History#
Most of Kuin's past is unknown, except that she worked for All For One's Villain Factory and used her Queen Bee Quirk to take possession of a host, changing to another when the former ceased to be useful to her. At one point, she met a troubled Tamao Oguro, the daughter of Iwao Oguro, formerly a Pro Hero known as O'Clock until Kuin's master stole his Quirk and left him scarred.
Tamao got into fights with her retired father often due to the latter disagreeing with her desire to become a musician and frequently shouting at her. In her current host, Kuin approached Tamao over her ordeal with her father. Sometime later, Tamao left home and soon fell victim to Kuin, who possessed her body, leading to Tamao becoming her new host.[1]
The first thing she did afterwards was go to Tamao's house and attacked her mother when her father was out. As soon as Iwao returned, he was horrified to find his wife collapsed on the floor, covered in a swarm of bees, and the person responsible was his daughter, who looked at him with a smile of condescension. It's unclear what happened next, but Kuin left, and Iwao, after admitting his wife to a hospital, became the vigilante Knuckleduster to search for and recover his daughter.[2]
Since then, Kuin lived as a simple high school student, while doing assignments and jobs for All For One under the guise of having a part-time job. In general, her job was to distribute Trigger throughout the streets, collect data from those that had been transformed into Instant Villains after using the drug, and look for suitable candidates among these consumers to kidnap them and transform into Next-Level Villains.[3]
To survive, Kuin looked for a house and murdered the owners inside, using their corpses as food and hives for her bees. She also stole their credit cards, living off their money until it ran out, at which point she left the place and searched for a new house.[4]
Synopsis#
Vigilantes Beginnings Arc#
Kuin meets the Naruhata Vigilantes for the first time while walking with her classmates. She notices Pop☆Step and asks Koichi Haimawari to take a photo of the two of them. After thanking them, she runs back to her friends who were waiting for her. While she is admiring the photo, a bee suddenly appears and disappears behind Kuin's eye patch. She then runs away after claiming that she has to go to work.
Kuin takes her eye patch off and releases a plethora of bees with strings containing Trigger. They proceed to sting random citizens, turning them into monsters wreaking havoc in the city. Fortunately, the Instant Villains are quickly subdued by the Heroes. Meanwhile, Kuin meets up with Teruo Unagisawa and suddenly starts bleeding out of her eye after Knuckleduster squashes one of her bees. Teruo and Kuin then continue to walk into an alley.[3]
Later as Kuin is shopping, All For One calls her and tells her to pick her targets more carefully, focusing on those with strong wills and potential. That night, she offers Trigger to a drug addict and encourages him to use his enhanced power, which he does by trying to smash her, but she dodges the strike and continues encouraging him before leaping away.
The next day, Kuin is sitting in a cafe and on the phone with her supplier. She questions if they should take care of the three vigilantes that keep interfering, but the supplier points out that they receive real battle data without involving heroes or the Police Force. After the call, Kuin is approached by a man, who asks if she is "Honey." Complimenting his appearance, she takes him by the hand and leads him outside.[5]
Stendhal Arc#
At some point, Kuin met the murderous vigilante Stendhal and formed an alliance with him. Kuin helps him kill the members of the Abegawa Tenchu Kai by giving him blood samples from the yakuza organization's executives. Once Stendhal achieves his goal, she tasks him with targeting former Instant Villains. However, Stendhal warns her that once he's no longer benefitting from their arrangement, she will become his next target, but until then, her helps suits him.[6]
Days later, Kuin meets up with Akira Iwako after he was released by the police, and gives him a sample of a new variant of Trigger, which empowers him even more than before, causing him to go on rampage through the streets, encountering The Crawler again, whom he immediately attacks in revenge.
As The Crawler engages the Trigger-enhanced Akira, Kuin covertly observes the fight through a bee perched on a car mirror, taking detailed notes on the drug's effects. When two classmates question her, she casually claims to be writing a report for her part-time job. During the clash, Stendhal intervenes to save The Crawler, which amuses Kuin. Later, she gleefully watches as Stendhal brutally murders Akira.[7]
With Akira dead, the next to go are Soga Kugisaki, Moyuru Tochi, and Rapt Tokage. In an alley, she meets up with Soga and tries to convince him and his friends to take Trigger to face Stendhal just as the latter arrives. When he refuses, she forcibly injects him with Trigger using her bees before leaving.[8] Stendhal is about to kill Soga, but fortunately, Koichi intervenes and saves his life. Knuckleduster later appears and manages to defeat Stendhal, who flees to his hideout.
