Black Gate

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The first thing that came through the air was cold.

Not the clean cold from a ventilation unit. Not the polite chill of an overfunded training dome. This was grave cold, wet and wrong, sliding across my skin before my eyes understood what had opened in the plaza.

One breath earlier, Thirteen had been explaining zone recognition.

One breath earlier, Iida had been looking at the facility like responsibility might become visible if he stared hard enough.

Then the center of the U.S.J. folded black.

Sound went strange first. The little jokes at the back of the class stretched thin. Footsteps lost direction. The water zone kept gleaming under artificial light, cheerful and impossible, while a wound opened above the central floor.

Mist poured out.

Someone gasped.

No one moved for half a second.

Aizawa did.

"Thirteen! Protect the students!"

His scarf snapped loose as his goggles came down. The exhausted teacher vanished so completely that the space he left behind felt violent. Eraser Head was already running toward the dark before most of us had found a name for it.

Thirteen stepped in front of the class.

"Stay behind me!"

The order reached us. It did not organize us. Fear made every student hear it from a different distance.

I tried to find the entrance.

I tried to find Uraraka.

I tried to find Iida.

All three attempts collided in my head and broke into pieces.

Black mist spread across the plaza, crawling low, then rising in curtains. Villains stepped through it in fragments: a shoulder, a blade, teeth, boots hitting polished floor, a laugh too ordinary for the room it entered. The invasion did not arrive like a formation. It arrived like someone had thrown a handful of dangerous people into a lesson and trusted panic to arrange the rest.

Then I saw him.

Tomura Shigaraki stood near the center with hands gripping his arms, neck, and face. He looked thinner than the shape in my memory and worse for being real. Not theatrical. Not cleanly monstrous. Just restless, irritated, and hungry for a world that would finally lose correctly.

His red eyes swept the class.

They stopped on me.

My lungs forgot their job.

Something behind my thoughts tried to arrange the danger into labels. It failed. No neat panel. No usable list. Just pressure, static, and the ugly certainty that being seen had changed the room.

"Midoriya?" Uraraka whispered.

She had seen my face. Of course she had.

"Do not let the mist take you alone," I said.

"What?"

Too late.

A taller column of fog rose beside Shigaraki and shaped itself into a man with yellow eyes and a voice too calm for the number of exits he was about to steal.

Kurogiri.

He looked at Aizawa, at Thirteen, at us.

Shigaraki lifted one hand.

For one horrible second I thought he would point at All Might's absence, at Thirteen, at the whole class.

He pointed at me.

"That one," he said.

Several classmates turned before they could stop themselves.

Bakugo's eyes snapped from Shigaraki to me. Iida's mouth opened. Aizawa heard it too; his head shifted a fraction without slowing his charge.

Enough to record the problem.

Not enough to save us from it.

Kurogiri bowed slightly.

"Understood."

"Scatter!" I shouted.

It came out too sharp, too late, and not nearly specific enough.

Thirteen raised one arm. Black Hole opened with a low pull that made dust and loose straps jump from uniforms.

Kurogiri did not fight it straight on. His mist thinned, split, and slid around the pull in ragged bands. Smaller openings flickered at the edges. Not a wall. Knives of fog. Hands of fog. A dozen wrong doors looking for students.

Uraraka moved before I did.

She slapped her fingertips against a loose section of broken-floor prop near the plaza rail. It lifted, not high, just enough to drift between Kaminari and a strip of mist reaching for his ankles.

"Move!" she yelled.

Kaminari stumbled backward. Jiro grabbed his sleeve. The floating slab spun, struck another rail, and ruined Kurogiri's angle for a breath.

A breath mattered.

Iida lurched toward Aizawa.

Then toward the entrance.

Then froze so hard I saw the panic behind the formal posture.

"Representative!" Momo shouted.

The word hit him like a hand between the shoulders.

"Outside help," I said, reaching for him.

My fingers caught his sleeve. Uraraka caught my wrist. For one second the three of us were a bad knot in the middle of the class, all duty and no time.

