Chapter 284

Deku takes the heroes airborne with him, reasoning that letting Tomura's Decay touch earth again means another wave of ruin, so the villain stays off the ground. His grip on Blackwhip is fading, so he releases the others and tells them to see to Gran Torino. Endeavor sends his son to give first aid, furious that he is not in the sky himself. Katsuki shouts at Deku to keep his distance now that Erasure is offline, and Deku shouts back that nobody else can hold Tomura up there. Tomura, noting the boy's fondness for the sky, promises to ship him off to heaven with everybody else once One For All changes hands. Deku hauls him closer and refuses to let him hurt another person.

Watching from below, Katsuki's mind drifts to the training sessions, and the day All Might pulled in Tsuyu Asui, Ochaco Uraraka and Hanta Sero to run them. Izuku had asked for hands on deck to master what he had newly gained. The others fixate on his hair, and he explains the game he and Katsuki had been playing, Blackwhip against evasion, which he lost every time; Hanta got the call because Tape works on similar principles. Ochaco and Tsuyu sign on, Hanta asks why Aizawa is not teaching the whip lessons, and All Might tells Ochaco her job is midair braking and body control, framing it as extra power to cover for Float practice, while explaining Aizawa's absence as a scheduling matter.

Sitting out the drills with Katsuki, All Might notes that Float works much like Zero Gravity, so the training may hand Izuku control in advance and possibly trigger the Quirk. After a silence, Katsuki says the secret of One For All cannot hold forever, not with Izuku's power now far past simple strength. All Might replies that nothing beyond Blackwhip leaves his mouth, precisely so Float never erupts on its own the way the whip did back in the Joint Training Battle. His second point reaches to the night Katsuki was let in on the truth and grasped that power of that kind puts bystanders at risk, since wanting it does not make a person evil. Another silence, and then Katsuki says Izuku trusts All Might with his life, yet the notebook of successors has a half-finished entry on the fourth user while covering the fifth, sixth and seventh in full. Nor did All Might come clean when Katsuki raised the resemblance between One For All and All For One. Asked directly if he is hiding something, All Might denies it and refuses to speculate about things he does not know, worried for Izuku, and noting that Katsuki is too.

Katsuki admits Izuku always puts everyone ahead of himself, that all that power sat wrong with him, and that ignoring his own weaknesses is what turned into years of bullying. All Might frames the training help as a kind of atonement, even if Izuku would never see it that way, and explains that the Endeavor comparison was about how both men only changed after being confronted, in Endeavor's case by All Might's withered form. He believes the two boys will talk it through one day.

Back in the current fight, Katsuki hauls Endeavor skyward with orders to make the final shot count. Deku, still towing Tomura, notices resistance building against his 100 percent strikes even as the damage sticks and the healing slows. His left arm is finished from the effort, but One For All exists to defeat All For One, so he decides to spend everything he has left and end it, whatever that costs him.

Deku sets the heroes he carried aloft back down and takes Tomura on alone in the air.

A flashback establishes the training Izuku has been putting in with Katsuki, Ochaco, Tsuyu and Hanta to master the Quirks left behind by earlier holders of One For All.

Speaking privately with All Might, Katsuki admits the bullying grew out of his inability to understand someone who puts others first. In the notes on the successors, the fourth user's information sits scribbled out.

Pushing One For All to its full output has wrecked Deku's left arm, yet he appears to be gaining ground on Tomura.

Seventeen pages, published in Weekly Shonen Jump issue 42 of 2020 and collected in volume 29 during the Paranormal Liberation War arc. Shoto, Endeavor, Tomura Shigaraki, Katsuki Bakugo and Deku appear on the cover, which is accompanied by a published sketch version. Episode 122 adapts the chapter.

Alongside Jaku City, the flashbacks visit U.A. High School and Tartarus.

Kohei Horikoshi's author comment marks an editor change, thanking Yoritomi and welcoming Taguchi to the team.