Chapter 350

In a police station stripped down to a single guard, the Doctor notes that the big day must have arrived. Preparing for it, he tells the lone officer, meant seeking out twisted raw material that the world had already produced, warped seeds worth using as vessels.

Eleven years earlier at Sekoto Peak, Toya burns alive while refusing to die, tormented that he never showed his father anything. He throws himself into a lake to kill the flames. In the present the Doctor reflects that he too was born cracked, calling Toya the boy born with everything, and in the past All For One recovers what is left of the body.

Toya wakes in a nursery surrounded by startled children. His own voice has changed, and he learns he has been unresponsive for three years, which only tightens his panic. He tries to leave and an overseer stops him, explaining he lives with the others now and they are his new family. Toya insists he has to reach his father, who is surely just busy and worried by now, and he has apologies to make for the things he did and said.

A voice from a monitor tells him the hope is empty. Rebuilding his burnt body required replacing what was missing with regenerative tissue, and the trade is permanent: the power he once had is beyond him, his organs damaged, his frame frail, his senses numb, pain itself gone. They meant to return him at full strength, the voice admits, and they failed. Toya recoils. Even so, the voice offers, his fire might yet be restored to what it was, if he will let himself be raised. Toya refuses outright, wanting no one else's training.

In the present, the Doctor explains that the boy was already shaped too thoroughly by his upbringing to be redirected, and even All For One could not turn his fixation on his father into leverage. Spares had been cultivated against the possibility of losing Tomura: a seedbed of hatred stocked with candidates for the Demon King, Dabi among them, and a failure. The officer asks whether this is another case of everything being planned from the start, and the Doctor calls it a warning instead, since that boy never bought a word of it. They let him walk because the body should not have survived a month, and Giran bringing him back alive startled even them. Recalling his first sight of Hood, the Doctor hears Dabi ask whether he is the reason he lasted this long, and Dabi adds that one look at the Nomu tells him what they intended for him. The Doctor grasps the answer: nothing but raw, unfiltered grudge kept the dying body running.

Back in Kamino, Dabi tells Shoto he did go home. He was frailer by then with nothing left to look forward to, but he wanted to see whether anything had changed. What he found was his own butsudan and Endeavor still abusing Shoto, confirmation that he was a failed creation and that his family had already moved past him. He pushed beyond every limit, sharpening his flames so he would not be weak at their next meeting, flesh peeling away each time without registering. Shoto understands that he has been ready to die since the beginning. Dabi finishes it: the hatred that grew out of watching Endeavor play hero killed Toya and gave birth to Dabi. The Doctor muses that heat is energy produced by everything alive, and that a man intent on living forever could find no purpose in a mad heat racing toward death, so even the Demon Lord let the frenzied flame go. As the burned husk of Dabi howls that his mark on the world will be burning everything that thing loves, Shoto readies Flashfire Fist and says it will not happen.

The Doctor and All For One recovered Toya from Sekoto Peak, meaning to raise him into one of the spare vessels.

Toya spent three years comatose and woke to learn the procedure had failed, leaving him unable to handle his own fire in his rebuilt body.

Toya escaped the nursery and was allowed to go, since his obsession with his father made him impossible to manipulate and they expected him dead within a month.

Returning home in secret, Toya found Endeavor still abusing Shoto, was reminded of his own status as a failure, abandoned the name Toya, and became Dabi. He studied Endeavor's hero work to sharpen his own technique.

Reunited with the Doctor, he learns that pure grudge toward his father is what kept his dying body alive.

Kohei Horikoshi titled this chapter Bound to a Fiery Fate, written in Japanese as En. Seventeen pages, published April 11, 2022 in issue 19, collected into volume 35, and adapted in Episode 146.

The Doctor and Gori share the cover. Haruaki Sun-Sun makes his debut here in flashback.

Shoto's Ultimate Move was printed as Flashfire Heatfist in the first English release, later corrected to Flashfire Fist. Horikoshi's author comment confesses a small desire to draw a horror manga.