Mahoro Shimano

Freckles dust the middle of Mahoro's face, and her brown hair hangs straight in pigtails bound with bubble-shaped bands in deep pink. She is small, her eyes a dark brown, and a broad sun hat usually shades them, its rim striped pale pink and its crown wrapped with a darker scarf and bow. A black tank top sits under her pink dress, which has darker straps and buttons, and her white sandals carry a pink stripe along the sole with flower shapes set at either side. A floral charm hangs from the bracelet on her left wrist, the twin of Katsuma's; their mother made both by hand.

Eight years past the Final War she has grown considerably. Her hair is dyed blonde now, and she wears earrings shaped like explosions, an apparent nod to Katsuki. Her uniform pairs a dark blue skirt with a green tie and a white dress shirt under a light blue blazer, finished with brown loafers over shin-high socks.

Mahoro is stubborn and forms her verdicts on people fast. Losing her mother and living with a father whose work kept him away made her ferociously protective of Katsuma, and it also raised her estimate of the man himself; for a long stretch, nobody else in the world qualified as a hero in her eyes.

Everything she did to Class 1-A was calculated to make that case. Sending Katsuma running for help so the students would sprint in and find nothing but a hologram monster was the point, not a prank. Nine's arrival broke the argument in her hands. She called out when he came for Katsuma's Quirk and Izuku Midoriya answered, and when Nine had him beaten she threw an S.O.S. Hologram into the sky begging for more. Izuku's rescue and the speech that followed left her openly stunned.

By the end of the film, with Izuku and Katsuki wrecked by Nine's attacks, she was in tears shouting at them not to quit. When the heroes left, she and her brother ran the length of the harbor deck waving and thanking them.

Mahoro lives on Nabu Island with Katsuma and their father, their mother having died some time before. Her Quirk, Hologram, projects images of anything she pictures, at any scale she likes, including enormous ones; none of it can touch the physical world, which is precisely what made the fake monster useless as a threat and perfect as an argument.

She used it that way throughout Class 1-A's stay on the island under the Hero Work Recommendation Project, working to talk Katsuma out of wanting to be a hero and pointing him at their father as the better model. Nine's invasion put both siblings in the middle of the fighting, since Katsuma's Quirk was what the villain had come for, and Izuku and Katsuki ended up defending them across the whole engagement. Mahoro's opinion of heroes turned over the course of that day.

Eight years on from the Final War, she is enrolled at an unnamed college.