Howard Thane

Howard Thane, also known as Saint Thane is a cult leader who believes that quirks are gifts bestowed by a god named Kikya, whom he says in the god of every religion. Howard believes all quirks are bestowed for a reason, and that is human duty for one to find the purpose of their quirk.

## Appearance

Howard is a tall and lanky figure, who in general looks unkempt and a little unhealthy. He wears a regular business attire with a coat instead of a suit. He has almost blue black hair, and dark blue eyes. He has a sunken face that suggests he isn't living right.

## Personality

Howard is enigmatic and strange, and is a very hard to read person. The only thing one can really tell about him from meeting him is that he has a strange obsession with religion and the concept of quirks. Howard is charismatic, and easily capable of swaying people to his point of view through conversation and debate. Despite being seemingly intelligent, Howard is also shown to be a bit slow to react, and always works at his own pace.

Howard has a unique philosophy, that every quirk is designed by 'Kikya' and given for a purpose, and that it is human duty to use one's quirk and find it's purpose. As a child Howard has to restrain his quirk, and this always brought him great discomfort, but when he adopted this philosophy he decided it was wrong for him to restrict his quirk.

## History

Howard was once a student as U.A. however, he mysteriously dropped out in order to travel the world. When he returned from his journey, he was a changed man. His sense of justice had changed from wanting to protect the public, to wanting people to use their quirks freely.

## Abilities

Despite having a Quirk not suited for combat, Howard is a surprisingly skilled fighter, as a former U.A. student he knows the basics of combat, and was able to enter U.A. despite not having an offensively useful quirk and his lanky appearance. Somewhere along the way on his journey of self discovery, he picked up how to use a knife with startling proficiency.

### Quirk

Howard possesses a powerful yet useless mutant type quirk called Blessing. Blessing is a powerful quirk capable of empowering others. Blessing empowers the quirks of others based on how much belief they feel. It can be belief in anything, be it belief in Kikya, Howard or themselves. Whenever the target feels a strong belief in something, Howard can make their power grow.

Blessing actually functions as a bacteria Howard emits from his body. Those infected gain power according to their belief, and once they have reached a certain level of faith, these hosts begin to spread the infection themselves, although to a much less degree than Howard. It should be noted that Howard cannot in fact control anyone under the infection. A useful side effect of the quirk is that Howard can track any and all infected targets. The bacteria produced is noted to smell like lilac, and everywhere Howard travels leaves behind the scent of lilac, however, it loses the ability to infect around ten minutes after being produced, and leaves only the scent behind.

When a host loses faith, the infections dies out, and they lose any power gained. Addition cures include, common antibiotics, Howard being put into critical condition or worse or Howard can forcibly cause it to die out within a targets body by maintaining physical contact for twenty seconds.

Howard cannot in fact turn off his quirk, and his body constantly releases bacteria. Because of this, in his youth he had to be completely covered from head to toe to prevent an outbreak. However, he has since adopted the view that each quirk has a purpose designed by Kikya, and since he can't turn off his quirk it just means he shouldn't restrain it. Because of his history as a former U.A. student, Howard's quirk is well documented, and the information could be easily obtained by a hero.

An interesting feature of his quirk, is that it actually boosts itself as well as other quirks. This boost only takes the form of faster bacteria production though. When Howard was a student and didn't strongly believe in anything, his quirk was more manageable, but since he adopted his philosophy, the production rate has reached the level where just getting too close to Howard is enough to become infected.

## Trivia

* Image is Howard Lovecraft from Bungou Stray Dogs. Them both being named Howard is actually a coincidence.