Yu Takeyama slammed her foot on the brakes, sending her Kawasaki KZ6R into a sharp, screeching drift just outside the commercial district. Billowing clouds of thick black smoke were already choking the skyline. The source was a four-story shopping mall, its ground floor completely engulfed in roaring flames.
Panicked civilians were screaming, tripping over each other as they poured out of the main entrance into the streets. Through the haze, Yu spotted a group of roughly ten villains recklessly looting the nearby high-end storefronts, shoving stolen jewelry, watches, and fat stacks of cash into heavy duffel bags.
'They intentionally set the fire as a distraction,' Yu realized instantly, her teeth gritting as she sprinted toward the perimeter. 'They knew any hero arriving on the scene would have to prioritize saving lives from the blaze over chasing them down!'
Inside the structure, the fire alarms were blaring, but the automated ceiling sprinklers were bone dry. The villains had undoubtedly cut the main water line.
'Every large commercial building has two primary water reserves—one underground and one on the roof. The underground lines are inaccessible right now, but the rooftop tanks...' Without wasting another second, she activated her Quirk.
In a surge of light and expanding mass, her body shot upward, growing into a towering sixty-foot giantess. Stepping over the perimeter power lines, Yu reached down with her massive gloved hands and ripped two industrial metal water storage tanks straight off the mall's roof. She tore off their tops like pop-tabs on soda cans.
"Everyone, move toward the cleared paths!" Yu's voice boomed across the plaza, reverberating off the surrounding skyscrapers.
Using the breached water tanks like massive watering cans, she tilted them over, pouring thousands of gallons of water directly onto the blazing exit routes. The torrent doused the flames in a wave of violent steam, creating a clear, cooled path for the trapped civilians to sprint out into the open.
However, the sudden sight of a giant hero quickly drew the villains' attention.
"Hey! Don't let that oversized chick ruin the payload!" one of the villains barked.
Suddenly, a hulking villain activated his Quirk. His body mutated instantly, swelling into a massive, heavy-shelled turtle the size of Yu's waist.
"HAAA!" the turtle villain roared, pulling his head and limbs entirely inside his spiked shell. Beside him, a second villain with a muscle-enhancement Quirk licked his lips with a sleazy grin. He wound back his leg and kicked the shell with brutal force, sending it spinning like a high-speed, lethal top straight toward Yu's midsection while she was still shielding a group of fleeing civilians.
'Shit!' Yu thought, her heart dropping. 'Where are the other heroes?! I can't dodge this, or the blast radius will crush everyone behind me!'
Dropping the emptied water tanks, Yu planted her boots into the asphalt, bent down, and caught the roaring, spinning shell with her bare hands. The friction burned through her gloves, forcing a pained grunt from her throat as she forced the shell's trajectory upward, hurling it into the open sky above.
Before she could recover her stance, the remaining eight villains unleashed a coordinated volley. Fireballs, razor-sharp wind blades, and even telekinetically tossed steel girders flew directly at her giant frame.
BOOOOOOM!
A sharp sonic boom tore through the air overhead. Out of nowhere, a sleek metallic shape streaked through the smoke clouds. A red energy beam swept across the sky, vaporizing the incoming steel beams and blasting the elemental attacks into harmless sparks!
"What?!" Yu and the villains gasped in complete shock.
The vehicle hovered in the sky, its glossy hull gleaming. Yu's eyes locked onto the chest section of the machine, where a brilliant crimson ring pulsed with clean, terrifying power.
'Wait... glowing red circle... an Arc Reactor?!' Yu's jaw practically hit the pavement. 'That pink-haired menace!'
Through the glass canopy of the jet, Yu caught sight of five familiar faces waving frantically at her—Nejire, Mei, Mineta, Toru, and Himiko.
A small hatch on the underside of the jet clicked open. Mineta dropped straight out, landing lightly right on top of Yu's head, using her hair to cushion his footing. Up above, the hatch snapped shut, and Mei gripped her remote controller with a manic grin.
"Fuhahaha! Eat laser fire, you low-grade target dummies!" Mei cackled over the jet's intercom, plunging Megatron into a steep dive while unleashing a barrage of energy pulses and explosive charges onto the villain group, scattering them in utter chaos.
