Chapter 253

Winter break ends, leaving only three months of the school year ahead. Tenya Ida wishes the class a happy new year and briefs them: today the class delivers hands-on reports about the internships, each student ready to say what the experience gave them. As he sends them off to change for Ground Alpha, Shota arrives to move things along. Mina greets him, Tenya reports that he did as asked, and Denki notes how fired up Tenya seems, which Tenya credits to the flexibility his Work-Studies under Manual gave him, an answer delivered with enough energy to prove the point. Shota is then called by the faculty office.

In the girls' room, Toru compliments Ochaco's new costume while Kyoka finds the wrist guards heavy. Ochaco explains there is a wire inside she can float with her Quirk to cancel the weight. Mina lifts the other guard and something drops out of it: an All Might key chain, a Christmas gift from Izuku. Mina teases; Ochaco denies everything and stows it.

In the boys' room, Eijiro praises Izuku's grip on his second Quirk. Izuku says he can hold it for only a moment and that it has limited uses, though he rates it strong. Katsuki responds by throwing his mask into Izuku's head, dropping him bleeding in front of everyone.

Outside, with the mask still stuck to his skull, Izuku explains he needs his body to adjust to it, since it warps his sense of speed past what his brain can track. All Might turns up spinning cotton candy for a pun on his own catchphrase, which lands flat, and tells the class Shota has an emergency to handle.

In the car, Shota snaps at Hizashi to drive faster. He says the behavior at the U.S.J. Incident was nothing like it, and that a joke has limits. Hizashi hopes Tsukauchi has simply got it badly wrong.

At Tartarus they meet Naomasa and Gran Torino. Naomasa reviews the standing understanding: Nomu are people rebuilt to carry several Quirks, their hearts and minds twisted past the point of being alive, puppets rather than beings. Or so everyone believed, Gran Torino adds. Shota wants the point; Naomasa says the preamble is there to brace them.

Inside Kurogiri's cell, Gran Torino calls him the League of Villains' hub, and admits the interrogation is going nowhere: he chats about nothing useful and shuts down whenever the League comes up. Asked what that means, the veteran and the detective explain that Warp Gate is not one Quirk but several factors fused into something new, complex enough that it took time to spot. The root factor closely matches a Quirk that belonged to an old friend of theirs, a boy who died early: Oboro Shirakumo.

U.A.'s first years have three months of the school year left. Ochaco debuts a new costume built around wires she can float, and keeps Izuku's All Might key chain on her belt. Izuku tells his friends he can control Blackwhip, if only briefly.

At Tartarus, Shota and Hizashi learn that the accepted account of how Nomu are made is wrong. Gran Torino and Naomasa Tsukauchi reveal that Kurogiri's Warp Gate was assembled by combining multiple Quirk factors, and that the base of it is Cloud, the Quirk of their late classmate Oboro Shirakumo.

Fourteen pages long, the chapter opens the Paranormal Liberation War arc and is collected in volume 26. It ran on December 9, 2019, in issue 2 of the 2020 Weekly Shonen Jump run, with Tenya Ida on the cover.

Its title page was accompanied by a color page. Chapter 252 precedes it and Chapter 254 follows, and Episode 107 adapts the material. Horikoshi's author comment for the issue jokes that super-spicy curry made him cry and reminded him of Food Wars.