Chapter 44: One Outrageous Traveler

Midnight is on duty when Kazuho Haneyama calls: an Instant Villain topped with a locomotive head is barreling after Koichi Haimawari, and Captain Celebrity is tied up elsewhere. Midnight passes the problem to Eraser Head, who is inside the Hotta brothers' shop and pleads a meeting he cannot miss. It makes no difference, she tells him, because the chase is coming to him. Sure enough, Koichi appears outside, his repulsion blasts doing nothing but enraging the creature, so he hands the job to Shota Aizawa, who ends it in moments.

The Hotta brothers want to know why Koichi keeps steering criminals to their doorstep. He blames a rumor that Eraser Head runs a branch office there, which Shota half confirms and the brothers flatly deny. Naomasa Tsukauchi arrives and Koichi slips away, first asking Shota to keep quiet about his Scrappy Thrust Style, an appeal Shota greets with indifference.

At the meeting, Naomasa lays out a swallowed form of Trigger. It is weaker than the original and stripped of the psychotropic component, which makes it far easier to push on the street since users no longer flip into outright villains. That suits the Villain Factory, which can screen prospects to abduct and rebuild as Next-Level Villains. Pressed on whether a rival outfit distributes it, Naomasa points to Hina's interrogation and names the villain from Osaka. Raids found the dealing sites already cleared out, and the chemistry traces back to China, putting it beyond Japanese reach. Eraser Head jokes about handling the matter off the books.

In Hong Kong, a bearded man in a hood gives an old passphrase at an apothecary and is led to a back room. He asks for information, is refused, and three enforcers move in. He snaps one man's arm, and the seller recognizes him as Hyper Quadfist, called O'Clock in Japan. The traffickers protest that the hero died after his face was split open and his Quirk taken. He agrees that Hyper Quadfist is long gone, then says the dead are beside the point, because he is standing here now. The hood comes down, revealing Knuckleduster.

Knuckleduster is confirmed to be the retired Pro Hero O'Clock.

He is Quirkless because Overclock was stolen from him.

An oral, non-psychotropic Trigger surfaces, sourced from China and feeding the Villain Factory's recruiting.

The Locomotive Villain, Tommy S. Gordon, debuts.

The forty-fourth chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court. It ran 19 pages on December 22, 2018, belongs to the Team Ups arc, and collects into Volume 6. The Crawler and the Locomotive Villain share the cover, and pages 8 to 19 adapt into Episode 18.

Serialization titled it simply Traveler before the volume release amended it. The unnamed Locomotive Villain reads as a nod to the Thomas & Friends franchise.