Heritage for the Future

While Izuku held everyone who made it into the final section of the 1v1 tournament in high regard, he couldn't really say the same for most of the other matches in the first round. Hanta Sero was almost instantaneously immobilized by a massive ice structure from Shōto Todoroki, not even five seconds after it started. Momo Yaoyorozu, who desperately tried to keep the attack from Ibara Shiozaki's vines at bay with a pair of machetes before eventually being overwhelmed.

He couldn't help but chuckle at Tenya's predicament as he was left at the mercy of Mei Hatsume's support gear, who had spent the entire time advertising them to the scouts of various support companies in the crowd, before she finally forfeited. He also praised Mina Ashido's ability to easily dodge Yūga Aoyama's lasers and knocked him out with a single punch.

Watching Hitoshi Shinsō face off against Denki Kaminari, however, was what intrigued him the most. Like most of his classmates in 1-A, he was generally supportive of him being transferred and taking the empty seat behind him, but any hints as to what his Quirk was left him puzzled. The way he even won his match left him with even more questions, as not even ten seconds after it started, Denki just turned around and walked out of bounds.

Izuku respected the tenacity Eijirō Kirishima and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu had during their fight, even if it ultimately ended in a draw as they ended up knocking each other out at the same time.

He tried to comfort Ochako by holding her in his arms as she broke down into tears over her loss while on the phone with her parents. He felt bad for his girlfriend for having been matched up against Katsuki, but her odds of beating the powerhouse that was his best friend were low to begin with. It didn't really help his case when the audience was booing him for being merciless, but Izuku and everyone else in 1-A knew that all Ochako needed was a single hit to use her Quirk on him.

And Katsuki was (begrudgingly) in the right for going all out to keep that from happening. It didn't sit well with Izuku to have to listen to his friend being labelled as a Villain by some of the audience members, but it was either that or patronize and possibly humiliate Ochako by making her think she stood more of a chance than she really did.

---

"Begin!"

Not even five seconds after Midnight gave the call to start, Izuku was forced to throw himself to the side after seeing that Shōto had immediately sent a wave of ice towards, just barely managing to dodge the attack. Soon after, he was immediately picking himself back up to dodge another ice attack, but this time he wanted to see if there was any way he could stop it.

"MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA!" Gold Experience cried, and while that seemed to momentarily block and keep the attack in place, Shōto had more than enough power to amplify it, forcing Izuku to cease the attack and figure something else out. But then all of a sudden, seeing the shards of ice that broke away seemed to trigger something in him.

For just a brief moment, he was suddenly reminded of something. He remembered driving a car with someone in the back seat, while everything around them (even the very air that they were breathing) kept freezing until they couldn't move, and Gold Experience wasn't able to do anything to stop it. He remembered as the man called Guido Mista fired his gun, before collapsing to the ground as his bullet ricocheted back towards him.

'White Album: Gently Weeps!'

Izuku's eyes widened. '...What?'

Before he could even begin to wonder what just happened, his attention was forced back to the fight, and let out a curse when he saw that his right leg was suddenly encased in ice, the flashback having been enough of a distraction for Shōto to capitalize on it. Almost as soon as it formed, Gold Experience was able to quickly hammer the ice away, and Izuku let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, before he threw himself to the side to dodge another attack from Shōto.

He needed a plan. An actual plan. By all means, he could try to do the cheetah thing like he did with Fumikage, but the odds of it working would just make it a waste of time. He could even try to just keep dodging each attack, but it would only be a matter of time before the entire arena would be covered in it, and he'd be backed into a corner of his own making.

He needed to figure out a way to force Shōto to play by his rules, within his range.

It was a given that the other boy's Quirk was just so much more powerful than his, but at the same time, this was Endeavor's son. Even if he was ultimately outclassed by All Might, the man's pure level of skill with his Quirk was nothing to sneeze at, based on how he had the most amount of Hero missions completed (not to mention the collateral damage that always accompanied them).

It was common knowledge among the Pro Hero community (and those who looked hard enough) that Enji Todoroki's youngest son was set to start U.A. Based on that (not to mention his heterochromatic hair color), it didn't take much to conclude that he at least had to have inherited the same level of strength potential when it came to his fire.

So where was it?

---

"So what's up with you just using your ice?"

Shōto paused his attack as he registered the words. "What?"

"Your left side," Midoriya said, from where he was standing on top of one of his ice structures. "Just about the only time you ever use your left side is for melting ice. I've never actually seen you try to use your fire yet."

"My reasons are my own," he replied. "Not that you would understand."

"You're right, I don't," Midoriya replied. "But I can guess why. It's because of your father, right? You must have something against him."

Shōto's eyes narrowed. "Be very careful with the next words you say."

