A/N: Stayed up until almost 3 in the morning writing this.

*zombie noises*

Whoever said that your life flashed before your eyes when you died was potentially a massive liar. If I'd had the time to rewatch my boring existence, then I would have had the time to figure my way out of my massive predicament.

It was my fault, absolutely. My life had been in my own hands and I'd overlooked an obviously major factor in my possible survival. Great big adult with responsibilities and what could have been a job I may have been, but I was also stuck in the body of a preteen.

Even if I'd come close to killing myself a few times with training in order to survive in this deceptively shitty world, having better reflexes or faster ground speeds didn't mean shit when the other guy could get one hand on you and then blow the fuck up.

Had I gotten cocky? Nah, I wouldn't say so. Cockiness would imply confidence, and confidence would imply that I'd even had time to think through the implications of what I'd done. I'd saved the teacher for a moment, whoever she even was, but the most my interceptions would have otherwise accomplished was maybe buy enough time for everyone else to get just a little bit further away.

Maybe that would matter, and maybe this happening today was inevitable. If only I hadn't moved without thinking. If only I'd had the time to think.

Looking back, I really could have grabbed his head and given it all the torque my little blood soaked hands could generate. It would have come with a whole new set of problems after the fact, assuming it worked at all, and I couldn't help but be just a little bit glad that my immediate reaction wasn't cold-blooded murder.

For all five seconds it would last. I wonder what the next life would have in store?

I didn't really see anything of grand design or significant impact through my mind as that spark caught and lit us both up. I could have said that time seemed to remain slow, that the utter dread I'd been feeling was enough to make this moment seem like it had lasted forever, but that was far from the truth.

There wasn't really any dread. There was embarrassment, sure, that I'd completely forgotten to confiscate any potential weaponry when I should have known that I wouldn't have the power to immobilise my enemy. There was fear, but that was mainly for the lives of everyone else around me. The actual children, those who hadn't already lived and learned.

They would be safe. They'd have to be. I'd had a hero following me since I got to this country, and even if they couldn't help my dumb ass out of this predicament, everyone else would be fine.

It was kind of a chilling realisation to find out that I was probably going to die. And that's okay. At the very least, this would give Shouji his amazingly tragic background story that every prolific hero needed.

Hahaha… Shit, I hope he could forgive me for this.

Getting free was impossible, given my time frame. Tanking an explosion when I was in the middle of its catalyst would probably be a bit out of my limits of endurance. Opening my mouth and allowing some of the gas to get into my lungs would be a monumentally bad idea, but so was tackling the living bomb.

I don't know how I had the opportunity, but when I took my final breath, I inhaled a bit more than necessary and threw my head back.

"BRING IT, FUCKER!"

The cry rang out over the screaming of the students around us. It beat the sirens out for sheer volume and drowned out panicked howling that was coming from all six of Shouji's arms. I closed my eyes, face scrunched up in preparation for the heat and the dark abyss on the other side.

Flames washed over me. I could feel them as they burned at my clothing, blasting the detachable hair from my head and chilling me to the bone- wait what?

Cautiously, I cracked a single eye open, tilting it down when it wasn't immediately burned right out of my skull. The hand clamped around my arm was still there, but now the wrist it had been connected to was pointing in the opposite direction of the elbow is was attached to. Blue flamed billowed around the man's entire body, hiding everything from view but the twitching of his clearly dislocated shoulder.

He was trying to scream, I think. It was hard to tell, because there was a very heavy boot digging directly into his jaw, pressing into the toxic bruise that I'd left behind.

I scrambled away, patting myself absently to assure myself that yes, I absolutely was still alive. The boot holding the bomber down lifted slightly, letting the man take a short breath before it dropped, the impact leaving cracks in the cement around him.

I followed the boot up a long leg, over a dark jacket, and up at the chin of the man who had just saved my life. The rest of his face was covered in an obsidian mask, leaving only enough room for piercing turquoise eyes to level a malicious glare down at my would-be murderer.

This was my babysitter for that morning, I could see that soon enough. The blue fire dancing along his body was a dead giveaway. Even so, he looked familiar. Like I should have known who he was, or at least had an idea.

Someone behind me groaned, the noise barely loud enough to be heard over the crackling flame. In that moment, I remembered where I was and what had happened. There were others around me. There were people dying.

The hero was forgotten as I spun around, assessing the situation as best I could. I didn't have much, only knowledge that was given to me about ten years ago and may have been a few centuries out of date, but what else was there?

