Fumikage Tokoyami

From the neck down Fumikage looks like an ordinary young man with fairly pale skin. Above it sits a black bird's head, crow or raven in shape, its yellowish beak hooking slightly at the tip. A thin red eye with a small dark pupil sits on either side of that skull, and a red choker circles his neck. He is short, though the work-study under Hawks left him noticeably more muscular, and he gains height in the years that follow the Final War. In childhood his features ran softer and rounder than the sharp edges he grew into. For class he wears U.A.'s regulation uniform for boys, trimmed in dark turquoise over a light gray blazer.

His hero costume centres on a full-length black robe that reads dark purple where light strikes it, ending partway down his shins above knee-high boots. Beneath it, as the Joint Training Arc revealed, are a dark shirt, loose pants, wristbands and a double-pin utility belt. Dabi's flames scarred his left foot during the Paranormal Liberation War, and afterwards his feathers turned ruffled and windswept in a way that echoes Hawks.

Reserved, serious and focused, Fumikage carries a certain nobility and says little. Requests he judges pointless go ignored, as Tenya Ida discovered while telling him to get off a desk, yet on a team he turns sociable, covering his partners and thanking them for the effort. At heart he is a textbook chunibyo, in love with darkness as a theme, calling himself a thing of the dark and speaking in archaic flourishes that land as dramatic or faintly creepy. He also knows the taste is hard for others to share and is quietly self-conscious about it, having refused to show his classmates his dorm room and then gone red with anger once they barged in and saw the decor.

None of the gloom makes him villainous. He is protective of friends and mentors to the point that harm done to them tips him into rage, which is dangerous because Dark Shadow answers to his emotions, and his fear of losing himself to it drove much of his training. Early timidity, such as his argument that the captured Katsuki was a job for the Pros, gave way to real courage: he risked himself to pull Hawks away from Dabi, and even after learning what his mentor had done to Twice, a villain who had put his faith in Hawks, he refused to turn on the man and begged him not to die. In the Final War he gathered the surrounding darkness against All For One, arguing that darkness comes in many shades and that the villain's own had already been devoured. The stand forced All For One onto the defensive and bought the time All Might needed to arrive.

Dark Shadow lets Fumikage manifest a sentient shadow beast out of his body and extend or recall it at will. Its energy is finite and bright light drains it, sending it back inside him when empty. Light governs the rest too: under it the creature shrinks, weakens and obeys; in total darkness it balloons in size and strength, able to tear down mature trees, and it rampages on its own will, though training in a dark cave taught him to hold it at daytime size even in pitch black. Mezo Shoji noticed that negative feelings such as regret and indignation feed it too, trading control for power, and Fumikage admits his anger costs him the reins.

The Quirk makes him one of Class 1-A's heaviest hitters, matching and sometimes surpassing Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo and Shoto Todoroki. He placed ninth at the U.A. Entrance Exam, fifth on the Quirk Apprehension Test and third at the Sports Festival, where he overwhelmed the recommended student Momo Yaoyorozu before she could answer and then stalled Katsuki despite a bad matchup. His demolition of Moonfish drew both Mr. Compress, who tried to abduct him, and Hawks, who took him on as an intern.

All Might's advice and the Final Exams produced Black Abyss, an ultimate move worn like armour to cancel his close-range weakness and built inside five days, with Covert Black-Ops Arms, Piercing Twilight Claws, Sabbath and Light of Baldur branching off it. The work-study under Hawks added Black Fallen Angel, in which the shadow levitates and carries him. Ragnarok names the uncontrolled, instantly overwhelming state that darkness unlocks, and Total Release charges the shadow from several sources at once. He is tactical rather than academic, trapping Shihai Kuroiro by baiting the Black Quirk into his own cape.