The purple, rubbery orbs on Minoru Mineta's head felt heavier than they ever had before.
He sat at the small dining table in his family's home, his hands gripped tightly around a lukewarm cup of tea. His UA gym uniform, freshly laundered sat folded neatly on a chair in the corner. He couldn't look at it. Every time his eyes drifted toward the "UA" logo, he heard the thud of bodies hitting the barrier. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the spray of crimson on the grass where Bakugo had fallen.
His parents sat across from him, silent, watching their son with a mix of trepidation and heartbreak.
"I... I can't do it," Minoru whispered. His voice was small, stripped of its usual bravado and high-pitched antics. "I can't go back there."
He looked up, his large eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
"I'm not like them," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm not like Midoriya, who runs toward the fire without thinking. I'm not like Todoroki or Bakugo. They have these... these gods-like quirks. They're built for this. But me? I'm just a guy who grows sticky balls on his head. I thought being a hero would be cool. I thought I'd be popular and people would look up to me, but..."
He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a stray tear finally escaping.
"The world is changing," Minoru continued, his breath hitching. "It's not about catching bank robbers or helping old ladies anymore. It's about snipers. It's about planes falling from the sky. It's about monsters that don't stop until they're dead. And I'm scared. I'm so, so scared, Mom. Dad. I don't want to die. I don't want to be a name in the newspaper that people forget by the next morning."
He bowed his head, his shoulders shaking. "I'm a failure. I got into the best school in the country, and I'm just... I'm a coward. I'm throwing away the chance everyone wants because I'm too weak to handle it."
For a long moment, there was only the sound of his quiet sobbing. Then, a large, calloused hand reached across the table and covered his own.
Minoru looked up. His father, a man of few words who usually spent his evenings laughing at variety shows, was looking at him with a profound, quiet intensity.
"Minoru," his father said, his voice thick with emotion. "I've watched you these last few months. I saw you waking up at five in the morning to run. I saw the bruises you tried to hide. I know you joke around a lot, sometimes way too much, and you act like you don't care about anything but being flashy. But I saw the work you put in. I saw how hard you were trying to be at the top of your game."
His father's grip tightened slightly, a gesture of grounding support.
"I've spent every night since you started at UA lying awake," his father admitted. "I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want to crush your dream. But seeing that news... seeing that plane... Minoru, I don't want you to be a hero if it means I have to bury my son. I don't want you to be a 'casualty' in the papers. I just want you to be you."
His mother nodded, her face wet with tears as she reached out to stroke his hair, avoiding the sticky spheres he was so ashamed of right now.
"You aren't a coward, Minoru," she whispered. "Knowing when you've reached your limit, knowing when a path isn't yours to walk, that takes a different kind of courage. Most people would keep going until they broke just to avoid the shame. But you're being honest with us. And with yourself."
She leaned in, kissing his forehead. "We don't care about UA. We don't care about the Top Ten. If you want to go to a normal school, if you want to be an accountant, a chef, or nothing at all for a while, we will support you. We just want you home. Safe. Alive."
Minoru let out a jagged, broken breath, the weight of the "Hero" title finally sliding off his small shoulders. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a warrior. He was just a fifteen-year-old boy who had seen too much, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel the need to pretend otherwise.
He leaned forward, and for the next hour, he wasn't a student of Class 1-A. He was just a son, held tight by his parents in the safety of a home that the villains hadn't reached yet. The hero world would move on, the war would escalate, and others would take up the mantle, but Minoru Mineta was going to live. And that was the greatest victory of all.
___
The infirmary was a sanctuary of sterile white and ticking clocks. All Might sat on the edge of the examination table, his oversized shirt hanging off his skeletal frame like a sail on a broken mast. He felt the phantom ache in his side, the jagged scar where his respiratory system had been ravaged years ago, but today, the air in his lungs felt... different.