"You don't use your fire not because you can't, but because you won't," Midoriya continued. "So what happens when the person you're trying to save ends up dying because you didn't use your fire? Are you gonna put the blame on Endeavor again? Daddy issues can only get you so far, Todoroki-kun."

Who the hell did he think he was, telling him what he couldn't do? He made it this far without having to resort to using that bastard's Quirk, hadn't he?

"Shut up," he growled, but his words only seemed to fall on deaf ears.

"If you're willing to sacrifice innocent lives just because of your childish grudge, then you don't deserve to be a hero."

"SHUT. UP!" Throwing his arm out, a massive wave of ice shot out, covering the arena in the biggest structure he had created so far. His opponent, Shōto noted with grim satisfaction, was completely immobilized all the way up to his neck.

Turning to Midnight, he waited for her to call the match, but when he saw that she wasn't going to do so, looked back to Midoriya in confusion, before his eyes widened at the sight of the other boy somehow having broken out of the ice.

What the hell kind of Quirk did he have?

Shōto admittedly hadn't been paying too much attention to the other students' conversations on the bus ride to the USJ, but what he did remember was that Midoriya's Quirk had two parts to it: the ability to create life and an invisible being similar to Tokoyami's that he could command. It didn't matter in the end, though; he'll just have to do it again and again until the other boy finally submitted or succumbed to frostbite, whichever came first.

But all of a sudden, a bizarre sound that Shōto could only describe as 'musical notes playing in reverse' filled his ears, and he very nearly fell on his ass as an honest-to-Kami dragon formed out of a very large chunk of ice.

This was the true power of Gold Experience, then. He'd ended up underestimating his opponent. Gravely.

The subsequent noise coming from the audience caused him to briefly move his attention towards them, and just barely managed to catch the sight of the dragon breathing in. It didn't take two brain cells to figure out what would be coming out.

With a deafening ROAR! that threatened to give him and everyone else in the stadium permanent hearing loss, a swirling torrent of pure, unadulterated fire spewed from its maw, and Shōto cursed as he desperately raised a wall of ice to block its path. At first, Shōto felt the slightest bit of hope when he saw it holding, only for it to turn to panic as the fire was very quickly melting into water that was being vaporized, forcing him to reinforce it with even more ice.

If he kept this up, then he would only have maybe another half-a-minute at best to continue blocking the incoming fire until he collapsed from Quirk exhaustion, or until he was roasted alive. Which left him the other option, the one that would cause him to break his vow. But it was a chance to completely match the beast's attack, and maybe even force it back altogether.

'Damn you...Midoriya...!'

Shōto grit his teeth as he realized what he needed to do, and he raised his left arm into the air as it glowed a brilliant orange.

---

Izuku had to admit: if he found out he could make giant mythological creatures during the entrance exam, he would have done so immediately. However, due to their size and the complexity of their biological structures, it made it so that he had to consciously focus on maintaining the transformation. So while Shōto was busy trying to keep the dragon's fire at bay, Izuku used that time to try and dig an underground tunnel to the other side of the arena as fast as possible with Gold Experience.

This plan obviously had several flaws, but Izuku couldn't figure out a better one in the amount of time that he had. After ten seconds of digging, he was already starting to struggle with equally dividing his attention and concentration, with the sheer urgency of the situation forcing Izuku to focus more on what was happening in front of him. After twenty, a violent SWOOSH! reverberated through the air, and he couldn't help but smile at the realization that Shōto was finally using his right side.

After thirty seconds, he heard an inhuman cry of pain from above, and Izuku realized that he was out of time. Finally ceasing his concentration on the transformation, Izuku felt the connection between him and the dragon sever as it eventually returned to ice. And using the final moments of confusion expected Shōto would have, he punched a hole above him and jumped out of it, ready to deliver a stun-shot with Life Giver.

Until he was suddenly stopped by an unknown force.

Izuku could only look on with a quizzical expression as he saw Shōto's face morph into a shocked expression, before he realized that he was looking at something below him, and looked down to see an icicle had embedded itself into the side of his abdomen and out through his back.

Oh, would you look at that? He's been impaled.

...

It was here that the pain finally made itself known to him, and Izuku could only let out a soft gasp as stumbled backwards, before collapsing to the ground.

Somewhere behind him, he vaguely registered the sound of Midnight's whip. "MIDORIYA HAS BEEN-"

"WAIT!" he yelled out in desperation. "I can...I can-" Tears welled up in his eyes as Gold Experience began to pull the icicle out, and he let out an involuntary cry as the pain rose to an excruciating level. After it was finally pulled out, the icicle was thrown to the side, and his Quirk then turned to the side, repeatedly punching the ground beside them. When there was enough debris, it moved to stuff the hole that was his open wound with it, with the faint sound belonging to Life Giver playing.

