At the end of the school day, Minoru made his way to Principal Nezu’s office rather than heading straight home. Aizawa had pulled him aside before lunch to let him know that the principal was hoping to speak with him at his earliest convenience, and he didn’t have anything to do other than obsessively research the hero agencies who drafted him.

  “Minoru Mineta!” cried the principal as Minoru pushed through the door into his office. “Prompt as I could wish! Sit, sit, relax and let me serve you some tea.” The small rodent-like being scampered about as Minoru set his bag down and took a seat, preparing tea at his hot water kettle by the wall as he continued to speak.

  “I have been very eagerly looking forward to our next conversation, I must say, very much looking forward to it indeed. Your predictions were absolutely on point, which means that either you are indeed from the future as you claim, or—“ and the principal cast a beady gaze over his shoulder at Minoru “—you are in fact the mole in Class 1-A whom I have been seeking.”

  “Mole?” asked Minoru, not expecting that particular turn to the conversation. “What mole…? Oh, come to think, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? I hadn’t really thought about it, but that would explain why the League of Villains was able to crash our training camp last time around.”

  Principal Nezu watched him for a few seconds more, before nodding and turning back to his tea brewing. “Indeed, indeed, it is as you say! I rather doubt that you are in fact the mole, as I have thoroughly reviewed our security history for this school year and am doubtful that your predictions have stemmed from breaking into our systems. Also I can think of no logical reason why you would expose the depth of your knowledge if you were the mole. Rather than put yourself at risk by directly interacting with me, I would have expected you to lie low and take opportunistic action. In point of fact, I hope that you might keep an eye open for whoever might be feeding our enemy information.”

  “So does that mean you believe me?” asked Minoru, leaning forward in his chair.

  Nezu poured a pair of cups of tea and carried them over, handing one carefully to Minoru before placing his on a handy side table and scrambling into the adjacent chair. “Yes, although it boggles the mind, I have been unable to find a decent alternative explanation for your knowledge or the accuracy of your predictions so far.”

  Minoru slumped in his chair as a surge of emotion swept through him. He hadn’t realized quite how invested he had become in the idea of having someone he didn’t have to lie to through omission. “Oh thank goodness. Then…”

  “Yes, I will certainly help you in your quest to prevent All For One’s return and your predicted fall of Japan,” said the principal. “However! I must say that I was a teensy bit disappointed in your performance at the sports tournament.”

  “What?!” Minoru shot up straight. “I placed second! I even beat out Todoroki, which was frankly a miracle!”

  “Indeed.” The principal took a sip of his tea. “But in the final match, you gave up before it even began. Mineta, I must ask you: if you cannot see yourself defeating a child like Bakugo, what chance do you have against an enemy such as All For One?”

  Minoru frowned. “I’m not going to fight All For One. Are you insane? I’d just die. If we’re going to beat him, it’s going to require the pro heroes, not a student with a middling Quirk.”

  “Perhaps,” said Nezu. “Yes, pro heroes will definitely be necessary to bring about All For One’s downfall. But fighting him, even indirectly, is to attack a foe who holds the overwhelming advantage. So I’ll ask again: why did you forfeit to Bakugo?”

  Minoru looked aside. “Honestly, I didn’t see the point of putting myself through that. I’d already placed high enough in the tournament that I would have a good selection of internships to choose from, and even beyond that—Bakugo won the first time around, and it was because of his behavior when he won that the League of Villains tried to recruit him.

  “But what if I’d beaten him? Maybe he wouldn’t have flipped out like that. Maybe the League of Villains wouldn’t try to kidnap him when they attack us next. And maybe them not having a student hostage would have reduced the response when the pros tried to go after Shigaraki afterward.

  “I couldn’t risk that. I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot ever since I got sent back through time, and I’m pretty sure that it was only Shigaraki being in danger that caused All For One to come out of hiding. He might even have allowed himself to be captured to give Shigaraki a chance to escape. I’m not entirely sure why he cares so much about that nutcase, but him being put in custody is probably our only real option to derail his plans for good.”

