Chapter Text
Neito had grand plans for his first year sports festival.
When his acceptance for UA had first come, he hadn’t been surprised. A quirk that let him copy other quirks, as many as he wanted at a time, with a time limit rendered negligible by the format of the entrance exam? The chance of a denial was so low that he hadn’t even considered it.
But he was limited by other things. Due to its nature, his quirk was incredibly hard to train without others to practice with. Quirk training would have to wait until UA, but there were other things he could do until then. Other plans he could begin to put in place.
And the biggest of those plans was the first year Sports Festival.
It was one of the biggest events in the nation, publicised all over Japan, and watched by millions. It was one of the biggest advantages UA had over all other hero schools, and it was Neito’s time to shine.
When heroes thought of the UA Hero Course, they were going to think of Monoma Neito, and his many, powerful quirks and sweeping teamwork, graciously smiling from his place in first, with still just enough personality to be interesting to sponsors.
Of course, class 1A just had to go and blow it out of the water in the very second week.
Suddenly, all eyes were on the hero course, but not the class Neito had wanted. 1A had gotten everything he was working towards, and they hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. So Neito upped his plans, convinced those he could from 1B to play the long game, talked about how getting into the third round was so much more important than scoring high on the first, and discussed strategy with Kendo (the victor for class president, which Neito had handled very tactfully) until their class was united in a way that Class 1A so clearly wasn’t.
Neito stepped out onto the field to the cheers of thousands, heard his class’s name be listed as merely an afterthought, and thought, ‘Class 1A is never going to see us coming.’
The first round went perfectly. 1A pushed ahead, being as loud and flashy as possible, and Neito pushed as many of his classmates through the finish as possible. He was exactly right on the cutoff as well, with 42 students getting through, a support course student and a particularly weak looking blond from 1A being the last to scrape through.
Neito took a brief moment to assess the field. He’d been paying close attention during the round, and had been analysing the various quirks of 1A, picking and choosing the best candidates for easy use and pure power. The girl with the high, black ponytail clearly had one of the most versatile and powerful quirks on the field, and Neito was definitely going to chase her up later, but he had no idea about her activation conditions and couldn’t risk it in combat. But Endeavour’s son clearly had a powerful quirk, and if he was holding himself back like Neito suspected he was, then Neito would have an easy battle against him if he could only steal it.
And the half-familiar explosion blond, well, his quirk was a beauty in of itself. Explosions could cause so much chaos, and if Neito could only remember where his face had been seen before, then that anger could be so easily exploited. Combined with the hardening quirk of the spiky red-head standing next to him, Neito would be sorted as a powerful player for a good portion of the match.
Somewhat satisfied, Neito turned his head up to the leaderboard, scanning the list of qualifiers to see if he’d missed any other notable competitors, only to freeze short. Neither of the two leaders of the obstacle race had won. The two powerhouses he’d been watching closely the entire time had only come second and third.
Sitting innocently in first place was Midoriya Izuku.
The picture next to the name was of a curly-haired boy, with green eyes wide in a freckled face. Neito quickly found him on the field, surrounded by a few of his classmates, looking extremely nervous. He didn’t look like much, and Neito thought if he passed him in the street, he wouldn’t have even spared a glance.
Neito had no idea who this was.
For the entire first round, Neito had been keeping track of all of his competitors, but mostly the ones he thought he might have to face in the second round, the ones who might pose a serious threat. There was his entire class, who he knew well, and Class 1A, who had all unanimously decided that the best strategy was an all-out display of power and ambition. The only other competitors he had noticed were the flashy support course girl who seemed to be taking the competition as a chance to self-advertise, and the purple-haired general studies student who had thrown the gauntlet down for the general course at the same time Tetsutetsu had thrown down theirs.
He had taken account of everyone, and everyone had been predictable, except, apparently, Midoriya Izuku.
As he watched, Midnight announced the 10 million bounty for the victor of the first round, and Neito smirked in sudden relief as everyone surrounding the boy began to disperse. The lack of notability was working against him in the same way it was advancing 1B. Midoriya was a wild card, and that made him a bad choice as a teammate.
Neito comforted himself in the fact that, no matter what Midoriya’s unknown power was, his teammates would be a drain on him, and that they likely wouldn’t be seeing each other again.
He walked off to find his pre-discussed teammates, and check-in with Kendo, and resolved to not think about Midoriya until he became a problem, and to definitely not consider how every so slightly he was impressed that at least one member of 1A had the foresight to think ahead to the future, and keep their cards close to their chest.
-
A conversation.
Hitoshi hadn’t expected just how hard it would be to find people willing to talk to him when finding a team for the second round of the sports festival.