When it was all over, Izuku clambered to his feet as his injury became completely healed, and while the pain still remained, it quickly lowered to a dull ache. He also noticed how there was nothing but silence all around him as Midnight and Shōto, and by extension the entire audience, were all staring at him in shock.

"Can you keep going?" the heroine softly asked, after a few moments.

Izuku sighed. "Yeah, but I...I forfeit."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I just-" He paused, before looking at Shōto. "Todoroki-kun. If you really want to distance yourself away from your father, then you need to have the resolve to take your Quirk as your own. It was never his in the first place." Without waiting for a response, Izuku turned around and walked towards the locker rooms, ignoring the crowd's roar of applause.

---

After a brief checkup from Recovery Girl, Izuku went to rejoin the rest of his classmates in the stands, where he was met with a tight hug from Ochako, who told him how scared she had gotten from his injury.

"I have to agree," Tenya added. "I wasn't expecting you to handle it as easily as you did."

"Deku can handle a whole lot of things," Katsuki grunted. "You can throw anything at him and he'll always get back up."

Izuku just nervously laughed along as he sat down, putting his arm around Ochako's shoulder. In hindsight, his attempted surprise attack on Shōto hadn't been his brightest moment, but there also was no doubt in his mind that revealing his ability to heal himself ended up getting a whole lot of people's attention, for better or for worse.

He was already aware of his growing reputation in Musutafu General for regularly donating organs as much as he could for anyone who needed them, but even when they tried their best to keep his identity hidden, it was bound to come out sooner or later.

Nevertheless, that was a problem for another time. Right now, he just wanted to finally relax with his friends now and watch the rest of the tournament in peace.

And so the First Year Sports Festival continued with its second round. Tenya easily won by dodging Ibara's vines and pushing her until she was out of bounds. Hitoshi, unsurprisingly, won by using his unknown Quirk on Mina after provoking her to anger. Katsuki eventually overpowered Kirishima's defense by hitting him with multiple concentrated blasts.

For the semi-final round, Hitoshi finally met his end when Shōto immediately went for immobilizing him in ice. All Katsuki had to do was continuously dodge Tenya's Recipro Burst attacks by constantly flying over him until his engines stopped working, to which a single blast sent him out of bounds. And even though Izuku knew that Shōto finally ended up using his fire in their match, the same couldn't be said for the final round, when Katsuki utterly decimated his ice structure with his newly-dubbed Howitzer Impact.

Once the final winner had been called, and the medals given to the first, second, and third place finalists (sans Tenya, who had to leave because of a family emergency involving his brother Ingenium), the first year classes all went back to their respective locker rooms to change back into their school uniforms, before assembling outside where their homeroom teacher was waiting.

"Good job out there," Aizawa began. "All of you. I know that some of you didn't make it to the last part, but you all tried your hardest. Tomorrow we'll go over how you did with the Pros, but for now you're free to just enjoy the rest of the Festival or leave for the day if you want. Oh, by the way - Midoriya." He turned to Izuku. "The principal wants to speak with you. He didn't tell me what for, but he said it was about something important."

"We can wait for you outside by the stands," Ochako said to him, giving him a soft smile. Izuku returned the smile in thanks, and made his way to the principal's office with Aizawa.

---

"Ah, Midoriya-kun," Principal Nezu began. "Please come in."

Closing the door behind him, Izuku walked in to see a large desk and what he could only assume was the principal himself sitting behind it. And in one of the chairs in front of the desk, sat a strange man wearing a black jacket with a black hat.

"...Did I do something?"

"No, no, there's no need to get worried," Nezu replied. "We only need to speak with you about something." He nodded to the stranger, who cleared his throat.

"My name is Doctor Kūjō Jōshirō, Midoriya. I'm one of the head researchers in the Speedwagon Foundation."

Izuku blinked. "The-the Speedwagon Foundation?" He didn't know a whole lot about the Speedwagon Foundation, but what he did know was that it was a household name just about everywhere in the world.

It was the organization that pioneered the study and advancement of medicine, technology, and science (alongside creating the field of Quirkology). They were also single-handedly responsible for providing aid and relief worldwide in the aftermath of the Quirk World War, helping to stabilize the majority of countries that were part of the United Nations.

So what did one of their researchers want with a guy like him?

Kūjō smirked, and after opening the briefcase he had brought with him, pulled out a photo depicting an ornately-shaped arrow. "Tell me: are you familiar with the phenomenon known as a 'Stand'?

---

"Sensei."

"Yes, Tomura?"

"You remember how you told me about those 'Stand' things that showed up before Quirks did?"

"What about them?"

"The Midoriya kid. The one who could make plants and animals. I think he has one."

"Oh? Tell me more."

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