Chapter 52 (Vigilantes)

Balloon is the fifty-second chapter of Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court's Vigilante - My Hero Academia: Illegals.

Summary
Koichi continues protecting Captain Celebrity from the Bomb Villain's attacks. Each time the creature approaches with his explosive punches, Koichi shoots him a blast before he has a chance to attack. Suddenly, the suction effect of Koichi's Quirk turn off and he started to fall, but fortunately Captain Celebrity manages to grab one of his legs before he falls to the ground. The Captain tells him that if he gets careless, he will fall and there will be no one to protect him from the villain, and if the villain knocks him down, there will be no one to hold up the Sky Egg. Koichi replies that he already knows that and asks him not to put more pressure on him. At that moment Koichi realizes that Captain Celebrity is smiling.

Christopher remembers when he met Pamela. In high school, he had always been very popular with people, especially girls, but Pamela did not seem interested, looking at him with a grumpy face. Christopher had never met anyone who looked at him in that way, so he decided to ask Pamela the reason. She replied that she always looks like that. To cheer her up, she decides to take her and fly, but the only thing he gets is to make her angry even more. Christopher apologizes and Pamela tells him that she is not especially fan of him and his goofy grin, calling him a balloon, because he may has good look outside but he has nothing inside. Christopher feels annoyed by those mean words and Pamela leaves.

Despite her words, the next day Christopher decides to talk to her again, carrying a balloon in reference of what she called him. He apologizes for the other day, he just wanted to make her smile, and asks if she's still mad. Pamela says no, and confess she actually was thinking that must be nice being able to fly like him. Christopher offers her another ride, but Pamela refuses, saying she does not want another of his crazy flights. Then Christopher offers her a balloon ride.

Christopher and Pamela float just inches from the ground. She says they must look stupid, so he decides to go up a bit more. In his thoughts, Christopher says that he does that things because he just wanted everyone to like him. However, after seeing Pamela’s face of happiness, he falls in love with her. Over time, he tries to win her affection, and although she is distant, in the end she decides to correspond to Christopher's feelings and marries him.

Despite the good start, the marriage soon begins to go through bad times. He always wound up making her mad, and his job as a hero wasn’t going well either. People he considered to be good pals turned out to be using him. And some of the villains he took down, turned around and sued him, like he was in the wrong. This makes him think that whatever he does, he always ends up having problems. Back to the present, Koichi asks Captain Celebrity why he smiles. Christopher replies that with the current situation, where he faces a villain to save thousands of lives, an idiot like him can’t get this wrong.

The Bomb Villain decides to attack again, this time concentrating more explosive power in his fists. Koichi manages to destroy one of the villain's punches with his blast, but the blowback is so strong that he does not realize until it's too late that the villain had another attack ready. Koichi can not destroy the explosive punch in time, and the creature gets to hit Captain Celebrity with it.

To his surprise, the punch did not explode, and he can see in the distance a helicopter approaching to their position. In the vehicle is Shota, who uses his Erasure to nullify the explosive Quirk of the Bomber, stopping it for now, but it could still blow. The Next-Level Villain tries to fly around the tower to get out of Eraser Head's line of sight, but numerous threads catch him in the air. Best Jeanist makes an appearance, balancing on a single string while holding a flying Bomber in control, while Ryukyu and Air Jet inform that they have alerted the authorities and personnel, and now they prepare to face the remaining Bomb villains.