Tatami Nakagame

Everything about Tatami points toward the sea. Turquoise earrings shaped like fish dangle from both ears with the tails aimed at the floor, and her short ash blonde hair spikes into two side clumps that read as fins, one chin-length strand hanging beside her right cheek. Her build is soft but carries visible muscle, her skin is pale, and a mouthful of large pointed teeth usually shows because she is usually grinning. Rectangular eyes sit wide on her face, lashes heavy above and defined below, the blue irises small inside them.

For hero work she zips herself into an aquamarine turtleneck bodysuit whose sleeves stop midway down each upper arm. Salmon gloves and boots that reach her thighs finish the look, cuffed with trios of little hexagons that suggest turtle feet, and a slim cyan belt closes at a round pink buckle set with a pale shell-shaped gem.

The eight years after the Final War leave her taller and calmer looking, the spikes in her hair mostly gone. Her rebuilt costume keeps the silhouette and adds detail: navy shoulder guards modeled on shell plating, gloves and boots extended toward shoulder and hip, openings edged in tighter hexagons that now suggest scales, a frilled neckline, no belt at all, and squid-shaped earrings in deep pink.

Sociable and upbeat, Tatami had no hesitation about walking up to rival students for a signature, and she gets along easily with the classmates she clearly likes. Her official profile pegs her as someone who moves with the crowd and latches onto whatever is popular, which is exactly what her request to Shoto Todoroki was about, since he had just become briefly famous at the Sports Festival.

The friendlier side comes packaged with a habit of nitpicking. When Yo Shindo botched an attempt to talk civilians into evacuating, she trailed after him repeating that his pitch had been terrible. She also names her peers' flaws out loud without much worry, as when she pegged Yo for sneakiness. The two of them are, according to supplementary material, a couple.

Ketsubutsu's class turns up for the Provisional Hero License Exam not long after All Might steps down, and Ms. Joke introduces the group to Shota Aizawa and Class 1-A. Tatami recognizes the U.A. students from Sports Festival coverage and immediately asks Shoto for an autograph. Inside Takoba National Stadium the friendliness ends: her school opens the exam by ambushing U.A., part of a tradition among rival schools of targeting them first. Fumikage Tokoyami nearly lands a hit on her, and she escapes by folding her torso down into her waist, startled at how much Class 1-A has improved. Yo levels the field with Tremoring Earth, his gambit of outlasting the other schools works, and Ketsubutsu advances. The rescue phase suits them, as they set up a first aid zone and pull actors out efficiently, then help move the wounded once the staged villains arrive.

Her Quirk, Telescopic, lets her head, torso, and limbs collapse into themselves the way a turtle withdraws. The collapse happens instantly; coming back out costs her a moment. Rocket Punch and Rocket Dash are listed among her finishing moves. Work-studies later pair her with Yo again.

By the Dark Hero Arc the two are third-years canvassing for civilians to move into evacuation zones, and one group refuses them outright. Then Muscular, now calling himself Jailbreaker, drops onto a nearby building. Yo tells her to get the civilians clear and takes the villain alone, and he is pinned and nearly crushed before a masked stranger flings Muscular away. Tatami takes the unconscious Yo, scolds him for the recklessness, and half-recognizes the rescuer's voice without seeing his face through the smoke. The man is Izuku Midoriya. The shaken civilians finally agree to listen. In the war that follows she is among the heroes surrounding Skeptic's hideout after La Brava seizes his systems, and later she volunteers for the reinforcement wave that Shota Aizawa teleports to Mount Fuji to carve a path toward Tomura Shigaraki. She graduates afterward and turns pro.