Airu Hagami

This article, Airu Hagami, is currently under construction by its rightful owner, **Greenie8511**. As a work in progress, some information may be underdeveloped, inconsistent, or unavailable at this time, so please bear with any and all changes made by Greenie, as she is far too lazy to keep up with her many projects.

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> *When it comes down to it — when you really think about what's on the line — you can't afford to hesitate. You do what needs to be done and never look back.*
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> — ***Airu Hagami***
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**Airu Hagami** (葉(は)神(がみ) 藍(あい)瑠(る), *Hagami Airu*?) also known as **Adamant** (アダマント, *Adamanto*?), is a student in Delta Cohort (CΔ) of the Tasai Institute (TAI). She was recruited by her current teacher and school-affiliated scout Suzume Kurabayashi to join the Heroics Division. As a first-year student, she is currently training to become a Pro Hero.

## Appearance

Airu is a teenage girl of average height with a slender, athletic build and a pale complexion. She has straight, cobalt blue hair which is generally seen tied back into a high ponytail with two loose strands hanging in front, ending at her chest. When left unstyled, her hair is cleanly cut at the small of her back. Her eyes are silver with prominent dark eyelashes and are slightly upturned and narrow in shape.

Since her Quirk is activated involuntarily through touch, Airu is almost always seen wearing gloves in order to prevent herself from unintentionally using it against someone. Her usual set was a simple pair of fitted, black, tactical gloves, although these were later replaced after she was gifted another set by her classmates on her birthday, a pair of black leather gloves emblazoned with the swirled delta insignia of her cohort in silver.

During school hours, Airu wears the standard female uniform, which consists of a cropped, white, black-lined blazer; a burgundy ribbon tie; a long-sleeved colored white shirt; and a knee-length black skirt with white lining. She forgoes the blazer and wears a short-sleeved white shirt instead during summer months, as outlined by the TAI dress code. She wears a worn pair of black combat boots with white laces along with her black gloves, both items of which she's usually never seen without in casual wear. Her uniform specially features a burgundy swirled-delta insignia emblazoned on the left breast of both her blazer and shirt, a class-specific emblem which signifies that she's a student within the Delta Cohort. She additionally has a small brass star above the pocket on her blazer, which represents her role as Ace.

## Personality

MBTI: INTJ

Enneagram: 5w6

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Likes: Meditation, martial arts, boots

Dislikes: Touch, high frequency sound, waiting rooms, sudden movements

Attributes:

Airu is a fiercely independent and stoical girl with a deep sense of conviction, never hesitating to take action when needed. Calculated and reserved, she generally comes off as quite guarded and solitary, as she remains naturally skeptical of others. This is because of a deep-seated struggle she's had with trust and abandonment since she was constantly vilified and virtually friendless for much of her life. Although initially quite distant and standoffish toward her classmates, she's become much more open both socially and emotionally. As Hirosuke remarks, she "takes herself too seriously." Pragmatic and driven, she ultimately brings a sense of much-needed gravity and coherence to Delta Cohort.

Airu's bitter and cynical attitude toward her Quirk may be attributed to her many adverse experiences with it growing up. When it first manifested, she completely paralyzed a classmate and believed that she had killed him — although the effect was ultimately temporary and no permanent harm was done. Similar incidents occurred in passing before she could even begin to understand her Quirk, and Airu developed an early reputation for being dangerous and even villainous; many of her classmates began to avoid and ostracize her, rumoring about her supposed "killing touch."

One of the most disturbing incidents regarding her Quirk occurred in her first year of junior high. Hoping to make a new start after transferring from her primary school, her gloves were stolen by a female classmate during gym class as a supposed prank, which ultimately resulted in Airu inducing a full-body paralysis upon her. She was continually vilified and met with nothing but contempt by her peers, something that reinforced her growing insecurity about her Quirk. She couldn't help but deeply resent it and became disgusted with herself for possessing an uncontrollable and despicable power, one that allowed her to cripple a person with a single touch.

