Izuku Midoriya

Strangers keep calling him plain, and the reading is not unfair. He is on the short side, round-faced, topped with a mop of dark green hair that curls at stubborn angles and casts heavy shadows over itself. Four freckles sit in a diamond on each cheek. His eyes are wide, round, frequently wet, and the same green as the hair above them.

Ten months of brutal conditioning under All Might replaced a scrawny frame with real muscle, and the years keep adding to it. Injury has left its own record. The bout with Shoto Todoroki warped the fingers of his right hand, Muscular scarred that arm badly enough to require a compression sleeve, and the Final War added a mark above his right eye running down to his chin, along with a shaved undercut while he healed.

His costumes run the Greek alphabet. Alpha, sewn by his mother, was a green jumpsuit under a cowl shaped like All Might's hair and a respirator painted into a grin. Later versions went darker and sturdier, gained iron soles for his kicking style, support gloves from Mei Hatsume, and Gran Torino's cape. By the Final War the whole thing read as feral: filthy, torn, trailing Blackwhip tendrils. Eight years on he teaches in a black suit and green tie, and carries a nanomachine costume that folds into an armored briefcase marked 18, his old seat number.

Timid, formal, and quick to overreact, Izuku spent childhood shrinking from Katsuki Bakugo, who never let him forget he had no Quirk. U.A. corrected that slowly. Friends, and a first honest fight with Katsuki, drew out a leader whose passion and planning made him a fixture of Class 1-A.

His obsession is documentary. He fills notebooks titled Hero Analysis for the Future, mutters observations aloud until classmates find it unsettling, and assembles battle plans in seconds out of what he has recorded about everyone's powers, allies and enemies alike. All Might is the axis of all of it. Izuku collects the merchandise, knows the smallest rescues, and carries the weight of following the Symbol of Peace.

He runs toward danger on reflex, often with no regard for surviving it, and Katsuki suspects the bullying taught him his own life was worth less. He also meddles, lecturing people through private troubles on the theory that a hero should. The habit won over Shoto, Tenya Ida, Kota Izumi, Hitoshi Shinso and Sir Nighteye, and eventually even Stain and Lady Nagant. After the Paranormal Liberation War he turned cold and solitary, skipping food and sleep to keep everyone at arm's length, until his classmates dragged him back. Underneath is a stubborn wish to understand villains rather than bury them, Tomura Shigaraki most of all.

Before any Quirk, his edge was research: years of studying professionals, applied under pressure. That is what drove him at the Sludge Villain to save Katsuki, and what convinced All Might to choose him.

One For All handed him a stockpile of force he could not survive using. Early on, a full punch shattered whichever limb threw it. Gran Torino's training produced Full Cowl, spreading the power thinly through his body for speed and strength without the wreckage, and from there he built Shoot Style to spare his ruined arms. Muscular and Overhaul still forced him to trade his body for output. Six inherited Quirks surfaced as the power matured: Blackwhip, Danger Sense, Float, Smokescreen, Fa Jin, and Gearshift.

By the Paranormal Liberation War he fought beside Endeavor and Eraser Head and held the line against Tomura. In the Final War he matched Tomura for speed and strength, then, paralyzed by Gearshift's recoil, used Blackwhip to puppet his own body and force every Quirk, One For All included, into his enemy, aiming at the hatred rather than the man. His final smash destroyed the body All For One had claimed and cleared the storm over Japan and North America for a week. It also cost him the Quirk. He taught history at U.A. until technology let him return to the field, ranked the No. 4 Hero.