𝐃𝐄𝐈𝐓𝐘 || ᵇ.ᵏᵃᵗˢᵘᵏⁱ

XLI

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"How excited are you on a scale from one to ten?" Aeri implored happily as she finished off the twin Dutch braids she was fashioning in order to keep her hair out of her face during the sports festival.

Bakugou pulled on his white t-shirt and then his UA sports jacket over the top. "Excited to win, yeah."

Aeri rolled her eyes playfully. "What do we even get this year? Last year we got apprenticeship offers, but this year we already have all that sorted."

"Bragging rights?"

"That's not a prize, you'd do that anyway!"

Bakugou clicked his tongue but agreed. "What d'ya think the first two rounds will be? Third round is obviously going to be the matches."

"I don't know but I hope it's nothing to do with giant robots, I'm so bored of them. Why do they have to bring them out when we do literally anything?" Aeri huffed.

"Apparently they spent a shit tonne of money building them so they're trynna get their money's worth. We used them in our first training session after we were all cleared a few weeks ago."

"Makes sense... but aren't they just spending more money fixing them when we inevitably destroy them?" Aeri pointed out. "It's a neverending, money-sucking circuit and they should stop punishing us for their poor financial decisions."

"Alright, calm down, I'm sure they'll reserve the robots for the first years and give us something really fuckin' cool for once," Bakugou smirked, clearly more excited than he was letting on.

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"This isn't cool at all," Bakugou grumbled.

"They've just recycled last year's obstacle race and added different obstacles! How is this harder?" Aeri let out an unmotivated sigh.

"But that's not all!" Present Mic singsonged. "You'll complete this obstacle race without using your quirks. Each student will have a quirk-dampening bracelet secured to their wrist or ankle by a member of staff to ensure the devices haven't been tampered with. You'll also have to hand over any equipment that could assist you, yes, that means the support students too. We chose to do this so that our hero course students won't have the unfair advantage that everyone always complains about!" There was some feedback from the speakers as Aizawa chastised Present Mic for his choice of words.

Aizawa snatched the mic from his coworker's hand. "We'll now hear from last year's winner, Moon Aeri. Aeri please come up to the stage."

"What the fuck, man?" Aeri said with a gloomy sigh. Jungwon, Jiho and Bakugou all hid their sly laughs behind their hands but Kirishima and Mina gave her giant smiles and an encouraging thumbs up. Aeri teleported through the crowd and awkwardly climbed the side stairs to the stage, glaring at her father as she took the mic from him.

"Betrayed by my own father," she shook her head at him. Aizawa's lips quirked into a smile as he ushered her towards centre stage.

"I look forward to seeing if anybody different will be fighting me in the third round this year, I hope you actually trained instead of sitting on your asses complaining again. Good luck." Aeri flashed a tight smile, returned the microphone and teleported back to her friends without waiting for the crowd's reaction. She expected to be booed for her cockiness and her slight dig at the other classes, but to her surprise, the students laughed lightly and clapped, clearly having matured since last year.

"Now, please separate into your classes and form a line. Your homeroom teachers will lock a quirk cuff around your wrist and then we will move to the obstacle race section of the venue!" Present Mic yelled.

Aeri looked up at the stands that were surprisingly busy for a second-year sports festival and searched for her brothers. She had no idea if Jinyoung and Hyoseop had made it, they hadn't said anything about coming, but she was still hopeful. She knew for sure that Hyunjin would be there, he'd texted rambling about how excited he was to watch Aeri, Jungwon, Bakugou, Jiho and Shinsou beat each other up for other people's entertainment.

She finally found them when she caught sight of Hyunjin waving dramatically with Amajiki on his left. Jinyoung and Hyoseop sat to his right and they hid small smiles when they saw she'd spotted them. She waved and then did a double-take when she saw who was sitting next to them.

"Jiho, isn't that your dad?" Aeri slapped her friend's arm and pointed to the stands where Jiho's dad was trying to get his son's attention without drawing too much attention to himself like Hyunjin was. Jiho's eyes watered and he bit back a wide smile as he tried to hide the small wave he sent his dad. He cleared his throat and turned back towards Aizawa, holding out his wrist to get his cuff. He grimaced as soon as the metal bracelet was secured, the presence of his quirk disappearing and leaving him feeling weirdly empty.

"Twins, give me your weapons," Aizawa commanded, motioning towards the large plastic storage box he'd brought with him.

"Are all the support students' gadgets going in that box too? I don't want my daggers getting scratched..." Jungwon frowned.

Aizawa sighed. "No, this one is specifically for 1A. Why would we have one box for the whole year group?"

Aeri unbuckled her holsters and carefully dropped them into the box before doing the same with her swords and any loose knives she had tucked into her uniform. Jungwon grumbled and reluctantly followed, placing all his weaponry neatly beside Aeri's. Together, they'd filled up the box, leaving no room for the rest of the class.

"Well, it's a good thing the rest of us don't carry weapons..." Kaminari said, flabbergasted.

"Huh, it's quite a lot when you look at it all together in a box like this." Aeri tilted her head, staring at the glinting blades sitting in the box. Aizawa clipped the lid in place and labelled it before slipping it over to Cementoss, who was loading the boxes onto a cart to take them away from the arena.

"Okay now that everyone's ready, please head to the starting line and let the sports festival commence!" Present Mic whooped animatedly. Kirishima, Kaminari and Sero mirrored the hero's excitement and sprinted off. The rest of the class followed after them, conserving their energy for the real race.

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