Shota Aizawa

Exhaustion defines the impression. Black hair falls to his shoulders unbrushed, part of it across his face, and his eyes sit half-closed, flat and bloodshot outside of combat. Stubble is permanent unless the press is involved. He is tall and lean, and the whole picture reads as a man who has not slept properly in years.

Black covers his hero gear: a loose long-sleeved top, matching trousers tucked into boots, a utility belt, and the wrap scarf he never removes. Bright yellow goggles hide underneath it until a fight needs them. As a student he wore a cut-down version with fingerless gloves, adding silver-lensed goggles in his second year. For press conferences he produces a black suit and a low bun.

Injury has rewritten him twice. The U.S.J. Nomu left his face and arms bandaged and a small scar under his right eye. At Jaku he severed his own right leg to stop a Quirk-Destroying Bullet, and Tomura Shigaraki took the right eye entirely, leaving a second scar behind a black patch and a prosthetic below. Afterward he tied part of his hair back with one strand over the missing eye, mainly because students kept staring; eight years on it is cropped short.

Logic runs him. He says what he thinks, sees no value in a tidy appearance, and spends as little energy as a situation allows, usually by climbing into a sleeping bag. He told All Might outright that Izuku Midoriya had no future, and he has said just as bluntly that U.A.'s examination systems are too soft to mean anything.

He was a withdrawn student who doubted Erasure was worth much alone, and Oboro Shirakumo and Hizashi Yamada pulled him out of it, Oboro to the point of planning an agency for the three of them. Then the villain Garvey killed Oboro. Grief locked him onto the work and pushed him into a solitude he never left, and he chose underground heroics on graduating. Before U.A. hired him he ran looser, overlooking the Naruhata Vigilantes and dealing with the Hotta brothers to get at the Villain Factory.

His notorious expulsion rate exists on paper only, since he re-enrolls the students he cuts, having decided that experiencing death once drives people further than encouragement does. He lies to his classes on the same principle and calls it rational deception. Class 1-A has never actually lost anyone.

Underneath he is fiercely protective. Barely conscious, he kept Tomura Shigaraki from decaying Tsuyu Asui; Recovery Girl suspected he let Momo Yaoyorozu capture him to build her confidence; he took on Eri's guardianship without complaint. Learning that Oboro's corpse had been rebuilt into Kurogiri broke him open, and he throttled Kyudai Garaki over it. The strictness, he admits, is about refusing to let a student die pointlessly the way his friend did.

Erasure cancels another person's Quirk while he keeps them in sight, lingering briefly after he looks away. Blinking cuts it, dry eyes force him to blink sooner, Mutant-type Quirks and plain physical strength go untouched, and his floating hair tells opponents when it is running. It does no damage by itself. The Quirk Factor sits in his eyes, so injury there is crippling: since the U.S.J. he cannot sustain it long, and since Jaku he works with one eye.

The Binding Cloth completes him, a capture weapon of steel wire alloy and carbon nanofiber that took six years to master, used to immobilize, to swing across terrain, and to set traps. Erase, wrap, close in, with goggles hiding whose power he just switched off. At the U.S.J. he held off a crowd of League members and nearly finished Shigaraki before the Nomu broke him, and he has since traded blows with Dabi and Himiko Toga. He kept fighting there with a fractured arm and skull, and went on using Erasure after cutting off his own leg.

He reads students and enemies accurately and grasps an unfamiliar Quirk after one viewing. Nemuri Kayama signed him up for teaching against his will, and he became one of the Hero Course's best, personally training Hitoshi Shinso in the Binding Cloth and refining his Brainwashing. His kit stays spare: eye drops, the Eraser Goggles, High Density Weights, caltrops, a knife for cutting the scarf free, and the prosthetic leg.