Salaam

Brown-skinned and rendered in two dimensions, Salaam looks like the human figures painted across ancient Egyptian art, always turned so the viewer sees him flat.

His costume borrows straight from pharaonic dress: a wraparound shendyt skirt, a top of finely pleated robes, and the striped nemes headcloth. Jewelry and a cape complete it.

The series has revealed little of what he is like privately. Egypt is fond of him, that much is established, and something about his presence in a fight puts the citizens watching at ease. One detail follows him everywhere: to this day nobody has ever seen his back.

His Quirk, Papyrus, thins his body to the width of a sheet of paper, letting him slip through tight gaps and ride the wind. Being Egypt's number one hero, he is combat-capable enough to stand against the Humarise terrorist organization.

That fight began when Humarise set off a Trigger Bomb inside a major city, leaving thousands dead and its infrastructure gone. The World Heroes Association answered by assembling its largest joint anti-terror task force ever mounted, and Salaam worked beside heroes drawn from around the world, among them The Lurkers with their trainees Hanta Sero, Denki Kaminari, Minoru Mineta, and Ibara Shiozaki. The task force raided a Humarise forward base in Cairo successfully but turned up neither the bombs nor any leadership, and the Egypt team was put on standby. Then Humarise broadcast worldwide that bombs sat in more than twenty-five cities, Cairo among them, with two hours before detonation would strip the population of their Quirks. Cairo dissolved into panic, and the Egypt team scrambled to contain it and find the device. While Yu Takeyama cleared jammed roads of trapped cars, Denki, Hanta, and Minoru searched the streets, and Minoru's doubts about covering so much ground brought Salaam to them, moving fast enough on Papyrus to impress all three as he led the way. They located the bomb and fought through the Humarise agents guarding it. The Lurkers reached it exactly as the countdown expired, and nothing happened, proof that Izuku Midoriya's group had disarmed the network in time. The heroes finished off the remaining agents and seized the device. Salaam stayed in Egypt as the team departed.

Japan's collapse pulled at him next. With All For One free of Tartarus and emptying the maximum security prisons, Gigantomachia's destruction unanswered, and heroes resigning under public criticism, Toshinori Yagi appealed abroad for help. Salaam agreed, irritated that his own government had not accepted sooner. The chaos was spreading through Egypt too. Then Cathleen Bate, America's number one, fell to Tomura Shigaraki, and the shock of the world's strongest hero dying made the other nations withdraw their support from Japan, to Salaam's dismay along with many other Pro Heroes. He remained in Cairo holding his country together, watching the Final War broadcasts, including Tomura's defeat at Izuku's hands. A week after it ended, with restoration finally moving at speed again, Salaam and heroes from Egypt and around the world arrived to help rebuild.