Shinji Nishiya

Nobody has seen his face. The helmet stays on, and what little shows underneath is a puff of red hair shaped like foliage. He is built solidly but stands short beside the rest of the top-ranked heroes.

His first costume was a dark blue bodysuit trimmed in wood at the belt, knees and shoes, with a small bunch of roses hanging at his left hip. Reaching No. 7 came with a modest upgrade, a pair of wooden rings at the shoulders sprouting stumps and branches. The version he wears eight years on from the Final War changes only the helmet, which now grows a crown of small branches and spills a mass of bright leaves down the back onto his shoulders. Even his civilian clothes are made of organic material, worn under a wide brim that hides his face completely.

On the job he is serious to the point of severity and strictly by the book, an approach that has earned him respect from heroes as senior as All Might. He is also thin-skinned about credit and visibly deflates when someone else takes the spotlight off a save he made. The emotion runs the other way too: an invitation from Edgeshot to join The Lurkers reduced him to two hours of happy crying.

Fame has not gone to his head, he defers to his elders, and the public likes him for the modesty. Profile material describes him as tight-lipped and straitlaced, records a bleak childhood that later became a popular documentary, and notes a fondness for nature therapy. Recovery Girl owns a Pez dispenser shaped like his head, a fact he was thrilled to learn about.

Arbor grows and steers the wooden parts of his body into heavy branches, ideal for wrapping a target up and holding it in place. Wood being wood, fire is the obvious counter. Lacquered Chain Prison is the signature application, a burst of timber fired from one arm that closes around an enemy and pins them where they stand.

The career speaks for itself. He climbed to No. 7 on the national charts, became genuinely popular with the public, and built a reputation among observers as one of the heroes the next era will be built around; he later occupied the No. 4 slot. He also holds a distinction none of his peers at that height can claim, coming through the war with the League of Villains and then the Paranormal Liberation Front without a single life-changing injury, while Endeavor lost an arm and the use of his legs, Mirko lost a leg and both forearms, Best Jeanist lost a lung, Hawks had his wings and back burned before losing his Quirk entirely, Edgeshot spent much of his life force restarting Katsuki Bakugo's heart, and Crust was killed outright.