67

Lots and lots of work this week for us moving forward. I realized in one part excitement and one part dread and abject horror that I had forgotten to prepare a couple important tidbits. So a good chunk of this week was spent going through and coming up with dozens of names, tying those to unique quirks and then tying those to schools for this the new competitions. Brackets for different events, relationships between people, their teams, their schools has to be detailed. Not to mention all of the more obscure characters like Maina Furasu, Tsutsutaka Agoyamato, or Chikuchi Togeike.

Lots to do. Lots and lots to do. If I miss something or someone please point it out. I'm starting to run myself crazy trying to keep track of loose ends and obscure characters.

As a note before I let everyone get onto the story I'm aware the chapter title is, in my opinion, meh. I'm 66 chapters in. They can't all be winners.

Last chapter we had:

-Waiting room shenanigans

-Event briefings

-Midoriya getting fed up with weeks of Todoroki

Enjoy!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The five U.A students milled around their starting platform as students from the other major academies stepped up onto their own. They were already well out into the water, delivered there by boats not too long before.A number of officials, representing various schools, backgrounds, and areas of operation, floated in boats along the course that they would all take back to land.

"It does feel a bit off-putting to suddenly be competing with all these strange people." Monoma fidgeted nervously as the others stretched on the platform.

"You shouldn't call other people strange just because they do not go to our school, Monoma!" Iida's fellow classmates gave him a blank side-eye as Toga tilted her head contemplatively.

"Eh, by their standards, we're the strange ones. The top five academies get to send students to compete. That's," Toga stopped and counted them off on her fingers, "Ketsubutsu, Shiketsu, Isamu, Seijin, and Seiai. But even still, they tend to limit it to one, two, maybe three students who will perform well at the event." Toga gestured to the other platforms where only a handful of students awaited the starting call. "We're the strange ones for having so many in most of our events."

"Ah yes, well, I suppose so. It must be nice, you know." Monoma fidgeted some more.

"What's nice?"

"To have the perfect quirk for this. I can't copy Tsuyu's mutation quirk like you can." Toga brightened, and the snort that came from her was anything but graceful.

"Oh, hell no. I wish I had the perfect quirk for this. Best I've got is hers for this swimming part. I've got nothing for the bike or running parts." Toga groaned, making grabby finger motions at Iida. "If only your damn quirk worked with mine. You're definitely taking second or third after the sprinting section."

"It doesn't? Why wouldn't Iida take first?"

Toga shook her head in response to Monoma's bewildered question. They had spent enough time with their sister class students since the USJ to know what kinds of quirks each other had but, unfortunately, not enough time to really understand how they functioned. It was Iida who took it upon himself to explain.

"No. Unfortunately for Toga, it does not. It would seem that not all mutation quirks can be carried over when she transforms, a mystery that I'm certain Midoriya would be happy to look into from the way he acts during our quirk testing."

Toga gave Iida a thumbs up and a big, toothy smile. She had been doing more of that lately, she realized. Back in her last school, before she had escaped to find Midoriya, people had always run away from her when she smiled, or even hit her. But Midoriya had been right about this, at least. The hero course students didn't seem to care. "He already is. No progress on that, sadly."

"As for why I'm going to come in second or third, there are a few factors." Iida began chopping his arm again, once more receiving the side-eye from those around him. "We do not know our competitors' quirks! As they were chosen for this event, it's quite likely that their quirks are compatible to some stretch, if not in multiple ways."

"And no one is likely to beat Setsuna."

"She's fast, kero."

"I am fast." The woman herself confirmed the statement with an exceptionally wide grin. Toga smiled back at her.

"Faster than you?" Monoma pointed at Iida with an incredulous look.

"Nah, I peak out at twenty-five on land. I could probably make it to twenty-seven, though, if I really pushed it. I'm just going to get way ahead of you guys during this first half-mile swim back to shore." Setsuna scratched bashfully at her cheek.

"Ah, if only the last stretch was a straight way. Then I could get into sixth gear. What a shame, I might have been able to catch up."

