Chapter 4: Those Who Commune with the Abyss

An assignment slip arrives at Heights Alliance with nothing printed on it, leaving Izuku Midoriya to assume a clerical mistake. Fumikage Tokoyami solves the puzzle by holding a lighter close to the sheet, and the heat brings up writing done in invisible ink. Three students are named in the request, Izuku, Fumikage, and Class 1-B's Shihai Kuroiro, while the hero behind it stays anonymous.

The trio follow the written directions to a large gate, trading gloomy one-liners along the way, a habit of Fumikage and Shihai that leaves Izuku bewildered. Waiting inside is a hero who calls himself Odd-Eye, an Edgelord who labels his sidekicks familiars and speaks in grand darkness-obsessed pronouncements. His lecture argues that the public treats heroes as lights in the gloom while every one of them buries something shameful, and that mastering those private shadows is what makes a hero worthy. To test whether the students qualify, he lunges at them without warning.

Fumikage and Shihai scatter; Izuku does not move fast enough. A palm lands on his face, and the Quirk called Mind Reaper forces whatever mortifies its victim most straight out of them. Izuku spills his devotion to All Might and his boyhood plan of serving as the man's sidekick, then crumples under the shame. Shihai goes next and claims to carry no dark history, yet Odd-Eye pulls out his nerves around girls, complete with a stray thought of Kinoko Komori, and a red face betrays the denial. Fumikage proves immune, insisting nothing inside him is worth concealing.

Odd-Eye announces he will unleash his real power, and Dark Shadow answers with a punch. The dim room feeds the sentient shadow, which slips its master's control and turns on everyone present. Odd-Eye cackles at the chaos, and his sidekicks explain that the laugh is simply what he does when cornered and out of ideas. Izuku calls for a light source; the sidekicks haul out a studio lamp their boss keeps for dramatic staging, and the glare settles Dark Shadow. Odd-Eye then delivers a florid oration about light overcoming the beast, having contributed nothing to the fight.

On the walk back to U.A., Izuku and Shihai marvel that Fumikage genuinely has no skeletons. Dark Shadow contradicts him, mentioning a habit that persisted until grade school, and a single threatening stare silences him, leaving Izuku to suspect real darkness after all.

The mission request reaches Heights Alliance written in invisible ink, and Fumikage is the one who exposes the text with a flame.

Odd-Eye debuts, together with Mind Reaper, a Quirk that pulls buried embarrassments out of whoever he touches.

Izuku's All Might fandom and Shihai's shyness around Kinoko Komori are both dragged into the open, while Fumikage registers nothing at all.

Low light lets Dark Shadow run wild until a studio lamp calms him. Afterward, Dark Shadow hints that Fumikage's spotless record is not the whole truth.

This is the fourth installment of My Hero Academia: Team-Up Missions, the spin-off written and illustrated by Yoco Akiyama. It runs 21 pages and is collected in the second volume.

Publication came on April 2, 2020, in the May 2020 issue of Saikyo Jump. Odd-Eye is the chapter's new character.

All Might and Kinoko Komori appear only inside imagined scenes rather than in person.