Airi Mamushi
Kemmasandi
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- 3 years, 5 months ago
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- Kemmasandi
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⸻ AIRI MAMUSHI ⸻
You wanna tell me I can't do it? Why? You think I can't choose to be different to my father? Guess what, shithead, I've heard it all before and I don't care what you think. Look for me on the JP Billboard in a few years and I'll be there, flipping the bird at you.
— Airi Mamushi, about to throw hands with one of her middle school classmates.
➥ AIRI MAMUSHI
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Kanji Name虺 愛理
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Romaji NameMamushi Airi
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Hero NameConstrictor Hero: Smauko
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BirthdayAugust 18.
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Age15 [beginning of school year]
16 [currently] -
GenderFemale
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EthnicityJapanese
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BirthplaceNishinoomote, Tanegashima
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Current ResidenceMusutafu, Shizuoka Prefecture
» U.A. Heights Alliance Dorms -
Height5'9" — 176cm
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Hair ColorDark ashy brown
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Eye ColorPeach
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Blood TypeAB
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StatusAlive
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FamilySouichiro Mamushi [father]
Naomi Uroko [mother]
Emi Mamushi [sister]
Yuri Mamushi [sister] -
OccupationHigh School Student
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AffiliationsU.A. High School
» Hero Course: Class 1-A -
SpecialtiesVillain Apprehension
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SeiyuuJunko Takeuchi ━ [ Noel ]
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Theme SongScribe & P. Money ━ [ Stop The Music ]
Airi Mamushi (虺 愛理 ・まむし あいり・Mamushi Airi), also known as the Constrictor Hero: Smauko (コンストリクターヒーロー: スマウコ), is a student in Class 1-A of the U.A. High School Hero Course.
Airi is the daughter of a famous villain, Souichiro Mamushi, better known as the Pitviper. When she was 9, her father was arrested and convicted of villainy, and Airi, her mother and younger sisters were made social outcasts in the aftermath. Airi‘s goal is to prove that even the children of villains can choose to do good, and to that end she is training to become a Hero.
APPEARANCE
Airi is a tall, lean teenage girl whose most immediately noticeable feature is the dark, sinuous tail extending out of her spine. Closer inspection reveals the patches of snakeskin which cluster around her hairline and temples, spreading out like freckles across the rest of her body. At 176cm, or 5'9", she is the tallest girl in Class 1-A. She has a slim frame with narrow shoulders and hips and a flat chest, giving her an androgynous silhouette. She is often mistaken for a boy, and often won't correct the assumption.
Airi's skin is very pale, burning easily in direct sunlight. Her snakeskin is dark brown with a faint black and silver diamond pattern which lightens on her chest, belly, and the undersides of her limbs, darkening elsewhere. Her eyes are a bright peachy color, halfway between orange and pink, with slitted pupils and natural dark eyelashes. Her hair is dark brown, lightening faintly at the ends. Although she grows it long, she habitually keeps it in a neat ponytail, the intended style being more 'handsome shoujo-manga samurai' than anything else.
▮▮▮ WARDROBE
Airi plays up her androgyny by dressing in men's fashion. She sought (and was granted) permission from the U.A. administrators to wear the male school uniform instead of the female version. Her trousers are tailored to accommodate her tail, but otherwise did not require modification for her body type. She sticks to the regular uniform, with short-sleeved shirts, standard brown loafers, and the U.A. blazer, which she often leaves open at the chest. In winter, she wears long-sleeved thermal undershirts and leggings to preserve her body temperature, and often wears thick scarves and mittens outside of the school buildings.
Out of uniform, Airi wears masculine street fashion inspired by any number of pop idols and teen drama actors. She favours desaturated reds and browns, along with black, silver, and grey. Her closet is dominated by big windproof jackets with fluffy collars and hoods, heavy boots, and baggy tees.