Already reserved and withdrawn, she became further cloistered and hostile, quick to lash out at others while bottling up her own self-loathing. Airu was often teased for her surname, Hagami, by her classmates as a result; the name itself is a homonym for a Japanese term meaning "to grind one's teeth (out of anger/vexation)" (歯噛み, *hagami*?, lit. "biting teeth"), although she was most often referred to as *Higami*, a term loosely meaning "prejudice/bias" or "inferiority complex" (僻み, ***"prejudice/bias" or "inferiority complex"***?). She became so ashamed of this that she even began to introduce herself by her mother's surname, Seishima, to distance herself from the term.

Airu isn't necessarily uncooperative to the point of being unreasonable, but she notably struggles with the idea of teamwork. Simply put, she's spent most of her life learning to rely on herself — or rather, learning not to rely on others. As she said to Tokiro Ichima, she believes that groups hinder what she can accomplish individually, although she admits that her misgivings are a result of her own trust issues and innate skepticism of others. Still, Airu is ultimately independent to a fault, as seen in several instances in which she's chosen to take charge by herself during group exercises, refusing to gamble her own success on the actions of her teammates.

## Abilities

**Overall Abilities**: Airu is officially recognized as the most accomplished student within her class, holding the title of Ace in Delta Cohort. With the strategic use of her Quirk, her prowess in hand-to-hand combat, as well as her tactical brilliance in battle, she’s no doubt a highly formidable opponent. Focused and disciplined, she's especially known for her ruthlessness and lack of hesitation in combat, some peers even regarding her as "cutthroat" as a result.

Unlike her peers, Airu is uniquely inexperienced with her Quirk since she can only use it on other people. She misunderstood her Quirk for much of her life; upon its manifestation when she was five, she naively thought it gave her the ability to "suck the life" out of people, and while it was later officially registered as a paralysis-inducing Quirk, this too was inaccurate. Of course, considering the particular stigma around enervating abilities and several prohibitive laws against Quirk use, it was difficult to actually practice using it; in fact, most of the times in which she's even used it were entirely accidental. Intent on becoming a Pro Hero, however, Airu later dedicated herself to theoretical rather than practical training. More specifically, she conducted intensive study of the anatomy of the human nervous system in order to better understand the logistics and potential of her Quirk since she couldn't explore its applications for herself, legally or ethically.

This wasn't even a comparable substitute for hands-on training, of course. When initially starting out at Tasai, she had barely used it in her entire life, let alone been able to seriously train with it. Even so, she has demonstrated remarkably intuitive and creative use of her Quirk due to her conceptual understanding of it. During the first training exercise of the school year, for instance, she was able to effectively paralyze Ren Kumoto by targeting a single nerve in their spinal cord as opposed to influencing all the nerves in their body. The match ultimately ended in a tie, however, since the release of the energy was so intense that it caused her to black out, and Ren had been rendered immobile. As seen here, her inexperience shines through as she tends to release too much energy at once and overextend herself as a result, which is a weakness that she continues to struggle with. Still, whatever she may lack in experience and control, she makes up for with her sheer ingenuity and strategic application of her Quirk.

Initially, Airu fared the best in a one-on-one situation since her Quirk was largely single-use, as she hadn't exercised it enough to control her output. She's disadvantaged against larger groups as a result and can easily become overwhelmed should she expend too much energy. Her Quirk doesn't have any real firepower and is only effective if she can land a touch on her opponent, which is another reason why she's focusing on being more conservative about the energy she releases in her training.

* **Heightened Senses**: As an element of her Quirk, Airu additionally seems to have stronger-than-average somatic senses.

* **Enhanced Agility**:

* **Enhanced Endurance**:

**Keen Intellect**: Airu has proven to be an extremely intelligent individual. Astute and strategic, her quick thinking in combat Sharp-minded and diligent, Airu has been described as a model student for most of her life when it comes to academics. Being in such a small and academically competitive class, however, she ranks directly in the middle of Delta Cohort — fourth place — in terms of grades, surpassed by other top-scoring peers Kango Otomi, Hirosuke Maboroshi, and Ren Kumoto.

