Together with Shoji

Around the time Shoto first put Dabi down, the clash outside Central Hospital escalated into a full riot. Roughly two hundred heroes and officers face some fifteen thousand people marching under Spinner to retrieve Kurogiri, and the mob fights smarter than expected, splitting its opponents apart while decades of stored resentment boil over.

From a rooftop, Paranormal Liberation Front executive Takaie Kanigumo feeds the anger, dismissing modern Quirk counselling, education and public contrition as theater masking what ordinary-looking people still believe, and pointing to the Great Jeda Purge and the 6/6 Incident as evidence. Acceptance inside big cities, he argues, proves nothing about everywhere else, and Spinner is the man who will finally make them shine the way heroes do for others.

Spinner, meanwhile, is running on instruction rather than conviction, his mind rotting under the extra Quirks implanted in him. Tentacole's Octoblow knocks him back, and the mob swarms the student, branding him a fake hero and a traitor to his own kind, insults identical to what non-heteromorphs threw at him as a child. That memory steadies him. He asks what any of this has to do with attacking a hospital, reminding them that during the first war the heroes evacuated Jaku General's patients and staff before making a move. He throws the crowd off, losing his mask and exposing his scarred face, and demands to know whether they have a plan at all, promising he will never forgive them if the answer is no. The mob wavers and begs Spinner for reassurance; overwhelmed, all he manages is that he does not care what is happening, which Takaie spins into permission for sacrifice.

Blood-red scales erupt across Spinner's skin, Scalemail added to Body Bulk so he would look the part of a leader, and his thoughts blur to a memory of trading talk about League of Legends with Tomura. His sword catches Tentacole in the air and severs one duplicated hand. Watching his friend maimed while the executive preaches, Anima's forehead begins to crack. He remembers the day Mezo told the class the truth: born unlike anyone in his village, he was beaten by neighbors who called it correcting the pollution of their blood. Minoru apologized frantically for the muscly octopus joke, and Mezo explained he took no offense, that the comparison even inspired his hero name, and asked them not to tiptoe around him. He wears the mask so nobody assumes his scars mean he wants revenge. The one memory he treasures is saving a drowning girl at a waterfall; the villagers scarred him for it, but her thanks and her guilt made him want to be a hero for people like himself. The class pulled him into a hug while Koji quietly cried.

Tentacole tells Spinner that shared persecution does not make senseless violence a solution. Anima, a crystalline growth now where the crack was, swarms Takaie with pigeons and tells him not to mock his friend. Present Mic recalls Mezo requesting this assignment from All Might and Eraser Head after the giant woman Deku saved warned them about Skeptic's call to the heteromorphs, saying he could not call himself a hero and look away, and marvels at how strong this generation has grown. Koji now commands animals without speaking, thanks to the formation his mother once described, and he remembers her telling him to get angry for the people he loves, a lesson framed by the time his father defended her against mockery of her horns. Anima drags the executive back to the road with Hitchcock Birds, Present Mic shatters Spinner's sword, and Tentacole floors him with an Octospansion, shouting that abnormal bodies should protect something rather than mirror the people who hated them. Spinner rallies the mob anyway, and while the heroes are pinned, he crashes through Central Hospital's front doors on all fours.

Mezo Shoji's childhood, his scars, and the reason behind his mask and hero name are revealed in full.

Koji Koda's Quirk evolves, the crystalline growth on his skull letting him command animals without speaking.

Spinner receives Scalemail on top of Body Bulk, his sanity degrades further, and he breaches Central Hospital despite being beaten by Tentacole.

Adapted from Chapters 370 and 371 plus the opening of Chapter 372. Steel Bulwark appeared among the rioters in the manga and is swapped for a different heteromorph here.

The flashback of the girl thanking Mezo now includes his condition after the villagers beat and scarred him, and the cracks on Anima's forehead are more pronounced. All Might carries Deku's backpack in the manga scene where Mezo and Koji request the assignment, but not in the anime, and the manga shows rioters beside Spinner as the smoke clears at the hospital doors.