Recovery Girl stood before a flickering monitor, her brow furrowed as she swiped through holographic renderings of DNA sequences and bone marrow density charts. She let out a long, contemplative sigh, the kind that usually preceded bad news.
"Toshinori," she began, turning to him with her hands tucked into her lab coat pockets. "I've run the samples three times. Your blood, your marrow... even the cellular regeneration rates in your stomach lining."
All Might braced himself. "Is it the end, Chiyo? Have the embers finally gone cold?"
"They have, but also," she said, her voice sharp with a confusion she rarely allowed herself. "They haven't. In fact, according to these readings, they haven't dimmed by a single watt since the day you passed the torch to young Midoriya."
All Might froze. He looked down at his trembling, oversized hands. "What are you saying? I can still feel the weight of it, but... I'm in this form. I'm shrinking."
"Your body is aging, yes. You are growing older, your skin is losing its elasticity, and the biological clock is ticking," Recovery Girl explained, gesturing to the scans. "But the physical decay, the atrophy that should have accelerated the moment you gave up One For All, is stagnant. It's like your body is moving through time at a crawl. You're not progressing naturally toward the quirkless state. Your strength... it's still there, locked behind a door that should have been removed from its hinges months ago."
All Might's breath hitched. "But that's impossible. The successor takes the power. The predecessor keeps only the scraps until they fade. That is the law of the quirk."
"Laws are being broken left and right lately, Toshinori," she countered. "I don't know what this means yet. I plan on speaking to Nezu, his mind might see a pattern I'm missing. But more importantly..." she paused, her eyes narrowing. "You need to call Gran Torino."
All Might felt a cold shiver race down his spine, a primal reflex born of years of brutal training on various beaches and city rooftops. "Gran Torino? Chiyo, surely we don't need to involve him just yet. He's... well, he's retired."
"He is the only one who saw you the day you received the quirk," Recovery Girl said, her tone brooking no argument. "And he is the one who always maintained that you were an anomaly. Most successors struggle to contain the power, look at young Midoriya, he's shattering himself just to hold ten percent. But you? Gran Torino always said you adapted to One For All all too easily. You stepped into it like an old suit."
All Might looked at the floor, the memories of his youth flickering like an old film reel. He had never broken a bone during his training. He had mastered the 100% output within months. He had been the "Perfect Vessel."
"He needs to meet the boy," Recovery Girl continued, her voice softening. "If there is something strange happening with the lineage, if your body is refusing to let go of the power even as it passes to the next, we need to know why. Especially now, with whatever is happening inside Izuku."
All Might gripped the edge of the table.
"I'll call him," All Might whispered, the dread of the phone call eclipsed only by the growing mystery of his own existence. "I'll call him today."
___
The air in Class 1-A was different. It wasn't just the smell of floor wax and the low hum of the newly installed high-tech ventilation system, it was the weight of the silence.
Izuku sat at his desk, his fingers tracing the wood grain. He looked around, counting the heads. He had expected the room to be half-empty, had expected his mother's fears to be the rule rather than the exception. But as he looked at the familiar faces of Uraraka, Iida, Yaoyorozu, and the others, he felt a surge of something of a shared resilience.
There were only two empty seats. One was Bakugo's. The news that he was out of his coma and recovering had swept through the dorms the previous night, leaving a trail of relieved sighs in its wake. The other empty seat belonged to Minoru Mineta.
Izuku stared at that vacant desk for a long time. He didn't judge him. After everything, the USJ, the plane, the rain of blood, the fact that only one person had walked away felt like a miracle.
Outside the window, the UA campus looked fortified. The new dormitory buildings, Heights Alliance, loomed in the distance, surrounded by invisible sensor grids and patrolled by drones. The school felt smaller now that the general education and management tracks were gone, but it felt infinitely more imposing. Maybe more like a bunker.
The door slid open. Shota Aizawa walked in, and the class collectively held its breath.