Despite his loss, Stendhal feels enlightened by Knuckleduster's words, realizing that what he lacked was resolve. After Kuin makes fun of him for his need for resolve, he angrily throws a knife at her face and walks away. Unbeknownst to him, the knife simply struck Kuin's empty eye socket without hurting her. She is annoyed at the vigilante's betrayal and pseudo-intellectual ranting, calling him a narcissist. However, she decides not to retaliate, believing that he will makes things all the more interesting.[9]
Senpai Arc#
During a brief interview about Knuckleduster from Makoto Tsukauchi, Kuin gives her opinion on the vigilante, describing him as a scary old man wandering the streets like a slasher.[10] Afterwards, Kuin continues with her job of distributing Trigger and searching for candidates, leading her to initiate Ryuichi Gojiyama's Kaiju attack, which is halted by Captain Celebrity.[11] After seeing the Naruhata Vigilantes deal with Fumiko Noborizaka, she wonders if obsession strengthens Quirks, meaning that the more annoying one is, the stronger they are.[12] Later, she injects Trigger into the Monster Cat, which goes on a rampage that nearly costs Koichi and Makoto's lives. When Team Idaten arrives to deal with the cat, she uses her bees to inject an extra dose of Trigger, causing even more chaos.[13] After the situation is resolved, Kuin takes the Monster Cat with her.[14]
On another occasion, Kuin uses one of her classmates as a trap to kill Soga as he was looking for her per Knuckleduster's request, although he manages to escape. She arrives back at what she calls "home", inhabited by the lifeless bodies of a couple whose house she has taken over. She informs her "mother" about a stalker who visited, then notices her "father's" empty credit card and slips it back into his pocket before settling in front of the television. As she eats dinner, she contemplates the dullness of her current existence there and considers the necessity of finding a new place to live soon.[4]
Vs. Queen Bee Arc#
Kuin learns about the Naruhata Festival, which is taking place at the roof of the Marukane Department Store with local artists and some guest heroes. Finding herself annoyed by the festival's announcement, she decides that she's going to make it "really fun". Just then, her classmate asks her about the girl she had previously used to attack Soga, since she hasn't been to school in a while, though Kuin has no clue about her whereabouts. She is unaware that she is being observed by Knuckledutser, who's glad to see her in high spirits.[15] The night of the show, she unleashes Teruo, now transformed into a Next-Level Villain, as a surprise villain to ruin the show.[16]
Kuin releases Teruo in the streets, causing panic among the passers-by, until Eraser Head appears and tries to stop Teruo. During the confrontation, Teruo unleash a large blast of electricity with his Electric Eel Quirk that causes a blackout in the show on top of the department store.
Kuin sits atop a nearby roof, watching the chaos unfold. She plans to take advantage of the situation and pump Trigger into the panicking audience at the show. All For One calls her through her earpiece and advises against the idea because it might harm their research, but Kuin dismisses his concerns.
Suddenly, Knuckleduster appears behind her, calling her Tamao, and tells her to come home to her mother.[17] Confused, Kuin tells her that he's got the wrong girl, until Knuckleduster clarifies that he doesn't want to talk to the "bee user", but his daughter, who's body Kuin is parasitizing. As Kuin laughs out loud as she realizes what is happening, Knuckleduster rushes towards her, initiating a fight between them.
Kuin easily dodges Knuckleduster's attacks, who is armed with a Taser Knuckle. Assuming that he brought it to defeat her without having to beat his daughter's body with his own fists, she is quickly proven wrong when he throws a punch straight to her face that she only narrowly dodges. He reveals that he hopes not to strike her with the Taser Knuckle, since one hit to a limb would knock her unconscious, and another to the chest would kill her.
Realizing that he is not holding back, Kuin counterattacks with a swarm of Bomb Bees. The first bee creates a real explosion, but since this type of attack causes severe damage to Tamao's body, the subsequent Bomb Bees are little more than firecrackers meant to scare the opponent, though Knuckleduster is able to see through her bluff. Backed into a corner, Kuin decides to jump off the roof and flees into the streets, with Knuckleduster chasing after her.[18]
Knuckleduster leads her to a dead end where he corners her. To get the upper hand, Kuin has her bees inject Tamao's body with Trigger. This enhances her physique, and her nails grow into claws. The downside is that it also causes her to lose some control over Tamao's mind, making the bees' mission less of a priority and allowing Tamao to briefly regain control. Once the process is complete, Kuin charges at Knuckleduster.
Having sent one of her bees to extract a sample from the defeated Teruo's body, she runs toward the vigilante as the bee injects her with the fluid, giving her the ability to use Electric Eel. Catching him off guard, she plunges the claws of her right hand into the man's chest, and gives him a strong electric shock that stop his heart.[1]
Kuin rubs her damaged arm and tells Knuckleduster that she'll see him in hell. Leaving him for dead, she walks away, returning to Marukane to see that they have managed to restore power and continue with the festival. Despite her condition, she still wants to crash the event, but to her surprise, Knuckleduster emerges from the shadows, having survived her attack by using his Taser Knuckle to self-defibrillate.
Tired of his insistence, Kuin proclaims she will sacrifice the body she is currently using in order to kill him once and for all, and then move on to the next one. Kuin uses different stratagems to defeat him, but all fail, and ends up being defeated when Knuckleduster ends the fight by hitting her in the chest with his Taser Knuckle, stopping Tamao's heart.[19]
Kuin tries to use her electrical abilities to shock her heart and make it work again, but Knuckleduster stomps on her arm to stop her. With the blood flow to her brain ceasing, Tamao's body begins to die. Thanks to this, he manages to get Kuin's swarm to leave his daughter's body.
Using a small device, he extracts the real Kuin from Tamao's hollow eye socket and calls back the swarm with a pheromone and bomb combination device that explodes, killing the Queen Bee and the swarm. Knuckleduster manages to resuscitate his daughter and save her.
However, a single bee secretly survived and escapes. Shortly after, Number 6, another agent of the Villain Factory, notices the last of Kuin's bees shakily flying through the air past him. In a flash, he catches the bee in a plastic capsule, commenting to himself about how "the many are reduced to one" before leaving.[20]
Number 6 hides the surviving bee in an abandoned building for years, luring victims to feed it until the bee regains enough strength to become a new Queen Bee and form a new swarm.[21]