Naruhata Vigilantes

The Naruhata Vigilantes refers to the ragtag trio of vigilantes formed by The Crawler, Pop☆Step, and Knuckleduster.

Overview
The team was originally formed by Knuckleduster to end the drug trafficking of Trigger in Naruhata, as well as fight those people who become Instant Villains for consuming Trigger. In doing so, they are also tasked with patrolling and protecting Naruhata from thugs and minor villains unrelated to the Trigger.

When they are not patrolling together, each member acts independently. The Crawler usually does all kinds of public services for no benefit to himself like picking up trash, pointing out directions to people, or returning lost objects to their owners, among other things. Pop☆Step, meanwhile, seeks to gain fame and recognition by acting illegally as a street idol, although later she will do so legally.

Knuckleduster, for his part, pursues a personal vendetta. The Villain Factory, the organization behind the trafficking of Trigger and the Instant Villains, was responsible for ending his career as the Pro Hero O'Clock, stealing his Quirk, as well as attacking his family and kidnapping his daughter, turning her into the villain and drug dealer Kuin Hachisuka. Due to the dangerous nature of his personal mission, Knuckleduster keeps his true objective in secret to his allies to avoid endangering them.

Strength
The Naruhata Vigilantes is not a very powerful team, but the collaboration between its members and with the occasional help of an ally, have managed to overcome any obstacle and enemy they face.

Despite being Quirkless, due to his past as a Pro Hero, Knuckleduster is the only one with the physique, knowledge, and experience necessary to fight, so he is always in charge of beating up villains until they are defeated. When he is working alone in his personal mission, Knuckleduster does not hesitate to use all kinds of items, dangerous devices, and firearms to defeat the threat.

The Crawler also fights and generally acts as support for Knuckleduster, since he is not very strong and his Slide and Glide Quirk is not too powerful. All in all, thanks to Knuckleduster's training and the experience he gains fighting villains, he improves notably in these aspects over time, discovering new abilities of his Quirk that make him more effective in combat. However, when fighting solo, his strategy to fight criminals and villains is doing what he can to buy time until someone much more competent appears to solve the problem.

Thanks to her Quirk Leap, Pop☆Step is usually the first to get to where there are problems, but because she has no combat experience, Pop does not usually participate in the fights against villains, but she helps her teammates in their missions in various ways: investigating for them, helping to evacuate the passers-by, acting as a distraction or decoy against villains, providing first aid, calling for help, etc.

Synopsis
The team is formed when the Vigilante Knuckleduster saw potential in Koichi Haimawari when he tried to save Kazuho Haneyama from Soga Kugisaki and his friends. Knuckleduster offers Koichi to be his master and train him to become a true hero. Although Koichi rejects his offer at first, Knuckleduster insists on it and explains that their goal is to fight the drug distribution of Trigger and defeat the people responsible for it.

Koichi doesn’t want to be part of Knuckleduster's plan, especially after knowing his violent methods of investigating, but after confronting a Trigger dealer, he finally agrees to become in his apprentice and being trained into "The Crawler". Kazuho decides to also join the team to help them in the investigation, primarily to stay close to Koichi who she secretly has a crush on. Sometime afterwards, Knuckleduster takes Koichi's Penthouse as a base, with Kazuho visiting them there often as well.

The three vigilantes face several Instant Villains, whom they often defeat and leave tied up for the police to put them in prison. Their actions soon began to intervene with the plans of Kuin Hachisuka, an agent of the Villain Factory. Kuin considered them a nuisance to the objectives of the Villain Factory, and wants to get rid of them, although her mysterious boss advises her not to do so in order to exploit the Vigilante's constant interference to collect data in order to refine their experiments.

Following orders from her mysterious patron, Kuin continues to cause troubles to obtain data. Finally, she is defeated by Knuckleduster, who extracts the parasitic bee from his daughter's body and kills it, rescuing Tamao in the process. After this, Knuckleduster abandons the Naruhata Vigilantes team without saying anything to his two teammates, who since then have to fend for themselves when they face villains.