The wistful tone in Iida's voice had Tsu letting out a low chuckle and replying blankly, "A straight way is your only hope of catching up with Cretaceous here, kero."

Monoma watched the calm banter between the 1-A classmates in a kind of stupor, no hint of nervous energy between them. "And that… doesn't bother you?"

The rest of them blinked at Monoma's question. "That someone else is going to take first?"

"No. Why would it? It is like Midoriya said!" Iida chopped his arm. "We are here to impress the heroes and entertain the public. Our personal positions in the race hardly matter when compared to that goal. We just have to do the best that we can, simple as that." Iida paused for a second, then scratched at the back of his head with a wry smile. "Though, I will admit that with my family in the audience today, the pressure certainly is notable."

The low buzz of camera drones emanated out from the decks of the small vessels patrolling the waters. They all glanced over at them with a sigh. "Looks like it's time, kero."

The students who were stretching stood up and took positions towards the edge of the platform as Present Mic yelled, hyping the crowd up for the first event of the day. It shouldn't have surprised them when Thirteen, the officiator for the triathlon, came over the speaker, their modulated voice reminding the athletes of the course that they would be taking, as well as the distances. A half-mile swim back to shore, a thirteen mile bike race through the city, before finally rounding out with the two and a half mile sprint back into the main arena.

Monoma rolled his shoulders as he sidled up to the edge of the platform. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Toga's skin shift and morph. Somewhere in the back of his brain, alarms started going off, that primitive wrongness of the uncanny drilled into humanity's primate brains. Monoma shook his head and did his best to set his reservations aside as he waited for the starting sound.

The starting pistol cracked, and he was off of the platform and into the water, sparing a moment to orient himself before moving towards the shoreline. Already ahead of him, the two Tsus blitzed through the water as if they'd been born in it. Iida, somehow, had already come up from his dive ahead of him and was swimming along while… where was…

An enormous shape torpedoed past them all, cavitating the water as it swam—thirty? forty feet?—muscle and sinew working together to push it further and faster than any of them could hope to keep up with reasonably. Vaguely, Monoma registered other forms to his left and right, some seemingly keeping pace with him, others pushing forward to keep pace with the twin Tsus.

Monoma's head broke the water, and he sucked in a breath as he began to swim again. What the fuck is with 1-A?

…

The students of the two classes milled around in their waiting room, passing around last minute snacks and drinks. Some watched the drones as they circled the competitors getting ready to dive into the water. Others chatted amongst themselves while they waited for the event to start or for something of substance to happen. Occasionally, Midoriya would tune into the conversations around him to see what was being said.

"The EF announced it's legally classifying All Might as a punch wizard."

And that's enough listening to that conversation. Midoriya focused back on the television as the shot rang out for the competitors to begin. Students dove off in any number of ways. One young man Midoriya recognized from Shiketsu sped across the surface of the water like a slick-oiled speedboat, aided as he was by his wind. A creative application of his quirk, with flight and stage-skipping having been banned. It would be interesting to see how he applied it while on the bike. A tailwind might help him, or the prolonged usage of his quirk might just exhaust him. They'd have to see.

Nedzu had said that the man had declined his invitation to U.A. A shame. Another form he recognized only because her file had been tied to Tsu's, Habuko Mongoose, had applied with Tsu, from the same school even, but hadn't made it in like her classmate. Another shame. With her quirk, there hadn't been any chance for her against robots. Another hat in the feather of Aizawa's argument, Midoriya supposed. Or, wait, that wasn't how that saying went, was it? Whatever.

The excitement, however, struck a half-second after everyone had hit the water with Setsuna's transformation. Midoriya shook his head ruefully as the roaring in the stands reached even their class' shocked students. "You know, I told her to go big and eye-catching," the students gaped as Setsuna glided just under the water, almost faster than the drones could keep up with, "but I didn't quite mean this. Smart move, either way, I suppose."