It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, to be honest. There were injuries, yes, but much of the scorch marks seemed to just stop at a certain point. Streaks spread out from both edges, true, but the people who had been near them had gotten away with little more than burns.

Of course, there had been someone who had taken the majority of the blast.

I could barely recognise the teacher that had initially approached when I'd fled the man. The most I could see was that her hair was pink. I would have to wait until later to figure out if it was natural or not, because I'd found where all the devastation to the environment had gone. Her limbs were charred, most of her face was covered in ash, and I could see she wasn't breathing because most of her chest was exposed.

I shrugged off my uniform top and draped it over her, partly to cover her modesty, but mostly so I wouldn't slip. Footsteps were rushing over to me as I settled on my knees and locked my hands over her sternum; I could tell it was Shouji, given how his arms threw off his gait.

I had the time to breathe into her mouth twice before he reached us. Both times her chest rose and fell, before she was completely still again. Fuck.

Blood loss, blood loss… a lot, but not enough to risk brain death. Maybe, possibly, but what choice did I have?

"Min-!" He froze, the rest of my name coming out as a short gasp. I rolled my shoulders before locking them into position, leaning my weight onto my arms and glancing up at him for a split second.

"You'll need to tell me when she has a pulse, I can't stop."

Shouji would come through. I knew I could trust him, even with this. I got to compression three before I could see him sitting beside me and crossing his legs, one of his arms morphing into an ear and the other five doing who knows what outside my vision.

"Ambulance sirens a few blocks away," He told me by compression twenty-seven. All I could do was grunt.

The second set of rescue breaths came and went. I almost faltered when I saw her eyelid flicker after the second one, but the moment was short-lived and there was no movement afterwards.

A loud crack echoed out of her chest as I counted past nineteen once more. The arm Shouji was holding over her flinched, and I nearly did too.

"That was a rib." One of his other arms told me, the words feeling oppressive in their volume even though they had been dan near whispered directly into my ear.

"Can't stop," was my short reply.

I couldn't tell you how long I was kneeling there, trying to bring some life back into the woman that I'd almost unknowingly sacrificed. The eternal moments I'd spent locked in that madman's embrace couldn't hold a candle to the marathon that I was participating in now. I think I honestly would have preferred to be locked in his grip again, if it meant that this hadn't needed to happen.

I fought back, just for a moment, when someone began tugging me away. The two hands on my shoulders were immediately joined by another pair, which was the only thing that calmed me down. Shouji tugged me backwards and I blinked, my vision suddenly filling with things other than my bloodstained shirt and hands and my brain snapping out of the continuous loop to thirty that I'd trapped it within.

She was lifted onto a stretcher, ferried away by people with Quirks far more suitable to the situation than mine could ever be. I folded my arms up in my ruined shirt, the cold sting of defeat curling up in my gut, and was about to turn around when a girl about my age was led towards the ambulance by the hand.

Her hair was identical to the teacher, in both colour and odd style. Her eyes were swamped with tears, but as she turned to look at me, even between the distance between us, I could see the crosshairs within her irises unerringly focus directly onto me.

'I'm sorry,' I mouthed at her, because I knew she would see it. She seemed surprised, pausing for a moment, but it was enough time for her to shoot me a watery smile before she was ushered into the cabin of the vehicle.

There were more than a few cars parked outside of the school. A lot more ambulances took up space wherever they could fit. Policemen were out in droves, clearing room as more children were shepherded through the front gate and towards the army of paramedics.

I tugged weakly against my restraints as Shouji led me directly to one of the ambulances. It didn't matter that the woman who wrapped a blanket around my shoulders greeted him with a tight hug. It didn't feel like I needed the treatment as she shot me an intimidating grin and checked my temperature with her third arm.

There was not a number in the world small enough to accurately showcase how little Shouji cared for my protests as he bodily pulled me into the back of the ambulance. He still had three arms wrapped around me as we sat hip-to-hip on the bed, his grip maybe just a little too tight and my hands shaking just a little too much to try to adjust it.

Bless that boy.

XxX

"-...i, who was patrolling the area on the second year of his provisional licence, was quick to step in. Thanks to the intervention of one of the school's own students, only one person was critically injured in the initial blast…"

I wish I could turn that damn thing off.

Hospital chairs were never comfortable. It didn't matter how much padding you packed under your ass, if the armrests were heated and a personal masseur was working the kinks out of your shoulders while you waited. And I didn't even have the latter two things to help me through this.