He’d been relying on being able to get one of the big powerhouses on his side, assured that at least one of them would be a lone wolf, but it seemed that 1B had already decided teams before the competition had even started, and 1A were forming clusters of friends, all centered around who they saw as the most powerful. They were all pushing past their pride and acknowledging that they needed to work together to succeed, which left Hitoshi, as the only general studies student on the field, and a complete outlier, at a distinct disadvantage.
The only stragglers were the less powerful members of each class, the ones who hadn’t been useful to the big powerhouses, or who had been loners in the first round and now didn’t have a strategy beyond that.
Hitoshi sighed, and began to approach a boy with a large tail who was standing around awkwardly, when he was startled by a tap on the shoulder. He turned, and saw the first place winner, 10 million point headband in hand.
Midoriya Izuku was a complete wildcard on the field, with a power no one knew, and a wild, reckless dash that led to him taking first place over Endeavour’s kid and the Slime Villain victim. Hitoshi knew that having him on his team would be a risk, and would go against his plan to go unnoticed until the very end, but Midoriya had to be the winner for something, right? It couldn’t just be a fluke.
Hitoshi sighed, and readied himself to take control, when Midoriya hurriedly interrupted his musing with a “Do you want to be on my team?”
Hitoshi blinked, and kept his mouth shut. An offer? That was the last thing he was expecting. He raised an eyebrow, and gestured for Midoriya to keep talking. The kid looked nervous, but judging by the excited bouncing of the pink-haired support course student next to him and the shy demeanor of the horned girl on his other side, it may not actually have anything to do with Hitoshi himself.
Midoriya blushed. “I saw you in the first round. You have some sort of mind control quirk, right? You were able to incapacitate people just by gaining their attention, and you were able to use other students and their quirks to get past the obstacles. I don’t know if you already have a team, because with a quirk like that I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, but if you don’t, we’d love to have you!”
Hitoshi blinked again. Deadpanned, because he was standing alone and the clock was ticking, “I don’t already have a team.”
Midoriya brightened. “So you’ll join ours?”
Hitoshi sighed. He looked back at the tail-boy he had been gunning for, but the boy had found a group, and finding someone else in the time they had left would be even harder. He might as well, even if teaming up with the 10-million points holder was the one thing he really didn’t want to be doing.
He nodded.
Midoriya smiled. “Good. So, we need to brief you on our plan, because if your quirk is what I think it is, then you’re going to be riding the calvary.”
Hitoshi sparked at that. Most team leaders, as it seemed, liked to ride up top. Self-importance, Hitoshi reckoned, wanting to take control even when someone else would be better suited to be the rider. To know that Midoriya wanted to win more than he wanted to be in control, well…
Hitoshi felt like he was actually part of a team, for once.
Midoriya introduced him to his teammates. Hatsume Mei, from the Support Department, and Tsunotori Pony, an American from 1B. Midoriya explained his plan, and Hitoshi, for the first time in the whole festival, found himself getting genuinely excited.
They weren’t going to win, but they were going to beat every one of their competitors, and even better, Hitoshi wasn’t going to be doing it alone.
When Midoriya looked up at him and grinned just as the starting bell rang for the bloodbath to begin, Hitoshi couldn’t help but grin back.
-
Neito was ready for the chaos of the Cavalry Battle. His team had been briefed, and they knew the exact plan. Let others fight for the 10 million, while they would go around amassing influence and trying to pick the easiest targets to completely annihilate. They would worry about scores once the true competitors revealed themselves.
That plan was almost immediately thrown off course when as soon as the starting bell rang, Team Shinsou pushed off the ground, launching their rider and their team high into the air.
Neito noticed Midoriya, large boots on, carrying the members of his team on his back as if it were nothing. Shinsou, the rider, that purple-haired general studies kid Neito hadn’t been able to narrow down during the first round, had a jetpack on his back, and was waving the 10 million headband around like it was nothing.
“You want it?” he crowed, as several teams raced into the spot where they were just moments ago. “Then fight it out! We don’t want it!”
Like tossing a dog a bone, Neito watched as he tossed the headband into the crowd below, and immediately the attention on the field shifted to the outcome of the all-out fist fight the battle for the 10 million had become.
In fact, if Neito hadn’t been so focused on the rest of the field, he never would’ve noticed Team Shinsou touching down on the other side of the field, their team balancing out again to keep Shinsou steady.
Present Mic’s voice rang out through the stadium as the crowd booed and cheered at the sudden twist so early on. “IN A SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS, TEAM SHINSOU HAS IMMEDIATELY SANK FROM FIRST TO LAST, NOW HAVING THE SMALLEST POINT TOTAL OF 120 POINTS! I SURE HOPE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING!”
Neito shook his head. Whatever team Shinsou were doing, they were so far behind the rest of the competition that Neito wouldn’t have to worry about them at all, unless they had some grand masterplan that would render all his own plans useless. And the chances of that, coming from a team of complete wildcards (and Pony, his own classmate, who had managed to come behind him in round one even with his being as slow as he possibly could), was near impossible.
