Aizawa Shouta stared at the screen with an impressively indifferent face as he watched his most troublesome student jump onto the rope strung across the gorge and cut it.

Beside him, Yamada Hizashi was screaming into the mic, commentating the event.

"Woah, what the hell?!" The hero, also known as Present Mic, yelled. "Midoriya Izuku of Class 1-A just cut his rope! What's he planning?! Does he have a death wish?!"

Shouta rolled his eyes at his friend's volume. "You're being dramatic again."

Though he was curious. What was his student planning? It was a long fall from the surface and hanging onto the rope like that was dangerous. Whatever it was, the boy was lucky there was water at the bottom to catch his fall. UA wasn't that thoughtless. But he would lose his chance in the race. Shouta sighed.

The cameras changed and started focusing on the rest of the race. Most students seemed out of breath as they kept running. Bakugou and Todoroki were in the lead of it all. Shouta noted the amount of Hero Course students that were at the front of the crowd.

Bakugou and Todoroki made it to the mine field first. Hizashi was running his mouth as Shouta sat there quietly. He was starting to zone out, thinking about random things. Like what he was going to eat for dinner. Or when he was going to get out of those stupid bandages. Or cats. Suddenly, a shout from Hizashi scared him shitless.

"What's this?! Midoriya just climbed out of the Fall and started off running! He's soaking wet too!"

"He must've swam and then climbed up the cliff," Shouta thought. "What the hell..."

Midoriya made it to the minefield and suddenly started digging at the dirt with the steel plate from the robots before. Beside Shouta, Hizashi went on with his shouting, something about Bakugou and Todoroki being head-to-head. The tired man kept his attention on Midoriya, strangely interested in the boy's actions.

"What reckless plan is he up to now?"

The freckled student gathered up mines in a pit as other competitors ran past him. Explosions and flying teenagers littered the field. Midoriya was wasting a lot of time. Most people were almost at the end of the minefield while he was still at the beginning. If his strange plan didn't work, he won't get into the next event.

Midoriya stepped back, hugging the sheet of metal to his chest, before bellyflopping right into the pile of bombs. There was a pink explosion and the mute boy was airborne.

Shouta's eyebrows raised. "Well." He thought.

He soared over the field with ease, using the chunk of metal as a platform to hold himself, and managed to pass most of the other students. Midoriya started nearing the front where Todoroki and Bakugou were. Both students looked back with wide eyes before activating their quirks and bolting.

'Fuck it' is what their faces said.

If Shouta was anyone else, he would've laughed out loud.

All three of them were neck-to-neck now, speeding toward the finish line. Shouta could see Midoriya falling. He was going down and, just as Shouta was afraid he'd crash, the boy slammed the steel plate into the ground, causing more pink explosions to erupt, and effectively pushed himself forward and his completion back. He rolled to a stand and took off sprinting.

It was just a few breathless moments before Midoriya Izuku broke past the finish line and applause and cheers sounded around stadium. The muted boy looked as though he could fall to the ground at any moment but somehow managed to stay upright. Hisashi started calling out as more students trickled into the stadium until the forty second student, Aoyama Yuuga, surprisingly, was the last of them to be counted into the final event.

Kayama was back on her stage in her horribly vulgar hero outfit (which Shouta had asked many times to change but was always countered with the fact that it had to be skin tight and thin for her quirk) and announced the next event, the Calvary Battle. She also explained the point system, in which the points were assigned by places from the Obstacle Course. Top places got the most points and the lowest places got the least. Despite the amount of people in the stadium, it grew eerily quiet when Midoriya was revealed to have 10,000,000 points. The boy looked as though he wanted to faint.

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Izuku felt like dying. He wanted to drop dead right then and there. Everyone around him looked like demons. Like hungry hawks ready to dig their talons into a single fat vole.

Izuku almost peed his pants at the aura radiating off of them.

But there was something Izuku caught onto quickly. He glanced up to the stands where he knew Toshinori was sitting.

"There's a lot of pressure... being at the top..!"

His gaze became determined as he stared back at crowd surrounding him. For a second, his vision flickered and a flash of an old memory was printed in front of his eyes. All those times people had downed him for being quirkless. Picked on him for being mute. Bullied him for things he had no control over. They all loomed over him with dark, satisfying looks in their eyes as they belittled him for being different.

Izuku shook his head and when he blinked, the image disappeared as though it had never been there before at all.

It wasn't like before, Izuku told himself. Things were different now. He had friends. He had people he could depend on. He had kind classmates and teachers who cared. He had a mentor who taught him and believed in him. He had a quirk.

And in recent days, he even had a voice.

He had so much of what he didn't have before. He had come so far. Suffered and hurt so much to get to where he was now. And he was still going. He wasn't done yet. He was aiming for the top. He wasn't going to let anything stop him. He'd train hard enough until he shook on his feet. He'd learn and he'd grow. He would take criticism and ignore disapproving gazes. He'd endure the pain and the pressure.

No matter what, he was going to get there. He was going to win in the Cavalry Battle and he'd do it to push himself forward, even farther than before.

Izuku made eye contact with everyone around him. There was a glint in his eyes as the corners of his mouth pulled up into a determined grin. They stepped back in surprise.

Midoriya Izuku was going to win.

Somewhere in the crowd, Izuku didn't notice Bakugou's sneer.

I'm 100% sure that there are mistakes somewhere in here. It was kinda rushed and I apologize for that. I wanted to get the chapter out as soon as I could. Just skipped over editing and jumped right to publishing lol