Chapter 12: Senpai

With the Stendhal affair behind him, Koichi Haimawari returns to the ordinary grind of university, where the coursework is beating him. A classmate slides in beside him and asks what he is reading. He shows her his hero sociology text, she agrees it is heavy going, and she volunteers to tutor him. Another student identifies her as Makoto Tsukauchi. Her terms are simple: help her with an errand and the tutoring is his.

At Koichi's place, Kazuho Haneyama is already inside with a book and hears the two of them approaching, so she ducks out of sight while Koichi stalls Makoto at the door long enough to tidy up. Once inside, she glances at his registration form and promises lecture notes and old exam papers, though attendance remains his own problem. Turning to the subject giving him trouble, she walks him through the third chapter of his textbook, which covers the friction between vigilantism and the sanctioned hero system.

Her explanation frames vigilantism as a phase rather than a fixture. When Quirks first threw society into disorder, private citizens stepped in to hold the line, and as stability returned that impulse either faded or was folded into official structures. Legislation converted some of those figures into heroes. The catch, she notes, is that the first such law, passed in Rhode Island, granted hero status to only seven of one hundred and eighty-nine vigilantes and branded the rest as Quirk-using villains. Personal justice, she concludes, gave birth to a system founded on societal justice, and it survives as a counterweight to mass surveillance.

She springs a question on him: what actually decided who counted as a hero and who did not under that original law. He has no answer. She tells him the answer is hidden, that it will never appear on his exam, and that it is the spine of her thesis. She wants his help with the research and promises to tell him eventually. He agrees. The task is a field survey on the rumored Naruhata vigilantes. Koichi hesitates, since prying into other people's affairs sits badly with him even if he has heard good things about the group, but she says that is precisely why she needs a bodyguard. They settle on ten o'clock Saturday at the station. The moment she leaves, Kazuho reappears in a foul mood over the other girl.

Elsewhere, Naomasa Tsukauchi comes home to find his younger sister waiting. He asks after her thesis and she says her sources are falling into line. When she fishes for information about villains or heroes, he refuses to leak anything confidential and tells her to keep away from villains. She reads that as advice not to get caught, and he repeats himself more firmly: no danger. Back at Koichi's, Kazuho stews about Makoto treating the apartment as her own, while Koichi shrugs it off and buries himself in his assignments.

Makoto Tsukauchi is introduced and strikes a bargain with Koichi Haimawari, trading tutoring for his help as a bodyguard on her thesis fieldwork.

The origins of the hero system are laid out, including the Rhode Island legislation that recognized only seven of one hundred and eighty-nine vigilantes as heroes and labeled the remainder villains.

Makoto reveals her research target is the Naruhata vigilantes, unaware that Koichi is one of them, and her brother Naomasa warns her away from villains.

Hideyuki Furuhashi writes and Betten Court illustrates My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. This nineteen-page chapter arrived on August 26, 2017 and was collected in the third volume.

It opens the Senpai arc, from which it takes its title, and The Crawler appears on the cover. Makoto Tsukauchi debuts here.

The chapter sits between Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 and was adapted as the seventh episode of the Vigilantes anime. Knuckleduster appears only in a flashback.