▮▮▮ GALLERY
PERSONALITY
outgoing ⋆ people-focused ⋆ sharp-tongued ⋆ quick thinker ⋆ energised by crisis ⋆ pushes boundaries ⋆ strong innate sense of fairness ⋆ picky and selective ⋆ makes snap judgements ⋆ defends by attacking
Temperament: Choleric
Enneagram: Type 5 ━ 'the Investigator'
MBTI: ESTP ━ 'the Entrepreneur'
▮▮▮ LIKES
━ lizards and snakes
━ sashimi
━ dawn and twilight, low-light environments
━ bullet journals and decorated planners
━ warm, humid summer days
▮▮▮ DISLIKES
━ celery
━ disorganized schedules
━ cold weather
━ doctors
━ her father
▮▮▮ HOBBIES
━ free-climbing and urban exploration
━ writing short stories
At only sixteen years of age, Airi possesses a level of experience and pragmatism which often tricks people into thinking she is older than she truly is. She is perceptive, observant, and tolerant of conflict for at least as long as she can figure out how to end it. And there has been a lot of conflict in her short life, giving her a well of experience to draw on when presented with a new interpersonal challenge. As a result, she is an unusually mature teenager.
As a young child, Airi's nature was extroverted, bubbly, and strongly emotional. All of these traits can still be found in her, buried beneath a thick protective layer of cynicism and defiant aggression. To those she does not know, Airi is suspicious, quick to dismiss, and can be actively hostile in response to perceived slights. To those she is familiar with, Airi is an energetic, fun-loving person who is not afraid to speak her mind and makes an excellent arbiter for settling arguments. She will call her friends out on their faults and errors of judgement, but does not hold it against them.
She is a quick thinker with a sharp tongue; her roasts and comebacks are well-known. She thinks in language, with a strong internal monologue split into two levels ━ commentary on her surroundings and the choices of others, and commentary on her own reactions to that input. This insight has helped Airi control and manage her naturally strong emotions, even through the upheaval of her preteen and teenage years. It also gives her a level of self-assuredness and confidence in her judgements that often leaves her unwilling to compromise, particularly when that compromise conflicts with her sense of justice.
This has also brought her into conflict with several teachers and other figures of authority, and with her childhood therapists, both of whom underestimated the extent of her natural self-analysis and promoted therapy techniques. This frustrated Airi because these were things she was already doing on her own, and therefore she perceived the time she spent in therapy as boring and a waste of time. Eventually she was sent to a psychologist who specialised in childhood conduct disorders. He quickly realised that Airi had no such disorder; she was just a child with a somewhat unusual manner of thinking and communication and a lack of respect for many of the adults in her life.
Airi is an extrovert, energised by human contact and presence. She is also energised by crisis. She does some of her best work running on caffeine and adrenaline the night before a project deadline, and in the field, facing down dangerous opponents. She is naturally competitive, motivated by the prospect of outperforming others and winning. She enjoys a good rivalry, and considers several of her classmates ━ primarily Shigeki ━ her rivals. Whether they return the sentiment is immaterial; all that matters to Airi is that their existence pushes her to succeed. She is a somewhat selfish winner, eager to celebrate, but generally takes losing in her stride.
Her standards in many things are high and her tastes are clearly defined. She tends to always eat the same meals in restaurants, for example—she knows what she likes and she’d rather not waste time and money. She can be frustratingly picky at times. However, she is not a perfectionist; her fussiness is derived from strong preferences rather than idealism or fear of failure. If something turns out very different to what she has expected, Airi will often shrug her shoulders and roll with it. (Knowing Shigeki has given her lots of experience in dealing with the unexpected!)
Due to her father’s Villain stature and her serpentine Quirk, Airi was subjected to discrimination throughout her childhood. Her aggression and judgemental tendencies developed from an unconscious coping mechanism—rejection was easier to cope with if she had made a show of rejecting others first. She was bullied by both boys and girls, and occasionally targeted by teachers and parents as well. Her mother tried to force the school to deal with the issue, but it wasn’t until Shigeki befriended Airi and his mother stepped in to support them that the active bullying was stopped. By that time, Airi had deep grievances built into the fundamentals of her personality.
She empathises with her father, who suffered similar abuse which drove him to villainy, but unlike him she has retained her belief in justice. Her motivation to become a Hero is to show that Heroes and villains alike are the same kind of human, and the only difference between them is the choices they make.
▮▮▮ SKILLS
⸻Critical Thought
Airi is a natural analyst with a knack for picking others' motivations out of their speech and actions. She enjoys picking apart the text and visuals of a presentation to figure out what the themes and messages of the work are, and automatically applies the same thought to the people around her. This makes her adept at identifying the origins of interpersonal conflicts and helping others navigate miscommunications. It also can make her somewhat difficult to get along with, as she can and will call her friends out on their bullshit just as much as anyone else. She is self-aware enough to be able to apply this ability to herself, and also self-aware enough to realise that sometimes she just wants to fight.
