Blackbelt

Long hair worn messily tops a young man of moderate muscle.

His costume sells an idea, that of the archetypal martial artist: a metal headband, robes cut loose, an oversized belt. Light makeup completes the presentation.

Recognition is what Blackbelt chases. He has built a persona around it, playing at being a medieval martial arts master, reaching for an antiquated near-Shakespearean register he keeps sliding out of before catching himself. He also invents elaborate techniques he never actually uses in a fight.

None of it dilutes the work. Whatever his appetite for applause, he prioritizes rescuing people over raising his own profile, and the reward was ridicule that nearly drained the will to continue out of him. Before Mei Hatsume built a camera fast enough to catch him at full speed, skeptics who assumed he was lying called him Hundo-Hit-Man, meaning Mr. 100 Consecutive Attacks.

Blackbelt took up hero work roughly a decade ago. Fast Fist, his Quirk, drives his fist at extraordinary speed, letting him land a hundred blows in under a second, which the naked eye reads as one strike.

The Team-Up Missions program assigned him three students to build support gear: Mei Hatsume, Denki Kaminari, and Momo Yaoyorozu. They learned what he was really after, studied the Quirk, and tried to design equipment that would draw eyes to him. Nothing worked, and he concluded fame was beyond him and announced his retirement.

Then Mei heard the nickname. Her answer was a camera drone fast enough to resolve his movements, finished just as a robbery gave him somewhere to be. The students streamed the fight through its lens, and the civilians watching the hundred hits land apologized for mocking him and started cheering instead. The acknowledgment was enough: he dropped the retirement and stayed a Pro Hero.