"Well now, what are we going to do about this?" croaked Asui. She, Yaoyorozu, and oddly enough a shirtless Tokoyami were gazing over the top railing of the stairwell at Minoru where he was lying hot-tied half a flight down.

  Now that he'd noticed them, Minoru stopped trying to squirm his way up the stairs and relaxed into what he hoped was an insouciant posture. "Oh hey, everybody! So did we win, Yaoyorozu?"

  She shook her head. "No. You were correct about Tokoyami; I was able to immobilize him thanks to your grapeshot, but his Dark Shadow was indeed able to reach the weapon despite that."

  "Ah. Darn." That explained Tokoyami's lack of a shirt, at least. It must still be adhered to the building somewhere. Minoru was surprised at the strength of the disappointment he was feeling. He'd really thought they had a chance, especially given the advantage of his future knowledge and not needing to freak out over being paired with Yaoyorozu this time around.

  "If only we'd had a little more time…" Yaoyorozu looked extremely frustrated, but she shook it off. "Well, no matter, we need to somehow extract you from there, but you're unfortunately well protected by your own grapeshot. Do you think you can crawl up the stairs on your own?"

  Minoru laughed ruefully. "I've been trying, but Tokoyami did a bit too good of a job here. I think I've only made it up a stair or two."

  "Hmm." Yaoyorozu looked up towards the corner of the room. "All Might, is the capture tape you gave us something that can be easily cut?"

  After a moment, All Might's voice sounded through the transceiver in Minoru's ear. "He can't just pull it apart? I mean, yes, it's not made to actually restrict you, just to mark you as captured. It's not like Aizawa's tape or that stuff you created."

  Minoru rolled his eyes. Maybe he could have peeled it off himself, if Tokoyami hadn't used the whole damn roll to secure his hands and feet.

  "My apologies," said Tokoyami. "The darkness in my heart must have made me over-zealous."

  "Well, let's see if that darkness of yours can help Mineta free himself," said Yaoyorozu, something already manifesting out of her arm.

  Four created pairs of scissors later—three of which were now stuck to various grapeshot, intercepted when Dark Shadow tried to toss them down to Minoru without skewering him—and Minoru was free from his bonds and able to rejoin his classmates above. Yaoyorozu created a blanket to cover some more of the grapeshot along one of the windowsills, and they lowered themselves to the ground using a rope, also created by Yaoyorozu. Her Quirk was incredibly useful.

  Soon after, they rejoined their classmates in the observation room for All Might's debrief.

  "Welcome back, my young heroes and villains!" the larger-than-life hero cried as they entered the room. "The heroes once more return triumphant! I know you have had excellent insight into your classmate's successes and failures, Yaoyorozu. How would you grade your own performance?"

  Yaoyorozu grimaced, and Minoru clenched up slightly as he waited for the recriminations over his obvious mistakes to start flowing. However: "It was my fault that we lost. While some of the other teams were too violent in their approach—" Minoru could practically feel the heat pouring off of Bakugo all the way across the room. "—I was too conservative and allowed our opponents to play to their own strengths. Mineta and I also should not have split up; if we had left Tokoyami alone on the stairs, we likely could have defeated Asui faster together and then Mineta wouldn't have been stuck fighting Tokoyami alone. If Mineta hadn't booby-trapped every single window and forced Asui into such an awkward entry point, we likely would have lost even sooner."

  What was going on? Minoru stared at Yaoyorozu's profile in shock. The first time they'd lost, he'd had the blame thoroughly shoveled onto him by virtually the whole class. Granted, he'd probably deserved it after creeping on Yaoyorozu to such an extent, but even so…this time he was clearly still at fault for failing not only to stop Asui but also completely messing up the confrontation with Tokoyami. "That's not true!" he found himself saying. "Your strategy was great, and it forced the heroes to split up! I was the one who caused our loss because I couldn't aim my grapeshot well enough and ended up panicking against both Asui and then Tokoyami! You fought both of them to a standstill and we would have won if not for Dark Shadow! Or maybe if I hadn't wasted so much of our time right at the start."

  "Yeah!" interjected Mina Ashido. "What was that all about? Yaoyorozu had a really interesting look on her face, but of course we couldn't hear anything that you said."

  "Ahem!" coughed All Might, and Minoru almost evaporated into a pure cloud of embarrassment on the spot when he realized their teacher and the world's number one hero had heard every single mortifying word out of his mouth. "I would say…you're both correct!" said All Might, straight up ignoring Ashido. "Yaoyorozu's strategy was indeed too passive and she is correct you would have had a better chance combating either opponent if you were together, but Mineta is also correct that he did not react to either opponent as wisely as he perhaps could have. Which brings us to our heroes: can anyone tell me what their mistake was? Yes, Ida!"

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Ida lowered the arm he had thrust quivering into the air. "They shouldn't have split up. Probably shouldn't have entered the stairwell in the first place when they saw how thoroughly the villains had trapped it, especially since Asui was able to scout the building quickly from the outside."