⸻Writing
Airi's language skills are very advanced for her age. She reads a lot of academic papers in her free time and earned herself some shady pocket money in middle school by proofreading and editing her classmates' homework. She prefers non-fiction over fiction, and excels at writing essays. Although being a Hero is her primary goal, she is also considering writing as a backup plan if the Hero thing doesn't work out. She has an anonymous blog on the Internet where she reviews books she's read and occasionally posts opinion essays on various topics. It has a couple hundred followers, perhaps five of which interact with any regularity.
QUOTES
I'm not arguing with you about Star Wars again.
━ to Shigeki, noted Prequels lover
Why do you want to hang out with me so bad, anyway? You know everyone thinks I'm just a villain waiting to happen.
That makes no sense! If they really thought you were destined to turn into a villain, why would they keep picking on you? Anyone with half a brain cell knows better than to pick a fight with a villain.
━ with Shigeki
I wonder if I can get the school to pay for a bigger heat lamp? Maybe if I say it's Quirk-care related...
━ pondering the plausibility of pulling a fast one on Principal Nedzu
QUIRK: Titanoboa
➥ QUIRK DATA
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Nameティタノボア [ Titanoboa ]
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RatingB » Quirks with a notable effect on the body and negligible effect on the environment or vice versa.
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ClassificationTransformation
» Full Transformation
» Serpentes -
Active RangePersonal
》》》Titanoboa is a powerful but typical example of the Mamushi Quirk line; snake and lizard Quirks run strong in the family. Airi and her sisters all manifested snake transformation Quirks rather than her mother's power over soil: Airi with Titanoboa, Emi with King Snake, and Yuri with their father's Pit Viper. Titanoboa is an outlier in that it draws from a long-extinct species, but the Quirk line is historically versatile, including several extant boa species.
Airi, like most of her family, has two distinct forms: an everyday humanoid form, with scales and a tail, and a fully-transformed serpent form, which reaches 13m (42') in length and 1135kg (2500lb) in weight. Her eyes have slit-shaped pupils, giving her good low-light vision. However, she (and most of her paternal family) have dichromatic vision, rendering them incapable of seeing the color red.
Her Quirk manifested at the age of five, heralded by the sudden growth of her tail. Airi was not initially able to control her transformations, resulting in some awkward calls to her parents from kindergarten. Her Titanoboa form was initially around two metres in length — very large for a child her age, indicating to her father that her adult size would be truly monstrous. It took several years for her snake form to be decisively identified as a Titanoboa: the shape and number of her teeth were the deciding factor.
▮▮▮ ADVANTAGES
- Airi is a great swimmer in snake form. Her nostrils are on top of her head, allowing her to drift along in murky water without drawing notice to herself.
- She needs to eat less than the average person, particularly when not using her Quirk much. Her diet is higher in meat than most.
- Her sense of smell is much better than the human average.
▮▮▮ DISADVANTAGES
- Airi has a semi-ectothermic metabolism, making her slow and sluggish in the cold winter months due to lack of energy. She needs to spend twenty minutes to half an hour under a heat lamp on cold mornings in order to fully wake up.
- Her snake form sheds its skin twice a year, in spring and autumn. This is an uncomfortable process, requiring her to stay in snake form for two to three days while shedding. She often feels sick for a few days on either side.
- She is partially colorblind, and sensitive to strong daylight and UV light. She has to wear sunglasses on sunny days to prevent eye strain and headaches.
COMBAT
Airi's friends often flippantly describe her combat style in Titanoboa mode as 'Hulk smash!" She throws her size and weight around in a way that is very difficult to ignore. Her skin is extremely thick and tough, able to shrug off many attacks. She prefers to ambush her opponents, sneaking up on them with slow, quiet movements and striking in one fast, devastating blow. If that first strike is not effective, her second and subsequent attacks are generally much slower: it takes her some time to set up a good quick strike. She is not particularly agile, and relies primarily on her thick reinforced skin to tank her opponent's attacks.
