Team Ups Arc

The sixth arc of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, covering Chapters 36 to 45 and Episodes 16 to 18. It follows the Osaka Incident Arc and leads into the Sky Egg Arc.

Koichi Haimawari and Kazuho Haneyama keep colliding with the Villain Factory investigation, which forces awkward partnerships with Eraser Head and Midnight. Running beneath it, Naomasa Tsukauchi chases a resemblance between the Osaka speedster and a retired hero nobody can find, and the answer to that question walks back into the story on its own.

Back in Naruhata, Koichi resumes patrols and takes more beatings than ever for meddling. The Marukane crew plans an official Narufest shop, and Makoto Tsukauchi approves Koichi's baffling pitch for All Might hoodies, only for the delivered boxes to hold Captain Celebrity merchandise instead.

Toshinori Yagi finds Naomasa in a sling and fractured after a run-in with a villain, and is told plainly why the number one hero cannot take jobs for personal reasons. Their exchange of souvenirs leaves Naomasa smelling of rose bath salts, which his colleagues and his sister both notice, and which does nothing for the argument he and Makoto are already having about Pop☆Step.

Studying footage of the failed Osaka arrest, Eizo Tanuma suggests the suspect belongs to the rare class of accelerators who perceive the world frozen around them. That points Naomasa at O'Clock, a speedster of the previous generation whose Quirk matches too closely for coincidence, though the ages rule out the same man. The retired hero cannot be located. In a flat far away, the speedster trains punches he does not need, calls firearms unheroic, and addresses a poster of O'Clock as master.

Koichi accidentally discovers he can fire repulsion blasts, names the technique Scrappy Thrust Style, and promptly breaks a window with it. He needs it soon enough. Octoid, a Next-Level Villain with cephalopod strength, wrecks the Hotta brothers' storefront and puts Shota Aizawa on the ground with hidden tentacles. Koichi steps between them and shoots the villain in the face, and an unlikely squad forms: Aizawa with one arm slung in his capturing weapon, the Hotta brothers on legal Trigger, Koichi as ranged bait, and Kirihito Kamachi joining once his tea time is interrupted. Aizawa nets Octoid in the warehouse, Kirihito frees him by accident, and the chase ends with Number 6 finding the fugitive first, taking a blood sample, and nearly beating him to death over a scratch to his cherished self-inflicted scar.

A mixer at a Naruhata bar becomes the next operation. Midnight, hunting a group distributing an ingestible new Trigger, poses as a substitute guest alongside a jealous Kazuho. Hina, obsessed with her friend Rin, keeps trying to spike Koichi's drink out of spite and keeps missing, until the drugged glasses reach other tables and the customers' Quirks run wild. Midnight puts the room to sleep and arrests her, sympathizing all the while.

Naomasa briefs Eraser Head on the oral Trigger. It is weaker and lacks the psychotropic edge, which makes it easier to spread and better suited to identifying candidates the Villain Factory can abduct and rebuild. Hina's interrogation names the Osaka villain as the distributor, the dealing site is already abandoned, and the chemistry points to China, beyond Japanese reach.

In a Hong Kong apothecary, a hooded traveler uses an outdated password and asks for information rather than product. Three enforcers try him and lose, and the shopkeeper recognizes a hero once known there as Hyper Quadfist and in Japan as O'Clock, supposedly dead after his face was split and his Quirk taken. Iwao Oguro lowers the hood and agrees the man they mean died a long time ago.

Home again, Knuckleduster visits his daughter Tamao in hospital and is told to shave. He passes Eizo Tanuma a memory card of Trigger trafficking data with Japanese importers named, and when the detective raises the accelerating villain, tells him to shoot on sight, then offers to handle it himself when Eizo refuses. He watches Koichi outrun a train-headed villain from a rooftop, proud, and leaves without a word. Koichi thinks he glimpsed someone and puts it down to imagination.