Chapter 116

All Might comes face to face with All For One in the sealed vault that holds him, and the prisoner opens by admiring the severity of the place. Shift your chair to scratch your back and every weapon in the room finds your face. Brain waves and vital signs are tracked around the clock. Even an attempt at a Quirk would put hands around your throat. The facility exists, he says, to shut the wicked out completely, and the borrowed name of the Greek underworld suits it. All Might assures him there is no escape and no early release from this particular hell.

Pressed again on why he came, All For One deflects with questions about Gran Torino and mocks the fact that All Might still wears the costume, calling continued Hero work absurd. All Might notes the flood of words, and his enemy admits he has not held a proper conversation in a very long time. Then All Might states his purpose: he wants Tomura Shigaraki's location. All For One claims ignorance and adds that, unlike his visitor, he has already let the boy move forward on his own. All Might pushes further, asking what all of it was for, the body kept alive against reason, the endurance, the years of exploitation and manipulation.

The topic strikes All For One as pointless, since understanding was never on the table between people who will never align. His answer is simple: the two of them are the same. Where All Might reached for the ideal of the Hero of Justice, he reached for the throne of evil. He had the power to hold and embody that ideal, and so long as it carried him forward forever, no cost was too high.

All Might counters: if the goal was eternal evil, why bother with an heir. The question amuses him. All Might took everything from him, above all his body, and only the apparatus he wears keeps him breathing. His ideals were fenced in by that loss. When something ends, he says, people hand it to someone else, the way houses and food made by human hands pass to other humans. He is doing what everyone does, which is why Tomura Shigaraki was groomed to inherit.

Security calls out three minutes remaining, to All For One's annoyance, and reminds All Might that the prisoner is sealed off from all outside information and must not be given any. Denied the news, All For One builds a hypothesis instead. Anxiety over the retirement, plus Endeavor as the Heroes' new figurehead, has the media making its case to society as a whole. On the other side, outcasts who never bought into Heroes will read the insecurity and organize, believing they can reshape the world. Tomura will stay hidden a while longer, building the League and extending its reach, and friction among villains is inevitable. If the picture matches, he says, then it is exactly the world he expected, all of it flowing from a retirement and the lie of an appearance. He predicts All Might will spend his remaining years powerless, unable to save anyone, watching villains rise, and asks how that feels.

All Might stands, security orders him back, and he tells All For One to presume nothing. He knows Tomura intends to kill both him and Izuku. He will not die that way, and the future being described will never be allowed. Asked whether that was the whole reason for the visit, All Might walks out promising to smash that dark future as many times as it takes, leaving his enemy to rot. The cell seals as All For One considers the rest of his life inside it.

Riding back, Naomasa Tsukauchi asks whether anything useful came of it, and All Might says no. Naomasa remarks on the long road ahead and figures Tomura will stay out of sight for now. Before he can bring up his interview with the Hero Killer, Stain, All Might's phone lights up with a message from Izuku: a photo of his provisional license and a note that he took another step forward thanks to him. It makes All Might's day, and the two drive on.

At the Heights Alliance dormitory, Izuku wonders whether the message landed. Classmates chatter about school starting again as Katsuki walks past him and says they need to step outside, because there is something to discuss about his Quirk.

Inside Tartarus, All Might questions his old enemy and comes away with nothing on Tomura Shigaraki's whereabouts.

All For One explains that he groomed Tomura as a successor because All Might's destruction of his body limited his own ideals.

Cut off from outside news, All For One accurately predicts the state of Hero society and the League's growth after the retirement.

Izuku sends All Might a photo of his provisional license, and Naomasa Tsukauchi mentions an interview with Stain.

Back at the dormitory that night, Katsuki pulls Izuku aside for a conversation about his Quirk.

Titled Meeting in Tartarus, the chapter runs seventeen pages and appeared in issue 51 of 2016 on November 21, 2016. It is collected in Volume 13 within the Provisional Hero License Exam arc, positioned between Chapter 115 and Chapter 117.

Katsuki Bakugo appears on the cover. Tartarus, the U.A. High School campus, and the Heights Alliance dormitory all feature. The anime adapts the material in Episode 60.

Kohei Horikoshi's author's comment mentions that Neda Sensei visited his house and how glad he was to talk with him.