The bus to the USJ left at eight thirty in the morning.
It was one of those days where the sky hadn't decided yet what it wanted to be—neither completely clear nor completely overcast—with that diffuse light that makes everything seem slightly calmer than it really is. The kind of morning that, in retrospect, always feels ironic.
Mineta sat about halfway down the bus, by the window, watching the scenery pass with the attention of someone who has a lot on their mind and has temporarily decided not to think about any of it.
Around him, the class had the particular energy of people heading toward something new. Uraraka stared out her own window with genuine curiosity. Iida was reviewing something in a small notebook, probably notes on rescue protocols. Kaminari and Sero were talking about something that periodically made Ashido, seated in front of them, laugh.
Midoriya, two seats ahead, had that expression of constant analysis, watching his classmates with the eyes of someone taking notes even without a notebook in hand.
Mineta observed him for a moment.
Today you're going to be the most important of all of us, he thought. Even if you don't know it yet.
Aizawa was seated at the front of the bus with his arms crossed and eyes closed, which could have meant he was sleeping or thinking—and with Aizawa, those two things were not always distinguishable.
Kirishima, with the courage or lack of judgment that characterized him depending on the moment, decided the bus ride was a good opportunity to ask the teacher a question.
— Aizawa-sensei — he said, three rows back.
— Mmm.
— Do you have a favorite hero?
Silence.
— No — Aizawa said, without opening his eyes.
— None?
— None.
Kirishima processed that for a second.
— Not even All Might?
— All Might is a symbol. Symbols aren't favorites. They are references.
— And what's the difference?
Aizawa opened one eye.
— A favorite is something you admire. A reference is something you use to measure other things. Not the same.
Kirishima opened his mouth to respond and then closed it with the expression of someone who has received more philosophy than expected at eight thirty in the morning.
Kaminari leaned toward him and whispered:
— Dude, I think he just said All Might is like a rule.
— A very muscular rule — whispered Sero.
— Don't repeat that out loud — said Aizawa, without moving.
The three straightened up simultaneously.
The USJ appeared on the horizon as the bus took the final curve, and Mineta saw it through the window with that particular mix of recognition and novelty that had already become familiar after weeks at UA.
He knew it from the anime. The huge dome, the design attempting to replicate various disaster environments within a single controlled space. But seeing it in person had that difference in scale that screens can't fully capture.
It was big. Bigger than he remembered.
Shipwreck zone in the back left, he thought almost automatically. Central stairs. Main plaza in the center. And in the center of the plaza…
He stopped that thought before it finished.
Not yet. Not now.
No. 13 was waiting at the entrance with that presence of someone whose hero costume is functional to the point of seeming designed by an engineer rather than a designer—which was probably exactly what had happened.
— Welcome to USJ — he said, with that warmth of someone who genuinely enjoys receiving students. — Unified States of Justice. Here you will practice rescue under conditions replicating real disasters: floods, fires, collapses, debris zones. The goal is not to show how much damage your quirk can do, but to learn how much good it can do.
The class listened with varying degrees of attention. Uraraka's eyes were wide open. Iida held the posture of someone mentally taking notes. Kaminari had the expression of someone following the speech but who at some point had been distracted by the ceiling's architecture.
— Your quirks are extraordinary tools — No. 13 continued, with a seriousness that was not heavy, just honest. — But extraordinary tools can cause extraordinary harm if used without judgment. What you will learn here is judgment.
Mineta listened with the focus of someone who knew No. 13's next words would be interrupted before they finished.
He was looking at the main plaza.
The fountain in the center. The stone floor. The open space where, in about ninety seconds, something would appear that had no right to be there.
Aizawa was to his left, standing with his arms crossed.
Today you'll fight them all alone to protect us, Mineta thought. And they'll tear you apart. And I can't do anything to stop it because if I intervene I only add variables to the chaos and probably make things worse.
It was the most uncomfortable thought he'd had since waking up in this body three years ago.
There was no good answer for him. Only the answer he'd written the night before: don't intervene in what you can't change, stay alert to what you can.
No. 13 kept speaking.
And then Aizawa frowned.
It was a small change. Almost imperceptible. Only someone watching Aizawa specifically at that moment would have noticed.
But Mineta noticed because he was watching Aizawa specifically.
The teacher looked toward the central plaza with that attention of someone who has processed something and is verifying whether the processing is correct.
In the center of the plaza, something was happening with the light.
It wasn't dramatic yet. It was just a different quality in the air over the fountain, like when heat distorts asphalt, but in a way the heat doesn't explain.
Aizawa already had the blindfold in his hand.
Here we go.
The distortion in the plaza grew.
And then the black fog appeared.
It wasn't like the anime.
In the anime, there was a sense of spectacle in Kurogiri's appearance, something the visual format inevitably made cinematic. In person it was different. In person, the black fog spreading from the center of the plaza had a quality that wasn't spectacular but directly wrong, the kind of thing the brain registers as danger before any conscious thought can formulate why.
The class took a few seconds to realize what was happening.
Uraraka was one of the first to process that something was very wrong, with the expression of someone whose intuition has reached a conclusion the mind is still verifying. Iida was already evaluating exits. Midoriya was staring at the fog with his real-time analysis focus.
And from the fog, one by one and then in groups, they began to emerge.
Villains.
Not one or two. Dozens. With that particular variety of people gathered not by similarity but by shared purpose, different sizes, different appearances, different quirks visible in the way they moved and in what their bodies did as they emerged.
