Shirabe Minase
Kemmasandi
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Profile
⊱ SHIRABE MINASE ⊰
❛ I have held myself back out of some instinctive need for my entire life, and now that I have the ability to let go and find my own limits I'm not quite sure how to do it. ❜
— Shirabe Minase to lamenting her inability to completely lose her shit.
➥ SHIRABE MINASE
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Kanji Name皆瀬 調
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Romaji NameMinase Shirabe
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Hero NameHot Water Hero: Thermodynamo
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BirthdayNovember 16.
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Age16
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GenderFemale
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EthnicityJapanese
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BirthplaceTanohata, Iwate Prefecture
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Current ResidenceMusutafu, Shizuoka Prefecture
» U.A. Heights Alliance Dorms -
Height165cm // 5'5"
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Hair ColorBlue and steam-like
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Eye ColorDeep blue with grey sclerae
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Blood TypeO
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StatusAlive
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Family
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OccupationHigh School Student
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AffiliationUA High School
» Hero Course: Class 1-A -
SpecialtiesVillain Apprehension
Environmental Management
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SeiyuuSora Amamiya — [ Miko Yotsuya ]
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Theme SongTwo Steps From Hell — [ Evergreen ]
Shirabe Minase (皆瀬 調・みなせ しらべ・Minase Shirabe), also known as the Hot Water Hero: Thermodynamo (湯のヒーロー: サーモダイナモ) is a student in Class 1-A of the U.A. High School Hero Course.
She is the daughter of an onsen owner, originally from the Sanriku Coast area of northern Japan. Having faced bullying and abuse for much of her life, Shirabe has set herself two goals in life: get out of her tiny hometown, and do what she can to shield others from the same suffering. The U.A. Hero Course has offered her an answer to both.
APPEARANCE
Shirabe is a slim girl of slightly above average height. She has broad shoulders and round hips with a trim waist, and her arms and legs are a little long in proportion to her torso, making her look taller than she actually is. She is naturally curvy, with a narrow waist, generous bust, and muscular thighs and glutes. Her eyes are wide and almond-shaped, colored dark blue with a very pale ring around the pupil, and rather thick dark eyebrows. Her skin and sclerae are silver.
Shirabe's Quirk governs her appearance to a comprehensive degree. Her hair ━ long, blue, and wavy ━ turns to water and occasionally emits steam from the ends, venting pressure from her internal water tank. A silver dot on her forehead acts as a pressure indicator; it glows when she's holding onto a lot of steam and disappears when she's all out. When she gets steaming mad, it happens literally: her hair boils off and gets shorter, and if she really loses her temper it'll end up in a troll-doll style sticking straight up. When she gets sad or tired, it grows longer and the ends become less indistinct.
▮▮▮ WARDROBE
Shirabe's fashion sense tends to be restrained, and cheap out of necessity. She learns towards knee-length dresses and skirts, high-collar shirts, and functional flat-soled shoes for her daily wear, seldom donning shorts or t-shirts except for the hottest of summers. Her wardrobe is almost all black, white, and shades of blue or grey; she doesn't like the way she looks in most other colors, with the occasional exception of greens and desaturated browns. She has a number of hand-me-down clothes from her big brother (his old high school gakuran jacket) and mother (mostly traditional hakama and festival yukata), which she often combines with more modern clothes despite her parents' disapproval.
At school, Shirabe wears the standard U.A. uniform with knee-high black socks and brown loafers. Her personal style in casual wear leans toward mori girl fashion, but her wardrobe is dominated by blues, greys, and blacks. She enjoys long-sleeved knit sweaters, loose printed pants and long layered skirts. She often changes outfits multiple times a day, as clothes she wears for longer than a few hours may get a little soggy.
▮▮▮ GALLERY
PERSONALITY
attention-averse ⋆ rule-oriented ⋆ kind ⋆ bookish ⋆ pragmatic ⋆ analytic thinker ⋆ strong sense of justice ⋆ security-conscious ⋆ really angry deep down
Temperament: Melancholic
Enneagram: Type 1 ━ 'the Reformer'
MBTI: ISFJ ━ 'the Defender'
▮▮▮ LIKES
━ water in all forms, but especially hot springs
━ winter weather and fashion
━ orchestral and score music
━ corn chips
━ chemistry and math
━ educational podcasts
▮▮▮ DISLIKES
━ her parents
━ forests
━ long spells of dry weather
━ dirt and contaminants in the water she absorbs
━ big cities
━ sleeping late, even when she has nowhere to be
▮▮▮ HOBBIES
━ playing the shamisen
At first glance, Shirabe seems like a shy, quiet girl, a real wallflower. She seldom speaks up in class discussions, and in small groups waits for others to speak before she will join in on the conversation. She pauses before she speaks, as though carefully inspecting her words for accuracy, and pays careful attention to others’ speech, even when it may not be worth the effort. She is never the first person in a group to step forward, and when something is bothering her she will wait a long time before speaking up. Despite her striking Quirk, she has a real talent for fading into the background.
