Chapter 4: Honesty

Walking home, Koichi Haimawari reminds himself that his enthusiasm for heroes cannot be allowed to swallow his job and the ordinary business of living. He ducks into an alley anyway, rides Slide and Glide up onto the rooftops, and reaches the battered penthouse perched atop an equally battered apartment block, five minutes on foot from Higashinaruhata Station.

Inside, an old man is parked in front of the television with a meal, having let himself in through the window. The mask goes on and the intruder turns out to be Knuckleduster, which comes as a relief. Koichi is still wrestling with the window when someone knocks. The visitor is a disheveled schoolgirl who tidies herself up on the spot and reveals herself as Pop Step, whose civilian look strikes Koichi as unexpectedly pretty.

Asked about the evening patrol, the pair explain themselves: Knuckleduster clocked out early and is killing time until dark, and Pop Step is due onstage later. Koichi heads for his shift, leaving the spare key behind and pointing out where the bath and toiletries are. Pop Step reads an ulterior motive into the hospitality, and his flat denial arrives with an odd wave of gloom.

The gloom has a history. Back in April, the cheap rent on the decrepit rooftop unit looked like a bargain that would launch his campus social life. He invited friends over after a night out, and the next day they thanked him and fled. Word spread about the penthouse, the reputation curdled into pervert and creep, classmates kept their distance, and his debut at college collapsed. Nothing about the experience matched what he had pictured.

Sent off to work, Koichi leaves while Pop Step performs for her crowd. Teruo Unagisawa pushes toward the front and gets shoved back by a rival fan. Jube Namimaru warns him against rushing things while Ichimoku Samazu lectures him on proper fan conduct, getting so worked up that his Meganetic Blaster fires off into the sky and draws a lecture about manliness in return. Teruo snaps at the pair for the noise, then spikes his neck with Trigger and swells into an eel-like creature.

The transformed fan gives chase, and Koichi spots it as his shift ends. He suits up, runs into Jube and Ichimoku on the trail, and Knuckleduster arrives with a plan: pin the slug-shaped monster low while he strikes from above. Slime defeats both halves of it, the punch sliding away and the grip failing until the two collide with each other. Knuckleduster clocks an udon shop nearby while Pop Step takes cover in an alley.

The two men persuade Pop Step that a handshake will send the overheated fan home satisfied. It does not. Teruo escalates to demanding a hug, then a kiss, wrapping her in his slime. Flour from the udon shop then rains over him, pulling the moisture out of the slime and stripping away his defense, and Knuckleduster pounds him until the transformation drops.

Back at the apartment, the guests send Koichi out for beer and shampoo, then bicker about each other's manners and immaturity while he hangs the laundry. Pegging their costumes on the line, he turns over the college life that never happened, and decides that having these two around makes it a fair trade.

Knuckleduster and Pop Step effectively move into Koichi's rooftop penthouse, and her civilian identity is shown for the first time.

A flashback explains that rumors about the penthouse wrecked Koichi's reputation and his first year of college.

Teruo Unagisawa debuts, injects Trigger at Pop Step's concert, and mutates into an eel-like monster that pursues her.

Flour taken from an udon shop dries out Teruo's slime and lets Knuckleduster beat him back to human form.

This is the fourth chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and drawn by Betten Court. It spans 35 pages in the first volume and belongs to the Vigilantes Beginnings arc.

Teruo Unagisawa is introduced here, alongside the fans Jube Namimaru and Ichimoku Samazu.

The material was adapted as Episode 3 of the anime, with pages 13 through 17 held back for Episode 5.