After his departure, Koichi and Kazuho continue with their vigilantism activities, although now without the veteran warrior. However, through their activities they've started to gain more allies, particularly Koichi's fellow college student, Makoto Tsukauchi, and American Hero Captain Celebrity, who the former also works as the manager for. Makoto seeks to help the vigilantes "go straight", so invites Kazuho to join a group known as the FeatherHATS, allowing her to publicly perform legally.

Despite this, Koichi and Kazuho continue to find more trouble facing against more crooks, especially after the appearance of a new threat, the Next-Level Villains, led by a mysterious new Villain Factory agent, Number 6. This causes them to be involved in various incidents related to the Villain Factory, as well as indirectly meddling with the police investigation to take down the criminal organization, relating with many Pro Heroes who collaborate with the police like Eraser Head, Fat Gum and Midnight.

However through these encounters, Koichi and Kazuho make new allies out of the Pro Heroes, namely Eraser Head and Midnight, who they are able to use their connections with to offer up all of their information on the Trigger victims, Instant Villains, and Next-Level Villains they've faced to help the Police and Pro Heroes with their ongoing investigation into the Villain Factory. Around this time, Kazuho begins to participate less and less in vigilantism activities to focus more on her idol career with FeatherHATS, so many times Koichi must work alone as a Vigilante. This makes him gain combat experience and his Slide and Glide Quirk keeps getting more powerful and versatile.

Koichi and Kazuho's relation to Captain Celebrity leads them to be caught up in Number 6's latest experiment, testing the limits of his Quirk with their new creations, the Bombers. They get caught up in the Sky Egg Incident, in which Number 6 leads his Bombers against Captain Celebrity, while he's holding a great event with the motivation of his return to the USA, an event in which thousands of people are attending and several Pro Heroes participate. Despite the villain's conscientious planning, and Koichi putting himself on the line to defend a wounded Captain Celebrity, the heroes (and particularly All Might) manage to defeat the Bombers and save everyone's lives. Seeing his plan fail, Number 6 decides to retreat but is attacked by a suddenly returning Knuckleduster.

Since he rescued his daughter and left the Naruhata Vigilantes, Knuckleduster had conducted his own investigations into the Villain Factory and the Trigger drug trade, reporting all discoveries to his police connections. He is especially interested in taking down Number 6, not only because he is the main agent responsible for the latest events, but also because he is in possession of his stolen Quirk, Overclock.

Number 6, on the other hand, is delighted to meet him despite attacking him because, in a distorted way, he considers himself a fan of his past as a hero, and wants to become his successor, the new O'Clock. Knuckleduster refuses and confronts the villain, in a fight that ends with the building in which they are collapsed.

After this, a few years go by without any major crises. The Crawler has become a popular personality among the people of Naruhata. Despite this, Koichi is thinking about quitting being a vigilante and getting a real job. On her side, Kazuho tries to figure out what she wants in her life with everybody around her moving on, and befriends Rokuro Nomura, the FeatherHATS' new manager. However, Rokuro is actually Number 6 in disguise, trying to get closer to Kazuho as revenge against Koichi for taking his role as "O'Clock's successor". He kidnaps Kazuho and implants a new parasitic bee in her, transforming her into the villain Bee☆Pop.

After a failed encounter, Koichi is rescued by Soga, who was tasked by Knuckleduster prior to his disappearance to keep watch over Koichi and Kazuho. Using Knuckleduster's information and resources, he informs Koichi over the situation regarding Kazuho being possessed by the Queen Bee, and alongside Moyuru and Rapt, help to train him and devise a plan to once again destroy the Bee and save Kazuho.

