After a grueling two weeks of training, starting to actually socialize with his classmates, and failing to replicate even a hint of the ability to change the properties of his grapeshot, Minoru and the rest of Class 1-A were waiting in their prep room for the U.A. sports tournament to start.

  "Is everyone good and ready?! The event's about to being!" shouted Ida from the front of the room; presumably the next in his continued attempts to establish himself as a leader of the class thanks to his position as class president.

  Minoru glanced at him, but Ida appeared to have returned to quietly freaking out now that his initial announcement was complete, so Minoru went back to debating with himself over ideal strategies. While he was confident he could get through the team-based cavalry battle, and hopeful that he would be able to at least show off his Quirk a little in the one-on-one matches, the obstacle course that he knew would kick things off was going to be a real problem. Two weeks was nowhere near enough to turn around years of sloth, and that combined with his exceptionally short stature meant he was at a severe disadvantage compared to most of his schoolmates.

  "Midoriya." A voice interrupted his inner turmoil, and Minoru glanced up to see the typically taciturn Todoroki approaching Midoriya nearby.

  "Todoroki? What is it?" asked Midoriya.

  "Objectively speaking, I'm stronger than you," said Todoroki. "More capable."

  Midoriya jumped in place a little. "Huh?! S-sure…"

  Todoroki didn't let up on him, though. "All Might's got his eye on you, doesn't he. Now I'm not about to pry into why that is, but I will beat you."

  "Ooh," piped up Kaminari from his seat near Bakugo. "A declaration of war from the strongest in the class?!"

  "Hey man, why pick a fight now?! We're about to go on!" Kirishima tried to intervene, but Todoroki shrugged him off.

  "I really don't care. I'm not pretending to be anyone's friend, here."

  Minoru rolled his eyes. He'd forgotten what a prick Todoroki was initially. Not that the boy had ever paid him a lick of attention even once he started to thaw towards the rest of the class, of course.

  Midoriya slumped in on himself. "Todoroki, I'm not sure why you felt the need to tell me you'll beat me. You're clearly stronger, and I can't measure up to most of the others here in skill. Objectively speaking, even…"

  "Don't be so negative, Midoriya! No need…" said Kirishima.

  "But!" Midoriya continued over him. "Everyone, even the kids from the other courses, are aiming for the top. An I'm…well, lemme say this. I'm not gonna fall behind. I'm going for it, too. With everything I've got!"

  Midoriya's sudden change of attitude appeared to have flummoxed Todoroki. "…right."

  Minoru shook his head, his earlier nerves somewhat dispelled. He hadn't really let himself think about it before, but he'd really missed Midoriya. He hadn't known him all that long, but he'd always looked up to the kid; he was everything Minoru wanted to be, but fell short of.

  Before the confrontation could go anywhere else, the door opened and the students were called out to the stadium to the roars of the crowd.

  Paying only peripheral attention to Present Mic's introduction, Minoru surveyed the nearby classes as best he could. He was having trouble remembering specifically what many of their Quirks were; Class 1-A had interacted with the other classes relatively rarely, and time had dulled a lot of his memories about specific individuals. He'd thought about trying to scout them out in more detail prior to the tournament, especially after he heard about Class 1-B's showdown with 1-A while he was in Principal Nezu's office, but he'd ended up prioritizing his own training instead.

  He did remember one of them, though; the boy with the wild hair and massive eye-bags was Shinso, and if Minoru's memory held up, he could exert something close to mind control over people who verbally responded to him. Definitely one to avoid.

  A whip crack shot through the stadium and pulled Minoru's attention to the stage. It was Midnight…! They hadn't had a class with her, and in all the craziness of the last few weeks, he'd honestly forgotten about her, but how could he forget Midnight?! Her bombshell body, a costume that technically showed no skin and yet left nothing to the imagination, that larger-than-life persona she enacted that nevertheless let hints of her personality underneath slip through...

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He teared up slightly. He'd really missed Midnight.

  "R-rated? Should she really be in a high school?" muttered Tokoyami nearby.

  "Hush," said Minoru, giving Tokoyami a light shove. "Midnight's a national treasure."

  "Your student representative is from Class 1-A: Katsuki Bakugo!" cried Midnight.

  Minoru wiped his eyes and watched with amusement as his classmates broke out in mutters. He'd forgotten some things, but he definitely remembered Bakugo's performance at the sports festival. The boy had a not-so-hidden talent for making enemies.

  "The athlete's oath," said Bakugo after he ascended the stage. "Make no mistake about it. I'm gonna take first place! You'll all make great stepping stones, I'd say."

  The students erupted in anger as Bakugo made a slicing motion across his throat and slouched off the stage, never once cracking a smile. Minoru rolled his eyes.

