Chapter 11 (Vigilantes)

Knuckleduster reaches Koichi Haimawari and Soga Kugisaki with no time to spare. Stendhal recognizes the man's reputation, Naruhata's vigilante, and has no wish to trade blows with him, reading him as another figure carving a righteous road through a rotten society. Knuckleduster rejects the comparison flatly: he calls himself justice's champion, and Stendhal nothing but a lunatic who murders people in the street.

The refusal disappoints Stendhal, though Knuckleduster spots the real regret, which is the surprise attack he can no longer land after being caught measuring the gap between them. Feeling generous, Knuckleduster drops a rope so the distance is easy to judge, then offers a choice: leave, or take a fist through the mask.

Stendhal picks the fight, retreating a step before rushing in at speed, but Knuckleduster closes first and steals the opening strike. The punch lands square on the mask, flinging Stendhal back with his face wrecked. Lifting the broken mask, Knuckleduster explains what he thinks of men who hide behind one: the disguise convinces them they have become someone else, someone untouchable. That recklessness makes them dangerous, he admits, yet it also makes them brittle the moment somebody walks into their space. Forget that, and what you are missing is resolve.

Bleeding on the ground, Stendhal takes the lesson. He tears forward again with knives, cutting Knuckleduster through his block before perching on an air conditioning unit, having arrived at a new conviction: there are sinners worse than villains, false Heroes with no resolve at all. Licking blood from his blade, he triggers Bloodcurdle to lock Knuckleduster in place, thanks him for the teaching, and vanishes across the rooftops.

Kazuho Haneyama turns up carrying a first aid kit, and starts patching Koichi and Knuckleduster, then reluctantly treats Soga as well. Koichi is simply glad to be breathing; Soga finds the cheerfulness irritating and asks about it, and Kazuho tells him the man is a happy-go-lucky idiot, nothing more.

In his shabby apartment, Stendhal inventories his shortcomings, power, speed, tactics, and above all resolve. When Kuin Hachisuka questions why resolve matters, he answers with a knife to her face, which her worker bees block. He notices the mask is gone and decides that suits him, because bare-eyed he can finally see the world truthfully. Kuin pushes herself upright to listen to him mutter, entertained. Walking a passageway, he vows to stain the world with his own blood and the blood he takes, leaving marks along his path that will never scrub out.

Knuckleduster refuses Stendhal's offer of common ground and defeats him with a single decisive punch that destroys the mask and his face beneath it.

Stendhal escapes by paralyzing Knuckleduster with Bloodcurdle after tasting his blood, treating the beating as an education rather than a defeat.

Kuin Hachisuka survives a knife thrust thanks to her Queen Bee swarm and decides the newly unmasked Stendhal is worth watching.

Discarding the mask and embracing resolve, Stendhal completes his transformation into the Hero Killer, Stain.

Written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrated by Betten Court, the eleventh chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes arrived on August 12, 2017, ran twenty-three pages, and was gathered into the second volume. It belongs to the Stendhal arc, positioned between Chapter 10 and Chapter 12.

Serialization used the title Mask (仮面, Kamen), which became Crossing Lines for the volume printing. Knuckleduster and Stendhal share the cover, and the anime covers the material in Episode 6.

All Might appears only in a picture, while Kazuho Haneyama, Soga Kugisaki, and Kuin Hachisuka fill out the supporting cast.