Friend

Acting on what Lady Nagant gave up, Deku, the top three professionals, and the Lurkers converge on a mansion in Haibori Woods, once a Creature Rejection Clan hideout and the address where he was to be handed over. He and Endeavor go in first. A recorded projection of All For One begins playing, addressed to the boy by name. The man expected him here, since Nagant would leak it and since Deku was never going to write off someone like her. People broken by their circumstances get labeled villains, he says, and anyone who does not fit gets pushed out, in any era and under any system. The road Deku has chosen will grind him down forever, and All For One admits he has thought of little else in his cell. He points, says All Might no longer interests him, and tells the boy it is his turn. The projector detonates, taking the mansion, the forest, and apparently everyone standing in it.

They escape by a margin and regroup in a warehouse, their one lead vaporized. Edgeshot proposes telling more heroes about One For All to widen and sharpen the search, and Mt. Lady stresses that it matters more than ever with the League hunting Deku directly. Endeavor and Best Jeanist push back, given how many are quitting and how close the press already is. A secret shared that widely will leak, and the fallout would land on the boy. Mt. Lady asks why All For One does not simply broadcast it himself, since it seems his kind of move. Endeavor reasons the opposite: publishing it would mobilize every remaining hero around Deku instantly, so silence keeps All For One hidden and the boy exposed. Hawks gets a text from All Might. Another assassin has already been flattened.

At that scene Deku is leaving, since the man had nothing worth extracting and might be rigged the way Nagant was. All Might calls out, worried he has not eaten. Still turning All For One's message over, Deku tells him flatly that he is fine now, and that the fight with Nagant taught him to move at full output without injuring himself, so there is no reason for his teacher to be caught up in any of this. All Might lunges and misses, then curses himself for never teaching the boy that rest is permitted no matter what he carries. He sits in the rubble beside food nobody will eat, and Stain watches him from behind a pillar.

Deku fights on, ignoring the worry from heroes and vestiges alike, longer shifts and less contact. The costume rots on him, and he walks around with Blackwhip tendrils trailing from his back out of sheer habit. The city starts arguing about what he even is, a Nomu or something worse, and why a figure who looks like that saves anyone. Fear from the people he rescues does not slow him, because he believes this is the price of getting everyone back to a place where he is allowed to smile with them. The vestiges can only watch, and the second user says there is exactly one thing the boy needs.

The neglect collects its debt at Ground Zero in Kamino Ward, where he collapses and senses another escapee. Dictator, whose power turns bystanders into a private army, closes in to collect him for All For One. Deku knows Despot breaks when the puppeteer or a puppet takes a solid hit, but he cannot stand, cannot think of a way through that spares the civilians, and can only swear he will find one while the unwilling mob buries him. The rescue comes from overhead: Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight drops in, takes Dictator out with an AP Shot, and calls back to the rest of his classmates that he has found him. The one thing the second user named is standing right there.

Rewinding, the class had pieced together that Izuku was working with the heroes from their strange behavior and sudden silence. With Nezu's help they cornered Endeavor for answers. After Shoto scolded his father for hiding this, Katsuki said the man's logic was sound and his knowledge of Izuku was worthless. His classmate is unhinged, Katsuki said, the kind who insists he is fine when he is not, and leaving him with All Might, who built the Symbol of Peace on that exact habit, is a catastrophe. Endeavor was still weighing it, mulling over remarks Hawks made when the boy went solo, when Hanta slapped the GPS phone away from him and snatched it out of the air. Tenya declared the class would go, because whatever burden their friend inherited, he is their friend, and no brighter future they smile at works without him. Nezu backed them, since the school has been responsible for the boy from the day he enrolled and walking out did not undo that. Endeavor raised the evacuees as a problem, and Nezu answered that he would make them understand when it came to that, adding that with the U.A. Barrier's new defenses, the boy's return would make an excellent test.

Back in the present, Creati and Shoto secure Dictator while the freed civilians flee, leaving the students facing him. Deku asks why they came. Uravity says they are worried. He puts his mask back on and says he is fine, and Dynamight laughs in his face at the lie. Seeing they will not listen, Deku gathers himself, powers up One For All, and tells his class to move. They set themselves instead, ready to fight him for his own sake.

The Haibori Woods mansion is a trap. All For One delivers a recorded message naming Deku as his new target before destroying the site, erasing the heroes' only lead. Edgeshot's proposal to share One For All more widely is rejected as too fragile.

Deku refuses All Might's help and deteriorates badly while fighting alone, feared by the public. He collapses at Ground Zero and is nearly captured by Dictator before Katsuki Bakugo intervenes. Class 1-A, with Nezu's approval, has come to bring him back to U.A., and Deku prepares to fight them rather than return.

Adapting the back half of Chapter 316 through Chapter 319, this Dark Hero arc entry aired in Japan on March 4, 2023, and in English on March 18.

The adaptation puts the rest of the heroes inside the mansion alongside Deku and Endeavor, shows him beating the second hired gun on screen, and has him defeat the thugs threatening the civilians outright where the manga only had him frighten them off. The Spinner styled mutants from that manga scene are absent. Two montage beats are cut, Deku walking a forest alone and eating an energy bar, while a visual explanation of Despot is added. Hanta knocking the phone from Endeavor's hand replaces the manga's version, where Endeavor tossed it for the students.