Forty meters with Shoji's formation was manageable distance.
The problem was that Tetsutetsu's team was arriving from the north at the same time they were arriving from the west, creating a situation where Sero and Kaminari's team faced two simultaneous threats—and whichever threat Sero chose to prioritize would determine which angle remained exposed.
Mineta calculated as they moved.
Sero will choose Tetsutetsu as the primary threat because Tetsutetsu is more visible, bigger, and more obviously physical. Mineta's team, by comparison, is small, and lateral movement in the Cavalry Battle tends to register as less urgent than a frontal assault.
That bias is the window.
— Left diagonal, — Mineta said. — Not straight. Make it look like we're moving toward the space between them and Tetsutetsu.
Shoji adjusted direction without comment.
Sero's team saw them coming, but Sero's attention was oriented north, where Tetsutetsu advanced with that locomotive energy of someone for whom the correct problem is always the one directly ahead—and always solved with more force.
Kaminari, in the rider position, was looking the wrong way.
There.
Mineta waited until the diagonal brought them within ten meters of Sero's left flank—the less protected flank because it was opposite Tetsutetsu's approach and because Sero had oriented the formation to face north.
— Now.
Shoji rotated the formation ninety degrees with the efficiency of someone who had practiced maneuvering a large body in tight space simply because it seemed useful to know how.
They reached Sero's left flank.
Sero saw them at the last second.
— Kaminari, left!
Kaminari turned. The expression of someone whose brain was still processing slower than usual.
Mineta's arm was already extended.
Kaminari's headband was twenty centimeters away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Tetsutetsu arrived from the north with metallic locomotive force, and the impact against Sero's front created a jolt that shifted the entire formation laterally—including Kaminari, including the headband.
The headband moved two centimeters away at the exact moment Mineta's fingers reached where it had been.
No.
Sero's formation destabilized under Tetsutetsu's impact. Kaminari briefly lost balance. In that moment of imbalance, the headband swung forward.
Mineta stretched.
His fingers found fabric.
He grabbed it.
They retreated before either Sero or Tetsutetsu fully processed what had happened, because two simultaneous threats narrowed both of their attention fields just enough to leave Mineta's angle uncovered.
Two hundred more points.
One thousand eighty-five total.
Qualifying zone. Provisional fourth place if the count holds.
Mineta glanced at the stadium clock.
Three minutes and ten seconds.
The remaining three minutes and ten seconds were the most complicated of the Cavalry Battle, because when time compresses, everyone feels it simultaneously—and the field that had contained pockets of relative calm for twelve minutes suddenly had none.
Todoroki's team attacked Bakugo's for the third time.
This time with fire active from the beginning, no longer held as a surprise variable. The exchange escalated beyond the previous ones because Bakugo answered fire with explosions that were not measured, and the center of the field became something the upper stands likely could not fully see through smoke and light.
Present Mic couldn't decide where to look and solved it by describing everything at once at increasing speed.
Mineta kept his team on the perimeter.
Not because there was nothing to do. But entering the exchange radius between Bakugo and Todoroki with the remaining time and their current points was the kind of decision that only made sense if the potential outcome justified the risk—and 1,085 points in provisional qualification did not need to become ten million.
Protect what you have. With three minutes left, defending is smarter than attacking.
— Perimeter movement, — he said. — We don't drift from current qualifying position. If someone approaches with intent, we move—but we don't strike first.
— And if Shinso approaches? — Ojiro asked.
— Same as before. Silence.
Ojiro nodded.
They moved along the outer edge of the field, maintaining qualification without offering an easy target to any remaining active teams.
Shinso's team attempted two more steals in the final three minutes.
The first succeeded: a 1-B team with two hundred points that didn't understand what Shinso had until it was too late. One thousand three hundred fifty points for the dark purple-haired team.
Provisional third, Mineta thought, watching the screens. Above us now.
Shinso's second attempt was against Midoriya's team.
Mineta saw it coming with one minute forty seconds on the clock and observed with the specific attention of someone who knows how this story ends.
Shinso approached Midoriya's team.
He said something.
Midoriya, concentration split between field movement and Hatsume's last-minute technical adjustments, responded.
What followed lasted exactly as long as it took Uraraka to understand what was happening—which was enough time for Shinso's team to approach Midoriya's headband but not enough to take it, because Uraraka used Zero Gravity on the rider and Tokoyami used Dark Shadow to form a barrier between Shinso's hand and the headband.
Midoriya snapped out of it when Uraraka struck his arm firmly enough to break the effect.
— What…?
— Don't respond to anything from the purple-haired team, — Uraraka said, with the firmness of someone who has reached a conclusion and has no time to elaborate.
Midoriya looked at her for a second.
Good, Mineta thought from the perimeter. Uraraka figured it out on her own. That matters more than avoiding it completely.
Shinso's team withdrew without Midoriya's headband.
With forty-five seconds remaining, the field looked like this:
Bakugo's team still held the ten million and had not lost a single band. Todoroki's team had seven hundred thirty-five base plus accumulated bands from exchanges. Shinso's team had 1,350. Mineta's team had 1,085.
Four teams in provisional qualification.
