopping wet and rolled over onto its roof.

He laughed to himself.

He was so looking forward to the sports fest.


Kyu Hotaka grunted as he punched a steel-mesh punching bag, his motions rhythmic and controlled as a professional boxer's for all their stopping power. Had one realized that the punching bag was full of scrap metal, they'd be even more impressed.

The ball bearings that sat naturally in place of Hotaka's knuckles certainly helped, the sharp sound of metal on metal ringing with every impact. He grinned to himself as his arms burned.

Training really was such a great thing.


Ame Senko whirled on her pointed toes through a classical ballet pirouette, her place in space shifting as she did. She kept her eyes closed and her mind clear as she flowed through the motions of a classic Swan Lake dance, teleporting with every other step.

Wooden crates placed around the training room stood untouched as she kept control of her position at all times. She had several bruises on her shins and hips that had taught her that lesson the fastest way.

Grace under pressure, that would be the key.


"Higher," Saru Teashi grunted.

His legs were stretching beneath him, nearing the top floors of one of the fake buildings he was facing, his eyes upward toward the blue sky. His legs began to feel terrible, like growing pains along every inch and growing worse by the second.

"Just- a little- further-!" he said through clenched teeth. When the pain grew too great, he swung his arm with a large piece of chalk to mark a line on the building and then grabbed a ladder set into the building to his right, his legs shooting upward and back into him like a rubber band. He shouted with pain as they settled back to their original length and braced his arms on the ladder, his legs trembling.

"Let's see," he said, adjusting his glasses and looking at the lines he had painted in white at five foot intervals along the side of the ladder. It looked like this run had been … six inches higher.

"Great," he sighed and numbered that line, the twelfth today. As he began to gingerly make his way back down, he muttered. "Arms next. Way less dangerous."


Kinzoku Hito took a deep breath as he stood on the edge of a building, focusing on what he was about to do. He held both arms out in front of him, and they turned from chestnut skin and muscle into gunmetal grey armored skeletal shape.

With a grunt, he lifted himself onto his arms in a perfect handstand, balanced against falling off the roof. With whirring like gears and pneumatics, he shifted his balance onto one arm, holding the other out to his side as it returned to flesh and bone. And as his arm returned to normal, the side of his face mechanized into half of a mask, his eye a glowing red lens.

"Let's see who's around," he said curiously, his robotic eye zooming in on the training ground.


Satsuki felt her lungs burn as she kicked through the school's swimming pool, chasing down mechanical fish. She'd grabbed three of the five and now had only two more. Her lungs felt like they were about to burst, so she kicked to the surface, blasting out of the water in a smooth arc to take a deep breath and then plunge back down in a smooth dive.

She oriented on her targets and, with one mighty kick, cut through the water to snatch one, then lashing out with her tongue to grab the other. With two more kicks, she emerged and landed on the side of the pool to click a stopwatch.

"One minute faster," she said happily. Then she brushed excess water off of her yellow one-piece swimsuit, collected the fish, tossed them back in, and dove for another try.


Scott Knight, international student from Scotland, stood his ground as a pitching machine fired baseballs at him. With each one that soared at him, he lifted a hand as if to catch it … but as it drew near his skin, its momentum was arrested before the ball was fired backward with ever more speed.

Scott missed several baseballs, the machine set to fire at random locations, though all at max power. Those he missed sailed right past him.

"Come on," he said in his thick Scottish brogue, forgoing the Japanese he so often had to speak here at UA. "I swear, I'll do my country proud."


Kashikai Joren leapt on her spider legs from beam to beam and wall to wall inside one of the beta ground's empty buildings styled after a warehouse, her spinnerets working non-stop. She didn't stop to think, she let instinct guide her. When she fell and landed in the middle of the building, she turned in a whirl of legs to examine the massive web she had woven.

In the center of the web were the words, "WINNER, WINNER" within a heart.

"Not bad," she said with a smile.


Steve Silver of West Virginia, USA, soared on his moth wings between pillars and through hoops, trying to hone his precision in the air. He had a bit of a jagged flight pattern, like most moths and butterflies seemed to. That hampered not only his accuracy, but also his speed. And with the sports festival coming, he could afford to lose neither.

And so he flew and flew until his wings were sore.


Hitachi Yumi fired a crossbow bolt from her Quirk, nailing a target dead-center in the bull's eye. She nodded and reloaded, timing herself in her head and writing down how long. When she was ready, she took aim and fired again … and the bolt split the first down the middle. A classic Robin Hood maneuver.

She nodded to herself and reloaded.

Soon she would begin firing on the move.


Fynn Fujiwara laughed uproariously as he spun out two discs of fire from his palms, the discs whirling like wheels until he flung them at a wall spray painted with a target. They sliced like a welding torch's flame into the brick on either side of the bull's eye.

"Let's try it again," he said, eyes wide and bright, spinning out two more fiery wheels.


Kushina Wani screamed in challenge as she fell from a two-story roof. She released her armored scales, flexing them as resiliently as she could, to slam into the ground. She grunted and dragged herself out of the crater, some of the larger scales cracked or split, dribbling blood.

She retracted her armor, her scales sore, and began marching her way back up the building.

"Second verse, same as the first,"she grimaced. But her eyes were gleaming.


Matsuge Yoru ran along an alleyway and bent to slide his hand along the asphalt. He grabbed something long and dark and hauled it up as he ran, his lean muscles straining with the sudden weight. On the other side of the alley, a large barrel tipped was dragged by whatever he had grabbed, scraping along as he ran.

After several yards, Yoru released it with a gasp, bending down to settle his hands on his knees and catch his breath … and the dark something that he'd grabbed and hauled the barrel by snapped back into place along the ground, stretching across the asphalt from the barrel in the opposite direction of the sun.

