Chapter 6 (Vigilantes)

Naruhata's latest nuisance is a thieving trio billing themselves Three Sturm und Drang Brothers, sliding through alleys on near-identical Quirks and lifting women's underwear until an furious crowd is on their heels. Koichi Haimawari stumbles into the chase and gets trampled for his trouble. Cornering the thieves afterward, he finds them convinced he is an admirer, since their powers mirror his own. They pitch their crimes as liberation, an attempt to free society from its cage and let raw feeling loose. The philosophy dissolves into idle chatter about lingerie until Pop☆Step arrives and scolds Koichi for keeping company with perverts. Knuckleduster settles the matter with his fists, then loses interest: none of the three has a blackened tongue, so none connects to the Trigger case.

Training resumes at Koichi's penthouse, where the old man's punches land hard enough to floor his student. Pop☆Step objects to the roughness, but Koichi notices something else, that Knuckleduster commits everything he has and still stops short of lethal force. Elsewhere, Kuin walks the sidewalk in conversation with the man supplying her Trigger. He chides her for burning through the drug carelessly and stresses its value; she shrugs, since the incident yielded useful data. What he wants, he explains, is fierce will, because only a powerful drive lets an extraordinary Quirk surface. He is shopping for people whose hearts burn hot enough to pull a trigger of their own.

Kuin considers such people exhausting, but she does the work anyway, handing a batch to a strung-out man named Chuma Yakumaru and urging him to throw his new strength back at the world. The dose turns him into an Instant Villain, and his first swing is aimed at her. She slips it easily, eggs him on, and vanishes. Civilians become his targets instead. Koichi's Slide and Glide keeps him ahead of the man's blows while Pop☆Step herds bystanders clear, and a last-second rescue spares one victim. Knuckleduster's boot to the jaw ends the chase.

Reading the fight, Knuckleduster works out that the villain funnels every scrap of power into a single fist at the instant of impact, leaving a window of total vulnerability while the punch charges. He answers brawn with brawn, weathering a savage exchange, and buries a punch in the man's face before the loaded strike can fire. Bloodied but satisfied, he explains the counter afterward and draws a conclusion that pleases him: genuine villains ought to be enormous, like the one he just flattened. Back at the penthouse his mood has swung all the way to cheerful, since huge opponents mean he can hit as hard as he likes without anyone objecting. Training with Koichi resumes, and Koichi is simply glad the man seems happy.

Kuin reports in, rating the test subject decent and noting that the vigilante trio interfered yet again. She floats the idea of dealing with the old man, though she is indifferent either way. Her employer refuses. The vigilantes are an asset, he argues, because they let the operation harvest field data without alerting the Police Force or any registered Hero, and he would rather leave things exactly as they are. When Kuin points out the trio are actively digging for leads, he tells her it is time she proved herself as a coordinator. She questions whether that is even her job and ends the call.

The chapter closes on a strange grace note: a man approaches Kuin asking whether she is Honey-Chan. She likes his build, he compliments her looks, and the two stroll away hand in hand. The Villain Factory Boss appears only as a voice, while Chuma Yakumaru debuts alongside Three Sturm und Drang Brothers. Jube Namimaru, Teruo Unagisawa, Akira Iwako and Moyuru Tochi turn up in passing or in flashback.

Serialization gave the chapter the shorter title Holding Back, rendered as Tekagen; the volume edition revised it to the fuller No Need to Hold Back. The chapter runs 35 pages, was collected in Volume 2, and was adapted as Episode 4 of the Vigilantes anime.