Hired Gun

Rain and dark, and a mob of men carrying weapons and black market gear have run a towering heteromorph woman into a wall, convinced she is a villain playing at innocence. They are already on her when Deku arrives and puts himself between them. He tells them to settle down, promises to handle her situation himself, and they scatter, snarling at her for confusing them on the way out. He retrieves the umbrella she dropped, holds it over her, and asks what she is doing out this late.

She stayed home when the rest of the district evacuated after the Paranormal Liberation War, hoping the panic would burn itself out. Instead her town kept getting worse, and fear finally drove her out looking for a shelter. Deku tells her he intends to put things back the way they were. All Might rolls up in his armored car, and Deku hands her off for an escort, pausing only to accept a batch of pork cutlets pressed on him so he keeps his strength.

Later he watches the city from a tower while Daigoro Banjo observes through the vestige realm and compares the disorder to the era when Quirks first appeared and everything came unglued. Deku insists he has to draw out the Quirk's full power quickly. His group has turned up nothing pointing toward either of their targets, and both the police and the remaining heroes are saturated dealing with escapees.

The scene shifts back to his previous visit to the inner world. While Daigoro, Hikage, En, and Nana were working with him on their abilities, Yoichi turned to the second and third users and asked them to help. Both hesitated. They had lived under a man who could take command of anyone he liked, and every ally they raised against him died. Yoichi grants that the idea sounds mad, then asks why they rescued him in the first place, why they nurtured the Quirk into existence, and why they bothered manifesting in the vestige realm at all if they believed in nothing. The second user asks whether he honestly thinks the boy can finish it. He does, because One For All was built to never give ground to his brother. Both men stepped forward, and from that point Deku had every user behind him.

Elsewhere, Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist collar more escapees without shaking anything solid loose about All For One or Tomura. Harassed by civilians blaming Endeavor for Dabi, they talk about widening the gap between themselves and the All Might group, since the public realizing they are one team would make a target of the boy they are already using as bait. Hawks notes that most villains they meet seem to be deliberately laying low, and suspects orders from the League to keep the country unsettled so All For One can convert that unease into a theft of One For All. Deku is prioritizing Tomura's position, since All For One now has a body to work through.

That clock is worse than it looks. Tomura's body may finish on Dr. Garaki's original schedule, and the hatred grown inside him could be sufficient to make the theft work. With everyone hiding, Best Jeanist floats widening the search area, though Hawks points out that shrinking public support makes it awkward.

Deku stops at a building's edge to reach All Might by phone. An oddly shaped bullet destroys the device and the GPS the others were tracking him with. All Might turns toward the dead signal, and his car is hit by an explosive. A woman's voice speaks out of a microphone tucked into the round, announcing that she will be taking him along, while she shapes another projectile out of her own hair and loads it into an arm that has reformed into a rifle. Deku reads the phrasing and the setup, a hired gun perched on a high roof, and understands he has finally found what he needed: an escapee wired directly to All For One.

He remembers a warning Hawks gave him on his last night in that hospital bed. The villains will want him breathing so the Quirk can be taken, and only one escapee is likely capable of that: Kaina Tsutsumi, better known as Lady Nagant, once an asset of the Hero Public Safety Commission and until recently a Tartarus inmate. Following the rest of that advice, he runs, slipping the second shot. Two more curve at him from impossible angles, and the last shatters the left Mid-Gauntlet. He recalls Snipe describing her in an interview as the best long distance shooter in the country, thanks to Rifle, which grants roughly three kilometers of reach and lets her mold her hair into rounds of varying type fired along precise arcs. Working backward from the angles of the first and latest shots, he places her about a kilometer out, and decides to close rather than flee.

Lady Nagant, meanwhile, tucks away the man she brought along before re-engaging: Kai Chisaki, slumped against a building, murmuring about wanting to see his Boss again. She had been dragging him out of Tartarus on the chance he would prove useful when All For One approached her with the contract on Deku. She asked why he came to her when everyone else was told to run wild. She is not like the others, he said, and the end of hero society will never arrive while that boy exists. She accepted, and he threw in Air Walk to help her close the job.

Deku rescues an ordinary heteromorph woman from a paranoid mob. In flashback, Yoichi Shigaraki convinces the second and third users to lend their support, completing the vestiges' backing of Izuku.

Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist conclude the villains are lying low on orders while All For One waits for Tomura's body to finish. Lady Nagant then ambushes Deku, destroying his phone and one Mid-Gauntlet, and he identifies her as the first solid link to All For One. Her recruitment is shown, including the Air Walk she was given and the fact that she pulled Kai Chisaki out of Tartarus with her.

Adapted from Chapter 310 through Chapter 312 within the Dark Hero arc. Japanese broadcast fell on February 18, 2023, and the dub on March 4, with Ours and North Wind bookending it.

The adaptation reworks how the rain soaked mob scene plays, staging the attackers pinning the heteromorph woman against a wall and having Deku return her umbrella twice. It adds dialogue from the previous One For All users, drops Yoichi's name from the second user's line, shows Hawks and Best Jeanist arresting the thieves Endeavor was handling, gives Rifle a more detailed demonstration, and depicts Lady Nagant freeing Kai from Tartarus just before her meeting with All For One.