The root of Shirabe's shyness is partially natural introversion and self-restraint, and partially a learned avoidance. She is a solitary person, preferring the company of only small groups, and over her lifetime this has been reinforced by the amount of people who have heaped abuse upon her. She has had only two close friends, though both relationships have been long-lasting, and can only recall one authority figure she would trust: her 8th grade homeroom and Chemistry teacher, Owada-sensei, who fostered her love of science and encouraged her dreams of being a Hero.
She was born with an instinctive and very strong sense of self-control━perhaps a necessary ability, given her Quirk. For as long as she can remember, Shirabe has restrained herself, her emotions and her reactions, out of a multifaceted anxiety of what might happen should she let go. She repressed stressful feelings by instinct, and has gotten quite good at it too. When she's stressed, you'll never know it, but once the stressful situation is over she'll tend to explode because she needs to release the feelings and now it's safe to do so. While she appears cool and unemotional on the surface, acting primarily on practical concerns, beneath this steely self-control her emotions are strong and her sense of justice instinctive.
As a child, Shirabe often doubted her own sense of fairness━she was raised by parents whose word was law, and who seldom bothered to explain the logic behind their decisions (where it even existed). Her older brother, who she idolised as a child, tended to enforce his views through sheer pigheaded stubbornness. In both cases, Shirabe found it easier to simply comply with their demands, and fade into the background where she could not. As she grew older and entered middle school, her newfound love of science led her to question many of the assumptions she had been raised with, and this led further to a careful, quiet examination of her family's dynamic and her place within it.
Shirabe’s avoidance has begun to melt away when others are in danger. She thinks quickly and acts decisively under pressure, is staunchly egalitarian, and when her sense of justice is threatened her willpower turns to solid steel. She will not compromise on her stance or morals —unless given a logical, practical reason to do so. Her drive to become a Hero is itself underpinned by practical concerns; it gives her the best chance of getting out of her hometown as soon as possible. Shirabe feels rather guilty about this—she does want to protect and defend people, but she worries that her underlying motive makes her selfish.
Her best school subjects are math and science, particularly chemistry. She likes to understand systems and how things work, and is a patient, logical thinker, traits which lend themselves well to solving problems and investigating hypotheses. On the other hand, she doesn’t do well with languages; despite persistent study she is still not fluent in English. Intellectually, Shirabe knows that language is just not her strong point, but it is a deep well of shame for her. She has the sense of inadequacy common to many former gifted children, which also contributed to her decision to apply for Hero courses rather than academic high schools.
Shirabe’s preference in fashion and interiors tends toward the cozy. She enjoys traditional Japanese art forms and music—she does calligraphy as a hobby and has taught herself how to play the shamisen with the aid of online tutorials. She is an auditory learner, at her best with lectures and audiobooks. Video distracts her, and she tends to be a slow, perfectionistic reader. She often listens to podcasts, especially when she’s exercising; educational podcasts on various subjects make up the vast majority of her library.
▮▮▮ SKILLS
⸻Studying
Shirabe both enjoys studying, and is good at it. She habitually takes notes on the things she reads, and often writes down questions to be looked up later as part of this, which then inevitably leads her down interesting new rabbit holes of knowledge. Studying for her isn't just about getting good marks, it's about understanding the world around her.
QUOTES
I feel bad even saying this on campus, but I think my brother does a slightly better omurice than Lunch Rush does.
━ with Tsuyu, discussing lunch.
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━ with sdfgri
QUIRK: Steam Engine
➥ QUIRK DATA
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Name蒸気機関 [ jо̄ki-kikan ]
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RatingA » Quirks with a comprehensive ability to affect the human body or environment.
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ClassificationEmitter
» Secondary Elemental ━ Hydrokinesis
» Thermal Energy -
Active RangeClose to mid-range
》》》Steam Engine is an interesting combination of Shirabe's mother's Quirk Hot Water, the ability to raise water to boiling point with a touch, and her father's Quirk Containment, which temporarily prevents a person or object from leaving a given environment. It contains the heating aspect of the former with the containment aspect of the latter and a pressurization ability inherited from her paternal grandmother. Thus, it stands apart from her older brother's Quirk Water Tank, which allows him to collect and filter water into a limited space.