Like actual boids, Airi seldom crushes what she constricts. She is able to exert enough pressure on small structures to collapse them, but she is generally too big to do the same to an opponent, and is limited by the obligation to apply only non-lethal force.
In human form, her combat style is primarily derived from Jeet Kune Do. She takes the philosophy of adaptation seriously, and has supplemented her combat practice with Krav Maga classes. She has trained informally with Shigeki for several years, and shares much of his style. Airi is a much more aggressive fighter than Shigeki, however. She takes more risks and is better at spotting openings in an opponent's form.
▮▮▮ OVERALL ABILITIES
⸻Enhanced Strength
Airi is stronger than she looks by a mile, and her core and back strength is especially highly-developed as these are the muscles she retains in snake morph.
⸻Enhanced Senses
Airi's sense of smell is strong enough for her to track people through pitch-black forests, and her low-light vision is nothing to sneeze at either.
⸻Enhanced Durability
One advantage of Airi's snake morph is that injuries to her arms and legs vanish when she transforms, allowing her to work without the distraction of pain or the potential for bleeding out. They reappear when she shifts back to human. Airi's scaly skin is also resistant to most forms of damage, and thick enough that weaker attacks have a hard time cutting through.
▮▮▮ MOVES
⸻Titan Smash
Airi lunges at her opponent in a titanoboa-sized bodyslam. It's generally very effective.
⸻Boa Bash
Airi smacks her opponent with her heavily-muscled tail. It is also generally very effective.
⸻Big Chomp
Airi bites her opponent. This is only used on opponents within a certain size range, as Airi's recurved boa teeth are about the length of a man's finger and the risk of doing permanent damage to a small opponent is too high.
EQUIPMENT
⸻Hero Costume
Airi's Hero costume consists of a close-fitting sleeveless dress, made of material which is resistant to cutting and heat damage and which expands to fit her transformed titanoboa form. It is primarily black, with blocky reddish-brown and peachy orange patterns intended to distract the eye and discourage targeting. It is cut on both sides up to the hips to give her a wide range of movement, and secured at the waist with a thick, reinforced belt.
⸻Drop Gloves & Boots
As part of her costume, Airi also wears padded black gloves which cover her arms to just below the shoulder, with built-in brass knuckles attached. She has long black boots of a similar construction, which cover her legs to halfway up the thighs and clip onto the belt of her dress with a functional garter. Since Airi's arms and legs shrink to nothing during her transformation, her gloves and boots are designed to drop away from her costume. They contain a tracking device, which allows Airi or a nominated second party to retrieve them after the battle is finished.
BATTLES
➥ Battle Trial Arc
- Airi vs. Shigeki: Loss
- U.S.J. Incident
- Airi vs. unnamed villains: Win
- Hero Agency Internships: Brightspark
- Airi & Brightspark vs. unnamed villains: Win
- Airi & Brightspark vs. Noumu: Win
- First Term Final Exams
- Airi & Shigeki vs. Borrower: Pass
- I-Island Incident
- U.A. Students vs. I-Island Security Bots
- Quirk Training Camp
- Class 1-A vs. Pixie-Bob: Fail
- Vanguard Action Squad Invasion
- Airi, Mayuna & Shigeki vs. unnamed villain: Win
- Provisional License Exam, Stage 1
- Airi vs. unnamed Ketsubutsu students: Win
- Exam Result: Pass
- Hero Work-Studies I: Sabertooth Agency
- Airi vs. unnamed villains: Win
- Joint Training Battle
- Round 5: Win
- Hero Work Studies II: Sabertooth Agency
TRIVIA
➥ Airi's given name is spelled with kanji meaning 'love' (愛 ai) and 'logic' (理 kotowari or ri).
- Her surname, Mamushi, is spelled with the kanji 虺 (mamushi), meaning 'large poisonous snake'. Mamushi is the Japanese word for pit viper, although that specific snake is usually spelled differently.
➥ Airi's U.A. data is as follows:
- Seat no. 18 in Class 1-A.
- Ranked 22nd equal during the U.A. Entrance Exam, with 43 Villain Points and 2 Rescue Points.
- She and Shigeki competed to see who would score the highest, but ended up with the exact same total score.
- Ranked 12th during the Quirk Apprehension test.
- Ranked 13th in Class 1-A's midterm grades.
