Enji Todoroki

The beard and moustache framing Enji's jaw are made of live flame, and shutting them off leaves only faint stubble underneath. Crimson hair stands spiked around his head, his eyes are a sharp turquoise, and the frame beneath is tall and heavily muscled. His costume, The Gates of Hell, wraps him in a close-fitting navy turquoise suit with fire pouring across chest, arms, and shoulders, a burning band serving as his mask, and boots visible only at sole and lace beneath the blaze. Reaching the top ranking earned him a rebuild: armored bracers that swallow his arms while leaving the fingers bare, vents on the backs of his hands, shoulder plating, and a belt bearing a stylized kanji for flame.

The damage accumulated in layers. A surprise blow from Hood wrecked his face down the left side; surgery and Recovery Girl's Heal saved the eye but left a jagged line running hairline to chin. All For One later tore off his right arm with a Rivet Stab, and Dabi's fire scorched the rest of him. He came out of the Final War swathed in bandages and confined to a wheelchair, and eight years on he manages a cane, facial hair gone, scar tissue wrinkling most of his face. As a boy he already stood level with the adults around him and looked strikingly like Natsuo would, only red-haired.

Shoto sums his father up as proud and driven, a man aimed at one target. That target was All Might, and Enji spent decades failing to reach him, until the futility hollowed him into someone cold enough that a young Inasa Yoarashi could read it in his eyes. He knew his ceiling and refused to accept it, so he arranged a Quirk Marriage with Rei to breed an heir carrying his will along with a power free of his own limitations.

What he built was a household he wrecked. Shoto, the child who came out right, was treated as an instrument and drilled brutally from infancy while his siblings were written off as failures. Rei was beaten down whenever she intervened, until a breakdown in which she hurt Shoto gave him grounds to commit her to a psychiatric ward. He was not empty of feeling: he pulled back from Toya out of genuine fear once he saw the boy's body could not survive his own stronger flames, and he remembered Rei's favorite flower from a single mention. He simply hid inside the job rather than learn to be anything else at home, and Toya unravelled chasing an acknowledgment that had moved on to Shoto.

Inheriting the No. 1 spot by technicality after Kamino enraged him, because the rank meant nothing without the climb. Hearing All Might lay out what the title actually owes the world cracked something open, and he began trying to father sons who wanted nothing from him before deciding they were better off without him. He stayed publicly rude and short-tempered, allergic to being measured against All Might, yet ruthlessly effective. He froze outright when Ending took Natsuo, terrified less of losing him than of never being spoken to again, and Dabi's broadcast broke him completely. His origin turns out to be his own father dying beside the girl he tried to save, a death Enji blamed on weakness and answered by naming himself for effort itself. By the war's end he stops pretending redemption is available, accepts Dabi's victims as his own, and settles into apology as a life sentence.

Endeavor sat at No. 2 from the age of twenty until All Might's exit handed him the top, his case record unmatched by any crime fighter before him. Hellflame lets him produce and steer enormous volumes of intensely hot fire, shaping it and dialing its temperature at will, riding it upward on foot-mounted jets, forming spears out of it, even firing it from his eyes, which is what scorched the hand All For One reached out to steal his Quirk with. Overuse cooks him from the inside.

He has put down Nomu of multiple grades without a scratch, held off All For One alongside Edgeshot at Kamino, and traded with High-Ends like Hood and Woman. Against the body-augmented Tomura Shigaraki he dealt more damage than anyone but Izuku, and later, with Hawks, Tsukuyomi, and Earphone Jack supporting him, he beat All For One badly enough that the Demon Lord took a reverse-engineered Quirk-Destroying Drug to survive. His mind is the underrated half: he pegged Izuku's power as All Might's from one brief use, and he read Hood's regeneration and its head as the weak point while being thrown through skyscrapers.

Flashfire Fist maxes his temperature for devastating output or sharp acceleration, branching into Jet Burn, the thin cutting beams of Hell Spider, and the smothering wall of Hell's Curtain. Prominence Burn, his strongest, is a full-body beam that vaporizes what it hits, and its PLUS ULTRA version, thrown while grappling the target, is what finally ended Hood.