Though Shirabe was born with her peculiar blue-and-silver colour, her Quirk did not truly manifest until she was three, when the pressure indicator dot on her forehead began to glow. She went nearly two years before discovering that she was able to release steam on command. This ability earned her parents' attention for a few months, which Shirabe did not enjoy; since then, she kept it to herself as much as possible.
The explosive power of her Quirk is considerable. At low pressure, her steam will scald flesh; at high pressure, it can destroy rooms and warp sheet metal by rapid decompression. Not many people are aware of her more destructive abilities━Shirabe has always had a strong, instinctive mental restraint on her Quirk. Her internal steam circulates rhythmically; she has a constant awareness of this activity, and over time has come to see it as something like the flow of qi through her body.
Her normal body temperature is about 43°C / 109°F, making her noticeably hot to the touch. She can also feel somewhat damp, as if constantly sweating, but this is simply the consequence of constantly emitting steam at low levels.
▮▮▮ ADVANTAGES
- She is not immediately dependent on her environment to provide a handy source of moisture; she can simply absorb large amounts on rainy, humid days and keep it pressurized internally until she needs to use it.
- She is capable of releasing steam through small points on her body, allowing directed streams, or from her entire body at once, resulting in an indiscriminate steam explosion. Her Hero outfit is designed to come apart at strategic points, allowing her to utilise this ability in combat.
▮▮▮ DISADVANTAGES
- She is constantly leaking small volumes of steam through her skin and hair, and requires regular topups to stay at peak capacity. In Japan, this is more an annoyance than a real issue, but in drier climates she could quickly and literally run out of steam.
- She can absorb seawater as ammunition, but due to the amount of minerals and other matter suspended in seawater it is not advisable to do so. Shirabe's body filters out these impurities as part of the absorption process, creating a sinter that crusts over her skin; if this sinter builds up too much it can cause a painful chemical reaction on her skin.
- Due to the constant low-level emission of steam from her body, she cannot wear clothes made of certain materials, and the clothes she does wear do not often last long.
COMBAT
As a Hero, Shirabe specialises in subduing villains one on one, which may seem an incongruous specialty for such a quiet girl until one finds out that she can store enough pressurized steam in her body to level entire buildings. Her primary weapon is her hair, which she is capable of manipulating as an amorphous blob of very thick steam. Unlike the steam stored within her body, this is not pressurized and therefore has no explosive capability, but if manipulated finely enough can be used almost like an extra limb, capable of landing blows and disrupting sight and breathing within the range of about five feet from Shirabe's body.
Her overall fighting style is quick and relies heavily on redirection of force and momentum. She is heavily influenced by Tai Chi, which she has practiced since she was five, and to a lesser extent, kickboxing.
▮▮▮ OVERALL ABILITIES
⸻Enhanced Heat Tolerance
Shirabe can tolerate temperatures up to 350°C, though much higher than 150°C causes her discomfort. She is also unaffected by the wet bulb effect; her body is adapted to the humid heat of a hot spring.
⸻Tactical & Strategic Skills
Shirabe's observant nature lends itself well to making and adapting plans of attack on the fly. She catches on to diversions and logical ruses fairly quickly, and will often play along as a means of setting up her own trap in response. She isn't a strikingly imaginative tactician, but she studies tactics and strategy as she does everything else, and she is rapidly establishing herself as one of the top students in 1-A in that subject.
▮▮▮ MOVES
⸻Teakettle
Shirabe releases a short, concentrated blast of steam from the palms of her hands. This has some pushing power and is hot enough to scald, making it very uncomfortable but not especially dangerous. The emerging steam whistles like a kettle, giving this attack its name.
⸻Steamwhistle
Shirabe releases a much stronger, destructive blast of pressurized steam from her hands. This attack can blast through mortar walls, destroy wood-framed buildings, and cause third-degree burns if not handled very carefully. It also produces a sound like a whistling steam train.
⸻Stephenson's Rocket
Shirabe releases pressurized steam from her legs or the soles of her feet, allowing her to jump extremely long or high, or even a limited ability to fly (depending on how much steam she has in reserve). This move also whistles like a steam train; Shirabe named it after one of the first commercial locomotives built in the Age of Steam.
EQUIPMENT
⸻Hero Costume
Shirabe’s costume consists of a sleeveless skintight bodysuit with sections of rigid, lightweight armor over her chest and hips, thigh-high boots, and armored gauntlets on her forearms. Beneath the gauntlets she has detached sleeves in the same material as her bodysuit, which cover her arms to just below the shoulder. She has a short partial skirt made of a floaty, translucent fabric. The bodysuit portions are designed to come apart at certain points to allow her to vent steam from her whole body.