- Ranked in the Top 42 of the U.A. Sports Festival First-Year Stage.
- Airi received no nominations from Pro Heroes for her U.A. Sports Festival performance.
- Scored 78 in the Provisional Hero License Exam.
➥ She is distantly related to Habuko Mongoose.
➥ The Mamushi family originate from Tanegashima Island, where Airi was born. The subtropical climate is well-suited to a family of snakes. The family home is located just outside of Minamitane, the southernmost town on the island.
- The family own and operate a historic orange orchard and goat farm. Airi was regularly sent to her relatives to help out with the farm during her middle school holidays. She did not enjoy the work, but she was aware that her mother was doing it primarily to get her away from their judgemental, ostracising community, and therefore never complained.
➥ Airi's Hero name, Smauko, is derived from the dragon Smaug. She loved The Hobbit as a child; Gandalf and Smaug were her favourite characters.
➥ Japanese is her native language. She did not begin seriously learning English until middle school, one of the many reasons she resents her elementary school teachers. She has improved dramatically over the three years since, but her lack of complete fluency still frustrates her.
➥ She was initially a fan of the vigilante Stendhal, and though she didn't exactly approve of him embracing the Villain name, she liked Stain at first as well. The moment he branched out into serial killing, she dropped him like a hot potato. "Cool motive, still murder," she says.
- She feels similarly about Dabi, upon the revelation that he is in fact Touya Todoroki. She resents those who let go of basic morals like not killing people, thinking of them as supremely self-centered.
BACKGROUND
▮▮▮ BIRTH
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▮▮▮ QUIRK DEVELOPMENT
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▮▮▮ THE PITVIPER
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▮▮▮ MIDDLE SCHOOL
.
CURRENT STATUS
▮▮▮ UA CLASS 1-A
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FAMILY
▮▮▮ SOUICHIRO MAMUSHI ⸻ ❛ the Pitviper ❜
〔 father 〕
Up until the age of nine, Airi was very close to her father. She thought of him as a strong, confident, kind man who provided (almost) everything she asked for and told her a bedtime story every night. Souichiro was an attentive, affectionate father who worked from 4am to midday, and therefore handled the children every day after school while their mother worked a more regular 9am-6m job. Airi has nothing but good memories of him up until his arrest.
She went through an intense grieving process afterward, struggling to reconcile the father she knew with the crimes he had committed. For the first year, she hated his guts, blaming him for his absence and for the struggles she and her mother and sisters went through during and after the trial. When her mother told her of the rejection and discrimination society had treated him with, Airi's opinion swung in the other direction; she started sympathising with her father instead and blaming his victims as though they were responsible for his choices. Her worried mother took her to therapy in response. After a couple of false starts, during which time Airi was labeled a 'future villain' in whispers, she began to learn more about the situation, and developed a more nuanced attitude as a result.
Currently, Airi and her sisters have no direct contact with her father. His incarceration in Tartarus prevents them from visiting and prohibits him from receiving mail, so they have to make do with passing messages along via their mother. Airi has not yet told him that she is studying at U.A., she is afraid of disappointing him.
▮▮▮ NAOMI UROKO
〔 mother 〕
Airi's mother is a quiet, devoted woman who has been dealt a difficult hand in life. In Airi's opinion, her only fault is not being outspoken enough. Naomi nods along with her daughter, but privately knows that diplomacy was her only option as the wife of a known villain. Naomi was not complicit in Souichiro's crimes, but had suspected for a long time that her husband was not entirely playing by the rules. She regrets having not taken a harder line in trying to stop Souichiro, but that is their only point of disagreement. They remain married, which has placed extra scrutiny on the family.
Naomi was aware of Airi's bullies. Despite being proactive in dealing with it, she was stonewalled by school administration for nearly two years. Admins refused to admit that the issue was as severe as she claimed, dismissing it as disagreements between children and at times implying that the family of a villain deserved to be abused. Naomi could not risk escalating the issue, or her children might be removed from the school; no other school in the city would admit a villain's spawn. Nevertheless, she kept trying despite all the odds.
Airi was fully aware that her mother was fighting a losing battle, and respects her immensely for it. She learned to cook and do basic household chores for her mother, so that Naomi could rest a little, and as a teenager would often volunteer to look after her little sisters without ever needing to be asked. She is fiercely loyal to Naomi.
