[attr="class","header2"]APPEARANCE

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DHojirozame Mako was born to her mother and father, Chihiro and Reijiro Hojirozame, both of whom were patented heroes. She was the oldest sister, followed by two more - Sakaki and Koyomi, as well as the youngest of the litter - her brother Tomo. The two were good and doting parents, until they died doing their duty saving people from a doomed natural gas tanker off the western shore of Japan. The tanker was caught on fire and exploded into a million pieces when the faulty systems finally gave out. Not even their bodies were found. Mako was 7 back then, and her siblings were too young to remember anything, which was good for them, probably.

Mako's grandmother, Sadako Hojirozame, took care after the kids, for a while. She was very old, but kind-hearted. From a young age, the girl had to help her out taking care of the house as well as her siblings. The woman was too frail and slow to be able to do everything, but she was a pool of folk knowledge. She taught Mako how to cook, clean, sew, and even treat certain illnesses with nothing else besides some local herbs growing in a small back garden. Oh, gardening was a thing too that she taught. Life was pretty hard though, as the woman's pension was not enough to fully support four children. They had to cut corners. From an early age, thus, Mako knew what poverty was like.

She had to help out somehow. Mako undertook most of the chores and was like a second mom to her sisters. Grades plummeted, of course, as she was more concerned with all the other troubles she had back home. Her one window of relief from the hustle was swimming. Like her parents, the girl was a great swimmer form an early age, and was part of the school's swimming team. Her teachers recommended her to take it up professionally, but Mako's family never had enough money for a coach.

When Mako was 16, grandmother became seriously ill and bedridden. Within a year, she died, and was buried at the local cemetery, in the cheapest of coffins offered by the government. They couldn't afford much beyond a simple gravestone, and a few flowers Mako planted nearby. Now, she was the oldest in the family, to take care of her siblings, who were 11, 10, and 9 at the time. Mako found partial employment at the post office, delivering parcels, mail, and adverts to mailboxes. This took most of her spare time that she did not spend with family, and still does. About the same time her mutation started kicking in. It was first seen during a swim class, during which she literally grew a tail, got covered with scales, and finished the laps 5 times faster than a human would. Emerging from the basin, Mako scared quite a lot of people, including her teachers.

Not particularly keen on keeping a subpar student who turned out to be a quirk-user too, the school quickly referred Mako to the Hero Academy, as soon as she graduated. They even gave her passing grades on all tests for her to succeed and be out of their hair for good. She didn't mind, the place seemed nice than the backwater school she had to go to. And, from what the girl heard, Heroes got a better stipend, better pay, and better work. She just had to be smart about it, lest she ended up like her parents. And so, with the new semester starting, class 1-B would find a new student sleeping at the back of the class. A shark-girl!