"The facility has alarms," Iida said.

His voice shook on alarms.

"Then make sure someone hears them," Uraraka snapped. "Go!"

That moved him more than my order did.

His engines sparked once. Not clean. One calf stuttered against polished floor. He almost slipped.

Then he shoved Kaminari out of a widening smear of mist and drove himself toward the entrance side with a sound like metal tearing itself awake.

Right choice.

No. Not clean. Costly. Late enough to hurt. Fast enough to matter.

Kurogiri noticed.

Mist rose between us.

I grabbed for Uraraka as the floor vanished sideways.

It was not falling. Falling had a direction. This was direction being taken away and replaced with cold cloth, black light, and the sensation of my ribs trying to decide whether they still belonged to me.

Uraraka's hand stayed in mine for half a breath.

Then something slammed into my side.

A student. A villain. The lip of a portal. I never saw which.

My grip broke.

"Uraraka!"

"Midoriya!"

Her voice came back wrong, stretched by distance and fog. I saw her for one flicker: boots off the ground, one hand out, three floating chunks of debris around her like ugly moons while she reached for someone I could not identify.

Then the mist swallowed her.

Pieces of class tore apart around me.

Momo caught Jiro's wrist and produced a metal hook before darkness folded over them. Shoji spread his arms around two students and still lost one to a portal opening at knee height. Bakugo blasted into the black on purpose, orange light burning across the fog as if anger could make a map.

Kurogiri's voice slid past my ear.

"Apologies."

Polite.

Worse than cruel.

Water hit me in the face.

Cold. Deep. Immediate.

I went under with chlorine in my mouth and panic punching straight through every emergency note I had ever trusted.

For one ugly second, I was only a person trying not to drown.

My arms kicked wrong. My shoulder seized. The brace dragged. My costume drank water and became heavy in places support gear was never meant to be heavy. Up and down switched names while bubbles tore past my eyes.

A warning tried to form behind my thoughts.

Flood.

Air.

Move.

Nothing else.

Not enough.

Maybe enough.

Green flickered through my legs, tiny and uneven. The burst pushed me upward but twisted my knee on the way. My head broke the surface beside a fake shipwreck. I sucked in air and coughed half of it back out.

"Midoriya!"

Tsuyu Asui clung to the side of the wreck with one hand, calm in a way that made the entire ocean seem rude for panicking.

Mineta surfaced near a floating crate, spluttering and slapping the water like it had offended him personally.

"We are going to die! We are absolutely going to die!"

"Breathe first," Tsuyu said.

"I am breathing in terror!"

Still breathing.

I looked for Uraraka again.

Wrong priority.

I looked for Iida.

Impossible from here.

Also wrong if looking stopped me from using what was in front of me.

Tsuyu. Mineta. Water. Wreckage. Villains beginning to move between broken ship hulls.

The group had changed and not changed. Some old shape had survived the scatter, but Shigaraki had pointed before the fog moved. Kurogiri had aimed. Uraraka was gone from the flood zone. Iida might be running, trapped, or down.

Memory had become a liar with sharp scraps in its pockets.

"Asui," I said.

"Tsuyu is fine, ribbit. Are you hurt?"

"Yes. Functional enough. Can you get Mineta to the wreck?"

She looked once at the water, once at him, and decided faster than I could explain.

"Yes."

"Mineta, highest surface. Throw only when-"

A wave slapped my mouth.

The rest vanished.

He stared anyway.

"Only when what?"

"When she tells you," I said, because the water was hers and pretending otherwise would get us killed.

Tsuyu's eyes shifted to me for half a beat.

Then she shot her tongue out, wrapped it around Mineta's costume harness, and hauled him toward the wreck with the resigned efficiency of someone moving luggage.

"I am not luggage!"

"Then climb," she said.

Three villains moved through the water between broken ship hulls.

One had fins ridging both forearms. One had a long eel neck and teeth that did not belong above a school floor. A woman walked across the surface with webbed feet and a knife in each hand, balanced like the water had agreed to lie for her.