**Rescue Ability**: Despite the offensive nature of her Quirk, Airu has proven to be extremely useful in rescue situations in addition to her combat expertise. She's able to use the more subtle influence of her Quirk as a makeshift sedative, for instance, to calm hysterical victims and to streamline certain crises involving civilians; she demonstrated this technique on the actors during the Provisional License Exam as well as civilians during the attack on Naha and the battle against the Paranormal Liberation Front.

**Human Biology Expertise**: Because Airu was unable to practice her Quirk, she instead substituted hands-on training with an intensive study of the ability's function. Starting in her second year of junior high, she engrossed herself in research on neurobiology and neuroscience, which was a subject that she grew to be fascinated with as a result, despite the fact that it was originally something of a personal homework assignment. Conceptually, she knows the kinds of somatic sensations that she can manipulate, the most crucial and sensitive nerves in the body (i.e., the most optimal targets of her Quirk), the behavior and direction of neural pathways, the theoretical minimum of influence required to fully incapacitate someone, etc. — all of which contribute to her incredible efficiency and intuitiveness in using her Quirk. This didn't make up for her lack of experience, of course, but it was nevertheless an invaluable measure that provided a solid foundation for her heroic training, allowing her to more skillfully attune to the nuances of the ability in practice.

Since the nervous system is anatomical in nature, Airu has a quite thorough understanding of human biology in general, especially due to her newfound interest in the subject. This has knowledge has proven surprisingly useful outside of understanding her Quirk, putting her ahead of most of her classmates in their science classes and even serving as a niche specialization in her hero training. As a more comedic result, she additionally tends to be very clinical and straightforward about sexual matters that others euphemize, which she predictably sees in a much more scientific light rather than an awkward or flustering one.

* **Pressure Point Fighting**: Airu's knowledge of neurobiology has also made her aware of the most sensitive pressure points in the human body, giving her a particular advantage in hand-to-hand combat. By employing pressure point techniques during melee fights in conjunction with her Quirk, she's able to instigate extremely quick and efficient takedowns against her opponents.

* **Medical Proficiency**: As an additional benefit of her research, Airu has demonstrated remarkably proficient medical knowledge, especially compared to other heroes in training who haven't yet received similar training. For instance, she was able to provide emergency first aid to numerous injured civilians and heroes during the battle against the Paranormal Liberation Front, a feat that may be attributed to a combination of her medical knowledge along with her quick thinking and Quirk technique. She was most notably able to stabilize the rapidly dying Midnight by utilizing her Quirk as a provisional anesthetic, capitalizing upon the numbing effect in order to minimize the hero's bodily stress response as well as to cauterize her wounds as painlessly as possible. She effectively led the rescue efforts at the first aid base during the Provisional License Exam as well, accurately describing the conditions of injured civilians to direct other students and treating their symptoms as needed.

### Quirk

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> *Her hand lashed out to the right in a trained reflex and landed on soft flesh. Energy burst from her fingertips like a lightning strike, and Airu felt the all-too-familiar shock of her Quirk, a static buzz snaking up her arms like needles dancing across her skin. She ignored the sensation and concentrated on the point of contact, the impulse expanding in a paralyzing wave that flooded the stranger’s body head to toe — and in an instant, he collapsed to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut.*
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**Neuromancy** (神経魔法, *Shinkei mahō*?, lit. “Nerve Magic”): Airu is able to influence nervous senses by disrupting synaptic impulses. Impulsive neural energy accumulates in her body and is involuntarily released as a minor electrical discharge, which occurs when she touches a nervous organism with her fingertips. This shock is what allows her to essentially hijack the neurotransmission of stimulus signals, since an electrical event is what causes a neuron to respond to a particular stimulus while other chemical processes transmit that signal to the rest of the system. Upon activation, this energy naturally and indiscriminately "shuts down" the nerves affected, but making a targeted and focused release allows Airu to manipulate specific senses and aspects of sensation as well. As opposed to similar touch-based Quirks that require five-point contact (such as Zero Gravity or Decay), Airu only needs a minimum of one finger to activate it. Contact for both the user and subject interestingly feels similar to a strong static shock.