⸻Steam-Directing Gauntlets
Her gauntlets (actually more like greaves, as they only cover the backs of her hands) are designed to collect steam given off from her skin and channel it into vents which allow her to pressurize and release the steam in a focused stream.
BATTLES
Battle Trial Arc
- Shirabe, Sato and Kouda vs. Mina, Yushiro and Aoyama: Win
- U.S.J. Incident
- Shirabe vs. several unnamed villains: Win
- First Term Final Exams
- Shirabe & Yushiro vs. Cementoss: Pass
- Vanguard Action Squad Invasion
- Shirabe and Rikido Sato vs. unnamed villain: Win
- Shirabe vs. Spinner: Interrupted
- Provisional License Exam, Stage 1
- Shirabe vs. unnamed Seiai Academy student: Win
TRIVIA
➥ Shirabe's given name is written with a kanji meaning 'to examine' (調べる shira.beru). The kanji has several other potential meanings, including 'tone' or 'melody'.
- Her surname is written with kanji meaning 'all' (皆 mina) and 'shoals' or 'rapids' (瀬 se). It is also the name of a former village in Akita Prefecture, where her father's family once lived.
➥ Shirabe's U.A. data is as follows:
- Seat no. 19, then 20 in Class 1-A.
- Ranked 8th tied during the U.A. Entrance Exam, with 44 Villain Points and 5 Rescue Points.
- Ranked 10th during the Quirk Apprehension test.
- Ranked 8th in Class 1-A's midterm grades.
➥ She is a fluent speaker of Japanese only, which she speaks with a fairly strong Tōhoku accent. She has studied English at school since she was a child, but she struggles to wrap her head around foreign grammar and sentence structure, and it remains her worst class.
➥ She finds it very difficult to style her hair, if not impossible, because of its tendency to go steamy and non-corporeal in response to changes in her mood. Her hair at the scalp feels very much like normal hair, though perhaps a little warmer than expected. A little further down the strand it goes floaty and wispy and starts giving off steam, and at the ends, it develops into condensed globs of water which are rather hot to the touch.
- She cannot wear most makeup, as it becomes saturated and starts running within an hour or so of application. She's not sure where she'd find foundation in steel grey anyway, so no great loss there.
➥ Because she's sort of a walking humidifier, her bedroom has to have a dehumidifier running just about all the time, or dampness will appear on cold walls and mold will grow in dark corners. She enjoys hanging out in hot springs and saunas, both of which are in plentiful supply at her parents' onsen.
➥ She has a ridiculously good immune system, possibly because her normal, healthy body temperature is ‘catastrophic fever’ on anyone else’s scale. When she does get sick, she appears to start crusting over. Her body can passively filter out impurities by forming a sort of sinter on her skin, especially around her eyes, like mineral growth around a hot spring. It’s usually white and it looks kinda like salt.
- Shirabe nevertheless missed the day of the Sports Festival in her first year at U.A. due to an unidentified illness. This was nothing if not typical of her luck, she thought.
➥ She habitually rises before dawn, in order to watch the sun rise and listen to the birds waking up. She usually goes to bed early as well, and will very rarely stay up later than midnight.
BACKGROUND
▮▮▮ BIRTH
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▮▮▮ QUIRK DEVELOPMENT
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▮▮▮ THEPER
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▮▮▮ ALLMRISIS
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▮▮▮ MAKINS
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CURRENT STATUS
▮▮▮ UAsdfghj
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FAMILY
▮▮▮ KAI & MISAKI MINASE
〔 parents 〕
Shirabe has had some faint awareness that something about her family is irrefutably broken since she was a small child. Her parents, Kai and Misaki Minase, are strict, authoritarian, and focused on appearances above all else. Her older brother, Takumi, is an independent, defiant young man who bore the brunt of their parents' tempers until he escaped to the big city after graduating high school, at the end of Shirabe's last year of elementary school. Her younger brother, Hazumu, is a spoiled, obedient six-year-old.
If Takumi was the scapegoat and Hazumu is the golden child of the family, Shirabe is lost in the background. For as long as she can remember, she has been dismissed and passed over, which for all its pain was better than getting dragged into the conflict between her parents and her elder brother. Shirabe accepted at an early age that her parents would not and probably could not give her the attention and love she really wanted, so she taught herself to suppress her wants and needs, avoiding her family where possible and presenting herself as an obedient, unemotional, uninteresting bit of furniture where she was forced to interact more closely with them. As a baby, she had been her mother's favourite, but Misaki quickly lost interest as Shirabe's Quirk and personality began to manifest. Her relationship with her baby brother is stifled by his status as Misaki's current favourite; Hazumu spends most of his time with their mother, who treats him with far more affection, love and tolerance than she ever did the two elder children.
