Chapter 399

Swinging on Tentacole and Froppy suction cups with Shoto and Tailman covering him, All Might slips All For One's blasts and works the tighter turns the new gear allows. The villain will tire of a one-sided chase soon, so a trap is needed. Assuming that heavy repeated damage eats into All For One's lifespan, All Might knows which Quirk finishes the job and knows he lacks the power source to run it, so the bird-shaped Anima drones go out to fix that.

Cornered in an alley, All Might is mocked for laughing like a lunatic one moment and fleeing the next. All For One says he understands the plan perfectly and can afford to waste strength, because coasting is enough to kill him. He seizes the buildings and fills the alley with Rivet Stabs, which All Might barely evades. He rockets skyward, two enormous Mouth Quirks stop the climb, and he dives back down calling the villain a liar, only to be told that the power conservation is genuine. The taunting continues: no smile left, a skeleton with half its organs gone, propped up by shoddy copies of his students' Quirks. The Rivet Stabs shred those copies one at a time, and All For One reminds him the cameras are rolling, so the world will watch the Symbol of Peace end as the Symbol of Impotence. He bursts through a building and buries a hit in All Might's stomach, promising that the light guiding them all is about to die. All Might answers by binding him with tentacles and forcing a device past his teeth, laughing that lights flicker, and that when his own goes dark someone else will pick up the torch.

At the Operation Troy site, thirty-one of the thirty-two heroes assigned to the surviving villains have already fallen to Kunieda, a serial killer who escaped Tartarus. His plants have eaten the ground and hold Yuga Aoyama and Fat Gum. Light is unnecessary, he says, since his seedlings feed on flesh, and the roots swallow Fat Gum until Fat Absorption is worthless. With his last strength Fat Gum tells Yuga to show them what he is made of, then becomes another plant. One bloom, Kunieda explains, and the pollen chained them outward, every growth an extension of himself through the roots.

He holds up Yuga's belt and tells the traitor there is nowhere to run, because without it the Navel Laser bleeds out of him uncontrollably. Wanting to fit in turned him into a pawn who accepted a power that never suited him, a pathetic, shameful life. Yuga thinks of his family and answers steadily: remembering how he has lived is what pushed him to follow the light his classmates carry, and it left him wanting to shine from his core. He unloads his leaking lasers across the arena. Kunieda scoffs that chasing what he cannot see earns an equally shameful death, and behind him a half-visible Invisible Girl says he took long enough and calls him a hero, then bends the light with Warp Refraction: Navel Laser and tears Kunieda apart. In the same moment All Might asks the darkness for light so he might twinkle too. The Anima drones return and tap a nearby power substation, and he tells All For One he did not come here to lose, and to learn the name as it burns him. Can't Stop Twinkling opens up from above, dropping a colossal laser barrage on them both.

All Might uses the suit's newly equipped items to evade All For One and sends the Anima drones ahead to secure power for a finisher.

All For One corners him and lands a heavy strike on his midsection.

Kunieda's plants consume the Troy team, Fat Gum among them, and he taunts Yuga.

Yuga fires his uncontrolled Navel Lasers, letting Invisible Girl use Warp Refraction to defeat Kunieda.

All Might activates Can't Stop Twinkling, calling a massive laser blast down on himself and All For One.

Chapter 399 of My Hero Academia, by Kohei Horikoshi, ran September 4, 2023 in issue 40 at fifteen pages, sits in Volume 40, and is adapted in Episode 160.

Kunieda's plant Quirk, sprouting growths and fungus out of living flesh, resembles the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis mutation used in the 2013 game The Last of Us.