Since the entire nervous system is interconnected, Airu doesn't necessarily have to directly touch the area of nerves that she specifically wants to influence when making a targeted attack (although this certainly makes it easier). It requires split-second focus, and she generally has to preemptively decide her target, but she's able to direct the energy that she releases to a completely different area in the body. As she describes, this process is akin to a more complex, multi-dimensional maze puzzle, tracing all of the possible neural pathways to reach a desired point. She hasn't quite mastered this technique, but she believes that it will also allow her to conserve her neural energy; if she's able to take advantage of the neural communication, she can also create a chain reaction from the original point of contact to indirectly influence adjacent nerves rather than trying to induce a mass area effect. In relatively simpler terms, her original method is to affect *all* of the nerves in a certain area with the total amount of energy required to influence all of those nerves individually; on the other hand, this technique only affects a *single* point with the minute energy needed to influence that individual nerve, and then that energy is then spread *virally* to surrounding nerves.

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> *She reached out in front, two fingers landing on the small of Kumoto’s back — then instantly, she tensed in one violent motion as a shock wracked her entire body, and it was as if her skin had burst open. Like a gunshot, something monstrous and electrical escaped from her very core, vicious and unforgiving. A scream wedged its way into her throat, and her vision felt white hot before everything went to black.*
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Airu primarily struggles with harnessing control over Quirk, which has also been a central focus of her training at TAI. Although this lack of control is most likely due to her inexperience in using it, it has also proven to be a significant inhibition. Namely, she needs to avoid releasing too much of neural energy at once to ensure that she doesn't overexert herself, as well as to conserve energy when fighting against multiple opponents.

However, this has proven extremely challenging since her Quirk's activation is immediate and entirely involuntary. Trying to hold back that energy is like trying to cap a flood; energy accumulates in her body like a separate reserve for her Quirk — "pent-up," as she describes — until she finally touches someone, but rather being emitted in a dynamic current, the energy in her body tends to escape her body statically in an explosive discharge all at once, and the nerves in the subject's body "conduct" the energy that she releases in turn.

In a similar vein, Airu's body sometimes develops mild Lichtenberg figures after extensive use of her Quirk. Interestingly common among victims of lightning strikes, these occur when a strong electrical surge causes blood vessels to burst in a person's body. This occurs since Airu's Quirk is inherently electrical in nature, and thus, instantaneously discharging extreme amounts of this energy from her nervous system will strain her body in turn. These appear as dark fractal markings on her skin, usually along her hands and arms where the energy is largely concentrated. This occurrence has become less frequent, however, as Airu has developed more control over the energy she releases.

#### **Weaknesses & Limitations**

The primary drawback of Airu's Quirk is that it's derived entirely from her body's own energy, which isn't easily replenishable. Transferring this energy takes a massive toll on the function of her own nervous system since it needs this energy to effectively transmit nervous signals to and from other neurons and the brain; her Quirk is just as devastating to her as it is to her opponents. The loss of this energy most commonly causes desensitization, which typically manifests as conditions such as paralysis/numbness, blindness/blurriness, deafness/hearing loss, and even complete loss of any sensation, depending on the severity of overuse. s well as extreme fatigue and exhaustion since her Quirk relies on her body's own energy. In more extreme instances of overuse, her body acts on overdrive and tries to compensate for her body's desensitization, seeing this as life-threatening in a similar manner to a fight-or-flight instinct. This, in other words, ultimately causes overstimulation, in which Airu's nerves become overly sensitive to any remote stimulus as the sensations in an environment are amplified to an intense and excruciating degree.