Shirabe spent the four years after Takumi left alternating between scapegoat and lost child status. She did not pick fights with their parents the way that Takumi had, but her passive, avoidant facade sometimes irritated their father. Kai was picky, perfectionistically authoritarian, and immediate obedience usually satisfied him, but when providing that obedience required letting down her facade, Shirabe chose defiance instead. Weathering his temper was easier when he didn't know what she thought or liked, or where her emotional weak points were. She came to the conscious realisation that his behaviour was abusive during her first year of junior high school, and spent the subsequent years making solid plans to move out as soon as possible.
▮▮▮ TAKUMI MINASE
〔 older brother 〕
Takumi is the one person in her family that she believes she has a salvageable relationship with. As a child, she was often held up by their parents as an example of good behaviour, which incensed Takumi and often drove him to take out his frustrations on her. At the same time, Takumi would step in where he could to protect her from her elementary school bullies, and was willing to hug and comfort her after their parents' frequent fights. After he moved away, they lost contact for two years before Shirabe was able to find him on social media, where they tentatively reconnected. Shirabe took a leap of faith and told him of her plans to escape; Takumi immediately gave her his support, and suggested that she apply for general high schools in his local area - Musutafu - in addition to the Hero courses and academic scholarships she had applied for. When she got into U.A., she moved into his tiny apartment.
Living together was stressful for them both, as their upbringing had not prepared them for healthy relationships and Takumi in particular had picked up a lot of bad behaviours from their parents. Shirabe was relieved when U.A. shifted to a dorm model. She has asked him to find a therapist to work through his issues with, offering to do joint sessions, but Takumi is reluctant. Shirabe suspects that the reason behind his reluctance is fear, and has resolved not to pressure him.
❛ I don't understand how you can treat me like this, when this is exactly what Mom did to you and you know how much it hurt. ❜
— Shirabe to her older brother, Takumi.
▮▮▮ HAZUMU MINASE
〔 younger brother 〕
Shirabe's relationship with her younger brother is stilted and limited, both by the age gap (born nine years apart) and by their mother's blatant favoritism. Hazumu, in Misaki's eyes, can do no wrong; he is her perfect little prince. Hazumu tends toward the same naturally anxious personality as Shirabe, but unlike her he has Mommy's love and support to build him up. When Misaki is away, they get along okay; Hazumu's drive to please transfers more easily to Shirabe than to their father, who he finds anxiety-inducing. When Misaki is around, Hazumu thinks only of living up to her expectations. Since Misaki has no interest in Shirabe besides holding her to impossible standards, they seldom interact more closely than the barest surface level conversation.
By the time she leaves for Musutafu, Shirabe has mostly written him off. She has very little hope of reuniting in the future, and can only pray that their parents don't mess him up too badly.
LOVE INTEREST
▮▮▮ SHOUTO TODOROKI
〔 crush 〕
Shirabe meets Shouto on the first day of classes, when she and he both try to walk around the same corner in opposite directions and just avoid crashing into each other. Shouto initially ignores her, and Shirabe is intimidated by his cold, standoffish demeanor, but somehow finds herself attracted to him nevertheless. She does some digging into his background and writes down her findings into her diary, something that she does for most people she meets, but over time she finds that she has written much more about him than anyone else, and rereading her diary makes her realise that she just might have a bit of a crush. This is a new experience for her, and she pours out her feelings into her diary, sharing the emotions she's too scared of sharing with anyone else.
After the Sports Festival and subsequent work experiences, she notices a slight change in his attitude, and speculates in fascination on what this might mean. A few days later, Takumi finds her diary and reads it... and decides to play the protective older brother and warn Shouto away from Shirabe. This does not go as Takumi planned: Shouto is completely unintimidated because after dealing with Endeavor, no scrawny-faced early-twenties salaryman is ever going to be scary. Instead, Shouto finds Shirabe at lunch the next day, and asks her what her brother was on about. Shirabe is so torn between mortification and fury that her hair all boils off into steam at once. She brings him a homemade bento the next day as an apology, which only confuses Todoroki more, but the food is good so he eats it anyway.
Their relationship develops at a snail's pace, over several years. Both Shirabe and Shouto are private, emotionally closed-off people, and Shirabe has had few years' head start on self-analysis. It takes Shouto most of high school and a good handful of developing close relationships with other people to decide that he'd like to reciprocate Shirabe's feelings. Luckily for him, Shirabe's crush had not faded in the interim, although she'd been trying her best to think of him as nothing more than a platonic friend.
