The alarm went off at five thirty in the morning.
Mineta stared at it from bed for exactly three seconds, seriously considered the possibility of ignoring it, and then sat up with the resigned expression of someone who knows what they have to do even though their body disagrees.
Alright. Day one.
He put on comfortable clothes, drank a glass of water, and went out to the backyard before the sun had fully risen. The air smelled of damp earth. On the parallel street, someone was already taking out the trash. The domestic normality of everyday Japan, completely unaware of his plans.
He stood in the center of the yard and looked at the available space.
Where do you even start training a body that's one hundred and eight centimeters tall?
It was a more complicated question than it seemed. He had the internet, yes. He had routines, references, the entire modern fitness infrastructure accessible from a screen. The problem was that this body had no prior physical base. It was the body of a twelve-year-old boy who, until a few days ago, had lived a life without any notable activity.
Zero. He was starting from zero.
He made his first attempt at a push-up.
He went down. Tried to go up. His arms trembled like gelatin in an earthquake and he collapsed against the ground with a dull thump that raised a small cloud of dust.
He stayed lying face down for a moment, cheek against the cold dirt.
Fantastic. I can't even do a single push-up.
The first thing he learned that morning was that humiliation is an extraordinarily effective motivator.
The second was that an unconditioned body protests in very creative ways. His arms burned. His legs refused to cooperate. At some point during his attempts at squats he decided the universe had a particularly cruel sense of humor.
But he kept going.
Not out of masochism. But because he had the advantage of knowing exactly why he was doing this. It wasn't abstract training toward a vague goal. It was concrete preparation for a future he knew with a precision no one else in that world could claim.
When he finished, an hour later, he sat on the ground with his legs crossed and caught his breath while looking at the sky brightening over the neighborhood rooftops.
Week one: build the base. No ambitions. No heroics.
The most common mistake when starting was trying to do too much too soon. He knew that well. The body needed time to adapt, to break down and rebuild. Consistency was worth more than intensity, especially at the beginning.
The routine of that first week was deliberately modest: push-ups, squats, sit-ups, light jogging around the neighborhood. Nothing impressive. Everything that built a foundation he could later work on.
In the afternoons, the yard became his laboratory.
He dedicated the first day of quirk testing to the most basic thing: pulling off spheres and throwing them at the back wall. Something the original Mineta had done almost without thinking since childhood, instinctively. He wanted data. Numbers. Systematic observations.
He wrote everything down in the notebook.
Standard sphere: approximate diameter of four centimeters. Light weight. Throwing speed: moderate. Adhesion on impact: high. Time until natural detachment without additional contact: between two and six hours depending on size.
Pain when pulling off: present but tolerable. Similar to pulling out a hair, multiplied by the size of the sphere.
Regeneration speed: slow. After pulling off five spheres in a row, new growth rate slows down. After ten, there is a mandatory rest period.
That last point was the most relevant. In canon, the quirk had a clear limit: pulling off too many spheres caused blood vessels in the eyes to burst, an unmistakable sign that the body had reached its limit. The most obvious and most frustrating restriction of the power.
But also the most workable.
If the limit was physical, improving the body should expand it. And if that wasn't enough, there were other avenues. For now, just theories scribbled in the margins of the notebook. With time, they could become something more.
Current estimated limit: twelve spheres before noticeable fatigue. Fifteen before serious discomfort. Twenty, risk territory.
He wrote it down, closed the notebook, and looked at the wall where several purple spheres were still stuck at various points like an art installation of questionable taste.
Starting point established.
The third week was when things started to get interesting.
His push-ups had gone from zero to five in a row. The morning run no longer left him breathless after two blocks. The body was responding, slowly but consistently.
What was interesting was what he discovered one afternoon while practicing accuracy.
He was training his aim like practicing free throws in basketball: repetition, adjustment, repetition. And at one point, distracted by his own thoughts, he threw a sphere without directly looking at the target.
It hit the exact point he had been trying to reach for twenty minutes.
He stared at the wall.
Then he looked at his hand.
Was that luck?
He tried to repeat it. He deliberately looked away, visualized the point, and threw.
He missed by five centimeters.
But he hadn't missed by as much as you'd expect from someone throwing without looking. And that was strange enough to deserve attention.
He wrote down: Is there some kind of passive spatial perception related to the spheres? Do I feel them somehow after throwing them? Investigate.
During the following days he dedicated part of his sessions exclusively to that. He closed his eyes after throwing and tried to… feel it. It was an absurdly vague instruction he didn't know how to execute, but the process of trying taught him something: there was something there. A kind of diffuse awareness of where the thrown spheres were, like knowing where your own hands are without needing to look at them.
Faint. Imprecise. But real.
The spheres are part of my body, he wrote that night. If human hair has living cells at the root, and these spheres are basically concentrated hair, it makes sense that some kind of connection remains even after separating them. Like a very weak and very poorly defined nerve.
If it can be trained, it could be useful. If it can be amplified…
He underlined that last sentence twice. A note for the future.
School was, by comparison, the least of his problems.
He returned to class with the attitude of someone who had more important things to think about, which was completely true. Mineta's memories gave him enough context to navigate the hallways, recognize faces, and respond when someone talked to him without seeming completely disoriented.
The problem was the preexisting reputation.
The original Mineta had patiently and diligently built an image that was hard to ignore. He wasn't exactly the class laughingstock, but he didn't generate instinctive sympathy either. The inappropriate comments, the looks in the wrong directions, the history of small behaviors that made people raise an eyebrow when he approached. All of that was there, stuck to his name like spheres to a wall.
He had no intention of continuing that. But he also wasn't going to waste energy convincing anyone of anything.
None of these people matter, he thought during a math class while the teacher explained something he already knew from his previous life. In three years I'll be at UA. What they think here changes nothing.
What he did notice, with some satisfaction, was that the original Mineta's intelligence was real. Not fake. The boy had genuinely been capable; he had simply applied that ability in useless directions. With his additional memories and the right motivation, classes were practically trivial.
This is at least comfortable, he admitted to himself.
At the end of the first month, he sat down with the notebook and evaluated.
Push-ups: from zero to eight in a row. Real progress.
Running: four blocks without stopping. Needs improvement but acceptable.
Quirk: limit expanded to fourteen spheres before noticeable fatigue. Passive spatial awareness is still inconsistent but exists.
Height: one hundred and eight centimeters. No changes. The body needs more time.
It wasn't impressive. It wasn't the epic training montage any shonen protagonist deserves. It was a month of constant, unglamorous work that had produced modest but measurable results.
This is how it actually works, he wrote at the end of the page.
He closed the notebook and looked at the ceiling.
He had been thinking about the same thing for weeks: physical training on his own had limits. Fighting was a skill that required real instruction, not internet videos and theory. He needed someone who knew what they were doing. He needed a dojo.
Tomorrow he would look for one.
He turned off the light.
One hundred and eight centimeters and eight push-ups.
A brief pause.
Something is something.
End of Episode 2.