Airu needs to release and transmit neural impulses that originate from her body in order to use her Quirk, which means that the function of her own nervous system is disrupted as well. The neurotransmission causes her to receive “feedback” from the use of her Quirk. By deciding that she specifically wants to blind someone, for nstance, the energy she releases targets the person’s optical nerves, and equivalently, her own system receives the synaptic message and influences her vision as well. This occurs on a much smaller scale than that of her subjects, of course, since she is actively influencing their senses, while this occurrence is only a result of a transmission of her body's nervous electrical energy. However, the more energy released, the more significant the backfire. Prolonged or extensive use of her Quirk — such as use on multiple subjects between short intervals or influencing a large area of nerves — would cause her system to ultimately become incapacitated.

This Quirk requires direct skin-to-skin contact and thus cannot be activated through clothing, which obviously decreases the chance to use this Quirk considering how clothes limit the surface area available. Despite the efficacy and combat potential of its function, Neuromancy is rendered virtually useless if there’s no way to activate it against an opponent. Considering how many hero costumes can be rather heavily-clothed or even completely unrevealing, in most fights, Airu is at a major disadvantage in terms of Quirk usage.

This Quirk primarily influences the body's nervous system, and thus, Airu can only influence physical sensations, as opposed to psychological senses (e.g., sense of time, hunger/thirst). As an additional result, Airu cannot alter the stimuli causing a certain sensation, but only the sense itself; in other words, she cannot change *what* a person is sensing, only how they *perceive* it.

### Super Moves

* **Total Deprivation** (完全な剥奪, *Kanzen'na hakudatsu*?): One of Airu's most powerful moves, she completely shuts down the function of a person's nervous system in order to cut off all physical senses and sensations (namely touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell), effectively incapacitating them. She's only used this twice, however, since she was sent into a temporary comatose state in both instances because the energy release was too taxing on her own nervous system.
* **Sensory Overload** (過刺激, *Ka shigeki*?, lit. "Overstimulation"): This move is the direct opposite of Total Deprivation — although equally devastating — in which Airu maximizes the sensitivity of the nerves in a person's body to an excrutiating degree. The overstimulation causes them to become unfocused and nauseous
* **Stunning Strike** (見事なストライキ, *Migotona sutoraiki*?): Airu induces complete paralysis of a person's body by shutting down all feeling in a person's nervous system. She can additionally induce partial paralysis, most commonly targetting the sensation in a person's legs.
* **Blackout** (ブラックアウト, *Burakkuauto*?): Airu completely blinds a person by shutting down their optical nerves.

## Trivia

* The kanji for her surname, Hagami, respectively mean “leaf blade” (葉, *ha*?) and “divinity” (神, *kami*?). Her first name, Airu, is composed of the terms for “indigo” (藍, *ai*?) and “lapis lazuli” (瑠, *ru*?).
	+ The last kanji in her surname (神, meaning “divinity”) is also present in the term for “nerve” or “sensitivity” (**神**経, *shinkei*?), referencing her Quirk, which allows her to influence nervous senses. The term in question is also present in the name of her Quirk, Neuromancy (**神経**魔法, *Shinkei mahō*?, lit. “Nerve Magic”), as well.
	+ Airu was often teased for her surname, Hagami, by her classmates as a result; the name itself is a homonym for a Japanese term meaning "to grind one's teeth (out of anger/vexation)" (歯噛み, *hagami*?, lit. "biting teeth"), although she was most often referred to as *Higami*, a term loosely meaning "prejudice/bias" or "inferiority complex" (僻(ひが)み, ***"prejudice/bias" or "inferiority complex"***?). She became so ashamed of this that she even began to introduce herself by her mother's surname, Seishima, to distance herself from the original connotations.
	+ Her first name essentially refers to the striking blue color of her hair.
* Airu’s known academic data at the Tasai Institute is as follows:
	+ Airu ranked in the 91st percentile in the academic entrance test to the Tasai Institute.
	+ Airu currently serves as the Ace of Delta Cohort since she holds the top overall ranking in her class. According to this position, she serves as one of the class representatives who reflects on the capabilities of the entire Cohort.
	+ Airu is designated as the fifth unit (U5) of Delta Cohort.
	+ Airu’s current overall class ranking is first out of seven within Delta Cohort. This measure takes into account the following data:
		- Airu is currently ranked fourth in terms of academic performance.
		- Airu is currently ranked second in Heroic ability.
		- Airu is currently ranked second in melee combat.
	+ Airu received 45 internship offers following her showing at EXPO.
	+ Airu passed the Provisional License Exam with an 83.

