Flood Zone

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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Distance did not make Aizawa safer.

The water taught me first, and the U.S.J. made sure I understood.

The Flood Zone put a half-sunk ship, broken dock panels, villains, glare, and too much cold water between us and the central plaza. It should have made Aizawa small. It should have turned him into someone else's problem for ten seconds.

My eyes found him anyway.

Fear had learned the shape of his scarf.

Aizawa moved through the mob like exhaustion had sharpened itself into a weapon. Every blink from him dropped another villain. Every twist of his shoulder made a knife miss, a fist overreach, a Quirk hit empty air.

He was winning.

Winning looked wrong.

Victory could be bait. My stomach knew before my thoughts caught up.

"We need to move," I said.

The words came out thin under the dome. Water slapped the side of the fake ship and ate half the sound.

Tsuyu landed beside me on the tilted deck, wet hair stuck to her cheeks, eyes wide and focused.

"To the center?"

"Yes."

"There are still villains between us and the shore, ribbit."

"I know."

Mineta clung to a pipe behind us. His breathing was too fast, high and wet and close to breaking.

"Why would we go toward the giant monster area? Away is better. Away is survival."

"Away leaves the teachers alone."

"The teachers are professionals!"

"So is whatever just walked in."

He stared at me.

"I hate that answer."

"Me too."

The three villains we had slowed were recovering. The knife-wielder had pulled herself onto floating debris, one knee moving badly. The finned one circled below us, smarter now. The eel-neck was still pasted against the wreck by Mineta's spheres, but his friends were already cutting at the cable.

Our advantage was melting.

Something behind my eyes tried to become a list.

Flood.

Air.

Move.

Then static.

No route. No neat answer. No little mercy from the part of me that liked patterns more than pain.

"We make a lane," I said.

Tsuyu's eyes moved from the wreckage to the shore. "With debris?"

"Crate. Dock panel. Pipe. Anything Mineta can anchor."

"My Quirk can make a bridge?" Mineta asked.

"A bad one."

"Why would you say it like that?"

"Because a bad bridge is faster than swimming."

Tsuyu nodded once. "I handle water. You handle timing."

"And me?" Mineta squeaked.

"You make everyone else hate the floor."

He looked insulted. Then scared. Then, somehow, a little steadier.

"That is not a heroic sentence."

"It is a survival sentence."

Tsuyu moved first.

She cut across the water in a low arc, tongue snapping around a plastic crate and dragging it closer. I jumped from the deck to a floating panel with too little strength and too much hope.

The panel rolled under my foot.

My knee dipped into the water. Cold bit through the costume. I caught the edge with both hands and hauled myself up, chest scraping wet plastic.

"Left side!" I shouted.

Water crashed against the wreck.

Mineta threw right.

Three spheres slapped harmlessly onto a fake lifeboat behind us.

"I said left!"

"I heard splash!"

The finned villain laughed from below.

The knife-wielder pushed off her debris toward Tsuyu. Tsuyu did not look at me for permission. Her tongue snapped out, caught the villain's wrist, and yanked just enough to ruin the knife angle. The woman spun, hit the crate hip-first, and swore.

Tsuyu pointed with her free hand.

"There," she told Mineta.

He threw.

This time the spheres hit the crate, the dock panel, and a pipe jutting from the wreck. The mess stuck together crookedly.

Not a bridge.

Barely a mistake with ambition.

It held.

"Again," Tsuyu said.

Mineta threw again before I could repeat it. His face looked awful, eyes too wide, mouth trembling, but his hands worked.

Local choice. Local fear. Local help.

I pushed a microburst through my calves and crossed to the next panel. The water dragged at my boots. My knee answered with heat. The half-built lane tilted under me.

"Move, move, move," I muttered.

No one could hear me.

Maybe that helped.

The finned villain surfaced behind Mineta.

"Duck!" I tried to yell.

The dome boomed with an impact from the plaza.

Mineta turned too late.

Tsuyu saw it first. She launched herself backward, tongue wrapping around Mineta's harness, and yanked him off the panel as claws raked through the place where his head had been.

My order failed.

Not because it was wrong.

Because water, distance, and fear did not care that I had been first.

Tsuyu hit the deck with Mineta under one arm.

"Stay where I put you," she said.

"I am trying to be placed!"

"Throw low when I say."

"That I can do."

The finned villain surged onto the lane, breaking one sticky joint loose. The bad bridge sagged.

"Low," Tsuyu said.

Mineta threw.

Sticky spheres hit the villain's forearm, the broken panel, and the water beside him. They did not stop him. They made his next push ugly.

Ugly was enough for Tsuyu.

She kicked off a crate, landed on the villain's shoulder, and drove him down into the water with both feet. Bubbles burst around him. He thrashed, caught between buoyancy, debris, and Mineta's Quirk.

I wanted to praise them.

No time.

The shore was closer now. The plaza sounds were clearer too.

Concrete cracked.

Someone screamed.

Aizawa's scarf flashed once above a cluster of villains.

Shigaraki stood near the center, scratching at his neck with small, frantic movements. He watched Aizawa the way a child might watch a toy refuse to break.

Nomu waited beside him.

Waited.

Worse than charging.

The thing did not need to posture. It owned the room by standing still.

"Midoriya," Tsuyu said.

I realized I had stopped.

"Sorry."

"Breathe."

"Doing both."

"No, you are thinking too loudly."

She was right.

I sucked in a breath that tasted like chlorine, metal, and panic.

Mineta crawled onto the next crate and looked toward the entrance. "Is Iida out? Tell me Iida is out."

