— The ship — said Midoriya.
They both looked at him.
— If we can get onto the ship, we have higher ground. Aquatic villains lose advantage out of the water. And from above I can evaluate the full radius of the zone before acting.
High ground. Yes. That's right.
— How do we get up? — said Mineta, already calculating the problem as he asked. The ship was about twenty meters away. Between them and the ship were eight visible villains and probably more under the surface. Twenty meters in water with artificial currents and aquatic villains was considerably more than twenty meters on land.
— Asui-san — said Midoriya, looking at her.
Asui had already understood.
— Kero. Get out of the water when I grab you. Don't resist the motion.
What followed lasted less than forty seconds and was chaotic enough that Mineta couldn't reconstruct it in linear order afterward.
Asui's tongue grabbed him first, with a strength that seemed impossible for a body of that size but was completely real, carrying him over the surface of the water in a trajectory passing above two villains who tried to intercept him and failed because the trajectory was too fast for their reaction to suffice.
The air. Air after water.
He landed on the deck knees first, which was painful but functional, and immediately turned to see what to do next.
Midoriya arrived seconds later, launched by Asui on a longer trajectory than Mineta's because Midoriya was taller and heavier, and physics was what it was. He landed with more grace than Mineta, which was annoying but not the time to care.
Asui climbed up the ship's hull with the ease of someone for whom vertical surfaces are simply another type of ground.
The three were on deck.
The villains in the water were regrouping.
— They have a response radius of about eight seconds, — said Midoriya, who had been timing them during the transit. — When one moves, the others take eight seconds to adjust formation.
— How do you know? — asked Mineta.
— I was counting from the water. — Midoriya focused on the group of villains with that concentration of his. — Which means if we act within that window we can neutralize several before the formation closes.
Eight seconds. More than I expected.
Mineta looked at the water. The villains regrouped with the patience from before, the patience of people who believe time belongs to them. Some stared at the ship with expressions varying between cold calculation and something closer to irritation that their targets had complicated what should have been simple.
— The problem is distance, — said Mineta. — The pneumatic shoulder system triples range but I'm still limited by line of sight and the number of spheres available. If the villains scatter before I can cover the central area, the rest escape to the perimeter and we have the same problem with a worse position.
— Then we need them not to scatter, — said Midoriya.
The two looked at each other.
— A vortex, — said Mineta.
— A vortex, — confirmed Midoriya.
Asui watched them both with her usual calm.
— Kero. Explain.
The plan had three parts and depended on each working within a very specific time window.
Part one: Midoriya would jump into the water and use Delaware Smash on the point of highest villain concentration. Not the whole arm, which was still recovering full functionality after the exam. One finger. In the last millisecond, as he had done before. The air pressure created a vortex in the water, and the vortex centralized the villains instead of dispersing them.
Part two: while the vortex formed, Asui would move along the perimeter intercepting any villain trying to escape the radius. Her aquatic quirk gave her a movement advantage in that environment that no villain could match if they tried to bypass the effect.
Part three: when the villains were centralized and escape attempts blocked, Mineta would use the pneumatic system to launch spheres into the center of the vortex. Maximum concentration of spheres in minimum space. Villains adhered to each other, the water, any surface they touched.
Simultaneous neutralization instead of sequential.
— Your arm, — said Mineta, looking at Midoriya's right hand.
Midoriya looked at it too.
— One finger. I can control it.
— Can you?
— I can try.
It wasn't the most reassuring answer. But it was honest, and Mineta valued that more than false certainty.
— Asui-san, — said Midoriya, — when the vortex starts, none escape at the edges.
— Kero.
— Mineta-kun, wait until the concentration is maximum before launching. If you launch too early, some escape before the adhesion reaches them.
— Understood. How much time do I have?
— Three seconds from when the vortex is complete. After that it starts to dissipate.
Three seconds. The pneumatic system can cover the central area in two if pressure is sufficient.
— Good.
Midoriya looked at the water. He breathed in that specific way of someone preparing for something he knew would hurt.
And he jumped.
The Delaware Smash had a specific sound that the animation approximated but didn't reproduce exactly.
The snap of the finger first, brief and dry. And then, a fraction of a second later, the sound of air moving in a way air normally doesn't move, as if the space between particles had temporarily decided to reorganize under pressure.
The vortex took two seconds to fully form.
