Jin Kiyora

Small and slight, Kiyora is a teenager whose dark, curly, wispy hair drops a fringe across his left eye. Inside the program he wears the issued bodysuit, black with blue striping, and the matching tracksuit. His shirts changed by stage: Team White's number twenty-one through Second Selection, Team A's twenty-one in the Third, and Bastard Munchen's tracksuit under the number sixty-nine once the Neo Egoist League began.

For the most part Kiyora is terse and blunt, given to a curt reply of Kay whenever someone tells him what to do. The quiet exterior hides a scrapper, though; he enjoys picking fights, and Tabito Karasu writes him off as a bit of a meathead. That side surfaced when he wandered into the wrong training room and, rather than check, simply ordered Seishiro Nagi to clear out on the assumption Nagi was the one in the wrong place.

Beneath the bluntness sits a keen instinct forged by a life of split-second choices on what he calls the borderline. Able to feel the precise instant that calls for action, he backs whoever he judges the underdog, betting that lifting them to victory will earn him the most credit in return.

Kiyora is filed as a forward, but his real value lies in a physical game that belies his tiny frame. His core strength is remarkable: he can hold firm on all fours even with a taller opponent draped across his back, and he fuses that stability with breakdancing to become almost impossible to read. From that base come his Twister Pass, a handstand trap and spin that flicks the ball away while he twists, and his Acrobatic Pass, a mid-air delivery he pulls off even as he is being tackled. His dribbling adds another layer, a flurry of light, rapid touches that scramble a defender's grasp of his next move.

His finishing tool is Grounder Kick Accuracy, a gift for pinpoint shots and passes that skim along the turf, which earned him Nagi's label of a grounder utility player. The Grounder Backspin Pass sends a heavily spun ball through a tight lane and stalls it dead in front of a teammate, the very setup that let Michael Kaiser unleash his Kaiser Impact Magnus for a super goal. He also owns a Grounder Backspin Accelerating Shot, a low drive loaded with backspin that grazes the ground before curling sharply upward into the net. Both times Kiyora has entered Flow, the total-immersion zone, he did so through that grounder accuracy, scoring in the Second Selection and assisting Kaiser in Bastard Munchen's final Neo Egoist League fixture.