Age: 15
Nationality: Japan
Rank: 42
Costume: Her costume is rather simple at the moment, favouring practicality and function over fashion; a white sports bra and short, similar to the ring attire of a boxer, plain and without ornamentation. She plans on updating this once she decides on a hero name and colour scheme, but the core design likely won’t change; at the moment her only concession towards looking like a hero is a hard white mask in the shape of a kitsune’s face.
Personality: The first impression most people have of Akeno is one of composure and quiet focus, though this of course depends on the context of their first meeting. Above all else she is a hard-working individual who is dedicated to her dream, someone who pushed themselves to excel; as a result she can come across as a little intense at time, but she is also friendly and sociable to those she interacts with.
Akeno has a drive to succeed which means that she always pushes herself to do more, to do better. She expects a lot from herself, sometimes more than she can actually give, and at the same time always sees herself as not achieving as much as she should. She’s harsh on herself, always beating herself up for mistakes and trying to nit-pick or undersell her victories; losses are hard for her but she’s used to them, and while wins are nice they are no reason to stop progressing.
It’s fair to say that Akeno undervalues herself and that she has a self-deprecating view of her capabilities; this leads her to have a competitive streak, insomuch as she doesn’t like to lose and she constantly compares her achievements to those of others. She doesn’t like being outdone by someone, but she never takes it out on the person in question, instead she will only tell herself to set that person’s achievement as her new goal and pursue it.
Although she can be tough on herself, she is generally supportive of others and won’t allow them to be tough on themselves. Instead she pushes others to believe in themselves and to keep moving forward. That being said she is not one to coddle people; it is important, in her opinion, to maintain a firm knowledge of one’s own strengths and limitations so that one can best know how to improve themselves. Harsh truths mixed with genuine compliments are her usual response when asked for her opinion on someone and she’s not someone who ever learned to hold back; she’s exactly as truthful as she would want someone to be with her if she was doing something wrong or needed to improve on something, which can be a little bit much for some people.
Akeno is a sociable person, one who enjoys the company of others but who also values time to herself and doesn’t mind being alone. She’s not exactly outgoing but also doesn’t shy away from social situations, she doesn’t seek the limelight nor is she particularly bothered by it. She maintains a calm, relaxed façade most of the time, her reactions subdued which can make it hard to tell how strongly she feels something even if her exact emotion is easy to decipher; in other words she smiles when she is happy but not broadly, she frowns whether she is annoyed or furious and is only a little quieter than normal when upset.
Quirk: Hothead
Type: Emitter
Effect: Akeno is able to raise her internal temperature, thereby increasing the heat produced by her body, and in doing so make it so that her skin grows hotter and hotter to the point that making contact with her is painful. Currently this Quirk can increase her temperature to the point that touching her feels like placing your hand on a cast iron radiator that has been on for too long, or sticking your hand under a hot tap; scalding and liable to give a minor burn after several seconds on continuous contact.
The downside of this Quirk is that it can cause her to overheat herself, leaving Akeno feeling lightheaded and even causing her to pass out if she uses it for too long. Additionally, as of right now she is unable to control her Quirk too well, unable to regulate her temperature or limit its usage to a specific part of her body, so it's all or nothing for the moment. However, a side benefit of this Quirk is that she is resistant to both low and high temperatures; cold weather doesn’t have much impact on her as she can raise her temperature to counter the chill and her skin is resistant to heat up to and slightly exceeding her own output, meaning that she cannot burn herself or be burned by something that is as hot as herself.
History: Akeno is tall. She is very tall. A height of 5’ 11” might not seem that impressive to some people, but when you’re 5’ 8” at the age of 13 and are significantly taller than everyone in your class except your teacher, it kind of becomes part of your identity. Along with her height Akeno has always been somewhat gifted athletically, finding it easy to maintain a slim build and having good control over her body; volleyball, basketball, even soccer all came fairly naturally to her and even though she wasn’t as skilled as someone who trained regularly she could make up for some of that with her natural talent and physique.
As a child Akeno was always very active, always playing sports with the boys rather than hanging out with other girls and always trying to keep up with her older brother. She loved swimming especially and the family would often visit the swimming pool in the local gym so she and her brother could swim. When she was 8 her father signed her up for karate lessons after she watched a few too many martial arts movies and expressed an interest, which in Akeno’s case means she wouldn’t stop talking about it until they agreed to let her try it.
It was about a year after this that Akeno first expressed an interest in becoming a hero; although she can’t remember exactly what it was that sparked this interest, perhaps something she had seen on TV or read about, it soon consumed her life. Her karate lessons now became her hero training, she spent hours coming up with costume ideas or hero names and she was always pestering her brother to play heroes and villains with her. While most children went through a phase like this, with Akeno it stuck and as she grew up she began to take it more seriously. She asked to switch dojos to one with a more serious instructor, pushed for more training and looked into hero schools and development programs. The one thing she didn’t do was practice her Quirk, for some reason.
It was still too early for her to attend one of the hero academies however, so alongside her time spend training and dreaming of being a hero she continued to attend a regular school. Once she started attending middle school and she hit her growth spurt it wasn’t long before most of the sports clubs in her school were scouting her out for membership. It was fun for her to be so popular at first and she went along with it, trying out the various club activities while not committing to any one in particular; at this point she was still taking her karate lessons and likely wouldn’t have any extra time for a club anyway, but she still went along with it because it was fun and she might have found one that caught her interest.
Eventually did find one to her liking when she found the school’s wrestling team. By this point she’d been taking karate for years and although she enjoyed it immensely, she wasn’t sure how long she wanted to pursue it once she became a hero. Wrestling was a change of pace, a new way to test herself and a whole new set of challenges to overcome; besides, with the way her Quirk worked grappling was probably a more useful fighting style than just karate on its own anyway, though that wasn’t her first, second or even third thought when she made the decision to join. She was a member of the team for the last two years of middle school before graduating, while she continued to attend karate lessons on the side when possible.
Once Akeno graduated from middle school she was able to begin submitted applications to various hero academies, though due to where she lived and the lack of dormitories at most schools her only real option in Japan was U.A. She was apprehensive about applying to one of the four biggest academies in Japan, but with few options available she did so regardless. However, just as she had feared, she was unable to pass the entrance exam; her Quirk was useless against the robotic combatants and her physical abilities weren’t enough either and she ended the exam with 0 points for combat and only a few for heroic acts.
With her chances of attending the most prestigious hero academy in Japan vanquished, Akeno wasn’t sure what she was going to do until the acceptance letter from New Heights arrived. She had submitted her application on a whim, with little hope of being accepted, but the fact that the school didn’t have a typical entrance exam and the rumours that admittance was random meant she had little reason not to at least try.
It seemed her gamble had paid off. Even if she couldn’t attend U.A., new Heights was almost as good.
Exam Report: The exam at New Heights didn’t go much different to the one at U.A. for Akeno; her Quirk was still too weak to do anything to the robots and she was still unable to score a single point for taking one down in combat. However, this time the added element of the ribbons gave her another chance to score points, but even then she wasn’t able to collect many; time and time again she found herself falling behind those with Quirks that let them move around, always too slow to reach a ribbon, always a step behind. She managed to collect a few, so as not to finish last, but still found herself in the bottom ten students.
