Chapter 72

Class 1-B turns up at the camp cabin, home ground of the Wild, Wild Pussycats, and the Blood Hero Vlad King tells them Quirks only grow when driven to their limits. What they witness makes the point: Class 1-A grinding away under hostile conditions, Katsuki Bakugo firing Explosions inside boiling water. Some doubt anyone can supervise both classes at once, so Mandalay, Pixie-Bob, Ragdoll and Tiger introduce themselves and their Quirks. Tiger calls over anyone with a straightforward strength-boosting ability, drawing Jurota Shishida and Sen Kaibara. Spotting Izuku Midoriya stretching, he invites an attack; a 5% Detroit Smash comes and Tiger slips it without effort, then hits back and observes that the boy's muscle fibers have not even torn yet.

For Class 1-B's benefit, Shota Aizawa spells out why this works: wide-area Quirks let the Pussycats handle dozens of students together, the fastest route to lifting everyone at once. Tiger keeps pushing, and Izuku accepts that only his own discipline will let him draw more from One For All. He throws himself back into stretching under Tiger's encouragement, watched silently from behind a tree by Kota Izumi.

At four that afternoon, Pixie-Bob and Ragdoll dump ingredients on Class 1-A and announce that meals are their own responsibility from here. Tenya Ida frames it as survival training and rallies everyone to make curry. Mina Ashido asks Shoto Todoroki for fire, prompting Momo Yaoyorozu to warn against leaning on others instead of learning; Shoto lights it for her regardless. Kota, watching from a distance, writes the whole exercise off as wasted effort and slips away, and Izuku notices him going.

Izuku finds him alone on a cliff and startles him with a bowl of curry, guessing he has eaten nothing. Kota demands to know how the spot was found, and Izuku says he followed the footprints. Told bluntly to take his food and his company elsewhere, Izuku persists. Everyone's training strikes Kota as pathetic posturing over corny powers. When Izuku mentions the Water Hoses and their water Quirks, Kota erupts, assuming Mandalay talked. Izuku says he only knows the names from hearing about them, and offers sympathy that lands nowhere.

Kota's anger runs wider than heroes: he despises a society where Quirks become violence and showmanship, and blames them for the dead. Izuku sees the scope of it and goes quiet. Ordered off again, he instead tells a story about a friend born without a Quirk, a boy who wanted to be a hero, could not accept a reality that made it impossible, and chased every method he could find to force a Quirk out of himself. The lesson he offers is that refusing reality only wounds the one refusing. Kota threatens him. Izuku apologizes for having no useful advice, sets the curry down, and leaves.

A few kilometers from the camp, Dabi and Himiko Toga arrive with two masked villains. One wants to strike now; the other tells him it is not time. Dabi says this is only a warning shot, and that the heroes will fall so a brighter future can arrive.

Class 1-B joins the camp and both classes push their Quirks past their limits under the Wild, Wild Pussycats, whose wide-area abilities make mass training possible. Tiger spars with Izuku and pushes him toward the physical discipline One For All demands. Class 1-A is made responsible for its own meals and cooks curry together.

Izuku tracks Kota to his secret cliff, offers him food, and tries to reach him with a veiled account of his own Quirkless childhood, but Kota rejects heroes, Quirks and society alike. Nearby, Dabi, Himiko Toga and the other new League recruits assemble and prepare to attack the following night.

Chapter seventy-two of Kohei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia runs nineteen pages in volume nine, published December 21, 2015 in the combined 3-4, 2016 issue. Part of the Forest Training Camp arc, it sits between chapters 71 and 73, with a large cover ensemble drawn from both classes.

Ragdoll, Tiger and Muscular debut. Episode 41 adapts the chapter. Horikoshi's author comment mentions working on staying healthy for the coming year and thanks readers.