Katsuki Bakugo

Bright red eyes, narrowed by default into a glare, sit beneath choppy bangs of spiky sandy blond hair. Katsuki runs a little above average height, lean and muscled. At U.A. he binned the red tie, left his collar open and let his trousers sag despite a belt, tidying up only once the Paranormal Liberation War was behind him.

The hero costume builds around a tight black sleeveless tank slashed by an orange X, marked at the collar with two dots identifying designer Sasori Nimaru's work. Add a rectangular neck brace, sleeves climbing to the biceps out of his Grenadier Bracers, green gloves with orange palms, plated forearms, grenades on the belt, bolted knee guards, tall black boots, and a jagged mask flared orange around the eyes. Winter swaps the tank for a high-collared jacket carrying the same X, since sweat matters to him more than comfort. Best Jeanist once combed the spikes into a side part and stripped away mask and bracers in favor of denim, hoping to soften how the boy read to the public.

War left marks. In the Final War, Tomura Shigaraki crushed his right arm, tore up half his face, and burst his heart, which Edgeshot sewed shut; All Might donated the wreck of the Armored All Might suit as a splint. Rehabilitation eventually gave the arm back. Eight years on he is taller and heavier with muscle, the X sweeping over his shoulders into a Y down his back, and two red braids hanging behind his head to mimic lit fuses.

Loud, arrogant, foul-mouthed and forever a syllable from an outburst, Katsuki grew up hearing that his Explosion Quirk made him exceptional and never doubted a word of it. The certainty curdled into cruelty aimed at Izuku Midoriya, who had no Quirk at all, and produced the nickname Deku, coined to say the boy would amount to nothing. He warned Izuku away from U.A. and raged when they both got in, wanting to be the only one out of that middle school to manage it.

U.A. and a run of defeats, one handed to him by Izuku, sanded him down without making him pleasant. He is a prodigy by any measure: near the top of the class, reading fluently at four, quietly good at cooking and drums, sharp enough to find a weakness mid-exchange. Insulting nicknames are his greeting of choice, Four Eyes for Tenya Ida and Half and Half for Shoto Todoroki, and anyone he has yet to fight is an extra. Winning is the whole creed: he needs first place, cannot stomach losing, rejects any victory he does not believe he earned, and rages at pity. He works alone unless unmistakably in charge, broods rather than admit error, and his pride has cost him real matches, worst of all whenever Izuku is nearby.

Something softer sits underneath. He carried guilt over believing his own weakness ended All Might's career, and refused Tomura Shigaraki's recruitment pitch on the grounds that villains are people who lose. Once he understood the bullying had been an outlet for his own insecurity, he tried to make it right by training Izuku in One For All, and after Class A fought him back to his senses he apologized aloud and used Izuku's given name. Hearing Izuku had been left Quirkless again broke him, since he had assumed they would spend their lives competing. Eight years later he is a top-five Pro Hero whose temper still drives off applicants, yet he led the funding for the suit that put Izuku back in the field.

Explosion secretes nitroglycerin-like sweat from Katsuki's palms, which he ignites at will. More sweat means bigger blasts; overuse leaves his forearms aching. He attacks with it, blinds with it, shoots it at range, hides behind its shockwave, and above all rides the recoil into a rough kind of flight. He widened his sweat glands by soaking his hands in scalding water, then chained blasts skyward to scale them up.

He took first place at the U.A. Entrance Exam and again at the Sports Festival, beating Fumikage Tokoyami and Shoto Todoroki en route, and pinned Kurogiri alone at the Unforeseen Simulation Joint after spotting the neck armor as a weakness. His reflexes may be his finest physical trait, and his stamina keeps him standing past when wounds should drop him. Tomura's Rivet Stabs nearly killed him and triggered the first Awakening in his class, condensing his blasts into the faster, denser Cluster. By the Final War he traded blows with a complete Tomura, died briefly, came back through Edgeshot, and held off a rejuvenated All For One using timing and cunning.

His techniques run from Explosive Speed, the propulsion move behind his pseudo-flight, through the blinding Stun Grenade, the focused AP Shot, the throw called Explode-A-Pult, and Howitzer Impact, where he spins into a tornado feeding oxygen to one enormous detonation. Cluster upgrades several of these, and Howitzer Impact: Cluster, driven by the Strafe Panzer cannons, is the strongest thing he has. On Nabu Island, Izuku briefly transferred him One For All, supercharging everything he had, until the Quirk settled back where it came from.