All Might POV:
Winter break is over. Izuku and the Vanguard have returned to school for likely the last semester of their education. I was surprised to learn from Izuku that the Winter Break Incident turned out to be helpful for Izuku in getting a new quirk but also increasing his control of OFA to 75%. Most normal heroes and villains cannot even stand against Izuku at his 50% mark and now he is at 75%. Izuku's 80% should be about the same as my 100% of OFA which means that he needs to be far more careful in the angles of his hits or else he will cause a lot of weather-changing events. Just him throwing a punch in the air at 50% can cause mild rain to happen but when I or he enter past the 70% and higher is when we start affecting the weather far more with our punches.
Anyway, the school here has started back up as well and the students are preparing for the upcoming sports festival. Last year, Izuku had come in 1st place (He had control of OFA to a point and wasn't breaking bones), while Todoroki came in second and Bakugo came in third (He still had to be chained because he refused to be beaten by a Deku.) However, this year Izuku isn't here and the class has not improved that much in their first year. A lot of the students had to retake the test for their provisional licenses which they all ended up pasting during the winter break retake the exam. As such, everyone in Class 2-A and 2-B now has their provisional licenses. Some of the students did work-studies last semester but not a lot of them. Some did a word-study that was connected to the Eri girl who has been living with UA since that day. Those students that were on the mission talked to the others about foreign first-year students that showed up and took the girl and bullets at the end even though they weren't on the mission. Bakugo just like always yelled that he could have destroyed those first-years. Bakugo and some of the students are still on thin ice with the school. The staff is hoping they improve this year.
-- Time Skip to J-UA Festival --
3rd POV:
We could see that the students were all lined up on the stage. The staff decided to have the top general education student give the speech this year since Bakugo somehow qualified for it and no one wanted to listen to him. Soon the events started and the first event was a king of the hill match. There was the typical race from start to finish but this year we had some new traps placed across the racing ground. This resulted in a lot of people being knocked out of the race and even a few from 2-A got knocked out of the race.
Next was the capture the flag match. 42 students went in this round and only 12 would pass. This match took a interesting turn as there were no official teams. However, Class 2-B joined forces and kept hitting Class 2-A. Other students noticed this that were still left and joined in on teaming against 2-A. This kept going for 30 minutes until the match was called and it was shocking because of the 12 people that made it to the final round all of them but one was from 2-B! The only student from a different class was Shinso from 2-A. You could see the devastation on 2-A faces. The staff box in the stadium was silent as this was a bit shocking. We thought there would be more from 2-A but there wasn't. None of the quirk powerhouses made it to the next round either but instead, a student with a mental quirk did which just proved his strength and quirk abilities.
"I told my class not to get complacent and what do they do? They got complacent!" stated Aizawa who was annoyed with his class. "They did indeed but none of that is your fault since we know this class went down the drain once Izuku left. He is what gave everyone the motivation and drives to go far past plus ultra and his leaving sucked all the plus ultra out of them." I said. "Indeed. I've been considering sending Class 2-A & B to America to have them attend the A-UA for a few weeks," stated Nezu. "NO! I will not agree with you sending his former classmates to annoy Izuku. Also, I doubt Victor and the A-UA staff would agree since some of them know what 2-A has done." I said. "Oh, Don't worry. I was considering it after Izuku graduates with his team. This way he wouldn't be stuck with them." Nezu said. This didn't really make me happy either but the staff and I agreed it could be talked about later in the year and wouldn't happen no matter what this semester at all.
We focused back on the festival and soon the matches went by and we soon had our winners. In third place was Shinso, 2nd was Kendo, and in first was Monoma because he copied a good set of quirks that he had practiced with a lot and became good at them. This was an interesting year of winners but was a good show of skills and quirks. Soon the students were told to go back to the classrooms and that they would talk to their teacher before going home for the weekend.
