Blackness was absolute.
No light. No sound. No anything. Just a dense darkness that wrapped around everything, as if the universe had decided to pause and forgot to turn on the lights on its way out.
Am I dead?
The question arrived without panic. With an almost offensive calm, like noticing you left your keys at home right after locking the door. He remembered the last moments in fragments: the noise of traffic, a white flash, and then this. The eternal and boring this.
Yeah. I'm definitely dead.
What a stupid way to go. Neither heroic nor memorable. A street crossing and the universe had decided it was already enough of him. No last words. No one writing anything down.
An impossible amount of time passed like that. And then, without warning, something changed.
A light.
Dim at first. Then unbearable.
And then the pain came.
The first coherent thought was that someone was squeezing his skull with an industrial press. The pressure was brutal, throbbing, as if his head had tried to shrink on its own. Sensations came in a cascade: sheets, the smell of detergent mixed with something sweet, the muffled sound of a television in the next room.
He blinked.
The ceiling was white. Smooth. With a damp stain in the left corner that someone had painted over without much care.
I'm alive.
He sat up slowly, and the first thing he noticed was that the perspective was wrong. The room looked huge. Not huge like when you're a kid and everything seems big, but huge in the sense that he was clearly too small for it.
He moved his legs to the edge of the bed. Let them hang.
His feet didn't reach the floor.
He stared at them.
Purple socks. With little yellow stars.
...Okay. No need to panic.
He slid to the floor with a dull thump, walked to the mirror on the desk, and observed the reflection with the most tired expression a twelve-year-old boy had ever worn.
Round face. Big eyes. And on his head, two perfectly circular spheres of dark purple hair sticking out as if someone had glued them there out of spite.
The silence that followed was deafening.
No.
He looked at his hands. Small. The hands of a boy who hadn't finished growing.
No, no, no.
He looked back at the mirror. The reflection was still there, unperturbed, looking at him without any remorse.
Out of all possible bodies, in all possible worlds… I got this one?
Minoru Mineta. Twelve years old. Approximately one hundred and eight centimeters tall. The most widely hated character in My Hero Academia for reasons anyone with half a brain could list without effort and without being asked.
He let himself fall sitting on the floor, back against the desk, and stared at the ceiling fan. It turned slowly. One of the blades had a star sticker on it, half peeled off at the edges, the kind someone puts on when they're eight and think it improves something.
Outside, the television kept broadcasting the news. A horn sounded on the street. The everyday life of Japan continued completely unaware of the existential crisis of this small purple room.
Eventually, he took a breath.
Okay. Think.
First: he was alive. That was, objectively, better than the alternative. No debate there.
Second: he knew exactly what world he was in. My Hero Academia. A universe where eighty percent of humanity had quirks, where professional heroes fought crime, and where in the coming years a war would break out that would shake the foundations of all society. A war he knew. Every arc, every betrayal, every death no one would see coming.
That was a huge advantage if he knew how to use it.
Third, and this was the hardest to digest: he was Mineta. Not in values or personality, because that wasn't going to happen. But in body, in name, in quirk, and in reputation. Which meant he also carried the one hundred and eight centimeters.
He looked at his feet again.
This is a personal insult from the universe.
Still, something in him refused to completely sink. If he looked at it from the right angle, there was something in this cosmic absurdity that had a twisted appeal. A second chance. That's what it was, no matter how ridiculous the presentation was. He hadn't asked to be born in a world of superheroes. He hadn't asked for the body of a twelve-year-old boy with balls on his head.
But he was here. And the least he could do was not waste that.
He spent the first few days taking inventory.
Mineta's memories were accessible, though blurry in some places, like old photographs stored carelessly. He could flip through them like someone else's album: he recognized them, but didn't feel them as his own. His parents traveled frequently for work, and sent him enough money to live comfortably and then some.
Free time and resources. Dangerous in the wrong hands. Exactly what he needed in his.
His quirk was Pop Off. He could pull the spheres from his head and throw them; upon contact with a surface, they became sticky. Canon had almost always reduced it to an escape or distraction tool, but it had more potential than the original Mineta had explored. The balls were technically part of his body, which opened questions about the control he could exert over them.
That would come later. First there was something more urgent.
Time. He was three years before the beginning of canon. Three years before Midoriya on that rooftop, before the UA exam, before USJ, before everything that would come in sequence.
Three years was time. Not much. Enough if he used it well.
That night, sitting at the desk with a blank notebook in front of him, he started writing.
Not a diary. He had no interest in documenting feelings. It was something more practical: a list. Concrete objectives, ordered by priority.
1. Improve the body.
One hundred and eight centimeters and the physique of a sedentary kid weren't going to take him far. He didn't expect to become All Might. But he also didn't plan to stay like this. The body of a preteen in full growth responded well to training if done intelligently.
2. Master the quirk.
Limits, range, endurance, regeneration speed. All measurable. All improvable.
3. Learn to fight.
Non-negotiable. A quirk without a physical base was half a tool. He needed something that adapted to his size and the nature of his power.
4. Enter UA.
Not as a final goal. As a necessary waypoint. It was where everything that mattered in the coming years would be.
He looked at the list. Then added one last line, almost as a personal reminder:
5. Not be Mineta.
Not in the sense of denying who he was now. But in the sense that certain habits and priorities of the original wouldn't cross over with him. He could carry the name and the face without also carrying the reputation.
He closed the notebook. Turned off the light. Lay on the bed looking at the fan with the half-peeled sticker.
One hundred and eight centimeters.
He sighed slowly, without drama.
Worse starting points have existed in history.
He wasn't entirely convinced. But it was what there was. And for now, it was enough.
End of Episode 1.