## Quotes

* (To Marrow) *"I don't break. I* learn*."*
* (To Tokiro) *"You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself."*
* (To Katsuki Bakugo) *"For a long time, I was obsessed with trying to... **impress** other people. I was so stuck on trying to be better than everyone else, trying to make people* look at *me instead of down on me — to make them believe in me and see something more than a lost cause. That was my grand scheme, I guess. I'd climb to the top, just to look down on everyone who thought I couldn't. As if it would make this hell all worth it. But looking at you now is like looking in a mirror."*

### Excerpts

* *"Her whole life, people always assumed the worst of her for a power she couldn't even control. But now, thinking about how her Quirk has helped so many people — thinking about how far she's come since those years full of shame and resentment — she can't help but let pride swell in her chest."*

## Creator’s Notes

First off, thank you for checking out my character page, whoever you are reading this. I’ve put a lot of love into all of my OCs and my fanon, and I’ve finally discovered this amazing platform to share them. Without further ado, I shall provide some of the background on the creation and development of Airu.
—Greenie

### The Inside Story

Unsurprisingly, Airu is essentially a self-insert of yours truly, and quite admittedly a Mary Sue. The conception for her character originated since I had initially started getting into the BNHA fandom, around June 2019. As fangirlish as I was at the time (and still am), I had never really got into any type of OC content before this series. But the idea of such individualistic superhuman abilities combined with teenagers, high-paced action, and heroism made the concept too tantalizing to ignore. And thus, the adventure into the creation of my own fanon began.

Airu went through...*many* phases before she became who she is today. Her initial draft was completely different in her name meaning/composition, Quirk, personality, backstory, appearance, nationality...I can’t even begin to describe how entirely opposite they were. She not only had a love interest, but they were a canon character as well—no, I will not be giving a name. She had multiple Quirks at one point—*cringe*. I can give you an entire roster of the names I went through: Aiko, Aisaki, Aimiru, Aiyaru; Murakami, Hakagami, Hakayari.

Honestly, she’s still a Mary Sue. The only difference between Ai then and now is that I’m painfully self-aware.

The base for her character was from a half-baked short story from when I was in eighth grade, a girl named Ellis McCoy who was conveniently angsty, teenaged, and static—the perfect recipe for a cringeworthy OC. The only thing between the two versions that stayed consistent is her relationship with her brother, Ryouta Hagami, who vaguely resembles his counterpart, the nineteen-year-old Tristan McCoy.

### Character Inspirations

I really try not to plagiarize other content. But sometimes, I really can’t help but take from other characters I see in other franchises. These are the major characters that come to mind that inspired my own.

* Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa)
	+ Quite possibly the largest inspiration on this list. Daddy issues, gloves, stoic and calculating personalities with an intensely emotional side...in all honesty, this probably counts as plagiarism.
* Reyna Ramírez-Arellano (Heroes of Olympus)
	+ I love Reyna. She’s a strong heroine, highly disciplined as praetor of Camp Jupiter and practically born to lead. Yet she’s still very troubled, repressing her emotions in favor of fulfilling her duties, responsibilities, and expectations.

## Fun Things

* Hypothetical D&D stats:
	+ **STR**: 10
	+ **DEX**: 17
	+ **CON**: 15
	+ **INT**: 15
	+ **WIS**: 14
	+ **CHA**: 11