Chapter 55 – The Hero Killer Stain

When I saw the alert on my phone, my previous good mood immediately plummeted. The Hero Killer, unless I did something, would prove true to his name once again.

The alert on my phone was rather simple really, it was made to alert me when Stain or anybody on my "wanted list" had been located.

It was created because, since several years ago, I was trying to find criminals but I simply couldn't in some case, like Stain's.

Why?

Because he wasn't a group, but an individual, meaning that didn't have a fixed location, and although he was most of the time in Hosu, it was a big city, and I couldn't see all of it. If they chose to hide, often even I would not be able to find them

I had tried to hunt Stain once, but it had proven pointless as the Hero Killer avoided me like plague, I'm pretty sure I wasn't in his list of "false heroes" (I was a Vigilante, I couldn't be doing this for money or fame, really. It would've made for sense if I wanted that to be a hero.) and he knew that I could easily beat him.

So I created a program, and although it was kind of a breach of privacy, it worked and was for good.

A few weeks ago, Ingenium had started to hunt the Hero Killer, and, seeing this as an opportunity, I had placed multiple bugs on his hero suit and made a program that would warn me if he was talking to Stain or about Stain for too long, as well as give me Ingenium's location.

Well, it was more complicated than that and had been a b*tch to create, but it worked (maybe?, I hope). There was always a chance that Ingenium was in fact not talking with the Hero Killer right now and that my program was giving me the middle finger, but I would verify, just to be sure.

.

So that's how, a few seconds ago, I had received a notification telling me that Ingenium was in Hosu, near Stain's usual hunting territory and warned me that he was very probably talking with the Hero Killer.

Frowning slightly, I went to the bathroom. It didn't surprise anybody, there were only very few breaks between the events.

Once I was there, I went into a cabin and opened a portal leading to my house. There I created a clone, gave him the exact clothes I was wearing right now and wore my Vigilante costume myself.

Then, I simply sent the clone back to pose as myself, while I, as Knockout, would be dealing with Stain.

A foolproof plan.

My clone would be controlled by one my three train of thoughts, I knew better than to make intelligent clones (that's how you end up in a dystopian sci-fi world, by having multiples autonomous and intelligent overpowered clones) while I would stop the Hero Killer and once I was done, I would just come back, as if nothing had happened.

.

I opened a tiny portal leading to nearly exactly where Ingenium was and sent an invisible finger-eye through it to assess the situation and see if I was needed.

What I saw made me jump through a portal straight to where the hero was, things were not looking good.

Ingenium seemed to be paralyzed, probably by a quirk or poison, but I suspected it was the Hero Killer's quirk.

Fortunately, the Hero seemed to be uninjured, for now, his opponent was simply monologuing while approaching him with his sword drawn, his intentions clear.

When I saw that, I had warped directly toward there and the first thing I did after arriving was to use Quirk Vision to know of his quirk. I knew I could easily defeat him, so I opted to see his quirk rather than to directly attack him.

As expected, his could paralyze. It was named Bloocurdle and allowed him to paralyze someone by ingesting their blood, basically.

Not that it would be of any us against me, he wouldn't get to draw my blood.

After looking at his quirk, I immediately kicked a very surprised Stain, who wasn't able to dodge it and was subsequently launched into a nearby building. I hadn't even used my stockpiled power in the kick, so he wouldn't be very injured by this.

Spitting a bit of blood, the Hero Killer got back on his feet.

"So you're here to stop me, Knockout? I guess there are worse ways to end than this. At least I will have been stopped by a true hero, not one of those fakes…

"Fakes… You are the only fake here. If you really cared, you would've at least researched the heroes you hunted, instead of attacking them indistinctively. Many of the "fakes" you ended were great heroes, there's nothing wrong in being human sometimes. But I won't waste any more words on a pathetic hypocrite like you. I hope you'll have fun in Tartarus, cause that's where you'll be spending the rest of your life," I retorted coldly.

I always found the ideology of Stain flawed and pathetic, he would attack heroes he judged fake, without any proof, evidence, without anything really. There was nothing distinguishing him from another villain in my eyes.

"And you, Ingenium, I thought you were smarter than this, going after the Hero Killer alone, do you have a death wish? You know how many heroes he killed and crippled, right? Why did you think you wouldn't've been his next victim? What would've happened if I hadn't found you in time? You would've died, maybe crippled if you were lucky. Don't you have a family, people you care for?" I admonished the turbo hero.

It was a really, really dumb decision to go after the Hero Killer alone and I quite liked Ingenium as a hero, I wouldn't've wanted him to be forced to retire, as he was one of the only heroes who appreciated the Vigilante and worked with them on a regular basis.

.

After I had finished berating him, Ingenium looked down in shame, he had always known that it was not a good idea to go after Stain alone but he still did it, and nearly paid the price for it.

He had learnt his lesson, I was pretty sure, and it was now time to give Stain the Knockout treatment and a one-way ticket to Tartarus.

.

I turned back to Stain, who started to unleash his powerful bloodlust, hoping it would faze me or buy him time to escape, but it was pointless, I had seen worse.

I simply shrugged it and got in the offensive. A split second later, I was in front of him and kicked him in the solar plexus.

He dodged, thinking it would be enough, but who was he fighting? Knockout, the vigilante with a thousand and one warp gates.

So I did what I did best, and opened a warp gate where my kick would've landed that led to the fact of the Hero Killer.

As always, this trick proved that it was effective when I hard a crunching noise and saw my opponent stagger a bit, his face bloody.

He was surprisingly resilient, though, I was certain that he would be knocked out by this kick but it seems that he wasn't half bad.

Regaining his footing once again, Stain eyed me cautiously, but I decided I was done playing, so, I directly teleported behind him.

Before he even knew that I was behind him, I had knocked him out with an elbow strike to the back of his head.

As simple as that, it was disappointing really, but opponents at his level weren't even remotely a threat to me anymore, only heroes in the Top Ten and powerful villains would be only a bit interesting to fight.

.

Now that this was done, I did my post-fight ritual, taking a Sharpy from my belt and drawing recognizable mustache on the now defeated Hero Killer.

Bidding goodbye to the still paralyzed and slightly dazed Ingenium, I warped Stain in front of a police station and returned home.

The Hero Killer would soon rot away in prison, like most of his kind.