  Midnight stepped back into the spotlight. "Now, without any delay, let's get the first event started. These are the qualifiers! It's in this stage that so many are sent home crying every year! And the fateful event this year is…an obstacle course race!"

  Minoru nodded. Thankfully Principal Nezu didn't appear to have tried to mess with him by changing anything. Now, the real trick: how was he going to convince someone to carry him to victory in this event?

  "Racers to your positions!" cried Midnight, and the students crowded to the gate that had opened leading out of the stadium. The lights above changed from red to yellow and finally to green with a DING as Midnight cried, "START!"

  The crowd of students clumped together, everyone trying to pull ahead, and Minoru took a moment to grab a pair of grapeshot off his head and leaped for the nearest student just as Todoroki let loose a blast of ice that froze the majority of the leading edge of the crowd to the ground.

  Mineta slapped both grapeshot to the uniform of the unfortunate student he'd chosen, scrambled up to his shoulders, and leaped off. As he jumped, he looked around for Yaoyorozu. He wasn't planning to hitch a ride the way he had in his past life—that had been social suicide—but she was still his best bet. Ah, there she was. She'd used her creation Quirk to throw herself into the air as a long pole emerged from her palm and was with the front-runners along with most of the rest of Class 1-A.

  Todoroki didn't get very far ahead, however, because as soon as they rounded the curve out of the stadium, the giant zero-pointer robots they'd faced during the entrance exam showed up to block the way. Not that they stopped him, as he just froze several in such a way that they crashed down on the people immediately behind him.

  That was all the attention Mineta could spare for Todoroki, however, as he was dodging through the press, trying to avoid anyone with a dangerous-looking Quirk as he worked to get closer to Yaoyorozu. Fortunately, his short stature and the fact that he'd been missing when the school came by to scope out Class 1-A appeared to be working in his favor because the other students were paying him virtually no attention.

  There she was! He'd finally gotten close enough that he spied Yaoyorozu through a gap in the crowd. She was leaning over as a miniature cannon extruded out of her stomach in front of her. Now he just needed…perfect! A student slightly ahead of him appeared to be running for Yaoyorozu instead of the robots. Minoru sped up, tossed a grapeshot in front of the student, and tripped him, forcing him to fall chest-first on the grapeshot just as Yaoyorozu opened up on the zero-pointer directly ahead of her with the cannon.

  "Piece of cake!" she shouted with confidence.

  "Yaoyorozu!" cried Minoru as he jogged toward her, and she turned his way. "Take me with you! We'll get further faster together, so if you make a backpack or something I can sit in I'll keep the other kids off you!" He gestured back toward the student struggling in vain to unstick himself from the ground.

  As he drew up to her, Yaoyorozu gave him an assessing look, but to his chagrin turned him down flat. "There's no universe in which I'd do that." Minoru's stomach plummeted. Shit, he was going to have to latch onto one of the less-threatening Class B kids and hope for the best. He remembered that a bunch of them made it to the—

  But Yaoyorozu wasn't done. "But I do agree that we'd do better together." She leaned down so her face was close to level with his, and Minoru desperately fell into an internal battle as his peripheral vision insisted that he adjust his focus just sliiightly downward while his promise not to ogle her fought a defensive action. "So I guess you'll just have to keep up."

  She took off at a flat run toward the fallen robot.

  "Wha…?!" Minoru's feet sent him sprinting after her, without any intervention from his brain. "But I asked because I caaaaaan't!"

  Yaoyorozu didn't respond, simply leaped over a piece of robot like she was some sort of parkour practitioner.

  Damn it, he was going to lose her in there! Minoru looked around frantically. Just to his side was a robot that had fallen on its side, its treads rising up well over his head. Direct route it was.

  Minoru popped a couple of grapeshot off his head and jumped at the treads, sticking his grapeshot in quick succession and then continuing to pull more from his head and slap them to the treads as he scaled the sheer surface vertically. Reaching the top, he sprinted across the relatively-flat surface to the far end and jumped down just slightly after Yaoyorozu emerged from below.

  "Yaoyorozu—wait!" he cried.

  She simply waved at him over her shoulder as she continued to run. She waved at him! Like it was a fun little excursion!

  Minoru figured he didn't have much chance of succeeding at this obstacle course now that his plan had fallen through, but he was damned if he was going to let her get away with having the gall to blithely wave at him after teasing him with cleavage and then ditching him. He put his head down, pumped his arms, and ran like his life depended on it.

  spectacularly ill-suited to this sort of melee and obstacle course except as a deterrent against other students (or slapstick comedy, like in the original when he gets pummeled by a robot just before he's able to use his Quirk).