▮▮▮ EMI & YURI MAMUSHI
〔 little sisters 〕
Emi and Yuri are significantly younger than Airi, at 9 and 7 years old respectively. Airi has taken on the role of a second caregiver for them in many respects, despite her mother's encouragement to focus on her own life first. She loves them deeply, and enjoys caring for them, particularly as they've grown older and are able to participate in household activities more actively. Emi and Yuri are very attached to their older sister, although they occasionally find her a little bossy. Airi has had to learn to relax and let them make their own mistakes.
Emi was newly three and Yuri was not quite a year old when their father was arrested. Neither understood why he was no longer a part of their lives, and Emi in particular found it traumatising. Yuri was young enough that she has no remaining memories of Souichiro at all. Airi has tried to protect them from the harsh treatment she and their mom faced, with limited success. Fortunately, by the time Emi was old enough to start school, the family had a powerful protector in the form of Koyomi Okushiri. Emi and Yuri are both generally treated like normal children, to their big sister's profound relief.
FRIENDS & CLASSMATES
▮▮▮ SHIGEKI OKUSHIRI-YAGI
〔 childhood friend 〕
Airi transferred into Shigeki's class in his second year of elementary school. They had little to do with each other at first; Airi was part of a large friend group alongside several of the children keeping Shigeki at arm's length. However, the year they both turned nine, Airi's father was arrested and prosecuted as a villain in a widely publicized trial. Airi's former friends turned on her overnight. She was ostracized far more thoroughly than Shigeki ever was, and often actively bullied. Shigeki noticed this, and after some initial hesitance he started to stand up for her where he could. Airi, tormented and angry, lashed out at him as an easy target. Shigeki steadfastly continued to support Airi, at the expense of his own reputation.
Eventually, a playground brawl in which she came off worst convinced Airi that teaming up with Shigeki (the tallest and heaviest kid in their year group and the one above) might be her only chance at safety. She made him promise not to use his Quirk on her, to which he patiently agreed, explaining that it was not something he was capable of using in secret even if he wanted to. Airi did not entirely believe him at first, but as the days and weeks went by, she came to realise that he had been genuine in his support. He introduced her to his friends and family, and tried to recruit his twin sister to help clear Airi's name. (Nagisa judged this a lost cause, but began steering her friend group away from those who continued bullying Airi.) He also recruited his mother to help force the school to take the bullying seriously. Airi thought little of this while it was happening, but looks back on it with intense gratitude.
Despite their very different personalities, Shigeki and Airi are very good friends. They work well as a team, communicating clearly and wholly trusting each other to do their part. They are comfortable going to each other for emotional support, and are physically close as well, often hugging and sitting close together. (Airi does this a lot because Shigeki is naturally warm and she's a snake who appreciates a good heat source.) They have been mistaken for a couple in the past, but neither has ever been interested in a romantic relationship; they are very much not each other's preferred Types.
▮▮▮ YUNAGI JUNJOUZAKA
〔 childhood friend 〕
Airi made friends with Yunagi through Shigeki. It was a slow process; Yunagi's shyness and Airi's prickly facade kept them apart for a long while. Ironically, it was an after-school fight that brought them together; Airi and Shigeki were confronted in a playground by a mob of Airi's former friends, who hurled sticks, stones, and abuse at them both. Then Yunagi came out of the dusk and spat fire at the bullies, who fled screaming. Yunagi was suspended and threatened with expulsion by the school admin, but the combined forces of Shigeki's family and Yunagi's enraged mother (and her connections to law enforcement) made the school back down. It helped that park security cameras had captured the bullies' abusive behaviour as well. In the end, Yunagi and the bullies got three days' suspension each, and when Yunagi came back to school, Airi sat with her and gave her a home-baked cupcake in thanks. They've been close friends ever since.
Airi doesn't know how she ended up setting up Yunagi with both of her boyfriends, but she's embraced her role as the group's matchmaker and agony aunt with a wicked sense of humour. She mostly gives Yunagi good solid advice like "don't just assume they know things, you've got to ask them plainly," and "communicate with them like an adult, goddamn!" Yunagi appreciates the blunt tone; she gets stuck in her own head sometimes and Airi is good at dragging her out.