I hadn't needed any attention beyond the simple check-up I got in the ambulance ride over. The guy'd had enough grip strength to leave some welts behind on my arms, but that was thankfully all that had happened. My attack had been too sudden and brutal for him to get any real damage in.

Between my assault and the finisher from the Pro that had been there, I had my doubts he'd ever be able to talk again. The vindictive glee I felt was probably a little much, but after all was said and done, I was glad to have left that mark behind.

Not for myself, of course. I didn't give a shit about that. It was all for the little girl that had claimed the seat beside mine, her legs drawn up to her chin and her eyes glued to the television.

I looked up at it too, just in time to watch an outsider perspective of the event as it happened. The camera had shifted from a couple of girls who would have been a few years levels above me, one of them doing their best to hold a wobbly smile, while the other waited impatiently for a camera flash that would never happen. It was easy to chuckle at that; Even after all this time, some of the classics survived.

Witnessing that blast from their point of view was terrifying. The area behind them lit up, and a few seconds of blurring colours and panicked shouts reigned. The camera was righted after concrete had turned to grass, and the girl's friend could be heard shouting at her as she skidded to a stop and turned her phone back towards the scene.

She got there just in time for my hair to catch the flaming glob of mucus. The camera shook again, people cried out, and then there I was, arcing through the air towards my victim.

And looking like a fucking fool while doing so.

The real reason I'd had enough momentum to actually do some damage with that kick was because I was tumbling over the pavement like a leaf in a hurricane. It seemed that only the grace of god and anime logic had allowed me to live through the day.

That chokehold was textbook, though. I could be proud of that attempted submission. Even if my shrimpy little t-rex arms didn't do the job properly.

Dropping a stomp from a full two metres right onto his baby maker was just an added bonus. I hope, for the rest of his miserable life, whenever he looked down there, he would think of me.

...OH FUCK WAIT NO-

The screen flared blue, replacing the horrid cries with crackling flames. I turned away from the burning light, tilting my head towards the ground as the screen broke off into static and the screaming finally stopped.

"...That footage, captured just this morning, shows the terrifying moment when a villain attack starts. No news has reached yet as to who this man even is, or whether he is a resident of our country. Police are still-"

The television flickered off suddenly, a low, metallic whine echoing out of the speakers as its inner workings began to cool. Small movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to Shouji taking the seat directly beside mine.

His father took the one on the other side of Mei, the remote held within one enormous hand.

"That's nothing a kid should be watching." Despite his gruff tone, the grin he sent my way was all friendly. "You doin' alright?"

I sagged in my seat, wishing I could run a hand through my hair without taking half of it with me. Without the constant drone of the television, the room we were sitting in was eerily quiet.

"Honestly, I think one of the nurses sedated me." And for good reason, too. I hadn't really been able to stop shaking once it sunk in just how close I had been to dying. It was the kind of thing that hit you much harder after the fact, considering there wasn't supposed to be an after the fact.

The man laughed, ruffling my hair; absentmindedly swatting away the spheres that had gotten stuck to his hand. "Yeah, they do that."

Maybe I would have tried to smile back at him, if I wasn't tripping. As it was, our current environment wasn't very conducive to cheer, no matter how false it may have been.

After a moment, Shouji patted me on the arm and hopped out of his chair. I did manage a smile as he moved around me and climbed into his father's lap, his shoulders even more stiff than mine. A glance towards Mei proved that she was an unresponsive as before, so with a sigh I settled back in my chair, picking at the dried blood on my arm as I awaited news about the woman that I'd left to die.

One of the receptionists had told me that Katsushika was notified on my presence the moment I came through the door. Apparently he'd promised to bring some fresh clothes when he came to pick me up. Technically I wasn't really supposed to be sitting there, but with Shouji's father being relegated to keeping an eye on Mei and Katsushika being Katsushika, well… let's just say I wasn't expecting to be able to change any time soon.

Time passed by at a crawl. With nothing left to occupy my time, I pulled out my phone, checking over my bank account as quickly as the horrible reception in the building allowed. I would be able to cover any medical fees if it came to that; being published with another book in the works was good for that, after all, but that was a secret and the mysterious novelist 'M.M' had nothing to do with me beyond a few odd coincidences.

If the world was a kinder place, I probably would have laughed over the fact that people considered my historical comedy set in pre-Quirk society as a horror. Take that, add in some aliens and philosophical musings on the limits of reality and fiction, and people were hooked.