  "Exactly right, young Ida! Don't forget, class, that no matter how well prepared you are, or how strong you believe yourself to be in a particular crisis, you'll always achieve more when supported by and supporting your teammates! Now before I am accused of focusing on nothing but the negative, what did you all notice these fine young heroes and villains doing correctly?"

  Minoru brooded on his journey home. Despite All Might's attempt to raise their spirits, he knew for a fact that the reason Yaoyorozu lost was because of him. After all, he knew exactly how awesome of a hero she could be—seeing her actions and tactics in their conflict with Gigantomachia had hammered that point home hard—and while she was certainly less confident and well-practiced at the moment, he had no doubt she could have come up with a winning strategy if she'd been paired with any other member of their class. His Quirk was incredibly strong when it came to restraining people, but he had to get it to connect in the first place, and as soon as they closed the distance his size and lack of any sort of offensive power severely crippled him. Plus, could he even say it was that strong when all it took to escape him was taking off your shirt?

  No, Yaoyorozu hadn't been the problem at all.

  But how was he going to change that? In his past life, the most guidance the teachers had offered was to force him to repeatedly pop off his grapeshot to increase his limits. Which wasn't bad in and of itself, but it sure didn't do much for him when he was in a situation where he was facing down a wary, drastically more powerful enemy. Never mind Tokoyami, how would he have handled Todoroki or Bakugo, or even Midoriya, unable as he was at the moment of controlling his own Quirk?

  He could train physically, which certainly wouldn't hurt but again he remembered from his past life that he just never grew all that large. Offsetting his close-range deficiencies through physical training was unlikely to lead very high dividends.

  Which actually brought him back around to Yaoyorozu. She definitely hadn't skimped on physical training, judging by her performance on the first day and the fact that she was able to best Asui and get close enough to Tokoyami to knock him over in the first place. Her Quirk was also amazing, and Minoru remembered how hard she'd trained to expand its limits in his past life. But what truly made her an amazing hero in his opinion was her ability to decisively see a path to victory and make it a reality. How would things have gone today if they'd had more familiarity with one another, more time to plan, and he'd been able to be more forthright about their opponent's capabilities? He knew that Asui could climb walls and that Dark Shadow could easily be disrupted with bright lights, but he'd held back on telling Yaoyorozu that because he couldn't explain how he knew. If she'd known everything he knew, he had no doubt she'd have come up with a plan to defeat the pair without them even catching sight of the weapon.

  He didn't have Yaoyorozu's ability to think tactically. But he was reasonably intelligent, if he did say so himself. He'd only been middle of the pack academically in his past life, but he'd also never really studied or tried to excel. If coming up with a plan of action in the moment wasn't his strength, maybe he could make plans ahead of time. Actually, given his future knowledge and desire to change said future, he needed to start seriously doing that sooner rather than later. Perhaps he would never have a single, overwhelmingly powerful way to achieve his goals, but what if he had a whole lot of less-powerful options?

  For that matter, why had he never leveraged support tools in his past life? He honestly couldn't remember anyone ever even suggesting it, which was weird given that their homeroom teacher focused so heavily on using the capture tape that Yaoyorozu had tried to replicate today. Hell, he knew both Midoriya and Bakugo had heavily leveraged support tools, and their Quirks were some of the most powerful and versatile in the class!

  So: he had some short-term ways to improve himself. Physical training he could probably gain sufficiently for now in school; he remembered some of the exercises they'd done in the past, and if he actually applied himself he imagined he'd see quite a lot of improvement without needing to devote extensive time outside school to it. Quirk training, he could do on his own…ugh, that was going to absolutely suck, but he really only needed one hand to push his Quirk's boundaries so he could do that while he was otherwise engaged. Coming up with strategies for how to handle the challenges in his near future was something he needed to really lean into in his free time, at the moment. He'd been somewhat in shock the last couple days, he supposed, but what he'd learned today was that even drastically changing his personal behavior didn't necessarily mean that he could cause events to proceed differently. It was going to take a much more concerted effort on his part, and probably a lot of help from the people around him.

  Speaking of the people around him…Class 1-A, and particularly Midoriya, ended up at the epicenter of a lot of the conflict against All For One, didn't they? Midoriya was always analyzing individual Quirks with an eye towards how to beat or improve them, but that didn't interest Minoru much. Unlike Midoriya, he couldn't remember a time without his Quirk, and he thought he had a pretty good handle on its strengths and limitations. But Midoriya was kind of single-minded; he'd often rather just rush in to deal with a problem on his own than form a team to take on his problems.

  What had All Might said today? They'd always achieve more when supported by and supporting their teammates? Now that was an interesting thought; Minoru knew these people better than almost anyone else in his life, despite the relatively short time he'd spent with them. Maybe along with thinking of ways to improve the future, he should spend some time brainstorming how he could support and be supported by the people around him. If he was going to involve himself more in the insanity that was brewing in Midoriya's future, he'd need all the help he could get.

  Lastly: he needed to seek someone out who could help him with support items, and perhaps even more importantly help him get a costume that didn't actively sabotage him in multiple ways.

  Seriously, what had his costume designer been thinking?

  is kind of diaper-like, and he's incredibly short. But given his behavior and positioning as the plucky comic relief? My money's on clown. Clown all the way.