▮▮▮ IZUKU MIDORIYA
〔 classmate 〕
Airi first took notice of Izuku in the UA entrance exam, when Iida scolded him for muttering. Later on, she was astounded to witness him taking down the zero-pointer robot. Shigeki introduced her to Izuku on the first day of school; Airi had trouble squaring away the anxious little first-year with the guy who had destroyed a robot the size of an office tower. She quickly came to respect him even so, thinging highly of his determination to stand up and do what was right even through his clear anxiety issues, and also his ability to think quickly and tactically in a firefight.
▮▮▮ KATSUKI BAKUGOU
〔 classmate 〕
At first, Airi wonders if Bakugou's snarling and temper is a cover for the same sort of bullying and sense of rejection she had experienced as an ostracised child. Then she finds out that actually, Bakugou had been one of the perpetrators, and her opinion of him dives right into the toilet. She is harsh and argumentative with him, unwilling to give an inch, and this of course incenses Bakugou. From time to time they have to be physically separated, although they haven't yet come to actual blows.
Bakugou's capture by the League of Villains is what begins to (slowly) change her mind; listening to Izuku rambling nervously about his shared childhood with Bakugou helps the process along. Airi, having been the community scapegoat for so long, is familiar with the idea of scapegoat/golden child dynamics, and the case of Bakugou and Midoriya makes her wonder if it's possible for such a dynamic to be played out on a community level. If so, she thinks, it's possible Bakugou's behaviour is a response to the more subtle abuse inflicted on the golden child.
▮▮▮ RENGE MIZUWARI
〔 friend 〕
Airi had heard of Renge's interesting personality through Yunagi, so when they finally met in person during the summer holidays, Airi was forewarned. They get along well as a result: Renge reminds Airi of Shigeki when he was younger, which inclines her to put up with the weirdnesses and social faux pas more than she ordinarily would. Meanwhile, Renge thinks Airi is Extremely Cool, and is so relieved to be accepted by Yunagi's other friends that she hardly notices the sharper edges of Airi's personality. They don't have a lot in common beyond their Heroics goals (and their shared friends), but this proves enough of a foundation to build a solid friendship upon.
In time, Airi becomes something of a social coach for Renge. Her own emotional maturity and experience in dealing with people gives her some ability to pick out where Renge's social skills are lacking, and point them out in a way that helps Renge. She is also very aware that Renge's social difficulties make her an easy target for social manipulators, and takes pains to point those out as well. Renge is grateful for both, and fascinated by the whole range of responses she gets to things that seem perfectly reasonable to her. She returns the favour by helping Airi with math homework and by paying for things as often as Airi will allow her (which isn't often).
▮▮▮ MAYUNA SHIRASAKI
〔 friend 〕
Airi first teamed up with Mayuna (and Shigeki) during the Sports Festival cavalry battle. Shigeki and Mayuna acted as the horses, while Airi was the rider. They did not get enough points to advance to the tournament, but they had fun and they did not come last, which was a slight consolation. Mayuna and Shigeki made instant friends, while Airi looked at their similarities and resigned herself to the inevitable. They teamed up again on the ill-fated summer camp, first as training partners and then in fighting for their lives against the invading villains. Airi spent most of the night in titanoboa form, with Shigeki and Mayuna clinging to her back. They took down two villains by themselves, using Airi's night vision, Shigeki's telepathy, and Mayuna's grappling skills.
Airi gets along easily with Mayuna; her cheery, easygoing nature isn't hard to relax around. She was a little worried Mayuna would react badly to her father's Villain status, but Mayuna just shrugged, and told her about her own mother's hatred for the retired Hero Dragonforce. Mayuna had been a little taken aback, but she is used to thinking of Heroes as complex human beings capable of both good and evil, and it didn't take much tweaking to apply the same principle to villains. Mayuna told Airi that actions are what counts, and as long as she continues to act like a proper Hero, that's all that matters. ("Watch me with Bakugou," Airi joked in response, but she appreciated the kind words more than she let on.)