International bestseller, or so I'd been told. I closed down all the unnecessary apps with a few swipes of my finger, opened up some unfinished notes, and quietly began work on the sequel.

On my phone. In a hospital waiting room.

Maybe this was a horror story.

Nobody was in a chatty mood for the next handful of minutes. Shouji's father left to use the bathroom, and silently played the part of despair well enough to get a small smile out of his son when Shouji refused to give the seat back. Mei sniffed a few times, and somewhere along the line I went from writing down ideas as they occurred to me to angling my phone so we could all watch silly cat videos.

We were about a third of the way through a lacklustre prank compilation, which I was only stomaching because it was getting laughs from Shouji and Mei, when a doctor I didn't recognise walked into the room. He cleared his throat, staring pointedly in our direction, and Shouji's father untangled himself from the uncomfortable positions we'd all settled in to stand up.

"Mrs Hatsume's next of kin?" The doctor moved to look at Mei at the same time Shouji's father stepped in front of her.

"Her husband is still an hour away and I have permission to inform him of anything that happens." Even though I could only hear the frown in his voice, I had to feel sorry for that doctor. Shouji's father (I really would need to learn his name sometime soon) had been all smiles with us up until that point, but he was still a man who was built like a two-story house. I couldn't tell if it was his Quirk or just the way he was, but the guy looked like he could actually, literally eat me.

I think I would have rather picked a fight with a bear. They were about the same size, but at least there was a slim chance that I was smarter than a bear.

It was an apt comparison, now that I actually thought about it. Both were protecting cubs.

The doctor stilled looked hesitant, not that I could blame him. It was common knowledge that villain attacks weren't just about injuries. Everyone, even (most) villains had friends, and about 80% of the population had a means of attacking someone if the mood struck them and the victim had given away enough information.

It was a ridiculous policy that didn't really help matters much and only really could be enforced in public clinics, but it was common enough to be a regular plot point on the medical dramas that I would sometimes sit through if there was nothing else to watch.

I get bored easily, okay?

Of course, blowing up a school didn't really count as discrete, and the doctor didn't take very long to realise that. He cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, gave the clipboard in his hands one last glance, and then returned his attention to Shouji's father with a small smile.

"She's expected to make a full recovery."

I slumped back into my seat like a puppet with slit strings, a relieved laugh bubbling up out of my throat. Something latched onto my hand, and it took me a few moments to realise that Mei had clamped onto it in a fit of joy. At least I think the dance she was doing in her seat was supposed to be joy.

"We're unsure if it's a hereto-unknown aspect of her Quirk, but it appears her heart managed to beat long enough for the paramedics to stabilise her." From the corner of my eye, I could see one of Shouji's arms morph into a mouth. Thinking quickly, I shot a hand out and nudged his shoulder, shaking my head in the negative when he turned inquisitive eyes on me. I knew exactly what he was about to say, and I had a fair idea of how it would go if something like that was released to the public. "It will take some time, but all her injuries are expected to heal."

The miracles of modern medicine. Though, saying "there's a Quirk for that" was hardly an advancement for any particular discipline. Whatever, I wasn't about to complain about that when there were so many other things I could complain about.

For example; my fucking school just got blown up. My teacher and fellow students too, but they would probably be okay. Still, school was literally the only thing that got me out of the house beyond my own backyard, so that was pretty shitty.

Questions would have to be answered, but for now, I wasn't in any position to even ask them. While I probably could have figured out exactly who that hero on duty was, there was no guarantee that I would be able to get into contact with him. Yamada was a definite no-go, and Aizawa was a coin flip at best.

Even so, why? Was it a random attack? I know I'd been reborn as Mineta and everything, but was I truly that unlucky? No, I didn't think so. Not when the man had walked up to me in particular. Not when I was forced to be under constant supervision from people who could fight.

Mei's father sprinted through the emergency room sliding doors forty minutes later. I'd spent all that time in quiet contemplation, ignoring any attempts to lure me into conversation. I was too busy trying to find clues that I could string together, trying to make any sense of this situation.

Shouji's father ended up driving me home.

Katsushiki never bothered showing up.

XxX

I always thought the corkboard, thumb tack, and string combination was a tired joke. A cliche for insane characters to showcase that they're insane. As I stood in front of my corkboard, looping another piece of string between two thumb tacks, I couldn't help but feel that there was a bit too much truth in television for my comfort.

