Senpai Arc

Third in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, this arc covers chapters 12 through 18 and episodes 7 through 9, following the Stendhal Arc and leading into the Vs. Queen Bee Arc.

Two threats to Koichi Haimawari's secret arrive at once, and neither is a villain. Makoto Tsukauchi wants to study the Naruhata Vigilantes academically, while Christopher Skyline lands in Tokyo and starts absorbing every camera in the city.

Drowning in his Hero Sociology coursework, Koichi accepts help from Makoto Tsukauchi, who trades notes and past exams for assistance on an errand. She walks him through vigilantism as a transitional phase absorbed by the official system, noting that Rhode Island's first hero law recognized only seven of one hundred eighty-nine vigilantes and branded the rest villains. Her thesis question is what separated the two groups, and her fieldwork is a survey of the Naruhata Vigilantes, with Koichi as bodyguard. Knuckleduster offers to silence her by force; Koichi promises to mislead her instead.

The survey produces a blunt verdict: the locals find the Cruller useful but creepy, know Pop★Step mostly for her looks, and consider Knuckleduster frightening. When Emperor Yotsuura steals Makoto's laptop, Koichi's new High-Speed Double Sweep whiffs and Ichimoku Samazu and Jube Namimaru finish the job. Makoto shakes Koichi's hand and asks outright whether he is the Cruller. He answers that she is wrong, and her Polygraph reads it as truth, because the name he answers to is the Crawler.

Captain Celebrity then rescues Koichi from a motorcycle thief and signs an autograph across his All Might hoodie. Knuckleduster explains the man's exile: lawsuits and scandals drove him out of America. When a kaiju-shaped villain rampages, courtesy of Kuin Hachisuka collecting samples, the Captain waits for reporters and a formal police request before acting, leaving Koichi to save a dog on his own. Makoto turns up in the cheer squad, and the Captain flies her to a rooftop lunch, only to find she has already befriended his wife Pamela online and will invoke another lawsuit if he backslides. Chastened, he stops a bank robbery, drags Koichi into photos as proof of good behavior, and rebrands his entourage toward male fans on Makoto's advice.

Koichi's mother, Shoko Haimawari, then arrives for a class reunion, and Makoto plays the girlfriend he once invented in a status update. Shoko sees through it and disciplines him with her Fly Swatter, but warms to Makoto. Kazuho Haneyama returns in a dress to help, only to be pressured into silence and driven off, and Koichi's attempt at a compliment earns him a slap. Knuckleduster arrives as the impeccably polite Takeshi Kuroiwa, describing their work as neighborhood patrols for a local NPO, every word technically accurate.

During a day of sightseeing, one of Kuin's bees doses a stray cat with Trigger. The animal's Quirk fuses it with a bus, and the resulting cat bus tears down an expressway toward a collapsed overpass with Koichi's group aboard. Knuckleduster steers it clear of the city with a makeshift toy, Ingenium and Team Idaten evacuate the passengers, and Kuin's extra dose leaves Makoto stranded on board. Koichi refuels Tensei's engines with juice, takes the front while Ingenium goes for the rear, and after Recipro Burst and Rocket Charge run their course he pulls Makoto out mid-fall, jumping once in open air. She learns exactly who he is.

Watching from safety, Shoko admits to Knuckleduster that Koichi floated before he could stand, and that she smacked him for it every time knowing the day would come when she could not keep him down. Knuckleduster answers that every child eventually flies, and the only thing a parent can teach is how to land. Shoko leaves satisfied, entrusting the two vigilantes with disciplining her son. Christopher Skyline is now working in Japan with Makoto as his manager, and Makoto knows the truth about all three vigilantes.