3rd POV:
"Well, that was something... I expected a bit more from all of you," stated Aizawa. He then went on to explain that if anyone requested them for an internship this year they would be allowed to go. They were warned to make a good impression on their internships because it could lead to a work-study if they were lucky. Otherwise, they wouldn't be getting the experience in the field that they need since internships only last a week which isn't enough time to gain experience.
Some of the class asked if UA would help students get work-studies. Aizawa shot this down quickly. "Getting you a work-study is not our responsibility. As an individual teacher, they could recommend you to a co-worker if they felt you would be a fit but that would also mean that the teacher had to like you and trust your skills enough to put their name behind you. Now how many of you have good enough relationships with any teacher here at UA for that?" Aizawa stated in a cold tone. "If you had a work-study last year you can call them and request they take you on again and they might if they believe you did a good job," he said before letting them all go home.
Aizawa soon went to the staff room and Vlad King came in and talked to him. They talked about doing some Joint-trainings to try and get class 2-A to shape up before the end of the semester or else they are going to turn out to be sub-par heroes that will die quickly. Some of them might make it to the top 20 ranks due to their quirks but most won't if they don't get skills to combine with their quirks.
-- Time Skip 1 month for A-UA tournament--
3rd POV:
Soon it was time for the America UA to start their yearly tournament. Mostly everyone had bets placed on the Vanguard taking all the top spots again this year and are betting on individuals ranking for the Vanguard. All Might had arrived two days before the tournament to spend some private time with the family. He also was brought up to date on everyone's skills and Izuku's current quirk training. Izuku informed All Might that he was able to push OFA to 80% and was on track to get to 100% before or right after the end of the first semester which made All Might happy. Using the gravity method, Izuku has been able to make his muscles firmer instead of bulking up to All Might's size. This method has also allowed Izuku to gain around a 5% increase each month to his control of OFA because he has been gaining muscles but also making them really dense.
The school has even asked Izuku to allow the support department to study his quirk a bit to try and replicate his gravity field effects. It was discovered that they were able to but only to a point. Izuku himself can now increase gravity by x8 but the support department could only build a room that would go up by x3. It was still a greatly beneficial device for A-UA in which they provided half the patent rights to Izuku since he allowed them to study his quirk. Gravity quirks that operate like his were really rare which caused problems in studying them. The school allowed students to use the room to train but had to get medically cleared to use it and had strict restrictions on its usage. Though the restrictions were strict, no one complained since they could see the results on the Vanguard from Izuku's quirk and they all wanted to benefit from it.
It was time for the tournament and everyone was called out to the stage for a speech by Paragon this year. This was the first time for a speech to be done because of the format of the tournament but the staff decided to do it because of how influential the Vanguard has become in the school. All of the students and staff treated the Vanguard's words as law in the school. This was due to how fair and honorable the vanguard has shown itself to be. The Vanguard during their time at A-UA had made several sweeping changes that got approved by the school. One such change was that there was now a new year-round quirkless combat ranking system that allowed students to challenge anyone to a quirkless fight if the school approved of it.
This ranking was allowed students to be rank themselves based on their combat and physical capabilities instead of more physical vs non-physical quirks. The ranked matches would take place in the combat training grounds and required either 2 vanguard members or one staff person to be present to end the fight at command. This ranking system goes year-round has resulted in an increase in the skills of the students which the staff has noticed and also allowed students to resolve civil disputes in a more controlled environment instead of fights happing in hallways or outside of school.
As such, Paragon had to give a speech and it was an inspiring one. "Welcome ladies and gentlemen to A-UA's annual tournament!" yelled the announcer. "Now, I'm sure you students know how this goes, but just to ensure everyone remembers. This event has been closed to only invited guests and the families of the students. As such, at the end of the event, we will compile everything we recorded into videos for Pro-hero's to use to scout you for internship offers or work-studies. Let us kick this off with a speech from the school's PARAGON!" stated the announcer.
