Chapter 57 (Vigilantes)

The blast leaves Number 6 falling with nothing to push off, his acceleration worthless in open air. Swinging from a grappling hook, Knuckleduster points out that the demolition took several floors along with the roof. He pulls a shotgun from under his coat; the villain shields his head, so the vigilante shoots his legs instead and denies him any clean landing.

Shot and buried under debris, Number 6 is at his mercy, but Knuckleduster reads the modifications and understands pain will not stop him, so he works the limbs to leave him helpless. The villain notes the shift: minutes earlier the man wanted a head shot, and now he does not. Knuckleduster answers that the priorities changed. Killing was the better long game, but with the trap sprung, wounding will do, because the building is compromised and one more explosion turns it into a tomb that even super speed cannot outrun. Told he is naive for granting recovery time, Knuckleduster starts hammering the villain's skull. Taking a dangerous villain off the board ranks high, he says, but first he wants intel on whoever runs the Villain Factory, and blunt trauma seals Overclock as neatly as oxygen starvation did.

The shotgun wounds stop bleeding, which tells him healing is at work, so he moves to tie the man down. Number 6 taunts him for passing on the kill, then slides a mini Bomber out of his sleeve and fuses it into his left arm. Bomber cells live in him as parasites, he explains, before detonating the limb and hurling Knuckleduster clear.

Down an arm, Number 6 praises the man's stubbornness and ranks him above the pros and even All Might, though he means to surpass him, since only one O'Clock can exist. Knuckleduster tells him to keep dreaming: the explosion hurt them both, and the villain came out worse, and he will make certain Number 6 ends here having amounted to nothing. Number 6 grants that he may be a copycat and that Knuckleduster knows Overclock better than he does, but insists the reverse never held. He can do things the original never managed, such as forcing the Bomber cells to grow, which is how a replacement explosive arm appears where the old one was. He extends the cells into his right arm too, giving him a matched pair. All that remains, he declares, is blowing out the walls with Knuckleduster among them. The vigilante charges before the speech finishes, vowing to end him before he can detonate, and Number 6, admiring the resolve, meets him.

Inside the dome, Fat Gum hears from Koichi that an explosion sounded somewhere. Eraser Head guesses a few mini Bombers escaped All Might's attack, and Naomasa orders a check. Monika Kaniyashiki turns up worried about the skinny man who was with them, and Fat Gum wonders aloud whether the megapunch blew him away, while the real Toshinori quietly asks Naomasa for something to wear. Back at the battle site, the building has come down completely, with neither fighter anywhere in it.

Knuckleduster's demolition strands Number 6 in freefall, and shotgun fire to his limbs leaves him unable to fight back. The vigilante switches from killing to capture, wanting information about the Villain Factory's ringleader.

Number 6 reveals the Bomber cells living in his body as parasites, self-detonates his left arm to break free, then grows explosive arms on both sides by accelerating the cells with Overclock. Their final clash brings the whole building down, leaving no trace of either man.

Nineteen pages, published July 13, 2019 and collected in volume eight, with Knuckleduster in his O'Clock identity on the cover.

The anime splits the chapter between Episode 25, which covers pages one through eight, and Episode 26 for the remainder. Serialization ran it as Versus (Bāsasu) before the volume release retitled it.