Chapter 291

Endeavor's mind goes back to the day the news came. Cold weather, dry air, Sekoto Peak, the same slope where he had trained. The fire had run past two thousand degrees Celsius, which is why nothing was left to bury, the bones reduced to ash and taken by the wind. One fragment of lower jaw was all they recovered.

He remembers the boy, too. A little white creeping into red hair, waved off as nothing while Toya bubbled about learning his ultimate move, and a father who looked pleased. Toya never got his mother's ice, but the fire he did get outstripped Endeavor's own. Overheating had no answer, and Endeavor intended to raise him for heroics regardless. Half-Cold Half-Hot remained the goal, and Rei, convinced that siblings would encourage one another, wanted more children, which brought Fuyumi. She took the ice and none of the flame, and that suited him, because Toya had the ceiling, and everything he wanted could rest on that one boy. Even once the skin began to burn, he believed Toya could carry him to the goal and burn out the dark he had been carrying.

In the present, Endeavor can only insist that Toya is dead and demand the lie be retracted. Dabi calls it a despicable truth instead, and notes that a man who staffed his agency with fire and heat Quirks was never going to look twice at him. Off to the side, Mr. Compress and Spinner realize none of them had heard any of this before, the former muttering about yet another remarkable bloodline, though neither joins in, since the priority is rousing Tomura, the only one able to hand Gigantomachia a fresh order. Dabi offers blood and skin for a test, then points out it hardly matters, since his own results are going out over the air as he speaks.

The recording explains itself. He took his own blood and Endeavor's, drawn after the Kyushu fight, and the comparison returned a 99.9 percent match. Expecting the public to distrust a villain's word anyway, he keeps building: Endeavor pressed his wife into bearing children until Shoto arrived as the masterpiece, and Dabi watched the abuse that followed. There is no compassion in the man, he says, only an addiction to the spotlight and a small, self-important interior, and that is not what a hero is made of.

Hiroshi Tameda refuses it, insisting people are not stupid enough to abandon heroes over this. Dabi's answer is that Endeavor's circle is no cleaner, and he plays footage of Hawks killing Twice at the Gunga Mountain Villa, framing it as a man run through while fleeing. Hiroshi is shaken further. In Jaku City, Skeptic asks for thanks over his splicing and editing, and Dabi gives it, the work having proved useful. Then he tells Endeavor the rest: to buy the League's trust while undercover, Hawks had supposedly killed Best Jeanist in his sickbed.

Such a thing came naturally, Dabi argues, given that Hawks' father robbed and killed his way across the country until Endeavor himself made the arrest, which is why the man's real name and history stay buried. He cannot stomach Pro Heroes, he says, all of them warped, all of them hiding something behind a mask of justice, all of them fooling everyone. He demands the public look hard at the heroes they trust, who use protection and praise and approval to paper over what is underneath.

Hiroshi's friend tells him Dabi has already won by simply speaking. Whether any of it is true can wait; people are going to stop believing regardless, and he is stopping too, because with this much wreckage only a fool would keep the faith. Hiroshi cries. In Jaku, Dabi thanks Endeavor for going strong all this time and leaps from the giant's back at him. Endeavor, still reeling, admits privately that he searched for Dabi for years without once suspecting he was dead. Shoto tells his father to guard Deku and the others and sort the rest out later, and takes the fight with Nejire Chan. Dabi comes down wrapped in fire, winding up Endeavor's own Prominence Burn, and never releases it. Wires drop out of the sky and truss him up. Best Jeanist, out of the plane, apologizes for being late and reports back for duty.

Toya's history is filled in. He was believed dead after his power went out of control during training, with only a piece of jawbone recovered. Endeavor, on discovering that the boy's flames beat his own, poured his training into him despite his lacking the combined Quirk, while Rei kept having children hoping they would support one another. Fuyumi is confirmed to have inherited her mother's ice. The punishing regimen made Toya's skin burn, the earliest sign of Blueflame's drawback.

Dabi's broadcast continues. He displays the DNA sheet matching him to Endeavor, and the video reaches Fuyumi, whom a colleague at her school alerts, and Natsuo once a class lets out. He exposes Endeavor's reasons for having children, plays edited footage of Hawks killing Twice, alleges the assassination of Best Jeanist, and reveals that Hawks' father was a villain Endeavor arrested, with the hero's identity concealed to protect his image. His conclusion for the public is that every Pro Hero is self-serving and hiding something.

Dabi drops toward Endeavor and Shoto steps in, asking his father to shield the students and heroes instead. Dabi winds up Prominence Burn, revealing he has learned Flashfire Fist, and Fiber Master snares him first. Best Jeanist, alive, descends from the plane with enormous spools of thread and declares himself back on the job.

Thanks For Going Strong is chapter 291, seventeen pages, released November 16, 2020 in issue 50 and collected in volume 30 within the Paranormal Liberation War arc. Episode 124 adapts it.

Toya Todoroki takes the cover under his own name. The chapter opens the fight logged as Best Jeanist and the trainees against the Paranormal Liberation Front. Horikoshi's comment apologizes for another break and asks readers to be patient.