"Onee-san!" Mineta shouted down to Yu from atop her head, his voice clear and sharp. "Let Mei and the girls keep the ground crew distracted! You take down that spinning turtle guy and keep suppressing the fire out here! I'm going inside the mall to check for trapped civilians!"
Down below, the turtle villain crashed back onto the asphalt a block away, popping his head out before pulling back in to spin toward Yu once more.
Yu gritted her teeth. Every instinct as a provisional hero screamed at her—this was illegal, they were middle schoolers, and above all, she couldn't let a kid walk into a burning inferno! But looking at the spreading fire and the complete lack of professional backup, she knew they were running out of time.
"I am temporarily granting you permission to act as my support sidekick for civilian rescue!" Yu barked, her voice firm and authoritative. "But under NO circumstances are you allowed to engage villains directly! Do you understand me, Minoru?!"
"Got it!" Mineta yelled back, leaping off her head and dropping down to the pavement like a acrobat.
He didn't waste a second. Ripping a strip of durable cloth from his gear pouch, he wrapped a cluster of his purple Pop Off spheres together, binding them tightly around the soles of his shoes to create makeshift, high-rebound springs.
BOING! BOING! BOING!
Mineta launched himself forward, bouncing off walls and floor tiles like a high-speed ping-pong ball, rocketing straight through the shattered glass doors into the burning mall.
"IS ANYONE TRAPPED IN HERE?!" Mineta's voice echoed over the roar of the blaze.
Bouncing through the smoke-choked corridors at dizzying speeds, he spotted several terrified shoppers trapped behind collapsed display racks and fire-locked storefronts. One by one, he scooped them up, piggybacked them out through the main entrance, dropped them into the safety of Yu's water-cleared zones, and immediately bounced back inside.
'Heart rate steady, stamina holding... I can keep this pace up!' he thought, scanning every corridor.
As he reached the third-floor theater complex, a desperate, raspy scream echoed from behind a set of heavy double doors.
"HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE!"
Mineta kicked through the doors and froze. Surrounded by a roaring ring of fire stood two very familiar girls—Komori Kinoko and Yanagi Reiko, both future Class 1-B students.
Reiko was trembling violently, her hands raised above her head as her telekinesis Quirk held a massive, burning support pillar in mid-air. Smoke was irritating her eyes, and her control was slipping fast. If she let go, the heavy beam would crush them both. Komori was cowering right behind her, sobbing in sheer terror as the flames closed in around them.
"Hold on!" Mineta shouted.
Bouncing over the ring of fire, he plucked the spheres from his head, snapping them together into a flexible, bead-like rope.
"Mineta Beads!"
He whipped the sticky chain forward, wrapping it tightly around the burning pillar. With a powerful twist of his core, Mineta yanked the heavy beam right out of Reiko's telekinetic grip and threw it over his shoulder, crashing it safely into an empty row of seats.
"Grab on tightly!" Mineta ordered, rushing up to them.
Without waiting for a response, he scooped both girls up by their waists, holding them firmly against his sides. Komori and Reiko clung to his shoulders like lifelines, burying their faces in his chest.
BOING!
With a single, powerful rebound off a concrete wall, Mineta cleared the wall of fire in a clean arc, zipping down the ruined escalator and bursting through the front entrance into the fresh air.
He gently set both girls down on the cool pavement. Tears streamed down their soot-stained faces as they gasped for breath, trembling from the adrenaline.
"Thank you... thank you so much..." Komori sobbed, clutching her hands to her chest.
"We... we thought we were going to die..." Reiko whispered, her dark eyes wide with shock and profound gratitude.
Mineta offered them a reassuring grin, wiping a smudge of ash from his forehead. "It's okay now. The path behind me is clear—run toward the giant blonde hero out front, she'll keep you safe."
Before they could even ask for his name, Mineta turned back around, his Pop Off boots engaging as he transformed into a purple blur, vanishing back into the burning building to continue his search.
Komori and Reiko stood there for a moment, watching the doorway where he had vanished. 'Who was that boy...?' both girls thought simultaneously, his confident smile burned into their minds as they turned and ran toward safety.