-
At one point, Neito’s team had been approached by Team Shinsou. He’d been settled, watching as Team Bakugou started fights with teams he’d already stolen from, comfortable in his own high score, when Shinsou had shouted something over at him. He’d turned, and responded loudy, and then when he’d looked back at the field everything had shifted.
Team Shinsou was even further away, with no indication that they’d even made contact, and Team Bakugou was duking it out with a completely different team. Even more worryingly, the clock had shifted. He’d lost over a minute, and all of a sudden, their safety net of points had been decreased.
Pony’s quirk, Horn Canon, must’ve been shot off towards him and taken his headband while he was distracted. But that didn’t explain why he had lost so much time, and how he hadn’t even seen the attack he wasn’t able to stop.
They had lost time. They had to go after a high scorer, and no matter his need for revenge and the steady rising of Team Shinsou, they were still, somehow, wildcards. They had also only taken their smallest value headbands, so even if they went after them, they would risk not getting enough points to pass into the next round anyway. So that meant going after the 10 million headband, which was still being frantically fought over, or going after Team Bakugou, which had been a high contender for the win since the start.
Neito smirked, and tucked his apprehension away. He so did want to take that brat down a few pegs. And his power was such a fun one.
“Team,” he said, and they looked towards him as one. “Let’s make our debut.”
They rode across the field towards the boy who had pledged to win, and Neito wondered if perhaps his plans had been lacking something more.
-
Team Shinsou got second place overall. They’d finished with nearly every headband on the field, with the exception of the 10 million points, which had been the only headband held by Todoroki at the end, and a few sparse others that were fought over in the last, furious scramble for third and fourth.
Endeavour’s son had looked furious, Neito had noted, and Neito had smirked at him across the field when he began to leave. Privately, Neito wondered how they’d done it. It had been so easy for them.
Class 1A had gathered together for lunch, as had 1B, and it seemed that the topic for lunch was, as it had been for Neito’s mind all morning, Midoriya, who was conspicuously absent.
Midoriya, who had won the first round of the sports festival, and effectively won the second round (people generally were agreeing that a strategic and tactical victory was much more impressive than a last minute all-out brawl, which was how Team Todoroki had won), and had done so with a team of people that, by general consensus, he had never worked with before.
Neito’s class had hounded Pony when she sat down, and Neito noticed a similar thing happening over by the general education students' tables when Shinsou walked over. Midoriya had given unity to the departments, and then had proven the strength of that unity by annihilating the competition with no opposition.
Their team had gone around the pitch over and over, effortlessly stealing only the lowest value headbands using a combination of Midoriya and Hatsume’s speed, Pony’s maneuverable horns, and Shinsou’s still unknown quirk. The teams they came in contact with never remembered the interaction, and so the team avoided retaliation as they slowly upped the value of the headbands they stole, until they had a monopoly over the field and the other teams were left to fight over the few headbands left that would mean the difference between fourth and fifth. All the while, Team Shinsou just watched, untouchable from the skies, until the final bell rang.
Neito was still somewhat in awe over how genius of a move it was. Midoriya truly was a wildcard.
But Neito could sense problems with that.
Two stages into the Sports Festival, and despite all the discussion, there was not a single time Midoriya had shown off his quirk. He was plain, there was no denying that, and a quick brain and a head for strategy wasn’t going to get him sponsored if there was nothing there to work with.
He glanced over at the management course, who had their heads together and were muttering furiously. They often used the sports festival as a chance to scout early talent, in order to build up trust with future clients early. They must’ve also seen the potential in Midoriya, but also the lack of anything stable.
Neito looked down at his food, and then back at his class. A good portion of them had made it through, and it was time to make sure that their class would have the best showing of this entire festival, 1A be damned.
-
Neito needn’t have worried for Midoriya.
The moment his first match began, he had begun to spark. Green lightning, dancing around him in waves, causing the close up shots of his face being broadcast to millions of views to look determined and fierce. His matches weren’t quick, but they were showy, and both Midoriya and his competitor looked exhausted by the end of it. But Midoriya never slowed down, and he never stopped talking to his competitor, and every so often Neito could hear flashes of the things he was screaming across the pitch.
Things like “Plus Ultra!” and “power” and “hero”, just flashes of a wider conversation meant entirely for the sake of the person on the other side of the field. It didn’t seem like just a fight for Midoriya. Every second he was on the field, it was like watching a Hero.
Neito felt a bit shamed by it. He’d had lofty dreams for the Sports Festival, big plans, but he was starting to realise that he wasn’t quite ready for them yet. He still had a long way to go before he had the sort of vision for the world’s possibilities that Midoriya had.
Next year, Neito pledged to himself, as Midoriya sparked and glowed and the country watched. By this time next year, he was going to be that sort of Hero. And he was going to win.