Letter

Years earlier, a drunk Iwao Oguro works the back alleys of Naruhata, grabbing a thug to ask who is moving the new drug and hitting him to get a look at his tongue. The man swings back and bloodies his nose, which accomplishes nothing except making the vigilante angrier, and he goes down. Koichi Haimawari runs in trying to talk both of them down, gets hit for the trouble, and watches the thug stalk off insisting he is the only victim present. Nose still bleeding, Koichi offers Iwao tissues for his injuries. Iwao walks away without a word, barely showing his face, smiling at the boy's decency. Neither of them knows it yet, but the future master and student have just met.

In the present, Koichi reads on. Knuckleduster apologizes for the deception and says he has no doubts about him, then defines what a hero actually is: Quirk and society living in harmony, made flesh. He illustrates it with a hero he says he once knew, meaning himself as O'Clock, a man efficient enough to dismantle organization after organization and still nothing more than a well-oiled part in the machinery keeping order, with no answer to real evil. Facing All For One while the villain was still recovering, he was broken, scarred, and stripped of Overclock.

Most people, the letter continues, meet their own helplessness by abandoning their ideals, sinking, and taking it out on others. Iwao names himself as the example: depression, drink, and a vigilante who solved things with his fists. A small number keep their decency intact anyway, and those are the real heroes. Koichi is one of them. He was never a project to be turned into a hero, because Iwao already saw him as one. His hero. As for the trouble Knuckleduster is in now, he is untroubled. There is no shame in fleeing something overwhelming, but with someone waiting to be saved, he knows he will move without a second thought.

Koichi finishes and asks where his master is. Soga has no idea; his last instruction was to keep watch over Koichi and Kazuho. Moyuru Tochi notes how long it has been, and Rapt Tokage floats the possibility that the man is dead. Soga steers them back to the urgent problem. Kazuho is host to parasitic bees that puppet their victims, and the moment heroes move to arrest her the swarm can kill her from inside and slip away. The only other route is pulling the Queen out of her skull, which breaks a stack of laws and lies beyond any hero or officer. He asks Koichi whether he will do it. Koichi says he does not know, and his friends groan at the answer, so he clarifies: the how is a blank, but he is getting Kazuho back, because as the letter puts it, a single road forward is not a decision at all. Soga laughs, gets called on it, and squirms.

A flashback shows the first meeting between Iwao Oguro and Koichi, with Koichi's kindness leaving a mark on the drunk vigilante.

The letter confirms that All For One defeated O'Clock and stole his Overclock Quirk, ending his hero career.

Soga explains that arresting Kazuho would get her killed by the bees, and asks Koichi to extract the Queen himself. Koichi commits to saving her.

Iwao Oguro appears alone on the cover. The chapter runs nineteen pages and belongs to Volume 10.

Knuckleduster's musings on hero society are illustrated with a wide fantasy spread of Pro Heroes including All Might, Endeavor, Hawks, Best Jeanist, Edgeshot, and Midnight, none of whom appear in the story proper.