Underneath His Mask

Part 20

• Izuku's pov •
• Day of the Sports Festival •

A couple weeks have passed since my first conversation with Denki, and we've had them daily since, I enjoy his company, and I've learned a lot about him. Because of him I've grown to trust again, and have opened up a little to my classmates, now they aren't scared to ask me when they need help with their work.

I've been religiously training both my body and my quirk, I got hours of extra training by freezing time, which in it of itself was a lot of training...

Stopping time across the globe took a lot of effort at first, now though, it's not something that is hard or requires much of any effort, it's as easy as lifting a person.

Now I stand with my classmates in the middle of the stadium, looking at Midnight as she spoke.

I wasn't paying much attention to her, I instead was analyzing any possible threats in the audience, and any people of interest in other classes.

There's an empty seat in 1A because of the pervert being expelled, and Nezu asked me to find a good candidate to fill the spot, since I'll be actually interacting with a lot of them.

I finished and turned my full attention back to Midnight. "Now we will hear some inspirational words from this years 1st place examinee!" I was surprised, no one had told me about this, and I wasn't prepared.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and freaked out, I grabbed their wrist and maneuvered around them, twisting their arm behind their back, adding pressure to it.

"Csst-! That hurts Izuku!" The person hissed. I realized it was Katsuki and immediately let go.

"Sorry Katsuki," I said as he turned to face me.
"It's fine, it's an upgrade from last time this happened," he let out a dry laugh, "I just wanted to say that you'll do fucking fine, just don't piss anyone off, now go," he gave me a light push in the direction of the stadium and I made my way up there.

I realized they wanted a motivational speech, so I decided to try my hand at one.

"Hello, my name is Izuku, and I just want to say... anyone can be a hero. You don't need a powerful, flashy quirk, or even any quirk at all... a hero isn't someone who wears fancy suits and poses for cameras... a hero is someone who helps people for the sake of helping people... so with that, let us all be heroes!"

I bowed deeply, trying to stay calm, though I was barely holding on because the stadium was completely silent.

Suddenly, the crowd and students alike started cheering, and I looked up a bit shocked. I looked at the announcer's booth and saw my dad's looking at me, both of them having proud faces.
I smiled on the inside as I walked back to my class, them all being little chatter boxes.

"I didn't think you could even raise your voice Izubro!" Kirishima said as he slung his arm over my shoulder, I tensed up, unnoticed by him, and slipped out from under his arm. "I can... I just choose not to..." Kirishima gave me a toothy grin, "you should, you're a bit less intimidating when you don't speak all monotone like," he chuckled and patted my back.

"That was a really nice speech Izuku!! I'm all pumped up!!" I turned my head to see Uraraka jumping and pumping her fists in the air.

"Thank you..." I turned to listen to midnight, our little conversation let me tune out all her unimportant babble.

She was spinning a wheel, which was undoubtedly going to tell us what we were doing.

"And our first event iiiiiiiisssssss... THE OBSTACLE RACE!" Cheers erupted from the stands, even though they had no clue what the obstacle race was.