Noel Niihashi

Tall and full-figured, Noel keeps a solemn look on her face beneath waist-length black hair and long bangs, her blue eyes set near a small white horn budding from her left temple. For school she wears the black three-button suit and short skirt of a South Braxton uniform with dark leggings and brown shoes.

On the job she swaps that for the Rangers' green suit, a red-and-black plaid cape knotted at the throat with a thick red bow, a green skirt holstering her Witch Kit at the right thigh, and dark leggings, the left one striped in white. Off duty she lounges in little more than a loose sweater.

Composed and dryly matter-of-fact, Noel favors uniforms precisely because they announce who she is without a word, and she insists on being addressed by her chosen first name. A committed Japanophile who has never set foot in Japan, she adopted the name Noel for its Japanese girlishness and set the Dragon Ball narration as her ringtone; she also softens around Balgo Parks's dog Osushi, for whom she keeps treats on hand. Even at her gentlest she stays even-keeled, having lost her temper only twice, both times when Osushi demanded to see her underwear.

At home she is warmer, tending her Planty Potties and reading the paper, though she walls Balgo off behind a curtain and turns aside his relentless advances with fists and kicks. Where Ninny hungers for rank, Noel simply wants the pay, content to pasture Dragons rather than chase a Sabre posting and reckless enough to grab a bounty alone so she need not split the reward. For all that, a real tenderness shows through: she fretted that Balgo might be executed for touching a Dragon and grudgingly allowed that he had been impressive after he shielded Ninny.

For all her calm, Noel hits hard, dropping Balgo with a single roundhouse kick and sending the far larger Shelby flying with another. That physical prowess makes her an accomplished hand-to-hand fighter, and she is an equally deft spellcaster, stunning a Dark Dragon with a low Stunball, frightening off a huge Dragon with Blue Spark, and firing a high-order Gatling Claw without pausing to chant. She can also raise concealing Cloth barriers and, joining her incantation to Ninny's, helped bind the molted Cinderella with Supernal Jail.

Her weapon is a white Witch Kit tipped with three teal discs, from which she looses her signature Absolute Dragon Shatter, a braced, devastating blast that tears a Dragon apart. She travels on a light-blue Broombuggy named Wordsworth, a placid, flower-tailed mount to which she is closely bonded.