The strategy around centimeters took a week to take shape.
Not because it was especially complicated in abstract terms, but because Mineta had a tendency—one he recognized with mild irritation—to approach problems from theory before landing on the practical. And this particular problem required the opposite: starting from the concrete and building upward.
The concrete fact was this: he would enter UA at roughly one meter twenty, if growth continued at the current pace. Possibly one meter twenty-five at best. In an environment where his classmates would include Bakugo, Todoroki, Iida, and a dozen others with significantly larger physiques and direct offensive quirks, that size difference was not a minor detail.
In canon, the original Mineta had survived that disparity by being useful in specific ways: area control, mobility, tactical thinking in situations where brute force wasn't the correct answer. It was a legitimate and necessary role, but with an obvious ceiling.
He wanted something different.
He didn't want to be the support who survives. He wanted to be someone who decisively changes the outcome of a situation.
The difference between those two things was strategy.
He spent the week with his notebook, the internet, and a stack of scratch paper that would have worried anyone concerned about the environment.
The starting point was a simple question: in what contexts is being small a real advantage, not just a minor disadvantage?
The answers, when sought honestly instead of with wishful thinking, were more specific than expected.
Change-of-direction speed: a smaller, lighter body changes movement vector faster than a larger one. Not top speed, which depends on muscular power and where size matters negatively, but agility in direction change.
Target profile: less surface area to hit. In a direct exchange of strikes, presenting a smaller target gives a statistical advantage if you know how to move.
Low center of gravity: harder to unbalance from above. JJB had confirmed this practically over months of training; it was considerably easier to unbalance someone taller than someone his height using sweeping techniques.
Confined spaces: in tight environments, the size difference is reduced. A narrow hallway significantly equalizes conditions.
Expectations: no one expects someone his size to be a serious threat. That false expectation, if leveraged, is a real tactical advantage.
He wrote all this in one column. Then in the column next to it, he noted how each interacted with his quirk and the styles he was learning.
Change-of-direction + sphere control: rapid repositioning with area control. While I move, the spheres define which parts of the space are problematic for the opponent.
Small profile + Wing Chun: Wing Chun is designed to work in a range where the target is hard to reach cleanly. My size makes that range natural rather than something I have to seek.
Low center of gravity + JJB: the ground is more favorable territory for me than for someone taller. If the fight goes to the ground, the size difference can invert.
Confined spaces + sticky spheres: total control of a closed environment. Spheres on ceilings, walls, and floors in a small space create a trap that scales with the designer's intelligence, not the executor's strength.
Low expectations + unexpected action: the first move always surprises. Surprise lasts a moment, but a moment can be enough.
He read it several times.
There was something there. It wasn't a complete plan, more the skeleton of a combat philosophy still needing flesh. But the skeleton was solid.
He wrote at the bottom of the page in larger letters than usual:
I'm not a tank. I'm not artillery. I'm a disruptor.
The goal isn't to win by direct force. The goal is to make the space where the fight occurs work for me and against the other before they realize it's happening.
He introduced the idea to the dojo obliquely, without explaining the full reasoning, in a conversation with Hayashi that started with a technical question and veered toward something more strategic.
"— If someone my size fights someone significantly larger," he said during a pause in the session, "when is the right time to go to the ground?"
Hayashi looked at him with the expression of someone who knows the question has more beneath the surface.
"— It depends on what you want to achieve on the ground. Wanting to immobilize isn't the same as wanting to create distance or neutralize."
"— Neutralize. Make it so the other can't continue effectively."
"— Then the right moment is before the other establishes their comfort range." Hayashi crossed his arms. "— Someone bigger than you has a range where they are most effective. Usually it's mid-distance, where they can control limb reach. If you let them establish there, size matters more. If you take the fight to the ground before that, you remove them from where they want to be."
"— And if the other also knows JJB?"
"— Then the size advantage is reduced on the ground but doesn't disappear." — A pause. — "Your low center of gravity is real. With equivalent technique, you on the ground against someone taller is more balanced than it appears from outside."
Mineta nodded, processing.
"— Can I ask something that isn't strictly technical?"
Hayashi looked at him.
"— You can ask."
"— How do you design a fight? Not in the moment, but beforehand. If you know you're facing someone with specific characteristics, how do you prepare the approach?"
Hayashi was silent for several seconds. The kind of silence in him didn't mean he was considering whether to answer, but that he was carefully building a response.
"— Identify what the other needs to function," he finally said. "— Everyone has conditions where they are most effective. Direct force needs striking distance. Speed needs space to build momentum. Reach needs you not to be too close." — He paused. — "Your job, before anything starts, is to understand what the other needs and make sure they don't have it. You don't attack the other. You attack the other's conditions."
Attack the other's conditions.
It was exactly what the skeleton of his philosophy was trying to articulate, expressed more cleanly and directly than he had managed.
"— And if the other is doing the same? If they are also attacking your conditions?"
"— Then the one who relies on fewer specific things to function wins." — Hayashi looked at him. — "That's why the training we're doing isn't from one style. It's three. Because if you have only one way to function, taking that away is enough."
