Chapter 308

Deku looks down from a rooftop with an unconscious Grand in his arms, and Muscular reacts with delight before settling himself, insisting revenge is not the point and a good fight is. He jams a chunk of rubble into the empty socket, jumps to the base of the building, and hurls it skyward, forcing Deku to leap clear while he screams for full power.

Smoke floods across the Taguchi Building, baffling the civilians, and Turtle Neck steps outside. Deku emerges through it to pass Grand into her arms, asks her to look after him, remarks on how much of the block is already rubble, and swears the count stops there. Turtle Neck cannot make out who the hero is through the smoke, though the voice nags at her.

Deku consults En, sixth in the One For All line, asking whether he overcooked the Smokescreen. En offers pointers on keeping it reined in, and tells him that after carrying the weight of eight generations he could stand to loosen up. Since these Quirks mostly work as standalone abilities, En suggests treating them as instruments for building a plan rather than as finishers.

Knowing from their first fight that Muscular can eat a hundred percent smash, Deku uses Float to hang above the city and Smokescreen to blind him, blanketing the streets. Drawing again on his old tactics, he slips the incoming attacks with Danger Sense, then locks the villain to the ground with Blackwhip.

Muscular gripes about being handled with gimmicks while Deku asks where All For One and Tomura Shigaraki have gone. He does not know, he says, having simply been told to go wild once freed, and berates Deku for talking and stalling instead of fighting properly. Deku keeps going anyway, asking what drives the rage, whether any regret exists, whether another road was ever open, and calling him Goto Imasuji. Muscular answers that blood and violence are all he wants, and sympathy is wasted breath.

Hearing it, Deku returns to his own thought about understanding villains and how that might change outcomes, and accepts that even with this fight unavoidable he wanted to know what sits underneath the man. Muscular tears free of Blackwhip and comes back at him, but Deku has noticed the muscle tendons of his Quirk unraveling from the vibrations Grand landed earlier, and admits he kept his distance because he saw it coming. As Muscular howls in irritation, Deku drives a smash into his stomach and tells him this is full power.

En's Quirk is named as Smokescreen, and the One For All users are shown communicating with Deku while he is awake. Deku fights Muscular using his full inherited arsenal, Float, Smokescreen, Danger Sense, and Blackwhip, to stay a step ahead. He tries to reason with the villain and understand him, and when that leads nowhere he ends the fight with a single smash. Muscular's real name is revealed as Goto Imasuji.

Seventeen pages, published April 12, 2021, in issue 19 and collected in Volume 32 within the Dark Hero arc, adapted in Episode 132. The rematch that opened in the previous chapter concludes here. Horikoshi's author comment apologized for the prior week's break, blaming body, mind, and skill, and promised a stronger return.