Chapter 97 (Vigilantes)

Koichi Haimawari shakes the police by threading between buildings, planning to reach the hospital unseen, and is caught instead by Ingenium, who only wants a word. Koichi latches onto a moving truck with his Quirk and listens. Tensei Ida tells him they know he is in danger and want to help both him and Pop. Koichi answers that he will surrender once Kazuho Haneyama is well, apologizes, and blasts away.

Before the escape, Koichi had floated the idea of working with the heroes and the police. Soga Kugisaki shot it down. Their enemy had already walked into a police station by exploiting the gaps in it, so the safer play is to guard Kazuho from outside the system, leaving Koichi free to move the instant he is needed.

Heading back into Naruhata to lose Ingenium, Koichi finds that Team Idaten anticipated exactly this and laid a trap, which he escapes by launching himself skyward. Ingenium concedes that the boy's new versatility puts him beyond what his team can handle, and hands the job to someone else.

A Spiral Spear Hand fired from behind forces Koichi down onto a rooftop, where Best Jeanist and Edgeshot are waiting. Best Jeanist names him the Sky Egg disaster's uncredited hero, says they know something is hunting him and Pop, and offers to earn back whatever faith in professionals he has lost. Koichi backs off, and Best Jeanist binds the jacket he is wearing into a straitjacket around him. Bound, Koichi slides away anyway and throws himself off the building. Both heroes move at once: Catching Cradle spins a web of threads to break the fall while Fishhook Snag hooks him. The catch loosens his restraints for a moment, which is all he needs to squirm free and vanish.

The two are left surprised. The Fiber Hero admits they misjudged the boy's resolve, and the Ninja Hero adds that an opponent desperate enough to ignore his own safety is very hard to take in without hurting him. Best Jeanist accepts the reading but refuses the excuse, since professionals do not get to make them, and the pair set off after him again.

As night comes on, Koichi avoids most of what is left and works back toward the hospital through Naruhata's alleys, only to be stopped by one more figure. Surface dwellers, the man tells him, are not built for someone like him, and these ruins are his hunting ground. Eraser Head steps into view.

Koichi is confronted in turn by Ingenium, by Team Idaten, and then by Best Jeanist alongside Edgeshot, and slips away from every one of them.

Their reason for refusing help from the police and the professionals is revealed: keeping them at a distance keeps Kazuho out of another trap set by Number 6.

Eraser Head returns and moves in to confront Koichi next.

The ninety-seventh chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, written by Hideyuki Furuhashi with art by Betten Court, titled Pursuers. It released on 13 March 2021, runs twenty-one pages, and is collected in volume twelve. Set during the Naruhata Lockdown arc, it falls between chapters 96 and 98.

Koichi Haimawari appears alone on the cover.

Serialization used a different set of characters for the title, changed when the volume was compiled, though the English rendering stayed the same.