Final Performance Arc

The ninth story arc of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, spanning chapters 66 to 85, with adaptation beginning at Episode 26. It follows the School Days arc and precedes the Underground Masquerade arc.

Three years into his career as The Crawler, Koichi Haimawari and his friends are all looking at what comes next. Exploiting Kazuho Haneyama's distress, Number 6 poses as the Pro Hero Rock and makes her the Queen Bee's new host. As the villainous Bee☆Pop, she pushes Koichi past every limit he has in a rescue staged as a final performance.

Naruhata knows The Crawler by name now, and the recognition is enough for Koichi. He interviews for an on-site cleaning job, tells Kazuho that everything he dreamed of has already happened, and admits that once he is employed he will stop playing hero. Kazuho, blindsided, says nothing. Makoto Tsukauchi returns from America a celebrity, confesses to Koichi over curry that every future she imagines has him smiling in it, and gives him until autumn to answer, deliberately leaving room for Kazuho's feelings. Kazuho, eavesdropping, is left with nothing to hold.

With Narufest ending and the FeatherHATS scattering, she starts writing for herself. The new manager Rokuro Nomura champions her, weeps at her song about pushing forward through pain, defeats a thug and produces a hero license, and offers to be her producer. He is Number 6, reading her subconscious with Overclock so every reply is the one she wants. He lures her to a basement full of corpses and a rising buzz, and locks the door.

Days later Kazuho is missing, and then she is on every hijacked screen in the ward, dancing through her own explosions as Bee☆Pop. Koichi saves Miu, reaches for her in midair, and gets bombs and a black tongue and the words I hate you. Soga Kugisaki drags his unconscious body out of an alley. A letter from Knuckleduster tells him the promise to make him a hero was a lie, because he already was one, and that the small percentage of people who keep their goodness after helplessness are the only real heroes. Soga explains the trap: arrest her and the parasites kill her from inside, so the Queen must be cut out illegally, and asks whether Koichi will do it.

Training follows, and one revelation. Koichi's aim is perfect on round targets and cannot touch a human-shaped one; he makes himself miss. So the plan becomes mobility, not marksmanship. Meanwhile Number 6 patrols as the hero Rock beside Compass Kid, who talks about his wife and his children and wanting them to see him look cool once before he quits.

Bee☆Pop's second show brings the professionals out. Endeavor decides annihilation is the only sane response and looses Hellfire Storm, cancelling it only when Koichi crosses his line of fire, which reclassifies the vigilante in his eyes as another villain. Number 6 shoots the heroes chasing Koichi, murders Compass Kid when the man's Pointer identifies him, and leaves a hand still aimed at his killer. Kazuho sings Bloom, a song her friends recognize as her own weaknesses laid bare, and prepares to end herself in the light. Koichi reaches her on a grappling hook and a double jump. She reaches back. Number 6 shoots her through the chest.

The bullet carries a drug designed to make the hive self-destruct and erase the experiment, host included. Fleeing through the blasts with Kazuho in his arms, unable to fight, Koichi runs straight into Endeavor, dodges Hell Minefield's second stage by rocketing skyward, and escapes both hunters at once. Midnight follows him down, puts Kazuho and the parasite to sleep, and covers for him when Endeavor arrives, who lets Pop go to the hospital because he wants her alive to interrogate.

On a rooftop, a charred Number 6 refuses Koichi's help and explains himself. He never had an identity, only the plan to be reborn as O'Clock II, and Koichi destroyed it. The rage is the first genuine thing he has ever felt. He swears to kill Kazuho for what she knows and Koichi for what he ruined, then crawls away on a trail of blood. The Queen is extracted successfully, though Kazuho does not wake and will carry the damage. Naomasa Tsukauchi gets nothing from Soga except the advice to guard her, Eizo Tanuma releases the three anyway, and Koichi takes up overwatch on the hospital roof, deciding that if someone is serious about killing her, he had better get serious too.