Chapter 262

Crust and several heroes are held up by a bulky High-End Nomu grumbling about the tight quarters. Crust urges everyone forward, since more High-Ends are ahead with Mirko and she needs support. He lengthens the protrusions his Shield Quirk produces to skewer the creature, but it shrugs the attack off and tells him it will take more than that.

The nature of Nomu is laid out: corpses rebuilt to hold several Quirks, incapable of independent thought and bound to their programming. They are sorted into low, middle, and high tiers by how many Quirks they carry and how far their bodies have been enhanced. Upper-tier specimens match roughly ten ordinary people, while the High-Ends stand apart because they retain a measure of reasoning and the personalities of the bodies they were made from.

At his terminal, Garaki complains about the labor behind them. He picked the most combat-hungry villains he could find, and transplanting Quirks artificially demands intricate surgery plus at least three months for the body to accept them, a process that has become brutal without All For One. Woman and four others have barely been trialed at all. He apologizes to the unfinished ones for sending them out, but he needs time, especially with Johnny and Mocha both gone and no way out without either of them, and Tomura Shigaraki sitting at seventy-one percent.

Mirko picks out Garaki's hiding place by ear. The High-Ends are startled she survived, and she explains she killed the impact with her legs on the way into the containers. Her Quirk is named Rabbit, which grants her a rabbit's capabilities. She launches straight at Garaki's position, and the High-Ends cut her off. Luna Ring scatters them, but one rips her left arm off with a Quirk that warps space. She flattens another with Luna Fall, then goes at the one that took her arm, which is astonished by how recklessly she closes. Landing on its shoulders, she tells it that its kind only ever fights from a distance. It tells her to die; she answers that she dies on her own schedule, and takes its head off with Luna Tijeras.

She binds the stump with her hair and informs the rest that since heads are the weak point, heads are what she will aim for. She lives every day as though tomorrow is not promised, she says, so when her time comes she will go without regrets, and no Nomu is going to be what ends her.

At the Gunga Mountain Villa, Skeptic comes apart as the heroes' attack begins, tearing around looking for Twice and blaming him for everything. He cannot work out how Hawks slipped past the scrutiny he kept on him, and settles on Twice being at fault anyway. He shouts a warning to the others as a crack splits the mansion down the middle.

Mirko fights the High-Ends turned loose to stall the heroes, destroys one Nomu's head, and loses her left arm in the exchange.

A High-End is given the name Woman, and Tomura's power boost is confirmed at seventy-one percent complete.

Crust's Quirk is named as Shield and Mirko's as Rabbit.

Skeptic realizes the heroes are striking the Paranormal Liberation Front directly and activates the villa's defenses.

The chapter supplies the series' fullest explanation of how Nomu are built and tiered, including why High-Ends can think for themselves.

Mirko debuts three named techniques here: Luna Ring, Luna Fall, and Luna Tijeras.

Horikoshi's author comment admits he would happily draw Mirko for another thirty weeks but also wants to move the story along.