The closest fifth was Midoriya's, who had lost points during exchanges with Todoroki but remained competitive.
If Midoriya steals a band in the final forty-five seconds, he passes us.
Mineta scanned the field.
Midoriya was looking toward Bakugo.
No, Mineta thought. Don't do it. There isn't enough time to attack Bakugo's team and qualify in forty-five seconds.
Midoriya did not attack Bakugo.
He attacked Todoroki.
Again.
With one minute remaining, he had attacked Todoroki's team—not the most tactically efficient target, but clearly the one Midoriya had chosen for reasons not entirely tactical.
The exchange lasted twenty seconds.
Hatsume activated everything she had. Dark Shadow created approach coverage. Uraraka reduced weight across the entire formation to maximize speed.
Todoroki answered with ice and fire simultaneously—the first time he had done so during the Festival—and it created a presence on the field simply different from anything before, hotter and colder at the same time in a way the body did not fully know how to process.
Todoroki's headband was not taken.
Midoriya's was not taken either.
But during the exchange, Midoriya and Todoroki looked at each other for one second where neither of them was fully thinking about the Cavalry Battle—and something in that second carried the weight of something not resolved today, but already beginning to be.
Mineta saw it from the side.
That's what matters, he thought. Not the points.
The signal sounded.
Present Mic:
— TIME'S UP!! THE CAVALRY BATTLE HAS ENDED!!
The field stopped with that quality of things that were in motion and suddenly are not—with that pause where forty-two people processed simultaneously what had just happened.
Mineta stepped down as Shoji and Ojiro set him on the ground with their usual practical efficiency.
The stadium screens displayed the final results.
He looked.
PROVISIONAL RESULTS — CAVALRY BATTLE
Team Bakugo — 10,000,000 pts
Team Todoroki — 1,015,000 pts
Team Shinso — 1,350 pts
Team Mineta — 1,085 pts
Fourth place.
Qualified.
Mineta watched the numbers for a moment.
Fourth of four. The tightest possible position within qualification.
It wasn't brilliant. It was honest.
It was also, objectively, qualification for the third event of the UA Sports Festival with an adhesion quirk and a fifty-percent-control Resin Protocol against one hundred eleven students, many with physically dominant quirks.
It works.
Around him, the field processed results with different energies.
Kirishima wore the smile of someone who had enjoyed every second—including the painful ones. Ashido analyzed with the focus of someone evaluating what worked and what didn't. Kaminari stared at the screens with the expression of someone whose legs had decided they were sitting down for a while.
Midoriya's team had not qualified. Midoriya stared at the screens with that expression of his—not defeat, but active processing, already taking mental notes on what had happened and what could have been done differently.
Uraraka stood beside him.
Tokoyami faced forward with his usual serenity.
Hatsume studied her inventions with the expression of someone evaluating technological performance more than event outcome—entirely consistent with her priorities.
Mineta watched them briefly.
Midoriya doesn't qualify for the third event from here. In the original canon, the individual tournament was where he continued building what he's building. Today that doesn't change.
Some things don't change.
Ojiro approached.
His expression took Mineta a second to read—not celebration, not defeat. Something closer to the specific discomfort of someone who has made a decision and isn't entirely sure it was correct.
— Hey.
— Yeah.
— About Shinso. What you knew about him. — Pause. — Where did that information come from?
Mineta looked at him.
The same question as before, now with time and context.
I could say intuition again. But Ojiro saw Shinso's quirk operate on the field. And Ojiro is the kind of person who processes things honestly, even when uncomfortable.
— There are things I notice about people before they become obvious to others, — Mineta said finally. — I can't always explain exactly how. But when I notice them, I act accordingly.
Ojiro held his gaze.
Not a complete answer. They both knew that.
But Ojiro nodded anyway—with the expression of someone deciding partial information is enough for now, and full context will come when it comes.
— Okay.
He walked away.
Mineta watched him go.
I don't exactly lie. I just don't say everything. There's a difference—even if the line is thinner than I'd like.
Asui appeared beside him with her usual quiet presence.
— Kero.
— Yeah.
— Fourth place.
— Yeah.
— Qualified.
— Yeah.
She looked at him calmly.
— Good.
The kind of evaluation that didn't distinguish between difficult work and easy work—only whether the result was correct.
The kind Mineta found most useful.
— Good, — he echoed.
At the center of the field, Midnight stepped onto the stage.
— Congratulations to the four qualifying teams! — she announced, her voice filling the stadium effortlessly. — There will be a twenty-minute break before we announce the third event.
The stands responded.
Mineta looked at the screens once more.
Fourth place. The third event.
The individual tournament.
Which, in the original canon, Mineta Minoru never even reached.
That changed.
From somewhere on the field came Kaminari's voice—having found enough energy to stand.
— Does anyone know if there's water? I need water.
— There are fountains on the side, — Sero said.
— Are they far?
— Forty meters.
— Can someone carry me?
Without a word, Kirishima extended a hand.
Kaminari took it and stood with the particular effort of someone whose legs had made independent decisions about cooperation levels.
Mineta watched them head toward the fountains.
Then he looked at the now-clearing field.
Twenty minutes.
Use them.
End of Episode 31.