I looked.

The entrance was too far, warped by mist and glare. For one second I saw a blue-white streak near the stairs. Or wanted to. Kurogiri's fog folded around the upper level, and the view vanished.

Iida had to be running.

He had to be scared.

He had to keep going anyway.

Across the dome, a chunk of rubble floated sideways in the landslide zone. Not smoothly. It jerked, stopped, and drifted again as if someone was lifting through nausea and bad footing.

Uraraka.

Alive.

Busy.

Too far.

The relief almost stole my balance.

Tsuyu clicked her tongue. "Eyes here."

"Right."

Consequences did not wait politely.

The knife-wielder came in again, lower this time. I blocked with the practice baton and felt the shock through my wrist. She was stronger than me in the water. Better balanced. Older. Meaner.

My foot slipped.

She smiled.

Then a purple sphere hit her knife hand.

Mineta stared at his own throw.

"I meant to do that," he said, unconvincingly.

"Then do it again," Tsuyu said.

He did.

The second sphere stuck to her boot. The knife-wielder jerked wrong. Tsuyu's tongue wrapped her ankle and pulled.

The woman hit the water flat.

We ran.

Calling it running was generous. Tsuyu moved like the Flood Zone had been built for her and hated everyone else. Mineta hopped, slipped, threw, cursed, and somehow kept sealing pieces of debris behind us. I took the middle, baton up, using tiny bursts only when a gap opened too wide or a hand came too close.

Each burst cost more than the last.

My calves shook. My shoulder had gone hot in the loose way joints should not feel. The water kept taking clean movement and turning it into argument.

We reached the artificial shoreline in a mess of knees, hands, and breath.

Then the plaza broke.

Nomu crossed the distance between stillness and violence without warning.

Aizawa erased Shigaraki with one red-eyed glare, dropped another villain with his elbow, and turned toward the black thing.

Too late.

Nomu hit him.

Even expecting the shape of it, I was not ready for the sound.

Aizawa slammed into the ground hard enough that the floor seemed to answer through the water. Tsuyu's face changed. Mineta made a small noise and covered his mouth with both hands.

Move.

The fragment returned as pain.

Not fight.

Move.

Rescue.

Not win.

I hated how narrow the words were. I hated that narrow might be all I had.

"Tsuyu," I said.

She did not correct the name.

"Can you get Mineta toward Thirteen?"

"Yes. Slower."

"Do it."

"And you?"

"I need one second from them."

Her eyes hardened. "That sounds like fighting."

"It sounds like throwing something and running."

"Midoriya."

Mineta shook his head hard. "Nope. We just made a bridge. We are bridge people now. We leave. That is the brand."

I grabbed his shoulder. He flinched, then froze when he saw my face.

"Your Quirk can make stronger people step wrong," I said. "That matters. You matter. Get to Tsuyu's mark and throw where she tells you."

His mouth opened.

"I matter?"

"An incredibly annoying amount."

He swallowed.

"Okay."

Tsuyu wrapped her tongue around his harness. Her gaze stayed on me a moment longer.

"Do not turn one second into two."

"I will try."

"Bad answer."

"Only honest one."

She launched toward the shoreline with Mineta in tow.

For half a second, I wanted to follow so badly it hurt worse than my knee.

There was a version of me that did. He reached Thirteen. He waited for All Might. He let professional heroes bleed in the order the story had already written.

Maybe he lived longer.

Maybe he slept worse.

Future knowledge did not make choices clean. It only made every outcome feel like evidence against you.

If I moved, I made myself visible.

If I stayed, Aizawa hit the ground again and again inside my head, and I proved caution mattered more than his skull.

I thought of Inko at the kitchen table. The way she checked my sleeves now. The way every promise I made had weight because she wanted to believe me and knew better than to do it easily.

Come home.

Not win.

Not prove anything.

Come home.

The promise did not make me invulnerable.

It made the next step harder.

I picked up a loose metal railing from the fake shoreline. Too heavy. My hands shook. I pushed power into my legs and back, too high for comfort, too low for heroics, and lifted anyway.

Pain sparked along my ribs.

I threw the railing.

Not at Nomu.

At the ground between Shigaraki and Aizawa.

It hit with a metallic scream, bounced, and forced Shigaraki's hand back from Aizawa's face.

Half a second.

Aizawa dragged in a wet breath.

Nomu turned toward me.

Every instinct in me went quiet.

No forecast. No command. No clean terror either.

Just the scrape of my shoes on wet concrete, my knee refusing full weight, and the promise in my throat like a bruise.

"Come on," I whispered, and I did not know if I meant myself, Iida, All Might, or the universe.

Shigaraki looked from the railing to me.

Then he smiled.

"Green one," he said.

Nomu moved.

There was no wind-up.

One moment it stood over Aizawa.

The next, the distance between us stopped being distance.

I shoved power into both legs and sideways into a dodge that was too late before it started.

Five percent.

The limit broke.

My bones held.

That almost made it worse.

Pain stayed soft for half a breath, the bill delayed but already signed.

Nomu's fist hit the concrete where I had been. The floor exploded. The shock threw me into the side of a rescue vehicle prop hard enough to empty my lungs.

Somewhere, Tsuyu shouted my name.

Somewhere else, Uraraka cried out.

I tried to stand.

My leg refused.

Nomu stepped through the dust.

Shigaraki laughed, interested and delighted in a way that made my skin go cold.

The monster raised one arm.

The only thought left was absurdly small.

I promised Mom I would come home.

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