Stendhal Arc

The second story arc of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, spanning Chapters 9 through 11 and Episodes 5 and 6. It follows the Vigilantes Beginnings Arc and leads into the Senpai Arc.

The arc introduces Chizome Akaguro years before the world knows him as the Hero Killer, operating instead under the alias Stendhal. Kuin Hachisuka points him at targets, Naruhata's vigilantes get in his way, and the fight that results plants the idea that will define the rest of his life.

Stendhal storms the Abegawa Tenchu Kai's Tokyo office and cuts down all four executive lieutenants after paralyzing them with a lick of blood from his bandaged arm, then kills the rank and file who come running, announcing himself as the Convictor. In an alley afterward Kuin Hachisuka collects the blood samples she wanted and names her price: four former Instant Villains to be hunted down, namely Rapt Tokage, Moyuru Tochi, Akira Iwako, and Soga Kugisaki. He warns her that her own head is on his list eventually, then agrees.

Released without charges, Akira takes a new batch of Trigger from Kuin and rampages again. Koichi Haimawari, patrolling without Knuckleduster, buys time in an abandoned parking lot until his foot catches in the broken pavement. A swordsman in a mask drops in, drives Akira off, introduces himself as a fellow vigilante, and vanishes over the rooftops, leaving Koichi thrilled and shopping for swords in his head.

Elsewhere Soga visits Rapt in hospital, where Rapt refuses any suggestion of touching Trigger again. When Kuin corners Soga that night and pushes him to arm his friends against the assassin, he breaks the vials and swears he will handle it with his own Spike Quirk. She finds that boring, so her bees inject him by force. The grin she walks away with drags him back to a childhood of being laughed at for a frightening Quirk, and rage finishes the transformation.

Koichi runs toward the screaming and finds Stendhal about to execute a barely recognizable Soga. He tries to talk, gets a knife in the leg, and is paralyzed by Bloodcurdle after a fingertip of his own blood reaches the swordsman's tongue. Knuckleduster arrives in time. Stendhal expects kinship and gets contempt: one of them is an ally of justice, the other a mad slasher. Knuckleduster lays a wire on the ground, offers him the chance to walk, and then steps over the line himself, shattering the mask and the nose behind it with a single punch.

The lecture that follows lands harder than the fist. Men who hide behind a persona believe themselves invincible and turn fragile the moment someone enters their territory, and what they lack is determination. Stendhal takes the lesson, cuts Knuckleduster with his knives, paralyzes him, thanks him, and leaves with a new target class in mind: false heroes, whose sins he now rates above any villain's.

Kazuho turns up carrying a first aid kit and patches Soga up under protest. Koichi is simply relieved they both survived, which Soga finds insufferable until Kazuho's blushing answer tells him rather more than she intended.

Alone in his apartment, Stendhal inventories what he lacks: power, speed, weapons, tactics, and above all resolve. Kuin needles him and takes a thrown knife through her eye patch for it, which does not kill her. He saws his own broken nose off with a trench knife, decides the missing mask suits him, and walks out promising to leave bloodstains that cannot be scrubbed away. Kuin pulls the blade out unharmed and lets him go, having decided he makes things more interesting.

The arc fills in two histories. Chizome Akaguro was already a murderer as a vigilante before he became Stain, and the fight that took his nose is what redirected him toward hunting heroes. Soga's past also surfaces: he once wanted to go pro, was written off for his looks, his temper, and a dangerous Quirk, and came out of it violent and unable to stand being laughed at.