Habuko Mongoose

Below the collarbone she is an ordinary girl, petite and fair skinned. Above it, her neck and head belong to a gray patterned snake, the eyes a bright yellow split by slit pupils, with a shock of red hair spiked out around the crown and falling to her shoulders.

Her Isami High uniform pairs a white dress shirt, its dark red bow knotted just under the collar, with a dark blue blazer, a pleated gray skirt cut at the knee, black socks reaching just below it, and brown loafers with no adornment.

Her hero costume is a blue bodysuit with a raised collar and heels built in, serpent patterning tracing down the arms and legs. Darker blue straps cross her shoulders and a panel like a snake's chest runs over her torso. A long yellow cloth ties at her waist, and split yellow-tinted visors sit over each eye.

She used to think of herself as treacherous and disagreeable company, a self-image that grew out of the isolation she lived in rather than anything she had actually done. Friendship with Tsuyu turned that around, and a photo of the new friends she made in high school shows how far she came.

The shyness never fully left her. An introduction to Class 1-A sent her ducking behind Kashiko Sekigai, her class president.

Two years before Tsuyu enrolled at U.A., the two attended Salty Banks Middle School together. Habuko took to following her, and she regularly turned Enfeeble on her, locking her in place three seconds at a time. Tsuyu let it pass, recognizing the same loneliness in Habuko that she carried herself. Eventually Tsuyu worked up the nerve to ask her to be friends. Habuko, touched by the kindness, said yes. They graduated together and split for different high schools, and the friendship held anyway, becoming the thing that pushed each of them to socialize and make friends elsewhere.

A day after the new school year opened at U.A., Habuko messaged Tsuyu that she had made friends of her own and would introduce them at their next meeting. The chance came during a Class 1-A training session, where she arrived as one of four Isami Academy guests for the Survival Training exercise. She hid behind Kashiko through the introductions, then spotted Tsuyu, and the two embraced. In the locker room Tsuyu explained their middle school history while Toru Hagakure, Mina Ashido, and Ochaco Uraraka struggled to get past how Habuko looked.

The exercise put her on Team F with her Isami classmates. Dadan Tadan opened with a missile barrage of Flash Bang Sweat, after which the Isami students went scouting and ran into Team B: Katsuki Bakugo, Eijiro Kirishima, Momo Yaoyorozu, and Mezo Shoji, all of whom had cloaked themselves against the flash. Habuko froze them with her Quirk, but Katsuki jumped a fraction before it caught him and struck once it wore off. Romero Fujimi then loosed his Zombie Virus across the area and turned everyone nearby, Habuko included. Later, the zombified Habuko came across Tsuyu and recognized her well enough not to attack; Tsuyu, moved by the strength of that bond, dropped her guard and took a bite from a zombified Yuga Aoyama. When the exercise wrapped and the Isami students prepared to leave, the two said goodbye agreeing it had been fun despite being turned and hurt afterward, and promised each other they would become great Pro Heroes.

Enfeeble runs on eye contact: staring into a target's eyes leaves them limp and immobile for three seconds while they remain fully conscious.