When complete, it had a radius of about eight meters centered where Midoriya had activated the quirk, and the villains within that radius suddenly lost control of the environment they had assumed guaranteed.
Now. Wait. Not yet. Now.
Mineta used the pneumatic shoulder system.
Not one sphere. Not two. He launched everything he had available in the three-second window, aiming at the vortex center with active spatial awareness of each sphere in flight, adjusting trajectories in real time to maximize coverage of the central area.
The spheres hit.
The villains touched them.
And they stuck.
Not all. Three villains on the vortex's outer perimeter had enough distance to partially escape the radius, and Asui was already in the water intercepting two of the three with the efficiency of someone born for that environment. The third tried to circle Asui's position beneath the surface.
The third.
Mineta launched two more spheres from the deck, calculating the villain's submersion trajectory from the disturbance they made on the water surface. The first missed. The second hit, sticking to the villain's back the moment he resurfaced seeking air, adhering him to nearby hull debris.
Asui got out of the water.
In the vortex's center, now dissipating, a block of immobilized villains with the collective expression of people who had underestimated someone one hundred twenty-three centimeters tall, a girl moving like a frog, and a boy with his arm in a sling who apparently could reorganize water with a finger.
It works. It worked.
Midoriya emerged from the water, right finger injured, needing medical attention but that wasn't the priority at that moment.
— How long do they hold? — he asked, looking at the immobilized villains.
— The spheres last between two and six hours depending on the surface, — said Mineta. — In water adhesion degrades faster. One hour, maybe two.
— Enough. — Midoriya looked toward the shore. — We need to get to the central plaza.
The shore of the shipwreck zone was forty meters away.
Without active villains to intercept, the crossing was faster than their arrival. Asui carried Midoriya with her tongue so he didn't strain his right finger. Mineta used the spheres as bounce points on the floating wooden debris, the rebound soles converting each contact into extra forward momentum.
They arrived wet, suits soaked, joints feeling the cold of the water—but they arrived.
And then they saw the central plaza.
Aizawa was still standing.
Which, Mineta knew and at the same time struggled to process in real time, was something that shouldn't be humanly possible given what he had been doing.
The scarf moved. The elbows kept striking. Erasure activated and deactivated with a precision requiring eyes open in conditions where keeping eyes open was already an act of pure will.
But his movements had those milliseconds of delay that at this combat level changed everything. Dust from the battle accumulated. Every blink was a fraction of a second where Erasure stopped working, and the villains knew it and waited for exactly that.
Don't look. You can't change this. Focus on what's next.
But he kept watching, because Aizawa deserved at least that.
Midoriya had the expression of someone whose analysis reached a conclusion he didn't want to accept.
Asui watched silently with that calm of hers, which at that moment was the closest thing to a fortress any of the three could articulate in words.
And then Shigaraki calculated the exact interval between blinks.
And touched Aizawa's elbow.
The disintegration was fast. Too fast for the human eye to fully process before it had already happened.
Aizawa didn't scream.
Which was almost worse.
Midoriya let out an involuntary sound and stepped forward, his feet stopping him because there was nowhere useful to go. Asui pressed her lips together, the only visible crack in her composure.
Mineta clenched his fists and didn't look away. Looking away changed nothing.
I can't change what's happening to Aizawa-sensei. But I can stay alert to what comes next.
And then the Nomu emerged from among the villains.
In person, it was worse than the anime—not because it was visually more violent but because it was real, and the real has a weight animation cannot reproduce. Large. Fast in a way that didn't match something that size. Moving toward Aizawa with the efficiency of something designed specifically for that purpose.
The arms.
The sound.
Their teacher's head hitting the concrete plaza floor, repeatedly, with a violence that had no rage behind it but something worse: mechanical indifference.
Midoriya was visibly trembling. His hands sought something to grab onto and found nothing.
— Sensei — he said, almost inaudibly.
Asui placed a hand on Midoriya's arm. A small gesture, the most she could offer.
Mineta kept his worry where it was, not letting it become anything else, because anything else was useless, and worry at least allowed him to think.
Shigaraki will move toward us. That's what he does next. Prepare.
The man with the hands saw them.
For a moment, the villain leader's eyes, visible among all the hands covering his face, landed on the three students at the shipwreck zone shore.
And something in his posture shifted from casual indifference to something closer to interest.
