Chapter 420

The warp that pulled Eraser Head and Present Mic off the falling U.A. drops all three of them on a glacier far out at sea. With comms dead and no idea where they are, Mic grabs "Kurogiri" by the collar and rages at him for malfunctioning now of all times, holding a fist to his head and insisting they were fools to hang their fate on a corpse.

Eraser stops him: he can see tears. Mic denies crying and Eraser clarifies he meant "Kurogiri". Rain, Mic says, not tears, because the thing is a Nomu and split them off deliberately, having interfered for Tomura twice already. Switch him on, return to the fighting, and afterward Mic will finish him for good. He is a darkened dud, Mic says, and the miracle they saw at Tartarus is worth forgetting, because none of them are Class 2-A students anymore.

He died a U.A. student, Eraser answers, and wonders why the warps never tore them apart or dropped them to their deaths, as Oboro begins stirring somewhere under the mist. At Tartarus they reached for him and drew out a sliver of light, and that light blended into his darkness and switched him off; no light ever cancels that much dark, but darkness does not work the same way, and something has switched back on. Their job as hero-course teachers is to see U.A. students through to graduation, he says, and perhaps that is where the origin lies. "Kurogiri" erupts in smoke and manages Mic's name, and Mic finishes the thought, that those memories never fade, as part of Oboro's face emerges.

Eraser reaches Naomasa and asks after Phantom Thief, who took a bad blow to the head and was rushed away for treatment. So he asks instead for every battle location and the coordinates of every hero still able to fight, and Naomasa grasps what that means. At U.A.'s evacuation center he startles Ectoplasm by walking in, explains that "Kurogiri" is usable and that Mic waits outside, and asks him to pull the heroes off evacuation duty and leave a skeleton defense, since nobody knows how long their hold will last. Death Arms volunteers, and so does a young hero named Astro. A civilian strips off his T-shirt and offers it for a wounded hero; others follow with supplies, and Eraser thanks them.

Nearly every battlefield has gone quiet by now, and the remaining fighters are gathered up. Only Takoba National Stadium still burns, where heroes grind against Gashly Eijiju's puppets in a war of attrition, until reinforcements including Lizardy, Jack Mantis and Ectoplasm pour through a Warp Gate and end it. Eraser declares Phase 3, the divide-and-conquer operation, underway, gates opening all around the battlefield, and "All For One" asks whether they have come to donate their Quirks.

Deku calls out and Eraser tells him to hold still, asking how long ago he lost his arms; Deku cannot say, since it happened in the subconscious. He turns over how Tomura seized control while U.A. was still airborne, after All For One had bragged about a perfect fusion, and how thoroughly the villain seemed swallowed, which is why breaking Tenko's spirit should have finished them both. Then Eraser produces Eri's horn.

Back at the shelter, Eri had come to him knowing she would never be allowed near the battlefield, holding out the horn she had snapped off with Ectoplasm's help and asking that Deku receive it. She had learned about rational and irrational choices from Eraser, and she knew a piece of herself would work because he had taught her how her power functions. He scolds her, since it might ruin Rewind permanently, but she says she wanted to do something for All Might and for Katsuki and could not, and that she wants to sing, thinking of Kyoka's School Festival performance. Deku and the others gave her that day, so she means to sing for them once it is finished, and since she cannot do much, she asks to fight her own way. Eraser sets the horn into Deku, calculating that the stored energy is thin and will rewind a target slowly and not far, two or three minutes at best. Deku's arms begin to grow back, and Eraser tells him he cannot die before he has heard her sing. Heroes stream out of the gates behind them, Creati, Chargebolt, Tentacole, Anima and Grape Juice among them, all saying they were down and out until word reached them that Deku was still working, and that got them moving.

Warped off the airborne U.A., the two teachers revive "Kurogiri" as Oboro's personality resurfaces.

Eraser strips the evacuation center of its guards to build a reinforcement wave, adding every fighter left across the battlefields.

Those reinforcements finish Gashly at Takoba National Stadium, leaving "All For One" as the only objective left.

Eri tears off her horn and sends it with Eraser Head so her Quirk can reach Deku.

Applied to Deku, it buys roughly two to three minutes of rewinding and regrows his arms.

Every surviving hero arrives to face "All For One", several Class 1-A students among them.

"From Aizawa" runs fifteen pages, published in issue 20 of 2024 on April 15 and collected in volume 41 within the Final War arc. Episode 166 adapts it. Eraser Head, Present Mic and "Kurogiri" appear on the cover.

Astro, the young hero at the Evacuation Center, is a carryover from Barrage, one of Kohei Horikoshi's earlier series. Heroes pouring out of Warp Gates mirrors the opening of the Final War, and both scenes nod to the climactic assembly in Avengers: Endgame. Horikoshi's author's comment describes spilling ink across his floor and finding the leopard spots it left on his legs pretty cool.