Kyoka Jiro

The plug-tipped cables trailing from Kyoka's earlobes are the thing anyone notices first. They behave like spare limbs, stretch on command, and answer to her will. She is short and slight otherwise, with black triangular eyes, notably long lower lashes, and small brows. Chin-length dark purple hair frames her face with two loose strands, its uneven fringe carrying two marks shaped like sound waves.

Her school outfit is the standard U.A. set for girls: a gray jacket with teal striping, two folded pockets, two gold buttons, a white shirt, a red tie, a teal pleated skirt, knee socks, and brown shoes. Her hero gear started out as a black leather jacket thrown over a salmon shirt long enough to be ripped at both collar and hem, dark trousers, and boots whose shafts house stereo cones, finished with white fingerless gloves, a plain choker, and two small red triangles painted under her eyes. Headphones and a pair of amplifier bracelets joined the kit later, and the paint grew into larger chevrons.

The Paranormal Liberation War left the right jack scarred. All For One took far more during the Final War, blowing away most of her left ear along with the jack attached to it, and she now wears a shell-shaped prosthetic in whitish gray, which dispenses an artificial jack from underneath. Eight years on she is taller, the back of her hair reaches her shoulders, and her asymmetrical bangs sweep the opposite way. The current costume is a black jacket with no sleeves atop a white tank, white and purple headphones with red accents covering the prosthetic, red gloves plus two mid-length black bands serving the Amplifier Jacks, and bulkier boots whose soles are punched with a pair of red holes. The face paint is gone, purple nail polish has replaced it, and the artificial jack now reads as flesh-colored with a pink tip.

Blunt, unimpressed, and quick with a barb, Kyoka aims most of that at people who irritate her, Denki Kaminari above all, since his cluelessness makes him a standing target. It is not the whole picture. She likes company and is genuinely warm with Momo Yaoyorozu and the rest of the girls in her class. Her earlobes do a fair amount of her gesturing, and they do her enforcement too, snapping out to smack Denki or Minoru Mineta back into line when they push it. Hero work brings out something else entirely: she plans, and she lays the plan out in terms people can follow, which surprises anyone who mistakes her flat delivery for disengagement.

Underneath the cold front sits somebody fiercely protective of her friends, quick to read what other people are feeling, and completely undone by compliments about her own ability. Horror rattles her, nudity embarrasses her, and she is touchier about her looks than she admits, hurt when Minoru did not find her attractive and violent toward Denki and Yuga Aoyama for calling her dorm room unladylike.

Rock runs in the family. She owns a shelf of instruments and can play most of them to some degree, though she treated the whole interest as a private embarrassment at first, convinced it had nothing to do with heroism. The U.A. School Festival cured her of that.

Overall Abilities: Close-quarters brawling is not her habit, but her command of Earphone Jack is thorough. She whips the prehensile jacks around like cords and channels vibration through them to stun opponents or drop them outright. By the Provisional Hero License Exam she could sink both into the ground and shake it hard enough to open fissures and scatter entire enemy formations. That performance drew Gang Orca's attention, and interning under the No. 12 hero sharpened her search work considerably. On Nabu Island she and Mashirao Ojiro made up the fourth defensive line facing Nine, and their ambush landed before Hydra put them both down; with Mezo Shoji added, the three forced Nine to open up Air Wall at full power to finish them.

Keen Intellect: She placed seventh in the midterms and thinks tactically under pressure, most memorably by exploiting how volatile Denki's Electrification is to let him electrocute a crowd of them at the U.S.J. Incident. Indomitable Will: rarer, but decisive. Facing All For One in the Final War she shrugged off terror that should have flattened her, and her defiance stirred rebellion among the vestiges of the Quirks he had stolen, though he suspected that had something to do with him wielding a duplicate rather than the original. Musical Talent: bass is her instrument of choice, guitar close behind, drums to a limited extent, and her singing voice has been described as husky but heavenly.

Earphone Jack: The jacks stretch several meters and pick up minute sounds and vibrations around her. Plugged into something, they transmit her heartbeat as a violent vibrational attack. She trained by driving them into a stone cliff over and over to widen the range of audio she could take in. Counter-Balance pushes a wave out through her boot amplifiers to cancel incoming sound attacks. Heartbeat Distortion slams her forearm amplifiers into the floor and shatters the ground. Heartbeat Surround has her earlobes pull those amplifiers off her wrists and aim them at a target point-blank for a short-range blast, with Legato as the larger, louder escalation of the same move, while Heartbeat Wall uses the identical setup to raise a barrier of sound that blocks enemy movement. Her equipment covers the Amplifier Jack bracelets, stereo boots that direct the vibration and can even launch her airborne, headphones that complement her jacks' pickup, and the prosthetic ear, which extends and retracts the way the original did.