Chapter 205

Tetsutetsu keeps swinging while his father's instruction, to drive his body heat as high as it will go, loops in Shoto's head. Neither temperature is landing, so the only road left is upward. He recalls Endeavor warning that his fire remains unsafe at full throttle, and conceding in the same breath that it has already climbed past his own. He also hears Izuku from their Sports Festival bout, insisting the flames belong to him and nobody else.

The temperature climbs. Tetsutetsu begins to feel it, and Shoto tells him plainly to back off or melt. One of the broadcast cameras gives out under the heat, and All Might, watching alongside Midnight, notes that the boy carries his father's fire. Tetsutetsu works out the plan, to bank heat inside himself, and calls it a blade with two edges, since the cost lands on Shoto just as hard and cannot last. He charges anyway, eats a rising blast, and drives a knee into Shoto's stomach. Warned that he will leave with worse than a burn, Tetsutetsu shouts that a training bout with nothing risked teaches you nothing about the real thing, and that both of them owe each other more. Shoto grins and tells him he is loud.

Across the field, Pony rides her horns to keep her distance while Mezo snatches the ones she fires. Even that far out the heat reaches her, and she wants to turn back for Tetsutetsu. She goes for the finish with Thunder Horn; Mezo answers with Octoblow, wrecking horns as fast as they come. Her feint, one horn curling around to his back, fails because there is an eye back there to see it. Mashirao then takes hold of her horns and follows with Tornado Tail Dance, reasoning that a Pony who cannot launch is barely a problem. She grumbles that being caught so plainly stings. Mezo sends him off to the prison and to Shoto, only for Juzo to surface behind him.

The furnace fight is burning out. Tetsutetsu says the flames have dimmed; Shoto says the punches have slowed. Groggy and desperate to cool off, Shoto needs distance to do it and is winding up an unnamed move when Juzo drops the floor out from under him, buries him in debris and seals it. Tenya arrives, kicks Juzo hard enough to shatter half his mask and send him flying, then lifts Shoto and apologizes for arriving late. Remembering Stain and his brother's counsel, he declares that saving people comes ahead of fighting villains.

Juzo, struggling upright, kicks himself for filing Tenya away as a problem for later. He knows his Softening dies with his consciousness and that the team pays for it, so he accepts the loss on his own terms: he liquefies a tower and orders Tetsutetsu to shove. Tenya runs flat out with Shoto in his arms and both are buried anyway. Juzo and Tetsutetsu drop too. The round appears to close in a tie.

Shoto drives his flames past their limit and pays for it in mounting fatigue, with several onlookers confirming the heat is enough to melt Tetsutetsu's Steel.

Three new super moves surface: Octoblow from Mezo Shoji, Tornado Tail Dance from Mashirao Ojiro, and Thunder Horn from Pony Tsunotori.

Juzo brings a tower down on the field, leaving four combatants unconscious and the third round seemingly deadlocked.

Fifteen pages long, the chapter ran on November 12, 2018 in issue 50 of that year and was collected into Volume 22 as part of the Joint Training arc. Shoto Todoroki and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu share the cover.

Episode 96 covers the material in the anime.

Ground Gamma at U.A. High School is the sole setting. Half-Cold Half-Hot, Steel, Softening, Horn Cannon, Dupli-Arms, Engine and Hellflame all feature, and flashbacks reach back to Stain, Native, Tensei Ida and the Sports Festival.