They did not feel like props.

The finned one called left. The eel-neck complained about Mineta's spheres already sticking to a drifting board. The woman looked at me and smiled.

"Green one," she said.

My stomach dropped.

Tsuyu heard it.

Mineta heard it and stopped climbing.

The woman tapped two fingers against her ear.

"Mist guy said to keep eyes out. Boss wants the student who yelled before the door finished opening. Recognizable, if possible. Bruised is fine. Broken is paperwork."

Information order.

Not capture. Not kill.

Almost worse.

It meant my warning had helped.

It meant my warning had marked me.

It meant the enemy was learning in real time too.

"You broke into a rescue class," I said, breath rasping. "Someone yelling was not advanced strategy."

The knife-wielder's smile widened.

"Mouthy."

"Mostly scared."

She lunged.

Tsuyu moved first.

Her tongue snapped out, wrapped the villain's wrist, and yanked just enough to ruin the knife angle. I kicked off the shipwreck with too little control and slammed my practice baton toward the woman's knee. I meant to strike the side. The water dragged me low. The hit clipped wrong, ugly and glancing, but her foot slipped through the surface and the lunge broke.

Pain shot up my calf.

Worth it.

Maybe.

The finned villain surged toward me.

"Mineta!" Tsuyu called.

He screamed and threw a handful of sticky spheres.

They went wide.

Two bounced off a floating crate. One hit my shoulder.

"Not me!"

"I panicked!"

The next throw was better because Tsuyu snapped, "Low right," and he listened. Sticky spheres hit water, debris, and the villain's arm when he tried to push through. The mess did not stop him. It slowed him.

Enough.

Tsuyu launched from the wreck, kicked off a floating crate, and drove both feet into the finned villain's chest. He went under.

The eel-neck vanished beneath the surface.

My skin crawled.

"Below!"

Tsuyu grabbed Mineta and vaulted upward as the villain erupted where they had been, jaws snapping shut on empty air.

I pushed power into my right leg.

Too much for water. Too little for land. Two percent in a medium that hated leverage.

The burst shot me sideways. My knee lit white. I caught a loose cable from the fake ship rigging and looped it around the eel-neck villain's torso as he surfaced.

He thrashed. Too strong.

I could not hold him.

Tsuyu could.

She landed on the wreck, tongue around the cable, feet braced against soaked metal.

"Mineta," she said.

Not shouted. Said.

He understood anyway.

He threw. Sticky spheres hit cable, deck, villain, cable again. One stuck to Tsuyu's sleeve and she did not even blink.

The eel-neck slammed against the wreck and stuck there, swearing hard enough to fog the glass dome.

For three seconds, we had control.

Three seconds is not safety.

It is only time with teeth.

The whole facility shook.

Not from us.

From the center.

I turned.

Across the distance, past water glare and broken railings, Aizawa fought like exhaustion had chosen violence as a language. Villains dropped around him. Too many. Still dropping. His scarf flashed, his elbow broke a charge, his heel took a knee out from under someone twice his size.

He was winning.

Victory turned into bait before my brain caught up.

The crowd around him shifted.

Something huge stepped through.

Black skin. Exposed brain. Wrong proportions. No drama in the movement, and that made it worse. The thing did not posture. It arrived as if violence had been engineered until intimidation became optional.

Nomu.

The name came late and useless.

My thoughts tried to build a forecast and came back with nothing but static and a single physical command: move.

I could not reach him.

I knew that before I looked for a path.

Water. Distance. Villains. My knee. Tsuyu braced behind me. Mineta breathing too fast. Iida, somewhere, maybe running for the door. Uraraka, somewhere, making gravity lie without me.

Aizawa turned.

Nomu moved.

Fast.

Too fast.

Tsuyu followed my stare.

"Midoriya?"

I could not answer.

Aizawa was about to go down.

And this time, Shigaraki already knew to watch me when it happened.

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