Chapter 64 (Vigilantes)

Fight On, Shota (がんばれショータ) is the sixty-fourth chapter of Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court's My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.

Summary
It starts raining hard while Shota Aizawa rushes towards Garvey to face him. Garvey detaches one of the lumps from his back to attack him, but before he has the chance to release the power he has stored there, Shota uses his Erasure to cancel his Quirk and kicks the lump away from him. However, by doing so without planning much, Shota realizes that unintentionally, he endangers the lives of the schoolchildren, since once his Erasure ceases to have an effect, the lump releases the stored power, causing serious damage in the area. Shota is aware that he needs to develop a better plan to deal with the villain, without endangering the lives of others

Shota come up with two strategies. The first one is to position himself overhead Garvey to lure him into attacking upward, at the sky. The second one the second is that every time Garvey tries to use his lumps, he must cancel the Quirk with his Erasure and kick the non-activate lumps straight up so they detonate at safe height. Although with these strategies he deals with Garvey's Quirk, the villain still has his enormous size, and Shota has no plan to deal with it.

Shota is smacked and knocked down. Given Garvey's enormous size, Shota doesn't know what to do to stop him and begins to despair. Suddenly, coming from the Oboro's gourd-speaker, he hears the words of encouragement from his partner, ensuring that he can defeat him. Reinforced by Oboro's cheerings, Shota gets up and attacks Garvey once more. Shota manages to hit the villain's left eye hard. Painful, Garvey pushes the student away from him with a swipe, but Shota, while still hearing Oboro cheering for him, uses his Capture Weapon to ensnare a huge piece of rubble and throws it at Garvey, hitting him in the face.

Completely out of his wits by Shota's blows, Garvey decides to end him once and for all and releases all the lumps behind him to attack him. This is the moment Shota was waiting for: with his Erasure he keep the lumps from exploding and with his Capture Weapon he catches and gathering them up. Then he feeds them to Garvey and blinks to deactivate his Erasure. With Shota's Quirk ceasing to take effect, lumps explode inside Garvey, causing him serious damage and leaving him unconscious. Exhausted by the fight, Shota also falls to the ground, shouting at Oboro with excitement that he has defeated the villain.

Later, the authorities and medical teams arrive at the place where the confrontation took place. Schoolchildren are returned to their families and Garvey is arrested and taken into police custody. The medics, meanwhile, heal the wounds and fractures of the heroes who faced the villain, although His Purple Highness has to be sent to the hospital due to the seriousness of his condition.

In the safe area, one of the members of the Buster Union comments that he is still surprised that Shota, being only a trainee, managed to defeat Garvey alone, but Shota corrects him by saying that it was actually a team work, because his partner Oboro was encouraging him at all times. Not seeing him there with them, Shota asks Nerumi about how are Oboro’s wounds looking, but upon receiving no response, he thinks that her silence is due that Oboro’s condition is worse than he imagined at first and asks to be sent to the hospital immediately.

He sees Hizashi is going to pick up the Oboro’s speaker, and asks him to do it so they can return it to owner. Upon hearing Shota's words, Hizashi remains silent, with his face grieving and his hand shaking, and Nemuri starts to sob. In the end, is Sensoji the one who picks up the speaker and says that the device is totally busted. Shota is surprised by this, and assures that he could hear Oboro encouraging him throughout the entire fight against Garvey, but Sensoji assures him that this is not possible, and most likely, being in a life or death situation, he gave himself an encourage talk and stress made him hallucinate it was Oboro who encouraged him, with his voice coming from the speaker.

Shota refuses to believe Sensoji's words, but when he looks at the place where Oboro had ended up under a pile of rubble, he sees his friend in a body bag, stained with blood, and finally realizes the terrible truth.

Oboro Shirakumo is dead.

Sensoji continues his speech but Hizashi asks him to ease up, but Sensoji tells Shota that he must be proud, because he has defeated a villain completely alone, without anyone's help. Hizashi ends up telling Sensoji that he envies his simple mind for not realizing the point.

After his body is removed from the area, the rain intensifies, and Nemuri tells Shota and Hizashi that they shouldn’t stay out in it and get sick. Hizashi thanks her for worrying about them, but replies that they are fine,he also tells her that the rain “kinda fits their vibe right now”. Shota remembers all his memories with Oboro, and with Hizashi by his side they mourn the loss of their friend.

Trivia

 * This chapter was initially titled Shota (ショータ), but was amended for the volume release.