Chapter 85 (Vigilantes)

In the wake of Kazuho Haneyama's admission to hospital, Naomasa Tsukauchi works through Moyuru Tochi, Rapt Tokage, and Soga Kugisaki one at a time. Moyuru and Rapt offer alibis that do not match about why they were near where she and The Crawler came down. Soga says nothing and glares. Naomasa tries reason: nobody here is being treated as a criminal, and he already understands Kazuho is no ordinary villain, but he needs something to work with. Soga tells him to go ask Pop, and asks whether she is out of surgery yet. She is, and Midnight arranged for Naomasa to pass along the updates.

Earlier, before the interviews, Naomasa had gone to the maximum security hospital holding Kazuho. Cleared through a bioscan and an officer's check, he found Midnight inside with Kazuho's mother. The security impressed him enough that he questioned whether it was warranted, and Midnight explained that Soga and his friends were insistent about it. Since the admission, unidentified people have been making inquiries and the alarms have been tripping. Midnight would rather move her somewhere more isolated still, but Kazuho cannot be moved at all.

Back across the table, Naomasa tells Soga the Queen Bee came out successfully, that Kazuho has not woken, and that lasting effects are expected. He adds that Midnight credits the three of them with saving her life, and says he chooses to believe it. In exchange, he wants Koichi. Soga rolls his eyes: chasing Koichi is a waste, and the actual job is guarding Kazuho from whoever wants her dead. Naomasa's patience snaps and he shouts that vigilantism has no place here with a body count this high, and Soga tells him that if the dead weigh on him, the police could try doing their jobs properly.

After a silence, Soga asks for detective Eizo Tanuma by name. Eizo comes in, notes he knows about Soga's history with Trigger, and observes that something about him has changed since then, in a way that recalls a certain ally. That gets Soga's attention. With Knuckleduster's name in the room, Soga repeats an analogy his old employer once gave him: the world runs like cheap socks, holes are guaranteed eventually, and buying new pairs only buys new holes, so all anyone can do is pull a second pair on over the first. Eizo laughs, and lets the three of them go. Naomasa cannot believe it, and Eizo answers that troublesome people are better aimed at real villains. The three walk off under the gaze of both detectives; Naomasa says he will keep watching them and The Crawler alike, and Eizo needles him for being wound too tight.

Koichi, meanwhile, reads the news on his phone. Endeavor is being credited with taking down Pop☆Step, though the brutality of his methods has drawn criticism, and the heroes wounded and killed on the scene are being blamed on an accomplice of hers. Koichi turns it over internally. He has always misread rooms and irritated people into hitting him or threatening him, but that heat always cooled once everyone talked it through. The man on the roof was different, serious, even if Koichi followed little of what he said. If someone genuinely means to kill him and Kazuho, he wonders whether he can stop it.

At the warehouse, Soga lays out the hospital's lockdown: ground level is the only way in or out. Rather than let the villain get close, they will run a checkpoint of their own outside. Moyuru points out they would be dead in a real fight, and Soga tells him fighting is not the plan, since running is enough to trigger the locks, the alarms, and the police. Soga, Rapt, and Moyuru set their perimeter and stop a man claiming to be there on an air conditioning repair job. He balks at opening his toolbox, so Soga signals and a blast knocks it out of his hands, spilling a camera. Media, then, and the fake repairman panics, scanning for the source of the shot. It came from Koichi, camped on a nearby roof with excellent aim. He exhales when Soga signals the all clear, and decides that with someone seriously trying to kill Kazuho, he has to get serious himself.

Naomasa interrogates Soga, Moyuru, and Rapt over their part in the Bee☆Pop incident, and Eizo Tanuma releases all three. Kazuho has been placed in an extra-secure hospital, where the Queen Bee was successfully removed, though lasting effects from her time under its control are expected. Koichi has told Soga, Moyuru, and Rapt about Number 6, and the group begins keeping watch over Kazuho's hospital, with Koichi covering them from a rooftop.

The eighty-fifth chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court, nineteen pages released on September 12, 2020, collected in volume 11 within the Final Performance arc. It was first published under the title Inquiries, changed for the volume edition. Naomasa Tsukauchi appears on the cover, and Knuckleduster features only in a photograph.