Chapter 44 (Vigilantes)

Traveler (法外の旅行者) is the forty-fourth chapter of Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court's My Hero Academia Vigilantes.

Summary
While performing hero work, Midnight receives a call from Kazuho, who tells her that an Instant Villain with a Locomotive head is charging after someone she knows (Koichi). She had tried to call Captain Celebrity but at the time he was busy on another job.

Midnight calls Eraser Head, who is in the Hotta brothers' shop at that time. Eraser Head tells her at that time he can not take care of the villain, because he has an important meeting. Midnight simply tells him that it doesn't matter, because the villain is heading his way. When he leaves the store, he sees Koichi being chased by the Locomotive Villain. Koichi shoots several repulsion blasts to the villain, which does nothing but make him angrier, so he let Eraser Head take care of him.

The villain is defeated easily, and the Hotta brothers ask Koichi why he brings criminals near to their shop. He tells them because he had heard that is an offshoot of Eraser Head's office is there. Eraser Head says that is more or less true, but the Hotta brothers deny it. Shortly after, detective Naomasa arrives and Koichi leaves, but not before asking Shota to say nothing about he used his Scrappy Thrust Style, as it would bring him problems, although Shota replies that he does not care about that.

During the meeting, Naomasa tells Eraser Head about the new orally administered Trigger. It is less effective that the old form but lacks the psychotropic element. As this new drug does not turn people into full-blown villains, it makes it easier to distribute on the street, and therefore, it benefits the Villain Factory, because it makes easier for them to showcase potential candidates to kidnap and transform into Next-Level Villains.

The Hotta brothers ask Naomasa if it isn't more logical to think that another group is in charge of distributing this new Trigger. He denies it, arguing that after interrogating Hina, the one distributing the oral Trigger is the same villain from Osaka. The investigation led the police to the place where the deals were happening, but they’d already cleared out. Naomasa reports that, due to the chemical composition, the new trigger came from China, so the Japanese police and heroes would have problems to do anything about it. Eraser Head jokes about deal with it secretly.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, a bearded traveler with his face hidden under a hood enters an apothecary, and after changing a few words with the shopman, he tells him a kind of password, and he asks him to follow him to the back room.

The seller asks him what he wants, the mysterious traveler says only information. The seller says that is not possible, and also as lately they had had some problems, and he had used an old password, calls three thugs to deal with him. The traveler defends himself and breaks one of the thug’s arm, and the seller is surprised to recognize him as the hero Hyper Quadfist, known in Japan as O'Clock.

The traffickers can not believe he could be him because Hyper Quadfist is supposed to be dead, after his face split and his quirk was stolen. The traveler tells them they are right, Hyper Quadfist died long time ago, but the dead don't matter, because now he is here.

After taking off the hood, the mysterious traveler turns out to be Knuckleduster.

Trivia

 * The unnamed Locomotive Villain is possibly a reference to the Thomas & Friends franchise.