"A bit overkill, though, don't you think?" Yaoyorozu tilted her head as she tried to place the creature that her classmate had changed into.

"No, overkill would have been having the U.A. students grab on. This is eye-popping but gets the point across, I suppose. She's going to be fuckin hungry, though, when she gets back, especially after that sprint."

"She did take some of the calorie bars, right?" Midoriya let his eyes flick over to Uraraka before glancing back to the screen. Setsuna was already almost back to the shore.

"Yeah, but she's going to hate using them, which means we'll all get to hear about it later." There was a chorus of groans from around the room.

"What an absolutely amazing showing from our dynamic dinosaur daimyo. It's hardly been a minute, and already she's climbing out of the water and running towards her bike!" The classes groaned again. It was bad enough hearing Present Mic's announcing in their classes—he taught like this, for god's sake—but most were already dreading what he would come up with for them.

"Since when could Setsuna do something like that?!" The question was repeated a few times across 1-B, but each time, the same dry response, since she joined 1-A, echoed back at them. It had started a few squawking arguments, but they were all in good fun, it seemed, so Midoriya left it at that.

"Don't quirks kind of defeat the purpose of a triathlon?" Kaminari shook his head as he watched several students plow forward through the water.

"Probably," Sero said easily, "but this isn't a normal triathlon. It has students from all sorts of courses, all of which are attending from famous heroics universities. This is probably the only time where students get to cut loose like this."

"A good point indeed, Sero. It isn't really expected that your average students will keep up with the heroics students, and in fact, they aren't even ranked the same way, unless one of them does manage to keep up. Most of our classmates and competitors will probably finish in somewhere around an hour, give or take ten or twenty. But the normal students who were training just to enjoy the event will likely trickle in over the next two hours, if they finish at all. I'd say about five percent will give up, so not many, but some."

Sero smiled and gave Yaoyorozu a thumbs up. Midoriya glanced at the clock, sighing before turning around in his singlet. He had waited until they'd come back from the opening ceremony to change into it. As expected, the damn rat had spoken for the entire time allotted. There had been an hour spent sitting in mildly uncomfortable seating, staring up at the stage as his teacher gave a dull and, surprisingly, only mildly reused speech from years past.

"Alright, everyone. You've got your lists, but since we're all here, I'll call out for you. Kirishima, Mezo, Sero, Tokoyami, Sato, and Tetsutetsu, we've got wrestling in less than thirty. I'm heading over now. Anyone that is unsure of the way to get out of this damn rat maze of tunnels in the right direction is welcome to follow me."

Several students glanced over at Midoriya before moving their gazes up and down his form with startled, obvious attention. Most had the decency to either blush and look away or to look back up at his face. Midoriya sighed as he noted four people for whom decency had not yet occurred to.

"Isn't there anything else we can wear, Midoriya? These are, um, wildly uncomfortable."

Midoriya stared evenly at Sero. "Sure, you're welcome to wear baggier clothing. There's no rule against it, though you will get thrown across the room by the aforementioned clothing, so take the advantages with the disadvantages." The group of men winced, then uniformly stood and shuffled their way towards him. With the action came more stares, more blushing, and less decency on their classmates' part. Midoriya couldn't help but sigh again.

"Look, just be glad that Nedzu hasn't decided to say fuck the legalities and return wrestling to its Ancient Greek roots for his own amusement."

"I think the singlets are manly!"

"Do I even want to know what that entailed, Midoriya?" Midoriya let a small smirk creep onto his face as he stared Shinso dead in the eyes.

"Naked, and soaked in oil." The wolf whistle from Ashido had Kirishima going the way of his hair. The peculiar shade of red, as well as Ashido's continued and creative badgering,had Midoriya amused, as well, even if he wouldn't show it. Shame had been drilled out of him decades ago.

"Yeah, uh, let's stick with the singlets." Midoriya snorted in response to Tetsutetsu before turning towards the door.

"Alright, everyone. Let's get this over with so we can change. There are only a couple billion people watching, after all."

Notes:

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