"Hello everyone and welcome to A-UA. We come out here on this battlefield to test our skills and resolve. To test our dedication to becoming heroes. It allows us to show our skills amongst our own school year but also amongst the entire school. As such, even if you fail today it doesn't mean you should stop. It only means that you should get back up and say I won't let my determination to be a HERO END HERE! We are heroes that are responsible for correcting the world's unfairness and protecting those that can't protect themselves! As such, never let your drive to do better stop even when you are knocked down! As such, let us all go further beyond our limits!" Paragon announced to the crowd of students and guests.
Izuku pov:
The first-year battles went by quickly and soon they had their winners. It was also clear to anyone that the Vanguard was going to take all 6 spots in the second-year. It wasn't even a debate that anyone talked about and everyone noticed that the Vanguard didn't go all out at any time even against ourselves. They realized that we were waiting for the rank system at the end to happen. It took a bit longer for the third-year student battles to come to an end since they all had combat experience but that was normal. Soon we made it to the year vs year battles. "Will all of our first, second, and third-year winners come out to the field. We will be starting in a few moments!" Yelled the announcer. "Let's do this VANGUARD!" I shouted as they followed me out. "Ladies and gentlemen. We are now starting our ranked tournament. The way this works is that the first years may challenge any of the upper years. If they win, they take that person's rank. The third-year students have the top six spots followed by the second years and then the first years. You may only challenge someone above your rank! If you are defeated you drop down to that person's rank. You can only challenge once more after you are defeated. If you lose again then you are out! We will keep going until we have everyone knocked out into their ranks or we have no more challengers!" Yelled the announcer.
Some of the first-year students challenged amongst themselves. Two firs-years wanted to try and take Dove and Azrael in a fight which proved a bad idea. The girls quickly ended the fights. Azrael made her illusions and swords appear from all directions and started to force the first-year near the line before she charged and did a kick to the chest and kicked him out. The first-year student that fought Dove attempted to get in close which was a mistake since Dove got better at her energy absorption skill and used it in hand-to-hand combat against the first-year. Soon the student was on the ground drained of his energy. As such, it came down to us to challenge the third-years.
These battles were a bit more flashy but still quick overall. Some of the third-years did put up a decent fight though the Vanguard was only fighting at 25% of our strength since we planned to go all out in our fights. We all finished our matches and the ranking currently was Sophia ranking 6th, Skylar 5th, Rose 4th, Alex 3rd, Lucas 2nd, and Izuku 1st. "Principal Victor, we would like to request to change the field of combat to the Vanguard's training ground so we can get more serious in our battles," I yelled up to the staff box. "Don't worry Vanguard, we already knew this would happen and had drones prepared for this fight! All of the vanguards is to move to your private training grounds and we will start in 5 minutes." stated the announcer.
3rd POV:
We all arrived at the Vanguard's private training ground and took up positions on the wall. Sophia challenged rose to a fight. This fight was interesting since during the battle Sophia had changed Rose's field of vision via illusions but that didn't stop Rose. Rose in recent training figured a way to feel the vibrations through the ground or in the air via her earth and wind aspects. This allowed her to feel for Sophia when she attacked. Sophia didn't know that Rose had figured this out already and got knocked out of the ring after 10 minutes of fighting. This resulted in Rose maintain her position and Sophia being stuck at 6th place. Next, Skylar challenged Rose. This fight also had its moments since Skylar used her area of affect energy drain move during the entire fight to drain Rose. Though it was countered about half of the time via Rose using the wind aspect of her quirk so this resulted in them stalling the match for a bit. Soon though Skylar was able to generate a gust of wind and used her swords that she created to have a small vortex of swords that forced Rose out of the ring. Rose decided not to challenge any of the boys since she knew they were far stronger due to them being the powerhouses of the group.
Now it was just Lucas, Alex, and Izuku left. The two lover boys knew that individually they didn't stand a chance against Izuku. As such, they fought each other and the battle turned into a competition of strength and speed in their transformed forms.