▮▮▮ KATSUMI NAGATO
〔 friend 〕
Airi and Katsumi do not get along that well at first; they judge each other somewhat harshly initially. However, Airi learns from watching her interact with others that being unreactive is an effective way to keep her tolerable. She puts up with her for Shigeki's sake, and over time finds that she has more in common with Katsumi than she had thought. They share the distinction of being uncannily good at dealing with adrenaline and stress, and bond somewhat over the way that sometimes creeps out their classmates. Katsumi's straightforward impulsiveness suits Airi's preference for being blunt, and they both enjoy banter, sometimes to a level that makes their classmates think they're arguing for real. By the end of their first year, they have become close friends despite their shaky start.
Mayuna joked once that Katsumi is what you might get if you crossed Airi and Shigeki and gave the baby way too much caffeine. Airi looked at Katsumi in horror; Katsumi gave a delighted grin and immediately started calling her 'Mommy'. Shigeki thought this was hilarious until Katsumi called him 'Daddy'. Any time Katsumi wants to wind either of them up, all she has to do is drag out those nicknames. Airi can only be grateful she doesn't do it too often.
▮▮▮ HIKOU KAIURUNGI
〔 friend 〕
Once UA moved to the dorm system, Airi began noticing that one of the 1-B boys would often coincidentally be found in her vicinity. She asked Mayuna, who told her the boy's name was Hikou and he was kind of a weird loner, and then speculated that maybe he had a crush on her? This bothered Airi. She put up with him shadowing her for a few weeks, then ran out of patience and confronted him after school one day. Hikou admitted that he was trying to figure out if she was trans or nonbinary, and then confessed that he was trans himself. Taken by surprise, Airi asked what nonbinary meant. Hikou apologised for assuming (and for the lowkey stalking), and explained. They ended up sitting together on a little-used set of steps for a long time, puzzling out the intricacies of gender.
Airi introduced Hikou to Shigeki and Katsumi, and encouraged Mayuna to give him another chance. She'd found him standoffish and lacking genuine feeling; Airi felt certain that this was most probably Hikou trying to be masculine in a way that didn't really suit him. She kept his secret, but made sure that her friends didn't harbour transphobic beliefs and encouraged him to come out to them once she'd made sure. Hikou gradually relaxed enough to feel confident around them, and over time this extended to the rest of their classes.
TEACHERS & MENTORS
▮▮▮ KOYOMI OKUSHIRI ⸻ ❛ Borrower ❜
〔 personal idol 〕
The first time Airi met Koyomi, she was in full hedgehog mode, ready to be rejected for her Villain father yet again. Koyomi rocked her entire worldview by treating her with warmth and kindness nevertheless. When Koyomi stepped in to whip the school admin into doing their jobs, Airi's opinion of her rocketed straight into hero-worship. Airi being the person she is, she's never really let it show - but she thinks Koyomi is the coolest person ever and she wants to be that sort of badass when she grows up. Koyomi encouraged her dreams of becoming a Hero, and has taught Airi all sorts of tricks from dressing to impress to throwing knives.
▮▮▮ SHUUSUI HIWATARI ⸻ ❛ Sabertooth ❜
〔 hero mentor 〕
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▮▮▮ TOSHINORI YAGI ⸻ ❛ All Might ❜
〔 teacher 〕
Airi had only met Shigeki's father a couple of times before he was injured, and like many others, she had assumed he was an American businessman. When Toshinori began tutoring the twins in combat skills more seriously, Airi was occasionally invited to join in, and became a regular fixture after she settled on becoming a Hero herself. Toshinori told her his usual cover (that he was All Might's personal secretary), and Airi believed this at first... but over time, she realised a few things did not add up, and came to the conclusion that Toshinori was All Might himself. She kept this conclusion to herself, just in case she was wrong, but by the time of the Kamino Incident, she was certain. (She had also guessed that All Might kept his true identity secret to protect his family, and had no desire to jeopardise this.)
Airi had always thought highly of All Might, like most people. Unlike most kids, she works well with his unpolished teaching style, able to make the leaps of intuition that fill in the gaps in what he's saying, and familiar with his distractible train of thought and odd metaphors thanks to her association with Shigeki, who is much the same. The first time she met him, she worried that he would judge her by her father's crimes, but like the rest of his family he treated her with kindness and sympathy. She does not feel that she owes him her loyalty, but she is loyal to him nevertheless, because he proves with his actions that he is worthy of it.
▮▮▮ SHOUTA AIZAWA ⸻ ❛ Eraserhead ❜
〔 teacher 〕
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