Chapter 400: Beyond Limits

With Kunieda beaten, Yuga Aoyama glances at Toru Hagakure and finds parts of her suddenly visible. She shouts at him to look elsewhere, distraught that the one thing defining her has slipped, and a half-dead Yuga apologizes without knowing what else to do. Her Quirk has never behaved this way except once before, during their earlier fight, which tells her that standing at death's door drove Yuga past his ceiling and glitched her Invisibility.

She tells him his Quirk has evolved, but his mind is on the plants, which keep spreading even with their user down. The heroes have roots buried in their flesh, so he asks her to calibrate his light precisely enough to burn the growth away. Toru worries about his stomach; Yuga answers that this is his final day wearing the U.A. uniform, so the cost does not matter.

The Can't Stop Twinkling laser starts to overheat, and All Might refuses to let it stop, since it is the only thing holding All For One in place. Firing from just beyond the beam's edge, he credits Star and Stripe's last stand for the idea, admitting he could not solidify a laser the way she did. When All For One tries to escape the blast radius, All Might answers with the suit's Earphone Jack vibrations to force him back in.

He recalls building the trap: Tentacole was spent to bind the villain, thrusters carried him clear, and the armor's Invisible Girl resin shielded him from the heat. Setting it up cost him a direct hit, which he absorbed with Tailman at the price of his legs. He reads the choice as deliberate, believing All For One skipped the head because he wanted to watch his face contort, and laughs that he came out ahead.

A lattice of Rivet Stabs carves away more of the suit, so All Might triggers Creati's morphing armor and Grape Juice's binding rounds to nail him down. He knows there is no more power to load into this, and hopes desperately that the villain simply expires while euphoria keeps his own agony at bay. Far away, a boy watches the broadcast and asks the old woman beside him who the skinny man is. She does not follow heroes and says the outcome hardly matters to them either way, since it is all happening somewhere distant. The boy keeps watching anyway and presses his hands together for him.

The beam burns out and collapses. From the crater it leaves, All For One rises reduced to the size of a child and glowing, telling All Might that tools never exceed their limits. Stunned, All Might charges as his enemy's back swells and the villain asks whether he has forgotten to smile. Then the body locks up mid-motion. Stain hovers over the ruins, having swallowed blood spilled across the debris, and uses Bloodcurdle while roaring at All Might to finish him.

Yuga's evolved Navel Laser floods Toru with enough light to glitch her Invisibility and render her partly visible.

All Might exhausts the remaining functions of his armor to keep All For One pinned inside the laser at any cost.

Yuga's laser finally burns out and collapses, exposing an All For One who is now child-sized and glowing.

Stain enters the war, licking All For One's spilled blood off debris and using Bloodcurdle to paralyze him before he can strike.

Horikoshi's four hundredth installment fills 15 pages of the fortieth collected volume, set inside the Final War arc.

It appeared in issue 42 of 2023, published on September 18. The anime adapts it as Episode 160.

The chapter concludes the Troy Team's fight with Kunieda and continues the finale between All Might and All For One. Star and Stripe appears only in recollection.