Both of them left the training ground on fire due to the heat that they generated. Lucas and Alex have been training so much that they were more or less equal in combat abilities and this match would be decided by whoever made the first mistake. The match kept going for about another 10 minutes with both Lucas and Alex having scratch marks across their bodies due to each other claws. Soon the staff of the school decided to call it a draw since they still had one more event to do. "Ladies and Gent's we will be calling this a draw. However, don't go anywhere since we have one more event. Since we figured Paragon wouldn't have much of a fight we arranged for a special match to happen for him and the rest of the Vanguard. Paragon! If you agree you will face off in a 1v1 against the current #1 HERO BRAVE! While the rest of the Vanguard will face off the other top 6 heroes if they agree as well." Shouted the announcer which set off all the students and guests.
Izuku POV:
I looked at my team and they all nodded their heads agreeing. "WE ACCEPT!" I shouted out. Soon the matches were set to start.
# 6th hero Robin vs Sophia
# 5th hero Bright vs Rose
# 4th hero Rain vs Skylar
# 3rd & #2nd Heroes Vixen & Lion vs Lucas & Alex (Due to them tieing)
#1 hero brave vs Izuku
Robin vs Sophia was a straight forward match. Robin focused more on agility and bow mastership due to his quirk giving him a high level of accuracy with ranged weapons and he uses a bow with different heads (Green Arrow anyone?). However, Sophia had the speed and flight abilities that allowed her to dodge most attacks from Robin. Soon Sophia used her weapons that she controlled and forced Robin to yield the match.
Bright vs Rose
Bright's quirk allowed her to use lighting to travel and fight which caused bright light which she took as her hero name. However, this was a bad matchup for Bright since Rose could control the lighting aspect. Rose would screw up Bright's attacks by redirecting the lighting that she threw. Soon Rose got in closer and closer and started to use the air aspect of her quirk to control the airflow around Bright's head which lead to Bright being knocked out.
Rain vs Skylar
Rain's quirk allowed them control of water in the air which they used to make weapons and other attacks. They fought mostly near bodies of water since they could also pull water from those sources easier since water in the air was heavier. Skylar did have some challenges for a few moments until she noticed that her light evaporated the water a bit. As such, Skylar started using more flashier attacks that generated some heat that evaporated the water quicker which allowed Skylar to get close and start fighting in close quarters. This allowed her to use her draining ability to end the fight.
Vixen & Lion vs Lucas & Alex
Vixen's quirk allowed her to transform into a fox form and have fox abilities. However, this didn't stand up well against Alex who transformed into a human-size dragon and just started to harass Vixen by fire and his claws. His skin became too hard for Vixen's claws to be useful as such she could only deal damage via physical attacks which didn't do much against Alex. Alex saw the chance and wrapped himself around Vixen and started to squeeze her which resulted in her giving up due to the pressure of his bind. Lion's quirk gave him greatly enhanced abilities and had control over fire. The enhanced abilities looked like a water down version of OFA but gave the ability to control and breathe fire. Lucas was able to counter any fire that Lion put off and started to get close to Lion to turn the fight into a hand-to-hand fight. Lucas soon started blasting fire from his hands which did harm Lion as he didn't have a natural resistance to fire on his skin. Lucas was able to wrap fire around Lion's legs without being noticed which allowed Lucas to get enough fire there to be strong enough not to break due to Lion's enhanced abilities. This resulted in Lucas winning his fight.
Brave vs Izuku
Izuku Pov:
Brave's quirk was unique. It provided Brave with a boost in his abilities the stronger his opponent was. He did have a base limit but would grow in abilities based on who he was fighting. For most people, this would present a problem, and wouldn't be able to overcome this challenge and lose since the hero would gain strength to trivial them but Izuku had multiple quirks that didn't tie directly in his strength. Izuku did test Brave's strength and found out that Brave was able to match Izuku only up to 60% of OFA which was amazing in itself. "Brave I must say you are one of the only people I can count that can go blow for blow with me at my 60% of my quirk's strength aspect!" Izuku stated. "However, that isn't the only aspect of my quirk! GRAVITY FIELD!" I yelled out as I increased Brave's gravity by x3 to not harm his internal's. Brave was forced down to his knees by my gravity field while I walked freely in it since I was countering it on myself. "Do you yield?" I asked as I placed my hand on the back of his neck. "I yield." He stated which resulted in my win.