He wasn't in bandages. For the first time since the USJ, their teacher looked whole. His gait was steady, his eyes sharp and devoid of the fatigue that usually defined him. A month of recovery and the urgency of the new regime had clearly changed him.
"Settle down," Aizawa said, though the room was already pin-drop silent. He stood behind the podium, his gaze sweeping over them like a searchlight. "It's been a long month. Most of you have moved into the dorms by now. You've seen the changes to the campus. You've seen the security."
He leaned forward, his hands flat on the desk. "Bakugo is recovering well. He survived a wound that should have been fatal. The doctors expect him back in this classroom by the end of the week. He's already demanding his hero costume back, which the nurses tell me is a good sign."
A small, shaky laugh rippled through the room. It was the first time Izuku had heard his classmates laugh in weeks.
"As for the rest of the roster," Aizawa's voice dropped. "Mineta has officially withdrawn from the Hero Course. We respect his decision, and I expect you to do the same. However, a hero class must maintain its numbers to facilitate proper team training."
He gestured toward the door. "Come in."
The door slid open again, and a boy stepped inside. He had wild, gravity-defying purple hair and dark circles under his eyes that made Aizawa look well-rested. He walked with a slouch, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, and his expression was one of bored, deadpan apathy.
"This is Hitoshi Shinso," Aizawa announced. "Formerly of General Education, Class C. Due to his performance during the Sports Festival and the vacancy in our ranks, he has been fast-tracked into the Hero Course."
Shinso stepped to the front of the room. "Hitoshi Shinso," he said, his voice flat. "My quirk is Brainwashing. If you answer a question I ask, I can take control of your body. I don't intend to make friends, but I do intend to be a hero. Try not to make it easy for me."
A collective gasp hissed through the room. Izuku watched as a few of his classmates shifted in their seats, their faces tight with a new kind of apprehension. In a world where villains were hijacking planes and snipers were hiding in plain sight, a quirk that took away your free will felt... dangerous. It felt like something people would be prejudiced against.
Brainwashing, Izuku thought, his pen already hovering over a notebook. High utility for capture and interrogation. It's not 'villainous,' it's useful. It's exactly what a hero needs to stop a fight without a single punch.
Shinso caught Izuku's eye for a fraction of a second, as if sensing the analysis, before he moved to take Mineta's old seat.
"We don't have time for a welcoming party," Aizawa said, snapping their attention back to the front. "Because of the suspension of classes, we are behind. The the school board have decided to accelerate the curriculum. You are going to be pushed harder than any class in UA history."
He tapped a button on the podium, and a list of hero agencies appeared on the screen. "You will be starting your internships earlier than planned. It was supposed to be immediate, but with the new security protocols, the paperwork will take until the end of the month. You will be paired with Pro Heroes who have agreed to the new 'Combat Mentor' guidelines. You will be expected to work and to learn."
Iida raised a hand, his movements stiff and precise. "Sensei! What about our safety during these internships? If Emerald Eye is still at large,"
"You will be under 24-hour guard while at the agencies," Aizawa cut him off. "And you will be given more freedom than usual, provided you follow the new curfew and communication rules. We are training you for a world that has already declared war on you. The best way to protect you is to make you capable of protecting yourselves."
Aizawa reached into the podium and pulled out a stack of small, white boards.
"But before we get to the field, we have to handle the basics. You can't be heroes without an identity. Today, we're getting back into the groove. You'll be picking your hero names."
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The tension didn't disappear, but it was joined by a solemn, heavy sense of purpose.
Izuku looked at the white board passed to him. He thought of Musutafu. He thought of the shed where Yoshi had died. He thought of the golden man who had given him a legacy, and the boy in the hospital who had always called him 'useless.'
I'm not 'Deku' anymore, Izuku thought, his grip tightening on the marker. And I'm not just a vessel for Yoshi.
He began to write. He was going to give the world a name it could rely on, even if the rain turned to blood again.