Chizome Akaguro

Stain moved with a pronounced stoop, and up close the face under his mask was the worst of him: flat, faintly triangular, missing the nose he had cut away himself, with a tongue far too long for it and studded with small papillae. His eyes were red in the anime and white on the page, small, the irises smaller still. Black hair hung long and unkempt, held off his features only by the headband and the cloth across his mouth.

He fought in dark armored gear, metal plating bolted over it as weapon mounts, the torso cut sleeveless so he could wrap his arms in yellow bandage from shoulder to wrist. Black wristbands, a watch on the left, steel knee guards, and spiked plated boots completed it. The blood-red scarf and matching headband were his signature.

The man who walked out of Tartarus dressed differently: a loose white jacket with overlong sleeves, bandaged forearms, red gloves, navy trousers, red kneepads, and boots trimmed in white. A katana rode on a belt across his chest and a short machete on another at his hip, and his hair was gathered into a tail behind the mask.

Years earlier, as Stendhal, that hair was longer and neatly bound, and he wore black and red gear resembling body armor with six folding knives split evenly across his sides above two pairs of pockets. A mask covered his face completely. Out of costume he was ordinary to the point of invisibility: collared shirt, beige trousers, a cap, and a bag holding his weapons alongside a sheathed katana with a carrying handle.

What drove him was a conviction he never doubted: that the title of hero belongs only to people who act without thought of money or applause, and that everyone else wearing it is rot to be cut out. All Might alone escaped his contempt. He knew perfectly well that murder was wrong and did it anyway, casting himself as the man who has to be stained so the rest of society can be clean, a martyr in his own accounting. He offered his life to the retired All Might and said plainly that no other hand would be permitted to take it.

The vigilante Stendhal came first, working from the rule that power without conviction makes a sinner, and calling the executions that followed heroism rather than hypocrisy. He would work beside criminals like Kuin Hachisuka when it served the purge, and he felt something like kinship with other vigilantes, pulling Koichi Haimawari away from Akira Iwako and recognizing his own road in Knuckleduster, though none of that would have stopped him from killing either man. Under the mask he considered himself a separate being, judgment given a body, while the man beneath it was a common civilian who merely believed in what heroes were supposed to mean. Knuckleduster broke that arrangement by telling him that anyone hiding behind a false face is a phony on a power trip. He took it to heart, cut away his broken nose, let the two selves collapse into one, and became Stain.

He was not indiscriminate. Killing without cause disgusted him, which is what put him at odds with Tomura Shigaraki, and he had no interest in Tenya Ida until the boy provoked him. He lectured Tenya about hunting revenge for his brother Tensei rather than saving Native, spared Izuku Midoriya for showing the strength, honor, and instinct he thought a hero required, and let Tomura live after sensing a genuine, if warped, conviction in him. Creeds were everything to him; without one, he held, a person is weak and will simply be weeded out. His sheer force of will radiated as bloodlust strong enough to freeze veteran heroes in place, and even from a cell his recorded speech pulled criminals and vigilantes toward the League of Villains in numbers.

He would also stand with heroes when something worse was loose. During the Tartarus break he refused All For One's side, gathered intelligence on the escapees, and promised a dying guard the data would reach the right hands. His admiration had never been about power, he said, but about the smile and the effort All Might put into helping people. At the end he threw himself into All Might's last fight against All For One, and, broken and dying, called the man his everything before holding out his arms and telling him to live and win.

Overall Abilities: Nobody had killed more heroes since All Might arrived. Seventeen Pro Heroes died by his hand and twenty-four more never fully recovered, among them Tensei Ida, whose defeat left him paraplegic and closed the Hero Killer's tally. Stain fought with misdirection, relentless pressure, and a read on what his opponent would do next, using terrain and surprise to make up for a Quirk that demanded he draw blood first. When Tomura Shigaraki tried to recruit him and got a refusal, Stain put both him and Kurogiri down without much trouble.

In Hosu City he had Native cornered when Tenya Ida arrived seeking revenge and was swiftly beaten for it. Izuku Midoriya's timing saved the boy's life; Stain blindsided the newcomer anyway and paralyzed him, then chose not to finish him. Shoto Todoroki proved the harder problem, alternating fire and ice, and the delay let Bloodcurdle lapse on Izuku. With Tenya free of both the paralysis and his own thirst for vengeance, three of U.A.'s best fought the Hero Killer at once, and it took all three to bring him down. Beaten, ribs through his lungs, he still tore loose in time to kill the Winged Nomu that had snatched Izuku out of the air.

Speed, Strength, and Endurance: His speed was what his enemies remembered. He slipped Tenya's opening kick and partly blocked a Recipro Burst from the fastest student at U.A., and Shoto could not land a single hit or even entertain retreat. Only Recipro Extend paired with a five-percent Detroit Smash caught him, and Shoto suspected desperation played a part. He sheared cleanly through Shoto's ice, shrugged off that same Detroit Smash to the head, stayed upright after losing consciousness, and swam the whole distance from Tartarus to dry land. After All For One hurled him through several city blocks he held on long enough to say one last thing to All Might. Despite the ruin of his nose his sense of smell was extraordinary, sharp enough to memorize All Might's scent in Kamino and, much later, to identify stray blood on a battlefield as All For One's rather than All Might's.

Bloodcurdle: Tasting a target's blood locked their body in place. Duration depended on blood type, shortest for O, then A, then AB, with B lasting longest, and eight minutes was the ceiling for anyone. He read the chaos in Hosu correctly as Tomura's work, noted that Shoto leaned so hard on Half-Cold Half-Hot's destructive force that he became easy to predict, and carried a hidden blade for the moment an opponent stripped him of his weapons. In the Final War the Quirk froze a rewound All For One long enough for Stain to go for his head, until the Symbol of Evil swapped his own blood type to break the paralysis, overpowered him, and took Bloodcurdle along with his life.

Equipment: Before his arrest he carried a worn katana, five daggers, throwing knives, folding knives, and boots spiked at the toe. Afterward he traveled lighter, with the katana, a small machete, and throwing knives. He also flew a Detnerat glider stolen off some hooligans while wandering Japan, riding it above the battlefields of the Final War to reach All Might.