— Look at that — he said, with that voice of his more unsettling than any scream could have been. — Three who escaped the water.
He moved toward them.
Don't step back. Nothing useful behind you. Hold your position.
Midoriya stepped back involuntarily. Asui stayed still. Mineta didn't move because his feet had decided not to, though the rest of him had varying opinions.
The villain reached them.
And placed a hand on Asui's face.
It was a moment lasting less than a second yet simultaneously felt endless. The hand with five fingers over Asui's face. Asui completely still, because moving could accelerate full contact. Midoriya frozen, horror and helplessness on his face in a way Mineta wished he'd never seen.
Mineta didn't think.
He launched.
Three spheres, as fast as the pneumatic system could shoot, aimed at the villain's hand on Asui's face. Not to neutralize him. For the only thing they could do at that moment: move the hand before contact was complete.
One of the three arrived in time.
The villain's hand stuck to Asui's cheek instead of covering it entirely. Not enough to activate full disintegration.
The villain looked down at the sphere with the expression of someone encountering an unexpected variable.
And at that moment, from the central plaza, Aizawa lifted his head.
With arms destroyed. With the face that had been against the concrete floor. With everything that creature had done to him.
He lifted his head.
His eyes found the villain.
Erasure activated.
The hand on Asui's cheek stopped glowing with disintegration energy and the villain noticed, looking toward Aizawa with an expression that for the first time had something resembling—not exactly—surprise.
Asui stepped back carefully.
The villain looked at Aizawa.
Aizawa looked back, head lifted from the ground by sheer willpower, eyes open though every second they stayed open was an effort no one should have had to make.
And then the Nomu moved again.
Aizawa's head returned to the ground.
Erasure deactivated.
The villain looked at Mineta.
— Hey — he said, with that casual curiosity of his. — Are you the sticky ball guy?
— Yes.
— Interesting. — He tilted his head. — They won't be very useful here.
Probably not. But they're all I have.
— Probably not — admitted Mineta.
— Then why are you in front?
It was a reasonable question. Mineta had no particularly good answer that didn't sound like something out of a heroic speech, which in this context would have been comical.
— Because someone has to be.
The villain looked at him for a second, expression not exactly disdain. Something closer to genuine curiosity from someone who found something that didn't fit his usual categories.
Then he looked at the Nomu.
The creature moved.
Here we go.
Mineta launched spheres. Four, five, in rapid sequence, aimed at the Nomu's leg joints, trying to create adhesion points to complicate its movement before it reached striking range.
You won't stop it. You just need to delay the first impact.
The creature dodged two at a speed that didn't match something that size. The other three hit its torso and left arm.
And it kept advancing.
Of course. Naturally.
The impact came.
The rebound soles allowed him to absorb part of the blow and redirect it instead of taking it directly, his body doing what three years of training had installed as an automatic response before the brain could issue instructions. Still, the blow was real and the plaza floor was real when it hit.
He stood up.
Lungs registering the impact. Knees protesting. The hull had held, but the shoulder system had absorbed part of the blow in a way not in the original design and would need inspection afterward.
Yes.
The Nomu looked at him.
And then Mineta noticed something on its skin.
It wasn't a thought. It was a sensation, like when something dormant suddenly awakens with more energy than the sleep suggested it had stored. The quirk did something it had never done before, flowing through paths that had always existed but never fully opened, reaching the surface of the skin with an urgency that was neither painful nor comfortable.
What is this?
He looked at the back of his right hand.
A glow. Subtle, almost imperceptible in the USJ dome's diffuse light. Dark purple on the wet suit's surface. As if something was pushing from inside out, finding its way through routes that had previously been closed.
I've never felt this before.
This is what I was waiting for to happen.
The Nomu raised its arm for the next strike.
Mineta gritted his teeth. Knees still aching. The body fully aware that what was coming would be worse than before.
Doesn't matter. Hold. Something is happening, and you need to be standing when it's done.
Midoriya shouted something from behind. Asui moved toward a flank.
And Mineta, with the quirk doing things it had never done and a creature designed to kill All Might preparing to strike again, looked at the back of his right hand once more.
The glow was considerably stronger than ten seconds ago.
It's happening, he thought, with the specific clarity of someone who doesn't fully understand what they're seeing but knows it's real. I don't know exactly what it is. But it's happening.
He stayed where he was.
End of Episode 18.