Aya Midorinawa

**Aya Midorinawa** *(緑縄彩 Midorinawa Aya)*, also known as the **"Sci-Fi Hero Interceptor"**, was a Pro Hero and Koharu Midorinawa's mother.

## Status

### Family

Koharu Midorinawa (daughter)Haruyoshi Sato (husband; deceased)

## Appearance

Aya was a very tall woman with dark purple hair and sharp heterochromatic eyes. Her left eye was amber and her right eye was blue. She possessed very well-defined muscles that were often hidden under loose clothing.

Her hero costume was a high-collared military officer-style uniform with a matching cap. Early in her career the outfit was all black, but she later switched to a navy blue and finally a purple variation. Each iteration of the costume also included a light blue visor and brown knee-high boots. The third version added a short white cape.

Back in her high school days, her costume was a light blue jumpsuit with a large white tape recorder-shaped chest piece. She also wore a large "fish bowl" helmet and carried a plastic blaster.

## Personality

As a Pro Hero, Aya gained a reputation as a fearless, no-nonsense woman. She was known for being incredibly fierce when taking down villains and her fights were popular in the media with polarizing reception. Publicly, she was seen as being disciplined and incredibly devoted to her work bringing villains to justice. She didn't make too much of an effort to stand out or become incredibly popular, though her efficiency and dedication garnered fame nonetheless.

Privately, however, Aya's life was marked with a lot of anxiety and self-consciousness. Her responsibilities and public image as a hero were a source of a lot of stress and she had trouble balancing them with other aspects of her life, such as her romance and later on her role as a parent. She was worried about how any of her decisions could be perceived and judged by those around her and it had a large impact on how she acted. For these reasons, she would often criticize the way heroes were treated like celebrities and how modern hero culture sometimes distracts from a hero's real duties to protect and defend the innocent. This also lead to her considering quitting hero work, but what kept her from doing so was a strong desire to help people and the fact that she couldn't ignore any sort of injustice.

Aya was very secretive about her personal life, especially her relationships and sexuality.

## History

After graduating from high school, Aya spent almost two years traveling around to various martial arts dojos to train and prepare herself for fighting villains. When she felt she'd honed her skills enough, she applied for and got a sidekick position in a big hero office. It was here that she first met Itsuko Taikan and Haruyoshi Sato, the other two new sidekick recruits.

About a year later, Aya and Itsuko began dating. However, Aya was unaware that Itsuko had already been dating Haru for a few months by that time and was cheating on him. Once Aya found out, she angrily broke up with Itsuko. The tension and animosity (mostly on Aya's part) between the two led to Itsuko leaving the hero office. Aya worked her way up and was eventually able to become a full-fledged Hero with her own office. In this time, she also partnered with Haruyoshi Sato to form a hero team and married him in a private ceremony. The two had a happy marriage and partnership until Haruyoshi was killed in action.

At Haruyoshi's funeral, Aya encountered Itsuko - who had attended to pay respects in secret - for the first time in years. Their initial meeting was rather awkward, but they did manage to forgive each other for their past actions and agreed to stay in touch. They grew closer once Aya found out she was pregnant and Itsuko began visiting her more often to help her take care of herself and later her child, which led to them rekindling their romance.

While not entirely intentional, Aya was a rather neglectful parent. Despite all her and Itsuko's best efforts to make time for her to spend with Koharu, Aya failed to connect well with her daughter. Their relationship was somewhat helped when Koharu ended up developing the exact same Quirk as Aya. She began giving Koharu little tricks and pointers with using Tractor Beam, but her Hero work left her with no time or energy to make many meaningful interactions out of this.

When Koharu was nine, Aya decided it was about time she made a greater effort to bond with her daughter. For this reason, Aya took her on a tour of her hero office during a school holiday. However, the tour was cut short when a group of villains were spotted outside and Aya had to go deal with them. During the ensuing fight, Koharu was caught in the crossfires and Aya shielded her from the blow. This left her with fatal injuries and she died with her daughter in her arms.

## Quirk and Abilities

**Physical Strength:** At one point, she allegedly roundhouse kicked a man through a bicycle rack with enough force to knock him out, demonstrating her impressive physical prowess.

**Hand-to-Hand Combat:** Aya was proficient in many martial arts. This was backed up by her physical strength, making her a formidable fighter even without her Quirk.

### Quirk

**Tractor Beam:** Aya possessed the same Quirk as her daughter Koharu, granting her the ability to project green beams capable of attaching to and holding objects. She was only shown using her Quirk with her hands and it is unknown if she was able to activate it with her legs or eyes like Koharu can. Her beams also had a shorter range than Koharu’s, reaching only around two meters, but they were much stronger and able to lock onto much larger objects. She was able to stop a car using just one beam and even lifted it off the ground with two.

Like her daughter, she incorporated her Quirk into hand-to-hand combat, but not in the same way. Contrasting Koharu’s disruptive hit-and-run tactics, Aya had a more aggressive and somewhat simpler approach. She could lift people off the ground and throw them with ease, which she often did for crowd control.

## Relationships

### Koharu Midorinawa

Aya had a lot of difficulty managing her life as both a Pro Hero and a single mother. Her work and responsibilities didn't allow her to spend much time bonding with Koharu. Despite this, she truly loved her daughter, demonstrated when she didn't hesitate to make the ultimate sacrifice to save Koharu's life during a villain attack.

### Itsuko Taikan

In the past, when she discovered Itsuko was using her as a "side-chick" while dating Haru, she was extremely upset with her and cut off communication. A few years later, though, after Haru's death, she came to regret her behavior and found it in her to forgive Itsuko, after which their newly-repaired friendship eventually blossomed once again into romance. Even though she was constantly afraid of their relationship being exposed and outing her sexuality, she really loved and cared for Itsuko. By the time they'd been dating for a few years, she'd also gained an incredible amount of trust in her as well, enough that she felt confident entrusting Itsuko with the care of her only child should something happen to her.

### Haruyoshi Sato

Haruyoshi and Aya became friends after simultaneously breaking up with Itsuko. They eventually fell in love and got married. According to Aya, they talked extensively about having children together and were both enthusiastic about becoming parents, but Haruyoshi died before Aya even found out she was pregnant. His death weighed on Aya heavily and affected her confidence in her parenting ability, leading her to inadvertently distance herself from their daughter. Aya's love for her late husband is evident in their child, as her name, Koharu, is partially derived from Haruyoshi.

## Trivia

* Her first name Aya *(彩)* means "color". This is a reference to her heterochromia, which gives her two differently-colored eyes.
	+ Like her daughter Koharu, her name is based on her eye color.
* Her epithet as the "Sci-Fi Hero" references how tractor beams (the namesake of her Quirk) are popularly portrayed in science fiction media.

## Concept/Creation Trivia

* "Aya" was originally going the name of Koharu's younger sister, but I scrapped the sister early on and made Koharu an only child. I eventually re-used the name for her mother when I began developing her character.
* Her husband/Koharu's father isn't an important character at all and I don't intend to go into much detail about him, but I realized he needed a name so I wouldn't have to keep calling him "Koharu's father" all the time. I looked up some really common Japanese names and surnames to use and at first got "Haru Sato". Later I changed it to "Haru*yoshi"* after I gave Koharu the nickname "Haru" so that I could differentiate the two of them.
* Since Horikoshi is a Star Wars fan, I used a list of Star Wars ship names to figure out her hero name. I found one that was called a "something-Interceptor" and used that.
* Just for fun, her high school hero costume is based on Wendy Oldbag's "space suit" from Ace Attorney.