Chapter 140: Disgrace and Fundamentals

The chapter opens on Drive Knight's recollection of the five minutes before he entered the battle. Watching the duel between Tatsumaki and the Psykos and Orochi fusion from afar, he grows curious about collecting a sample of the fused monster, but his power is badly drained after his earlier clash with Nyan. Surveying the trenches Tatsumaki's psychic assault gouged across Z-City, he notices a wrecked underground power line among the debris. Set on joining the fight, he plunges his hand into the cable and drains it, blacking out the district but pulling in enough charge to reach the front.

In the present, the heroes gather to work out their next move. Sweet Mask relives his defeat by Fuhrer Ugly and berates himself for cowering like an infant during it. When the others look his way, he assumes they scorn him for having called on Tatsumaki mid-battle, and Child Emperor's suggestion that he hang back in the rear only reads to him as a fresh insult.

Terrified that word of his loss could wreck his standing as an idol hero, Sweet Mask weighs slaughtering everyone present and pinning it on a monster attack. Just as his darker self starts to surface, Iaian breaks in to ask whether he is all right. The moment stirs a memory of Blast, who once rescued Sweet Mask from a monster, and the resemblance between Iaian's stance and Blast's snaps him out of his killing urge. He smashes his head into the shattered concrete, brushing off his aggression as annoyance over a mismatched outfit, and reminds himself that he must hold his composure.

The chapter ran in Volume 28 with the VIZ Media title Disgrace and Foundation. Its bonus page presents a portrait of Sweet Mask wearing a resolute expression.