I then heard the announcer go off. "Vanguard has done it! The vanguard has defeated their respective opponents which were the top 6 heroes of America! THE FUTURE FOR AMERICA HEROES LOOKS, BRIGHT FOLKS!" yelled the announcer. All of the guests and families started to cheer out.
3rd pov:
Soon we were dismissed and allowed to return to our families. The vanguard, All Might, and my parents decided to go out and have a nice relaxing dinner to celebrate this year. We soon arrived at a fancy restaurant that provided us with a private room.
As we were sitting down All Might had talked to us about how the festival in Japan's UA went and Izuku couldn't say he wasn't shocked that only Shinso got to the last round. The Vanguard was wondering how far Izuku's classmates have fallen after Izuku's departure based on All Might's descriptions of them.
We all soon talked about how the current schedule has the vanguard graduating at the end of this semester and that they would be attempting for the hero exam 2 weeks before the semester exams. They also talked about how the UN has decided to take over their heroes exam instead and would be ensuring that no bias happens because of how favorable the government has been about the Vanguard. The Vanguard didn't protest and told the representative from the UN to make the exam harder for them if they desired to which shocked the UN representative. The Vanguard explained that they wanted to be challenged and want to show that they haven't been given any easy work, that they have worked hard to earn their achievements.
Izuku Pov:
Izuku had pulled All Might aside in the restaurant and sat on one of the small couches that were in the room away from the table to talk in private. "Yes, my boy?" All Might asked. "All Might, I wanted to talk to you about your retirement," I said and he had a shocked look on his face. "I want you to start planning out how you would like to announce your retirement to the world and whether or not you will announce to the world about your skinny form in that announcement or slowly reveal it to people," I said as I looked at him in the eyes. "I understand. I always hated the fact that I would need to retire. I have known that I would need to plan it out but want to resist it so much. Do you have any preferences on announcing it since I would be announcing that you are my protege at the same time to reassure people?" All Might said. "Currently, we plan to graduate by the end of this semester. If we can stall your announcement until the end of the year this would give me and the Vanguard time to build up more of a reputation around the world since the UN does plan to send us on missions once they approve the world designation. I also think we should have Nezu help in the planning since he would be good at preparing for it and any fallout. Also, could you consider doing the announcement here in America at the UA here?" I told him. We talked a bit more about his retirement and he did agree that he would likely leave Japan to move where the Vanguard was and wanted to take up a position in our agency as head of physical training and office management since he would have so much time on his hands and he didn't think he wanted to stay away from the family since he enjoyed his time with everyone. He also agreed to think about doing the announcement in America since that is where the Vanguard has the most support and that he would talk about it with Nezu.
I also asked All Might to pass my contact details to Mei in support since she was very good at creating a lot of things and she could do some good for us. Though she would be hired on by the family companies since Lucas's family business owns one of the tops support gear businesses. I had talked about her to the Vanguard team and they were interested in meeting her to discuss the possibility of her working for the vanguard via the family businesses since Lucas, Alex, and I would inherit the companies via the parent company that our fathers created which is called Yin & Yang Corporation otherwise known as Dragon & Phoenix Corporation. Our fathers decided to name it this because the Dragon and Phoenix are considered the ultimate symbol of love and marital joy in some cultures which represents our soulmate marks quite well.
Soon everyone returned to the house and went to our separate rooms for the day. The vanguard has the weekend off from training and studying but will return to the schedule on Monday where we will pick everything back up. We only have a few more months left before our graduation and exam. We need to keep the workup and I need to master all of OFA since I am only at 75% and need the last parts done before graduation.