That conversation changed the focus of quirk training that week.
Up to that point, Mineta had worked on the quirk mainly in terms of capacity: how many spheres, how long, how clear perception was. All quantitative, all aimed at expanding what he could do.
Now he added a different dimension: the strategic use of area control.
He designed exercises where the goal wasn't to demonstrate capacity but to create unfavorable conditions for a hypothetical opponent. He distributed spheres to define movement zones, like designing a maze in real-time. He practiced repositioning inside that maze while modifying it, adding and relocating spheres based on spatial movement.
It was harder than expected because it required two types of simultaneous thinking: tactical, evaluating how to distribute spheres for maximum effect, and perceptive, maintaining awareness of all active spheres while moving.
Attention fragmentation, developing inconsistently over months, suddenly found a context where it was not just useful but necessary.
When dividing attention into two zones, one zone could handle tactical thinking while the other maintained awareness of active spheres. Not perfectly, not with the fluency he wanted, but enough for the quality of work in both areas to improve over trying to do everything with unified attention.
He recorded it that night with the restrained excitement of someone who has found something long sought, without knowing exactly what shape it would take:
Attention fragmentation isn't a curious phenomenon. It's the tool that allows combining tactical thinking with real-time quirk perceptual control.
Without fragmentation: either I think about tactics or maintain the quirk. Never both at the necessary level simultaneously.
With fragmentation: Zone A manages tactics. Zone B manages the quirk. The total result is greater than the sum of the parts because the two zones inform each other without interfering.
This was what was missing. Not more capacity. Better attention architecture.
The most visible progress of this period, however, was not in the quirk.
It was a Wednesday at the dojo, the sixth week of the second year, during a free sparring session Hayashi had recently introduced as a complement to structured exercises.
Free sparring at Seiryuu wasn't unrestricted combat. Clear rules dictated what could and couldn't be done, contact was controlled instead of full force, and Hayashi observed with an attention that made "free" a relative term. But within those limits, it was the environment closest to a real situation the dojo offered.
Mineta had been sparring with a student named Fujimoto, sixteen years old, who had three years at Seiryuu and a solid Muay Thai base with enough JJB to be dangerous on the ground. He was significantly taller and stronger, and in previous sessions had dominated most exchanges in ways Mineta found instructive but not entirely pleasant.
This session was different.
Fujimoto went for a clinch with a shoulder grip that previously resulted in a sequence of knees Mineta had consistently handled poorly. This time, instead of resisting the grip or trying to break it in the usual way, Mineta used the moment of contact to change levels, lowering his center of gravity with speed Fujimoto hadn't anticipated, turning the clinch attempt into a JJB entry that brought Fujimoto to the ground in a position that, in a real situation, would have been unfavorable.
Hayashi stopped the sparring.
They both looked at him.
"— Repeat what you just did," said Hayashi, in the tone Mineta had learned signals something has genuinely caught his attention.
"— I don't know if I can. I didn't plan it."
"— Try anyway."
He tried. It didn't come out the same, because Fujimoto anticipated the second time and adjusted his position, but the principle was recognizable: use the opponent's contact moment to change the fight's level instead of responding at the same level.
Hayashi had them practice the variation for twenty minutes, refining mechanics until a clearer form emerged.
At the end of the session, when Fujimoto had gone to the locker room, Hayashi lingered beside Mineta.
"— What you did today isn't in any of the three styles we're working on," he said.
"— I know. It was a combination."
"— Yes." — A pause. — "Combinations that arise spontaneously are the ones the body has built on its own from what it has learned. They're the hardest to anticipate because they don't follow the logic of any known style." — Another pause. — "They're also the most yours. No one else has exactly the same because no one else has exactly your combination of training and physical traits."
Mineta processed that.
"— Is that good?"
"— Very good." — Hayashi picked up his water bottle. — "It means you're starting to have your own style instead of three borrowed styles. That's what we've been aiming for from the start."
The notebook entry at the end of the twenty-second month since arrival had a different quality than any before.
It wasn't longer. It was calmer.
Height: 119 cm.
Push-ups: 45 straight. Running: 18 blocks.
Quirk: functional attention fragmentation in strategic usage context. Area control as tactical tool in development.
Dojo: first spontaneous combination of three styles. Hayashi said I have an emerging personal style.
What I know now that I didn't at the start of year two: strategy isn't compensating for limitations. It's building around them so they stop being limitations in the contexts that matter.
I won't be Todoroki. I won't be Bakugo. I'll be someone who makes the space where the fight happens work in a way those two find difficult to anticipate.
That's enough. It has to be enough.
One last line at the bottom of the page:
Approximately fourteen months remain until the UA exam.
Most of the work is done. What's left is refinement.
And to see if the quirk has anything more to say before that day arrives.
He closed the notebook.
For the first time in twenty-two months, he didn't think about one hundred eight centimeters.
He thought about one hundred nineteen, the height he had now, and what he would do with it.
It was enough to start sleeping soundly.
Almost.
End of Episode 10.