Chapter 211

Walking out to their starting position before the fifth match, Neito talks to Hitoshi about growing up being told his Quirk would never make him a hero. People built like him, he says, cannot do anything alone. Hitoshi is unsure where this is going, so Neito spells it out: he knows exactly what being unable to act feels like, and that shared circumstance is why he likes Hitoshi.

Hitoshi replies that he is not content with where he stands, and Neito says that is simply how the world runs. Curious, he asks how Hitoshi managed to brainwash Izuku, and hears that it took trash-talking a classmate of Izuku's, since he had no read on the boy's character at the time. Neito draws his conclusion quickly: reaching hero status from where they started means behaving in ways heroes are not supposed to.

In the present, Izuku bears down on a baffled Neito with a concentrated Delaware Smash. Then black energy erupts from his right arm and whips outward, and Izuku understands he is losing hold of his own Quirk as he fights to keep the bulk of it contained. He shouts at Neito to get clear as the tendrils tear into the field, and Neito dodges while they haul Izuku bodily toward Hitoshi's hiding place. Watching him crash down beside Hitoshi, Neito worries for him, and Rikido wonders whether Izuku has invented something new.

Hitoshi has narrowly avoided being caught. He finds Izuku wrecked and pleading with him to run from the unstable energy, and can only stare as the tendrils send Izuku rampaging across the ground. Both classes see them spreading fast. Class 1-A scrambles to stay out of their path, and Ochaco realizes Izuku is about to put himself in danger all over again.

Izuku cannot understand why his Quirk is defying him, and the strain on his mind is savage. Horrified, All Might tells Shota and Vlad King to call the match before anyone is seriously hurt, and Shota moves at once, knowing what overusing that power costs. As the tendrils lash out at random, Izuku begs the Quirk to obey, thinking back to the day he received it and the years spent shaping it into something of his own. For all that dedication, he grieves this turn, because the last thing he wants is to make anyone worry about him again. The black energy begins to swallow him and the damage escalates. Ochaco makes the call, using Zero Gravity to launch herself onto him in the hope of holding him back from hurting himself and everyone else, and calls out to Hitoshi for help.

Neito reveals that as a child he was told his Quirk would never make him a hero.

One For All slips out of Izuku's control, producing black tendrils that drag him around the battlefield, and All Might calls for the match to be stopped before anyone is badly hurt.

Ochaco's feelings for Izuku resurface as she leaps in to keep the black energy from consuming him, then asks Hitoshi for help.

Thirteen pages long, the chapter was published on December 22, 2018 in the combined fourth and fifth issue of 2019 and collected into Volume 22 during the Joint Training arc. Izuku Midoriya and Neito Monoma share the cover.

Episode 98 adapts the material.

Ground Gamma at U.A. High School is the setting. Copy, Poltergeist, One For All, the emerging Blackwhip and Zero Gravity all feature, and the fifth user of One For All appears in shadow.