❛ It doesn't matter to me if you like me back or not. I just want you to be happy. If that means I have to stay away, then that's what I'll do. ❜
— Shirabe, trying to apologise to Shouto for her brother's indiscretion.
FRIENDS & CLASSMATES
▮▮▮ KENSHI MURASAKIGAOKA
〔 childhood friend 〕
Kenshi is Shirabe's best (and only) friend from her younger years. They first met in fourth grade, when nine-year-old Kenshi proposed that they form an alliance of forces against their bullying classmates. Shirabe accepted, and although the bullying got worse immediately afterward if anything, she found that it was so much easier to weather knowing that she was not alone. Kenshi felt similarly, and their teamwork persisted long after the bullies got bored and moved on.
Both Kenshi and Shirabe are intelligent and studious, though their fields of interest do not cross over much—Kenshi was always obsessed with history and geography while Shirabe found science and math more interesting. They spent a lot of time together studying, teaching each other about their respective interests and helping each other out with homework. Kenshi could sympathise with her strained parental relationships; he had to deal with the high hopes of his parents, a dentist and an opthalmologist, who were determined that their only child would follow them into medicine. Shirabe encouraged him to follow his dreams and become a historian, and Kenshi reciprocated, supporting her in her efforts to get out from under her parents' shadow.
After they graduated from junior high, distance forced them to keep in touch mainly by email. Shirabe went to U.A., while Kenshi got into a top academic high school in Morioka and likewise had to leave Tanohata. They write long emails to each other, once a week or so, and text each other with silly selfies or photos of the interesting places around their respective dorms. Mina Ashido saw some of these silly selfies once and mistook Kenshi for Shirabe's boyfriend. Shirabe's hair boiled off all at once in embarrassment, forcing her to explain with some difficulty that she and Kenshi had always seen each other as too much like siblings to ever consider dating.
▮▮▮ TSUYU ASUI
〔 friend 〕
Tsuyu decides at the very beginning of the year that she and Shirabe should be Friends, because what's a better duo than amphibians and humid environments? Shirabe jumps at the chance, because she's never had more than one or two friends and none of them ever sought her specifically out of the crowd. They get along well; Tsuyu quickly picked up on Shirabe's insecurities beneath her bland, shy facade, and made a conscious effort to get Shirabe to trust her with her deeper thoughts. Shirabe comes to respect and trust the way Tsuyu says what she thinks. After some time they occasionally argue over their very different interpretations of social situations, but Shirabe is quick to treat these arguments as a learning experience in the way other people see things, and Tsuyu is very careful to couch her side in logical terms and to never let herself get emotionally invested in the outcome of the argument.
When Class 1-A move into their dorms, Shirabe's room is on the fifth floor, between Momo and Tsuyu. She and Tsuyu often hang out in her room on dry sunny days, studying and making silly videos and occasionally napping in the heat. They're often left to themselves; most of their classmates struggle with the heat and humidity. (Tsuyu starts calling these get-togethers the Wet Frog Club, which Shirabe finds both horrifying and hilarious.)
▮▮▮ MOMO YAOYOROZU
〔 friend 〕
Shirabe is initially drawn to Momo's friendly, responsible personality, and is one of the people to vote for her in the Class President elections. However, she maintains an undercurrent of wariness in her interactions with Momo, because Momo unfortunately superficially resembles one of the girls who persistently bullied Shirabe during elementary and junior high. Shirabe knows intellectually that Momo is not that girl, and is flattered by Momo's genuine kindness and care to everyone in Class 1-A, but she can't help but maintain her wariness until the summer camp, where Momo's quick thinking and actions prove once and for all that she legitimately does want what's best for the class and everyone in it. The next term, Shirabe quietly joins Momo's regular study group, offering her own help in science and math-related subjects.
Momo picks up on about 10% of this: she realises that Shirabe is not quite comfortable with her, but concludes it's likely just her being shy and doesn't worry about it. She is quick to befriend Shirabe after the summer holidays, and is delighted to find a fellow chemistry nerd.
▮▮▮ IZUKU MIDORIYA
〔 friend 〕
Shirabe's first impression of Izuku is not good — she instinctively comprehends just how comprehensive his lack of control over his own Quirk is, and consequently tries her best to stay out of his way where possible. Given their respective friendships with Tsuyu, this isn't always possible. Shirabe finds she quite likes Izuku otherwise (he reminds her of Kenshi, a little). He makes a good study buddy, even if he's often going off on random tangents and frequently relating the randomest things back to Heroes he knows of. (Since they're studying Heroics, Shirabe thinks, that's probably going to come in handy sometime.) On the whole, she thinks he's a nice, polite boy. It's just a shame about the whole barely-controlled ultimate power thing.