My head felt like it was spinning in an endless circle. All of this made sense in the most nonsensical of ways. Elite guards are following me around, my school gets attacked, I was the one the guy initially approached… and then nothing. No clues, no interesting little shred of evidence in the police reports that I perused through totally legal means (shut up), and no form of follow-up ever since.

Explodo McFuckface stared at me from the corkboard, his blank eyes carving a divot into my soul. I stared right back at him, my head cocked to the side, in a fruitless attempt to come to any conclusion other than, 'this is a mugshot.'

He wasn't alone up there. I had pictures of Mineta as a baby, somewhat obstructing the few shots I'd managed to scrounge up of what I'd looked like in my first life. Beside those was a picture of every conceivable angle of the building housing the less than legal surgical facility that had saved me from a tortured existence of being two feet tall, along with a transcription of the conversation I'd had in order to set up the appointment.

I'd forgotten that part of the deception was claiming I was just an unfortunately short twenty-something. It wasn't like that was a lie, it just wasn't the entire truth.

Gaslight ChildPopper the Third wasn't telling me shit. I gazed into his dead, photograph eyes for a moment longer before shaking my head and sighing in disgust. The man had no weaknesses, my techniques weren't working. I ran my hand through my hair, shaking the balls off my fingers afterwards. I needed a new angle.

I tore the edge of the photo slightly as I ripped it off the wall and flung it somewhere towards the corner of the room. The crazed-sounding muttering I was doing under my breath didn't really help alleviate the 'insane' appearance any, but I had more important things to worry about.

Like stringing up a picture of my school in the space where Fugly's head had once been.

Enjoy getting diddled in prison, dipshit.
The door behind me slowly creaked open, flooding half the room in light. I paid it no mind, instead choosing to keep focusing on the board. Hizashi was out buying groceries, which meant that Aizawa was both alone in guarding me and more aware than ever, given the lack of backup. Trusting him to know when it would be alright to interrupt me, I grabbed at another piece of string-

Two tiny hands wrapped around arm. I froze, glancing down at them in utter bewilderment, and didn't even get a chance to turn around before the talking started.

"Ohmygosh why didn't you tell me Shouji toldmewhatyou did I was so scared why didn't you tell me that youguysweretheones that saved mama!"

I turned around, and sure enough, there was a head of pink hair tucked into my side. Cross-haired pupils stared up at me, and if I didn't know any better, I would have sworn that there were tiny stars dancing with them.

There was no point trying to unpack the massive jumble of words that had tumbled out of her mouth. Instead, I sighed, tried to untangle my arm from Mei's grip, and gave up once it became apparent that she wasn't about to let go without a fight.

"How did you get in my house?" Opting to go for the simple route of easy questions, I turned back to finally apply that little bit of string, that would connect my school to an underground smuggling ring that had been busted a little over a century ago- and immediately dropped it when my shoulder was almost yanked out of its socket.

"The sleepy man let me in!" The power this child wielded was immense. The corkboard soon became a distant memory as I was tugged out of the room, and even the amused expression on Aizawa's face had to take a back seat as I was dragged through my own house by a girl I'd never had a conversation with. "Wanna see what I'm working on!?"

Being almost a full head taller than her had its disadvantages, such as when we took the corner into the kitchen at speed and I was almost brained on one of the cabinets. Resigned to my fate, I quickly dislodged the sphere of hair holding my spool of string, just barely managing to leave it on the counter before I was pulled through the back door.

I wasn't exactly sure what was happening or how it had come to be, but the fact that my body had automatically gone mostly limp during the journey to my backyard in order to minimize the damage spoke wonders. Shouji was already there, laughing at my predicament. I didn't know what the eccentric goggles he was wearing were supposed to do, but something told me I was about to find out.

As Mei dove for the goggles and let go of my arm a little too late, I pondered my fate just a little bit more. This was an interesting hole I'd found myself trapped in; I didn't know how deep it was or if I was even falling at the moment. I didn't even know which life I had to worry about more.

Those thought left me, along with all the air in my lungs, when Mei came crashing down upon me. The goggles on her head and the massive wrench in her hand must have come close to doubling her weight, and all of that was now resting on my sternum as she fiddled with her strange invention. She seemed comfortable, sprawled out on her stomach, but at least her shifting around every few moments gave me a chance to breathe.

Shouji laughed again, happy and carefree, and maybe knowing he could still make a noise like that turned the pained wheeze I let out afterwards into a strained chuckle. He didn't seem worried, not anymore, and maybe that was a bit more reassuring than it should have been.

Buuuut… Guess I didn't have a choice, I would just have to figure this all out another day.