Chapter 344

Before Class 1-A ever leaves campus, All Might, Naomasa Tsukauchi, and Nezu lay out the deception. The students were never expected to locate All For One. Their visible failure is the entire point, because a villain convinced his enemies are worn thin stops watching carefully. Naomasa works from the assumption that Search keeps constant tabs on them, so every fruitless day since Izuku Midoriya came back has fed a false picture. Shota Aizawa supplies the finishing touch: let Yuga Aoyama name the meeting ground and pull the enemy into the open.

Momo Yaoyorozu raises the flaw. Yuga's father was warned that any lie ends with the family dead, which means the villain has some way of hearing falsehood. Naomasa answers that the method has been narrowed down. Contact only ever happens by voice, and with informants too numerous to double-check, truth detection has to run through speech itself. Fool the voice, and the man will show himself.

The answer walks in as Hitoshi Shinso. Tsuyu Asui recalls him admitting during the Joint Training Battle that he could not force speech out of anyone, and he explains the gap: a spring transfer into the Hero course meant grinding past his own ceiling. He can now compel the Aoyamas to talk, stripping their motives and nerves out of the equation. Nezu notes that Yokumiru Mera, currently running the Hero Public Safety Commission in an acting capacity, has signed off, since Hitoshi holds no Provisional Hero License. Fumikage Tokoyami asks how the heroes reach the site unseen, and All Might replies that they will not need to arrive early at all.

At Kurogiri's cell inside Central Hospital, Aizawa and Vlad King put the request to Neito Monoma: Copy the Warp Gate and master it within days. Aizawa admits nobody knows whether Kurogiri or Oboro Shirakumo is currently answering, and confesses that Erasure through a single eye leaves him sidelined. Neito remembers hearing that Jaku City would have been a slaughter without Aizawa there, and every voice in his life so far has cast his Quirk as supporting-player material. Vlad King corrects him. Nothing about the plan functions without every hand on it, and there are no bit parts, only stars.

Hitoshi brainwashes the Aoyamas into placing the call. On the day itself, Neito's gates deposit the entire hero force onto the field at once. As both sides charge, All Might watches from Central Hospital and reads the enemy correctly: he intends to finish everything here and take One For All. Tomura Shigaraki feels something wrong underfoot and sends Dabi in, whose blaze is swallowed by a wall of ice as Shoto Todoroki and Class 1-A step out of a second gate, the brothers shouting at each other on sight. All Might then triggers Troy. Cages erupt from the ground and box each villain separately, and while All For One knows they can be broken, he grasps what they are for. Neito opens more gates around the cages, and the heroes move in to shove the enemy apart.

The counterforce's deception is exposed. The hunt run by Izuku Midoriya and his classmates existed to lull All For One, not to actually locate him.

Hitoshi Shinso has pushed his Quirk past its old limit and can now make targets speak. His Brainwashing goes onto the Aoyama family so no lie registers in their voices, with the brainwashed Yuga choosing the exact meeting point.

Neito Monoma is brought in to Copy Warp Gate from Kurogiri, giving the heroes a way to reach the battlefield without warning. Aizawa reveals his Erasure is functionally dead with only one eye left.

When the operation finally runs, All Might triggers Troy, sealing each villain in a separate cage so the heroes can throw them through different gates and split their numbers.

Kohei Horikoshi titled this installment Stars, written in Japanese as Shuyaku. It runs seventeen pages, ran in issue 12 of 2022 on February 21, and was collected into volume 35.

Rikido Sato, Minoru Mineta, Nezu, Denki Kaminari, Naomasa Tsukauchi, and All Might share the cover. Episode 144 adapts the material for the anime.

Horikoshi's author comment reveals that Monoma's design was modeled on Dane DeHaan from Amazing Spider-Man 2.