Chapter 258

Two months or so before the heroes vanish, and a week after the hospital tip, Twice comes to Hawks for help. He wants help wording his own take on liberation as an idea. Meetings eat Spinner and Mr. Compress every day, Giran and Dabi could not care less, Himiko Toga is cute, so Hawks gets the question. He adds that plenty in his unit distrust him as a puppet handed a rank, so speaking in his own words feels better.

It took Hawks a month to chart the Front's regiments and the lieutenants and advisors staffing them. Black is the tactical arm, supporting the rest, under Twice. Violet is the raid arm, tracking everyone's position nationwide with one exception, under Dabi and Geten. Carmine is intelligence, under Himiko and Skeptic, with Slidin' Go among its members and advisors. Brown is support, under Mr. Compress and Spinner, who sat out the advent at Deika City and are dangerous regardless.

Striking first, Hawks judges, ends it. He reflects on mapping the membership without being caught despite heavy surveillance and administrative limits, crediting the negotiating skills he built up from childhood. Since so many members loathe the current system, he coaches Twice to promise they will trample the society that has smothered individual freedom, and to profess loyalty to Re-Destro, whose bloodline is what binds them. Twice agrees, privately deciding he is only flattering people, since he does not share the feeling.

The plan, as Hawks reads it, is simultaneous attacks on major cities, after which Re-Destro and his party leaders take over the crippled, lawless places, handing out supplies and calling for freedom while claiming self-defense, and Tomura Shigaraki throned on rubble at the center of it. Hero society ends. Hawks silently thanks Twice for arranging the pieces for him. He admits Twice was the one he most needed to watch once he learned the man had beaten his own trauma, no longer a small-time villain, and grants that he is good-hearted. He remembers Twice asking why he reads the Meta Liberation Army so accurately, and answering that he sympathizes: the world he once wanted felt like a cage, and he wants to fly free. Twice says he would take him to Tomura if not for Skeptic's bugs on his wings, and in doing so lets slip where Tomura is: mountains, Kyoto.

Back in the present, Twice offers that anybody who helps his companions cannot be a bad person, and Hawks tells him again that he is kind.

As spring break ends, every hero school in Japan sends its students to the same place for internships. Burnin meets them and explains the split: students pull residents out from the city's rear while the pros hold the mountain's base.

The Paranormal Liberation Front's structure is detailed, split into the Black, Violet, Carmine and Brown regiments with their respective leaders. Sanctum gets a mention, flagged as the Meta Liberation Army's longest-serving member.

Hawks pins Tomura Shigaraki's surgery to the Kyoto mountains. The heroes throw a mass invasion at that mountain, while Burnin assigns students from most hero schools to evacuate citizens.

Seventeen pages long, in the Paranormal Liberation War arc and collected in volume 26, this chapter marks the start of the Paranormal Liberation War itself. It ran on January 27, 2020, in issue 9 of the 2020 Weekly Shonen Jump run. Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Burnin and Shoto Todoroki share the cover.

Red, Sanctum, Amplivolt, Takaie Kanigumo and Dai all debut. The anime splits the material: Episode 113 uses pages 14 and 16 to 17, and Episode 114 covers the rest. Horikoshi's author comment describes his unchanging routine with the table of contents request, which neither side wants to alter.