  Principal Nezu watched him, his expression unreadable. “Then you decided to deliberately deny Bakugo the fight he wanted to ensure that history would repeat itself and give us a chance to capture All For One?”

  Minoru shook his head. “Yes. All For One being confined to prison will give us the best possible window for preventing his plans that we could hope, and I didn’t want to mess that up.”

  Principal Nezu stared at him for a moment more, before collapsing back onto his seat with a laugh. “Ah, young Mineta, I do believe you made some of that up on the spot simply to divert yourself from the shame of your own actions.”

  Minoru shifted uncomfortably. That was a little close to the mark, given that he didn’t think of most of what he’d just said until after he’d already thrown the match against Bakugo. He’d never expected to get that far in the tournament, after all. Todoroki had seemed like an unbeatable challenge.

  “But!” the principal continued, holding up a paw. “I also believe that you are correct. Bakugo’s unrestrained aggression could indeed be seen in a villainous light, and based on what I know of this Shigaraki nothing would tickle his nihilistic heart more than to steal away one of our precious students. I cannot very well argue the particulars too much when the results are self-evident.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “However, I stand by my original point, as well: you, Mineta, are uniquely placed to guide events to ensure that we are given the opportunity to tackle these diverse threats. You must be willing to fight, even against hopeless odds. But enough about that!” The principal set aside his tea cup and grinned. “You must be wondering what to do with all of your internship options!”

  Minoru sighed in relief. Evidently his grilling for forfeiting was over. “Yeah, I could definitely use some advice about that. I know I don’t have many compared to Todoroki or Bakugo, but it’s still…a lot.”

  “An excellent problem to have!” exclaimed Nezu with a gleam in his eye. “So many options to winnow down until you arrive at the perfect configuration for achieving your goals…wonderful. Now, let me see this list of yours; there was one particular hero who was so persistent in his efforts to recruit that I ended up talking to him over the phone. He certainly succeeded in engaging my curiosity, but I would hate to recommend anything before we have reviewed all the possibilities…”

  A week later, Minoru exited the train in Hosu City, and headed to what ended up being the unassuming office of his new hero internship. After researching several options, and based on Principal Nezu’s recommendation, he’d finally landed on a hero neither he nor Nezu had heard of before the hero’s persistent attempts to secure Minoru as an intern: a man calling himself the Fly.

  Minoru had asked Midoriya, but not even his hero-crazed friend knew anything about this particular hero, nor was there much information online. About all that Minoru had been able to gather was that the man had a Quirk that allowed him to fly, that he had graduated from a hero academy of significantly less acclaim than U.A., and that he had never attempted to participate in the U.A. internship program before. Why he had personally drafted Minoru—and so aggressively, at that—was a mystery Minoru was looking forward to solving.

  The address that Minoru arrived at appeared to be rented office space in a building that was otherwise housing small-to-medium businesses. Minoru entered the lobby, found the Fly’s agency on the building directory, and proceeded to the fourth floor where he found the door propped open with an old shoe wedged into the gap between the door and the frame.

  “Excuse me, hello? I’m here from U.A. about the internship…?” Minoru pushed open the door and entered the office.

  It was, in a word, shabby. A couch that looked like it had been picked up free off the street was gathering dust in one corner behind a coffee table with a scattering of month’s-old magazines on top. Nearby, a potted plant wilted, its dirt looking rather light brown and cracked with lack of moisture. To the other side, a small table had some sort of board game set up on it; Minoru thought it might be Western chess.

  An inner door stood open, leading to an office that was little more than a desk overflowing with paperwork and another potted plant that looked, if anything, even more despondent than the first.