When Bee☆Pop makes their next appearance, Koichi and Soga put their plan into motion, and despite the interference from Pro Hero Endeavor attempting to apprehend Kazuho, and Number 6, who introduces himself to Koichi as High Speed Hero: O'Clock II, Koichi manages to rescue and escape by flying with his Quirk. Before they can attempt to remove the Queen Bee from her, Midnight arrives to assist the new Naruhata Vigilantes, allowing Kazuho to be safely taken to the hospital, while Koichi sneaks away. However, a furious Number 6 confronts Koichi for ruining his plans, and declares his vengeance to kill Kazuho and Koichi, before retreating.

While Koichi goes into hiding, Soga, Moyuru, and Rapt act as the face for the Naruhata Vigilantes, attempting to work alongside the Pro Heroes through Midnight, and the Police Force through Naomasa Tsukauchi in order to protect Kazuho and track down the villain targeting her. However, Naomasa's insistence on Koichi turning himself in for his vigilantism and connections to Kazuho leads to conflict between the three groups, while Number 6 uses the opportunity to instigate Operation Anonymous.

With the power in the city shut down, and a new set of Bombers deployed known as the Anonymous, the Vigilantes, Pro Heroes, and Police Force all agree to work together to deal with Number 6's assault. Eventually, Koichi faces down Number 6 alone, in order to distract him long enough until the Pro Heroes can return, inadvertently discovering new applications of his Quirk and fighting abilities he never imagined possible, able to counter Number 6 at every move.

Number 6 ends up transforming into a beast known as the Hi-Crawler to try and take Koichi down, but his attempt to catch him off guard is backfired by the once again returning Knuckleduster, revealed to be alive, who pounds Number 6 faster than he can react. Knuckleduster reveals he planted bombs all over the city and is planning to detonate the one underneath him in order to take them both out for good, only to be surprised that it doesn't work.

Soga then appears, having been chasing down Koichi during the chase, revealing that he had discovered the bombs and disarmed them, figuring out Knuckleduster's suicidal plan and not wanting to let him die. Number 6 thinks he has the upper hand again, but Koichi arrives to knock him into the air. Further enraged, Number 6 combusts the Bomber cells into his body, transforming himself into a being of pure plasma energy, and after absorbing all the cells of the Anonymous, becoming a giant fiery kaiju known as Destruction Style.

This appears to be too much for Koichi to handle and he is seemingly crushed by rubble, only to be surprised by the arrival of a visage of Knuckleduster, while the real Knuckleduster falls unconscious. The illusion of his Master gives Koichi advice on how to persevere, giving him the energy to break out and face down Number 6 again. He is then visited by an illusion of Pop☆Step, while the real Pop is having a seizure, who joins "Knuckleduster" in giving Koichi the motivation to keep fighting as their "hero".

Eventually, the Pro Heroes manage to return to help evacuate the civilians and deal with Number 6, and after the villain makes one last ditch effort by transforming into many exploding mini bombers, the arriving All Might and Endeavor hastily take care of the threat, saving the city.

However, Number 6 barely survived, and tracks down Koichi, as his "Master", All For One, wants him to kill him and retrieve his body. Instead, Number 6 defies these orders, scratching Koichi on the cheek, so that'll be his mark left on the world, before dying in one last explosion, despite Koichi's attempts to save him. At the same time, the illusions of Knuckleduster and Pop☆Step fade away, as their real selves wake back up.

Koichi is retrieved by the Pro Heroes and taken the hospital to recover, with Koichi expecting to be arrested due to all the damage inherently caused. However, Makoto and Captain Celebrity suddenly appear to help, to declare Koichi as Captain Celebrity's "Sidekick", to get him off the hook. After Koichi and Kazuho tearfully reunite, and Koichi reveals, despite his supposed insistence, that he still desires to be a hero, he accepts their offer.

The Naruhata Vigilantes officially disband as Kazuho continues her rehabilitation, Soga makes frequent visits to watch over her, while Koichi travels to America with Captain Celebrity's Agency as "The Skycrawler".