The barrel's shadow.


Tatsumoki Rasen touched a wooden crate, and the planks swirled like a semi-liquid whirlpool until the box began to tremble from one side. He removed his hand and the swirling stopped, but the crate collapsed in on itself from the sudden deformity.

He observed the effects and then slapped his hand to a support pillar, a foot-wide expanse swirling inward for a brief moment … until it lost its structure and the roof began to cave in. Rasen bolted, slamming into the exit door and making it swirl with a touch to create an exit hole that he fell through before the room he'd left collapsed.

"That was stupid," he sighed and hit himself over the head.


Katsuma shouted his kiai as he punched the air, methodically and rhythmically to focus on his form, over and over again as the last light of the horizon faded away. He had an undercurrent of his Quirk running through his muscles, soothing some of the fatigue and jumpstarting the process of rebuilding his muscle fibers to speed it up as he slept.

He'd lost track of how many punches he'd made — he confined himself to losing track twice before he gave up — and finally decided by the acute sense of pain in his shoulders that it was time to call it a day, at least for punching. He brought his arms from outward to the level of his hips with a smooth breath … and then shifted his stance for kicking.

As he swung outward with scything kicks, one leg after the other in a solid cadence, he thought of his friends. He thought of Kota's sheer stopping power with his water blasts, of Satsuki's own devastating flying kicks, and Eri's punches to the solar plexus that she was quickly becoming infamous for among the class.

'I've gotta keep up,' he thought firmly. 'I can't let Mr. Deku down.'

"Wait," he said aloud, "what number was that?" He thought back and couldn't settle on one. "Ah, man," he sighed, then settled back on the balls of his feet and began again.


As it turned out, Eri and Katsuma had to reschedule. Satsuki had the idea to go out as a group for pizza, escorted by a pro. Things hadn't been bad at all, though, when a certain tall, well-built blond with strange blue eyes smiled at the sight of their group.

"Lemillion!" Eri called and ran to her brother, throwing her arms around him in a hug. He laughed and whirled her around in his arms before setting her down and all but demanding to be introduced to her newest friend. Katsuma had been thrilled beyond belief to meet the nation's famed No. 2 Hero, Lemillion. And a little nervous to meet Eri's older brother, though he couldn't really say why.

The night had been fun, with Mirio's cheery disposition making the night all the better. It seemed that others had found out, too, as the No. 8 and 16 Heroes, Nejire-Chan and Suneater, made appearances to say hello and meet Eri's new friend just as Mirio had.

Katsuma's introduction to Nejire had been quite funny to watch as the lovely young lady wrapped him in an enthusiastic hug with her grown-out hair shrouding him like a curtain, and Katsuma's face had turned so red he might burst into flames. The whole group had laughed, even Tamaki before he tugged his hood down in embarrassment. At the sight of that, Katsuma's blush had faded into a look of concern and empathy and he stood to sit next to Tamaki, placing his arm on the table next to the hero's without actually touching him.

"Nice to meet you, sir," he said, softly and without rush. There was a long moment of silence, everyone waiting to see what would happen, before …

"… Nice to meet you, too."

Nejire had ended up giving her long-term boyfriend a big kiss on the cheek for that, and Katsuma too, bringing his blush back full-force. Naturally, everyone teased him about it except for Tamaki or Eri, with Kota being the loudest of all.

"Didn't know you liked older women, Shimano," he said slyly.

"Shut up," Katsuma murmured before biting into his pizza.

"Like you're any better," Satsuki said with a tiny smile. "I remember when you first met Nejire. We were twelve and your face lit up like a neon sign."

The teasing wound down after that and returned to more lighthearted fun until Nejire and Tamaki had to return to patrol. "We'll be at the sports fest," Nejire said brightly. "I mean, it'll be security and stuff but you can bet we'll be rooting for you!"

"Luck," Tamaki managed to squeeze out as they left.

"You have such a cool family," Katsuma said warmly. He'd gotten the feeling that the other members of the former Big Three were just as much older sibling figures as Mirio or Deku.

"Yeah, they're pretty great," Eri said.

They only had a little while after that before they had to return to campus. Lemillion dropped them off, giving a departing hug to Eri and ruffling the others' hair, actually taking Kota's cap to ruffle his hair despite his half-hearted protests.

"Good luck, everyone," he said happily, and saluted with two fingers. "I know you'll make this sports festival one to remember."

Chapter nine, everybody! A rapidly-changing POV, but a fun one to write! Next time, the Sports fest commences!

*The many and rapid POV shifts in this chapter were based upon the montage of Class 1-A training in s2, ep 2. This was expanded to include all of the students from a small group of panels in volume 3, and I always liked how the animators got creative with each kid training their Quirk. Ochako, Mina, and Aoyama were actually training together, which inspired the second portion of this chapter.

*It always seemed kind of strange that Class 1-A in canon had no international students while Class 1-B had at least two: Pony/Rocketti being half-Japanese and from America, and Rin/Dragon Shroud being full-on Chinese. So I added two English-speaking students to our Class A, more influenced by the inspirations for their Quirks than anything else.

*Fun fact: Splitting an arrow on a target with another arrow is actually called a "Robin Hood." The more you know.

*This chapter wasn't supposed to end with the Lemillion pizzeria scene, but it grew as I added the other Big Three and I couldn't make myself cut it off. I really do like how that came together!

*For those of you wondering why Tamaki is so low, relatively, on the charts, it's because he tends to shy away from the public eye even after flashy takedowns. People still love him, though, and it keeps his standing in the teens. Nejire, of course, is a ray of sunshine that is always in the top ten.

Hope you're liking the story! Leave a review if you can! And may your own tales turn smoothly and and with fun!