  Before Minoru could investigate the office further, a man with long blond hair and some sort of partially-translucent sheets of material extruding from his forearms strode into the room from the hall behind him.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome, you must be Minoru Mineta! I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to greet you, but when nature calls, what can we do but answer? In any case, I—“ the man struck a pose, arms on his hips and his Quirk jutting out to either side of him, “—am the Fly!” The man’s epic bangs fell across his eye, and he blew at them several times before giving up and abandoning his pose to sweep them behind his ear.

  “Uh, yeah, I’m Minoru. Though I’m going by Pomace as my hero name.”

  “Very good, very good!” The Fly shook Minoru’s hand with great enthusiasm. “Do come in, settle down! I’d offer you tea and snacks, but well…” He looked around he office as if seeing it for the first time. “I actually don’t spend much time here, and I don’t have either.”

  “…Right,” said Minoru. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Come, come, have a seat!” The Fly dragged a chair from the corner that Minoru hadn’t noticed and dropped it facing backwards in front of the couch before hopping onto it and gesturing for Minoru to sit across from him.

  Minoru sat down gingerly, trying not to cause the dust to billow all over him.

  “So, Minoru. Can I call you Minoru? What do you know about the hero work that I do?”

  “Uh, practically nothing, actually. I looked you up, but couldn’t find much more than a few side mentions in news articles. Sorry.”

  “Ha ha, do not apologize! It’s true that I’m not one of the big names you hear about all the time.” The main deflated briefly, slumping forward over the back of the chair before rocketing up straight once more. “But! When I saw your performance at the sports tournament, I knew I just had to throw my name into the ring, and I’m so happy you took me up on my offer of an internship! What made you pick me, by the by?”

  Crap, Minoru hadn’t thought to come up with a reason for that ahead. “Um, well, I’ve always wanted to see what it feels like to fly.”

  The Fly threw his head back and laughed. Minoru was getting almost All Might vibes from this guy, give or take the quiet desperation of his actual office. “Don’t we all!” He held out one of his arms and the membrane or whatever it was that made up his visible Quirk fluttered slightly, making Minoru realize what it reminded him of: the movement was reminiscent of a fly’s wings, though he couldn’t fathom how having wings coming out of your forearms could possibly work.

  “Yes, my Quirk allows me to fly,” said the Fly. “But the reason that you have read nothing else about me is because…” He paused, giving Minoru a meaningful look that Minoru could make nothing of. “…that’s all it does! No super strength, no offensive powers of any kind, nothing! Just pure mobility.”

  “…Right,” said Minoru again.

  The Fly leaned forward. “So now you must be asking yourself: ‘why pick me?! That is nothing like my Quirk! My Quirk reduces mobility!’ And you would be right! But I didn’t offer you this choice because our Quirks are compatible. I wanted you as an intern because when I watched you struggle against your classmates I realized that we are kindred souls!”

  Minoru was seriously starting to second-guess his decision to intern with this guy.

  The Fly leaned back, holding onto the back of the chair as he rocked it away from Minoru in a way Minoru was certain was going to end up with the Fly on the floor, but a quick buzz of his wings sent him falling back level. “You know, I poked around online and most people seemed to think that you were throwing out those purple balls of yours in a random panic, that you kept winning simply because you got lucky. But that wasn’t what I saw! I saw a boy dictating where his opponents could move, and thus what they could do! You read the lines of action and counter-action and laid the groundwork for your victory with every single movement! Am I right?!”

  “Uh,” managed Minoru. He was pretty sure that most of the time he had, in fact, been throwing out grapeshot more or less in a random panic. Sure, he could kind of see what the Fly was talking about if he thought about his fight with Todoroki, when he intentionally placed things to back the boy into a corner, but otherwise…

  “Perhaps I was mistaken. Or perhaps you are simply not aware of it yet. Well, no matter! I don’t really know how these internships are supposed to work, but I personally have always learned best through direct observation. Put that costume on, Minoru, because you’re about to get your wish! We’re going flying!”

  the Fly! What’re these monsters trying to achieve here?!”