Warning: Spoilers for My Hero Academia Season 6, Episode 19Deku has awakened yet another new Quirk in My Hero Academia, but this time he's getting a little advice from an experienced hand: the Quirk's original user.
In the 19th episode of season 6 of My Hero Academia, Deku makes his first appearance on screen in dramatic fashion, several minutes into the episode. He's cloaked in a strange purple fog as he's revealed, which is soon confirmed to be another of the Quirks stored within My Hero Academia's One for All, this time the Quirk belonging to the sixth user, En. The Quirk, known as Smokescreen, causes foggy gas to pour out of his body, obscuring his location and making it difficult for enemies to track his movements.
Smokescreen Unlocks Deku's True Potential in MHA
Surprisingly, En's vestige within One for All actually chides Deku a bit, saying that he's overdone it with the Smokescreen Quirk, a fact which seems indisputably true given how much purple fog is lingering over the city in wide shots. En suggests that Deku might have too much respect for the Quirks stored within One for All, expecting each of them to be as overwhelmingly powerful as power stockpiling. Rather, he says, these Quirks should be looked at as tools at his disposal, not ultimate techniques that can defeat a villain singlehandedly.
For Deku, the powers within One for All are legendary abilities passed down to him through the generations, but there wasn't really much rhyme or reason to who ended up with the power or why; it was mostly just given to the closest trusted person in an act of desperation. The Quirks, while growing stronger over time, weren't selected for their combat utility, and thus really are, in the end, just run-of-the-mill Quirks enhanced by One for All. Smokescreen itself is exactly the kind of Quirk that's not hard to imagine belonging to another student, one who might have problems with windy days or generating volumes large enough to obscure themselves sufficiently. While Deku doesn't have those exact issues, it certainly highlights the "mundane" nature of some of these Quirks.
A Fifth Quirk at Deku's Disposal
Adding Smokescreen to the list gives Deku five powers he can use at the moment: the core power-stockpiling ability, Float, Danger Sense, and Black Whip. Since All Might didn't bring a Quirk to the table, that's five of the seven Quirks stored within One for All already available to Midoriya. Each of these abilities has certainly come in handy already, and Deku's fight with Shigaraki proved that while Quirks like Float might not be much on their own, their real power comes from the ability to combine these tricks. Different Quirks are good for different enemies, so it really is as En says--their value is in the variety of powers, not the power itself. My Hero Academia has given Deku this advice now, so it's all up to him to follow it through.
New episodes of My Hero Academia air on Saturdays, via Crunchyroll.