Stake Your Life, Hero!

Shoto Todoroki, carrying an injured Kosei Tsuburaba, runs alongside Katsuki Bakugo and calls for a regroup at the facility given how far the situation has slipped. A villain blocks the way. Katsuki asks who is supposed to be ahead of them, and Shoto names Fumikage Tokoyami and Mezo Shoji. Moonfish is crouched over a severed arm, admiring it, until he remembers he has a job to do and turns toward the two students instead.

Outside the forest, Mandalay slips a swing of Spinner's blade by throwing his attention with Telepath, then opens him up with her claws. Magne hauls her in with Magnetism, but Tiger's fist frees her, and his follow-up is blocked. Getting to her feet, Mandalay tells him that Ragdoll has gone quiet, which is not like her at all.

Izuku squares up against Muscular with Kota behind him. The cloak comes off, Muscle Augmentation comes on, and the villain's speed puts Izuku through a rock wall before he can register it. Muscular pauses to ask where Katsuki Bakugo is, since collecting him is the assignment, then attacks again; Full Cowl gets Izuku clear by a hair before a kick slams him into the same wall. A Full Cowl punch lands and accomplishes nothing. Muscular explains the trick: his Quirk swells the muscle fibers sitting under his skin, which is where the strength and the speed both come from. He calls Izuku a lesser copy of himself and laughs at the idea of this hollow power saving anyone.

A rock hits him. Kota demands to know whether he tormented his parents the way he is tormenting Izuku, and Muscular is delighted to learn the Water Hose duo left a child behind, calling the meeting fate. He refuses the blame Kota puts on him and insists he holds no grudge over the lost eye. As he tells it, the pair tried to stand between him and his own hunger for death, and everything that followed was simply the shape of that collision. The guilty ones, he says, are those who act when they have no power to back it up, and he calls the boy's parents pathetic for believing they could stop him.

Izuku comes in on Full Cowl, telling him the fault is his alone. Reading the gap, he judges that the only path to a win is erasing speed from the fight, so he drives his broken arm into the villain and lets it lodge among the muscle fibers. Muscular mocks the plan, since inferior strength will not save him anywhere. Izuku answers that a hero's work is to put his life down for someone else, and with nothing left to hold back, he opens One For All to one hundred percent.

Shoto and Katsuki run into Moonfish while trying to reach the facility.

Mandalay and Tiger press their fight against Spinner and Magne and discover that Ragdoll has stopped responding.

Muscular batters Izuku almost senseless and reveals how Muscle Augmentation works.

Kota's rock interrupts the killing blow, and Izuku commits to One For All at full power.

Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Kosei Tsuburaba, Ragdoll, and Moonfish appear on the cover. Episode 42 adapts the chapter.

Ragdoll's silence here quietly sets up her fate later in the invasion. The clash between the U.A. students and Moonfish begins in this chapter.

Horikoshi's author comment praises a King Ghidorah figure he bought from MonsterArts.