Chapter 243

U.A. lets the students home for a day over New Year's Eve with pro escorts. Izuku spends it with Inko and tells her about the Joint Training Battle, including the help from Ochaco and Hitoshi, which nearly makes her faint. He shows her a letter from Eri thanking him for the school festival invitation, misspelled because she is still learning, and treasured for it. Inko admits she has spent his whole life worrying, because a boy born Quirkless kept throwing himself at other people's problems, and she believed her job was to stand between him and the world. Seeing how much he has grown, she no longer does.

At the Paranormal Liberation Front base, Hawks strolls back from an unauthorized absence and tells Slidin' Go the coffee on site is terrible. Lectured about rank, he needles the man about freedom supposedly being the point of the organization. Skeptic overhears and flattens Slidin' Go, since Japan's number two is worth immeasurably more to the Front. Hawks' clearance opens the hero information network, and Skeptic has planted twenty micro devices on him to harvest it, boasting that nothing the heroes do escapes him. Quite a fuss for coffee, he says. Hawks answers that he takes it sweet.

A flashback covers Hawks briefing the Public Safety Commission. Contact with Dabi is established though the villain stays wary, and from here Hawks will be watched. He proposes coded communication and sets the priority: locate where the Nomu are made.

Endeavor greets Izuku and Katsuki with startling warmth, then drops it and makes his distaste plain. He accepted them only because his son asked, and would rather have had Shoto by himself. Shoto tells him to quit grumbling about a decision he already made, and Katsuki cheerfully calls him a jerk while allowing he will tolerate it to watch the top hero work. Endeavor asks Shoto whether this person is genuinely his friend. Izuku thanks him, remembering their exchange at the sports festival and how the intimidation that once frightened him now reads differently.

All Might, in flashback, thinks the plan is excellent. Having mastered the images of locking and unlocking should keep further outbursts away from Izuku, he says, and Endeavor will suit Katsuki because the two are cut from similar cloth.

Walking the streets, Endeavor turns over what Izuku once said about Shoto not being like him, then breaks into a run at a disturbance, refusing to waste time training anyone but his son. He orders the boys to stay behind him and is startled to find them already suited up, with Izuku asking for instructions. He repeats the order. In the city, Starservant assaults passersby while proclaiming a new era, and Hawks reads Meta Liberation War on a rooftop above, remarking on the timing.

Hawks presses on with his infiltration, aiming to find the Nomu production site. Skeptic's micro devices let him monitor everything Hawks does, which is why Hawks hides his reports behind codes. The three students start their work-studies with Endeavor, who stays stern despite his changes, and Hawks turns up at a crime scene.

Chapter 243, by Kohei Horikoshi, runs nineteen pages in volume 25 within the Endeavor Agency arc, published September 14, 2019 in issue 42. Starservant debuts, Episode 102 adapts it, and the cover carries Ochaco, Izuku, Shoto, Katsuki, Mina, and Eijiro.