Kaminari said something that was technically a word, but at that moment functioned more like an involuntary sound than language.
Aizawa already had his elbow guards on and his scarf floating.
— No. 13 — he said, with a calm more concerning than alarm would have been — protects the students.
And then he looked at the class with that expression of someone who has made a decision and has no intention of discussing it.
— Stay back.
And he leapt into the plaza.
What followed had the chaos quality Mineta remembered from the anime, and in person it was worse—not visually more violent, but more real.
Aizawa moving among the villains with that efficiency of someone who has turned combat into something so functional it seems simple, though it's not at all. The scarf capturing, the elbows striking, Erasure activating and deactivating with a precision that required watching multiple villains at once and processing which threat was priority in each fraction of a second.
It was extraordinary.
It was also, Mineta knew, unsustainable.
Don't look. You can't do anything. Focus on what you can.
But he kept looking anyway, because he was human and because Aizawa deserved at least that.
The class was huddled behind No. 13, who had extended his arms in the gesture of someone placing their body between a danger and what they want to protect.
— We need to leave — said Iida, with the voice of someone who has processed the situation and reached the logical conclusion. — Someone has to get to the main building and trigger the alarm.
— The fog portals blocked the entrance — said Midoriya, concentrating on the situation with his usual focus. — It's controlling access.
And then the voice came from the fog.
Mineta recognized it before he saw who was speaking.
A young voice. Casual. With that particular quality of someone permanently bored, for whom even this, even this moment, was simply another thing.
— What a disappointment — said Shigaraki Tomura, emerging from the fog with his hands covering almost his entire face and that coat full of hands, which in person produced a discomfort the anime didn't fully capture. — I thought All Might would come.
Mineta looked at him.
He had seen him in the anime dozens of times. He knew exactly what he was, what he could do, what he wanted.
In person, it was different. Not more intimidating exactly. But more real.
And that made it worse.
— Kurogiri — said Shigaraki, with his usual casualness — scatter the students.
The fog moved.
It happened fast. Too fast for most of the class to fully process before it happened.
Kurogiri expanded with that quality of something that doesn't respect space in the way space normally functions, and the portals appeared among the students with the precision of someone who has studied their positions.
No. 13 reacted, quirk activating, but Kurogiri was exactly the type of opponent against which that quirk had specific limitations.
The class fragmented.
Mineta felt a portal open near him before he saw it, that sense of something wrong in the air he had learned to recognize in the past thirty seconds, and had exactly the time to see who was near.
Midoriya to his right.
Asui Tsuyu to his left.
And then the ground disappeared.
Water was first.
Not the sound, not the vision: the water. Cold. Abrupt. With that quality of impact that makes the body take a moment to remember which direction is up.
Shipwreck zone. I'm in the shipwreck zone.
Mineta surfaced, coughing, blinking water from his eyes, and assessed in the two seconds he had before the situation demanded action.
The water in the shipwreck zone was deep, with artificial currents making it hard to stay in position, and surrounded by structures mimicking wreckage: wooden planks, hull fragments, ropes stretched between submerged pillars.
And villains. Many villains.
In the water, around them, emerging from below with the ease of people whose quirks specifically functioned in this environment.
Count. Count them before they move.
Twelve. Thirteen. Maybe more beneath the surface.
Too many to confront directly. This isn't a backyard pool.
Midoriya was already surfaced, scanning the environment with that real-time analysis focus that was his natural state under pressure. Asui was in the water with the ease of someone for whom this environment was completely natural, watching the villains with her large eyes and that calm of hers, which wasn't absence of fear but something else.
One aquatic villain approached. Large, with scales glinting underwater, swimming with the efficiency of something that has been doing this its whole life.
Don't confront. Redirect.
Mineta threw a sphere. Not at the villain, but in front of him, into the water between them. The sphere landed on the surface and adhered to the floating wooden planks below, creating a semi-invisible obstacle underwater.
The villain dodged instinctively, but the dodge took him off a direct path and disoriented him for a second.
One second was enough to gain distance.
— Mineta-chan — said Asui, with that directness of hers that doesn't change — there are too many to confront directly.
— I know.
— Midoriya-chan looks like he's thinking.
Mineta looked at Midoriya.
Midoriya indeed looked like he was thinking multiple things simultaneously and evaluating which was the least bad.
This is where you start being yourself, thought Mineta, watching him. Even if you don't fully know it yet.
Two more villains split from the main group and swam toward them with the coordination of people who have practiced exactly this.
No time to wait for Midoriya's plan. I need to buy him time to formulate it.
Mineta threw four spheres in a fan pattern, one to each approach angle, creating an adhesion zone in the water strip between them and the main group of villains. It wasn't a barrier—the water dissolved part of the adhesion, and the aquatic villains could go around it underneath. But it slowed direct advancement and forced the villains to take longer routes.
Buying time. That's what I can do right now.
The water was cold. His arms began to feel the effort of staying afloat while throwing.
Work with what you have. Work with what you have.
— Midoriya — said Mineta, swimming toward him while monitoring both flanks with fragmented active attention — I need to know what you're thinking. Now.
Midoriya looked at him. Then at the water. Then at Asui.
And in his eyes was something Mineta recognized: the moment someone stops evaluating and starts deciding.
Somewhere in the USJ, although from the shipwreck zone he couldn't see it, Aizawa was still fighting alone.
And the villains in the water kept approaching.
End of Episode 17.