Chapter 288

A large aircraft cuts toward Jaku City. Its passenger wants to know whether five minutes have passed yet; the pilot points out that she is not Hawks and she is not Mirko, and this is as fast as she flies. She also wants him seated, since the ground below has turned dangerous and his body has not finished mending. His reply is that lives hang in the balance, which puts his own safety somewhere further down the list.

Hero units converge on Gigantomachia. He is barreling toward Nabato City at a hundred kilometers an hour, boring through buildings the way a mole works through soil, and an evacuation zone sits five kilometers ahead. At that pace nobody catches him. Eight minutes remain. The heroes name their failure out loud, that letting civilians suffer this rampage is a crime of their own making, and resolve to put their lives between the giant and the people who should never have paid for it.

Watching through his laptop, Skeptic tracks the convergence. Mr. Compress finds the timing convenient. Satellite coverage here is thinner than what they had at the Gunga Mountain Villa, Skeptic notes, though still workable, and while the hero count is lower it is nothing to shrug at. Mid-strategy, Mr. Compress spots movement and asks for a closer look: Uravity and Froppy, threading through the city. Himiko Toga sees them too, hurries over, and asks for her gear. He hands it over.

Kitted out, she gets ready to go, and Mr. Compress tries to talk her down, calling it too dangerous. She tells him she needs her answers. He appeals to Dabi, who brushes him off and turns to Skeptic instead, which irritates the man further. Spinner is the one who reaches her. In his telling they are all nothing much, strays who happened to collide, and she is not the only one hurting over Twice. That collision was what Twice called family, and Tomura would want them together. Letting folks act as they please is the whole brand of the Paranormal Liberation Front, so go, and come back fast. Himiko smiles at him.

Below, Uravity radios in a sighting of the giant and pushes for a faster evacuation. She meets up with Froppy, pulling her clear of falling debris as the frog hero shepherds civilians from a building. An old woman then cries out that her husband is asleep and too slow to move himself. With the giant closing, Uravity sends Froppy on with the people she already has and takes the woman's case herself. The elderly woman leads her into an alley, calling her husband's name, running startlingly fast, which she credits to love. Uravity promises to get him out. When she catches up, the woman is Himiko Toga, wearing a stolen face.

Himiko ducks into a house and Uravity follows her in. From cover, Himiko admits she had been hoping for Froppy, a friend in her estimation, and for Deku, who she loves best when he is hurt. She likes Uravity too. What, she asks, does Uravity plan to do about her, and she pounces with a knife, pinned at arm's length. Uravity's response is a stack of questions: was all this staging really just to ask that, did she drain the woman she copied, is that woman alive. Thrown slightly by the deflection, Himiko listens as the young hero states her own terms. She intends to save everyone she can reach, and anyone standing in the way gets arrested where they stand. Himiko only glares.

An unidentified passenger, shown only in shadow, closes on Jaku City by plane while recovering from serious injuries.

Skeptic's satellite feed shows the heroes massing against Gigantomachia. Himiko picks Uravity and Froppy out of the crowd and decides to confront them with the question that has been eating at her, and Spinner, rather than blocking her, sends her off with an invitation to come home.

Disguised as an elderly woman pleading for her husband, Himiko lures Uravity into a back alley, drops the transformation, and forces the confrontation inside an abandoned house. Their rematch begins.

Chapter 288 carries the title Save Takeo!! and runs seventeen pages. Issue 46 of 2020 published it on October 16, and it belongs to volume 30 and the Paranormal Liberation War arc.

Best Jeanist takes the cover, which quietly answers the question of who is on that plane. The anime splits the material: Episode 123 handles pages two through seventeen, and Episode 124 picks up the first page. Horikoshi's comment apologizes for a break and hints at an announcement he cannot make yet.