Perhaps as a result, she isn't at all surprised when the secret of One For All is finally shared with 1-A.
▮▮▮ TENYA IIDA
〔 friend 〕
Shirabe's quietly studious demeanour and diligent work habits make her one of Tenya's favourite classmates. He can rely on her to always be prepared and properly equipped for class, to have her homework handed in on time, and to refrain from causing a Ruckus in public. The first time he witnesses her level a small building in training, he's aghast; it conflicts rather violently with his mental image of her. However, he gets over the shock quickly enough, and is loudly approving of her self-control. Shirabe is absolutely not used to people like Tenya treating her so well; she becomes a deer in headlights the first few times he turns his focus on her. Tsuyu has to rescue her once, at which point Tenya hurriedly apologises for not realising he was being overwhelming. Shirabe immediately apologises for being a shrinking violet, to which Tenya and Tsuyu both insist that she has nothing to apologise for.
They get along very well once Shirabe gets used to Tenya's boisterous personality. She admires his forthright honesty and sense of justice, and will often go to him when she has questions about the Heroics industry that she doesn't quite feel brave enough to ask their teachers. She's also a little envious of his close relationship with his family; she wishes she could have been loved like that too.
▮▮▮ OCHAKO URARAKA
〔 friend 〕
Ochako is the most frequent third member of the Wet Frog Club. She likes both Shirabe and Tsuyu, and is determined to hang out with them because that's what friends do! Her hair suffers for it, but friends make sacrifices for their friends, right? She says this to Shirabe and Tsuyu once, and they immediately decide to hold the Wet Frog Club outside more often, for the sake of poor Ochako's hairstyle.
Shirabe doesn't have a lot in common with Ochako, save for their shared rural background and their families' respective lack of cash. They often swap money-saving tips (and store coupons) and share recipes they think the other might like, and Ochako is currently teaching Shirabe how to patch and repair her own clothes (something Misaki was too proud to admit ever needed done). Shirabe has promised to teach Ochako how to pick wild berries and mushrooms in return. They study well together, and are equal matches in the sparring ring. Ochako thinks Shirabe is a sweet, kind girl, and Shirabe's opinion of Ochako in turn is really no different.
▮▮▮ YUSHIRO KAIZUKA
〔 friend 〕
Shirabe and Yushiro were matched against each other's teams in the Battle Trial. They fought each other to a standstill, allowing Shirabe's teammates to clinch the victory. Yushiro was disappointed, but impressed by Shirabe's power and her fine Quirk control. They were shocked to find that she wasn't from a legacy Hero family at all, just an ordinary girl from Tohoku. Yushiro, the scion of a legacy family themself, had to go home and process this outcome for a while afterward. This early humbling nevertheless led to a strong friendship between the two... as did the fact that they somehow kept getting randomly picked as teammates for various assignments.
Shirabe's very first impression of Yushiro wasn't particularly good: she thought they seemed arrogant in the Battle Trial, and this took a while for her to get past. Over time, Yushiro proved that they had a good personality beneath the occasional flashes of main-character-syndrome, and that they were willing to learn from their mistakes. Shirabe's growing respect turned into genuine feelings of friendship.
TEACHERS & MENTORS
▮▮▮ SHOUTA AIZAWA ⸻ ❛ Eraserhead ❜
〔 homeroom teacher 〕
Aizawa made Shirabe very anxious at first. He shares some superficial similarities with her father, and his promise of expulsion to the last-placing student in his Quirk Apprehension test seemed to confirm her fears. Aizawa noticed her discomfort, did a little digging into her background, and privately thought that the Hero Course was unlikely to be a good match for her. However, they each changed their minds after the USJ invasion; Shirabe witnessed the lengths Aizawa would go to in order to protect his students and realised despite appearances he was nothing like her father, while Aizawa noticed that the invasion had not affected Shirabe as much as it had some of her classmates, and decided that perhaps she was not as fragile as she had seemed. As he recovered from the attack, he reviewed the complex's security cameras to analyse the students' actions, and is surprised to find that Shirabe successfully took on several villains on her own, taking very little damage.
Later on, after the Sports Festival, he suggests to Shirabe that she might do well to pick the Golden Ice agency for her work experience week. Shirabe takes his advice, and in light of the roaring success of that week, finds herself trusting him fully afterward.
