Cockroaches

By mid-December, roughly a month and a half after the League first reached Daruma Ujiko and first met Gigantomachia, Tomura Shigaraki is still trying to force the giant into submission. His allies rotate through the fight to spell him. As All For One's chosen heir, Tomura draws the giant's attention almost exclusively, so nobody minds when the others drift away. Twice pads out their numbers with copies.

It changes nothing. Gigantomachia can go forty-eight hours and forty-four minutes without pause, swelling larger the longer he fights, then recovers on three hours of sleep. He is happy to tell them why ambushing him while he rests will not work either: his hearing and his nose are both extraordinary. Daruma keeps his promise and withholds real support, handing over only a single stingy allowance. Himiko Toga spends hers on a coat.

Walking to meet the others, Spinner turns over how far the League has drifted from Stain's creed, and asks Himiko why she stays. Her answer is that Stain, Izuku Midoriya, and Ochaco Uraraka all still have her heart, and that what she wants is to become them, which strikes Spinner as impossibly light-footed. They find Tomura, Twice, and Mr. Compress battered but resting. Tomura insists the giant has lost a step and that submission is close. Spinner sees in his eyes the same look as a boy still chasing a dream.

Twice's phone rings with Giran's number. Mr. Compress erupts, complaining that the broker never picks up and demanding to know whether his ruined prosthetic arm carries insurance. Twice, split between gratitude for the man who brought him into the League and irritation on Compress's behalf, gets an answer from a stranger: the silence, the voice says, is their doing, and it addresses him by his legal name. Alarmed, the two demand to know who is speaking and what has happened. The caller tells them to watch the news.

The broadcast reports another discovery. A pinky has turned up in Central Fukuoka, where Endeavor recently fought a brutal battle. A ring finger surfaced the day before at Central High, site of an attack on a prison transport months earlier. Earlier finds pair each digit with a keepsake: a scarf and a middle finger at the Shie Hassaikai Compound, glasses and an index finger outside Hosu City Terminal, a thumb next to a white jacket at Kamino Ward's Ground Zero. Police believe every piece came from one victim and that the display is an organization's message.

Mr. Compress recognizes the locations as their own history. The caller introduces himself as Re-Destro, Grand Commander of the Meta Liberation Army. Tomura scoffs that the Yakuza tried this already and now a second outfit wants to ride the League's notoriety back into relevance, and asks whether the book is to blame. Re-Destro corrects him: the Army started that wave. Twice cuts in to ask what has been done with Giran and what the man wants. Giran lives, he says. The Army intends to tear down society's current architecture and rebuild it so every Meta-Human can live openly and use their power however they please. Compress sees nothing worth opposing there, and Himiko wonders whether this becomes another Yakuza-style collaboration. Tomura tells Re-Destro to free the broker and call back later, since he is busy. Compress suspects that remark will cost them. Re-Destro suggests Tomura take a rest.

The broker stays, he continues, because holding him yielded a great deal about the League. He credits Giran's nerve: the man wiped his client list, refused to talk, and gave them nothing on his face while they took his fingers one by one. The list was recovered anyway. Generations of patience have grown the Army's roots wide and deep, and Re-Destro counts 116,516 liberation warriors ready to move. Among them are Tomoyasu Chikazoku, who sits on the board of the tech giant Feel Good; Chitose Kizuki, an executive director on the publishing side at Shoowaysha; and Koku Hanabata, whose Hearts and Mind party he leads. Making light of that merry band of revolutionaries, he warns, disgusts him.

Spinner reels at the numbers. Twice flings his phone away when Re-Destro names their position deep in the Niigata mountainside. Satellites have them locked, he says, and no amount of running will shake it; one call puts every Hero on their heads. Tomura thanks him for the courtesy and asks what he actually wants.

What he wants is the revolution carried under Destro's banner, and the League's fame is in the way. Their destruction will serve as the Army's formal second coming. The fingers were proof of resolve, and freeing every Meta alive is what his people intend to bleed for. Giran waits in Deika City, Aichi Prefecture. Re-Destro hangs up leaving two doors open: face the Army and be crushed, or sit still and be collected by Heroes once he gives up their coordinates.

Tomura's campaign against Gigantomachia is still unresolved.

Destro's descendant is identified as Rikiya Yotsubashi, operating under the name Re-Destro.

Re-Destro has been amputating Giran's fingers as bait to lure the League into the open.

The Meta Liberation Army's senior executives are named, and its ranks are put at more than one hundred thousand soldiers.

Re-Destro formally declares war on the League of Villains.

Fifteen pages, collected in Volume 23, released April 8, 2019 in issue 19 of 2019 and adapted in Episode 108. Tomura Shigaraki and Gigantomachia appear on the cover.

Settings include the Niigata Mountains, Hosu City, and Ground Zero. Energy Saver appears, the Meta Liberation War book features as an item, and the clash between Tomura Shigaraki and Gigantomachia both starts and concludes here.

Two names are jokes at real targets: the IT firm Feel Good Inc. nods to the Gorillaz song, and the publisher Shoowaysha plays on Shueisha, which puts out Weekly Shonen Jump.