▮▮▮ TOSHINORI YAGI ⸻ ❛ All Might ❜
〔 teacher 〕
Shirabe starts out incredibly starstruck by All Might. She performs well in the battle trials, and All Might praises her quick thinking and actions, which sends her into barely-hidden conniptions. After a lifetime of never being good enough to please her parents and too strange to please the majority of her teachers, here's the Number One Hero telling her she did a good job! She's floating on cloud nine for the rest of the week. All Might notices this, but pays no mind to it (lots of people do the same thing).
As the year rolls on, Shirabe makes significant strides in improving her combat skills. All Might compliments her tight control over her Quirk, naming her as an example for Bakugou to learn from. It makes Shirabe feel a little better over her instinctive self-restraint. She is surprised by the revelation of All Might's injury and true form, but more surprised by how she reacts to it: bursting into inconsolable tears for the first time in years. She feels a lot of sympathetic pain and sadness for him, which is very much out of the ordinary for her ━ and then once school starts up again, she realises that sense of emotional connection extends to many of her classmates too. She's still mystified as to why.
▮▮▮ KASANE OWADA
〔 former teacher 〕
Shirabe's second-year junior high school homeroom teacher, who also taught chemistry and biology classes throughout her junior high years. Owada-sensei clocked Shirabe as a bullied child the moment they met, and took it upon herself to encourage her student and support her in achieving success in classwork and gradually in her extracurricular activities as well. Shirabe enjoyed her classes, and came to think of them as a refuge in comparison to her increasingly turbulent home life. Owada-sensei fostered her interest in science, and took pains to praise her intelligence and analytical skills to her parents, knowing that neither was a skill they valued and hoping that she could change their minds on the issue. Shirabe often asked for Owada-sensei's advice on her life choices. Owada-sensei was the first adult she told of her goal to get into a high school with a Hero course, far from her parents' reach. Owada-sensei did what she could to help, although as a full-time teacher on a low rural-school wage this was mainly limited to research and help filling in application forms. When Shirabe got the news that she had been accepted into U.A., Owada-sensei baked her a cake, and helped her keep the news secret until she was ready to break it to her parents.
Throughout her high school years, Shirabe writes occasional emails to Owada-sensei, keeping her updated on how her studies are going. Owada-sensei replies when she can, and occasionally sends her little messages from her old classmates. Their relationship has gradually shifted from teacher and student to something more like surrogate parent and child.
▮▮▮ KANAKA OTAGAKI ⸻ ❛ Kintsugi ❜
〔 Hero mentor 〕
If Shirabe considers Owada-sensei and Kenshi her surrogate mother and brother, then Kanaka is her big sister. They met during Shirabe's first work experience week as a Hero student, and both got along swimmingly from the moment they met. Kanaka's warm, nurturing kindness went a long way toward bringing Shirabe out of her protective shell. On the first day of the internship, Kanaka brought Shirabe along on a follow-up visit to the victims of a villain the Agency had dealt with the previous week. The experience hammered in the real-life consequences of Hero work to Shirabe, and taught her the importance of caring about more than just defeating the villain.
From that moment on, Shirabe has looked up to Kanaka as a shining example of a Hero. She often models her non-combat choices in the field after her, consciously asking herself the question — What Would Kanaka Do? Their Quirks are very different, as are their physical strengths, meaning that Shirabe cannot adapt many of Kanaka's combat tactics, but as a Rescue Hero Kanaka is seldom directly involved in combat anyway. Kanaka directs most of Shirabe's combat training to her partner, Kotori, aside from a few basic self-defense techniques. She identified early on that Shirabe does not lack for power or confidence so much as the trust in her own self-control to use her Quirk to its full extent. She encourages Shirabe to research steam on her own time, and provides a reinforced area in which Shirabe can practice, without worrying about breaking something or attracting the wrong sort of attention. Most importantly, she gives Shirabe honest and constructive feedback, and takes Shirabe's mistakes in stride. Shirabe knows that she can trust Kanaka not to throw a temper tantrum or praise her for something that doesn't deserve it.
▮▮▮ KOTORI TOUYOU ⸻ ❛ Avalanche Maiden ❜
〔 Hero mentor 〕
Kotori intimidates Shirabe at first; her cold manner and cutting phrasing provokes anxiety. Shirabe avoids being alone with her at first, but after seeing the way Kotori fusses over Kanaka after a battle, she quickly discovers that invoking Kanaka's name is the best way to make her soften. Kotori is not interested in Shirabe at all at first; Kanaka was the one who volunteered their names for an intern, so Kanaka can be the one to look after their intern, she thinks. However, she is interested to discover that Shirabe is a secondary water elemental like herself, and over time she begins to take an interest in Shirabe's battle skills and Quirk development. Shirabe persistently finds Kotori's manner a little offputting, so it takes them a long time to develop more than a working relationship, but it happens eventually.
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