Miko (Kazama Miko) Kazama Miko whoops during fights, ad-libs during songs, and eats a convenience-store onigiri before every single deployment. She's TIDEWALL's main rapper, its tallest member, and the fan favorite, because she screams what everyone else is thinking. She is terrible at being serious for more than twenty seconds. When she manages it, everybody listens. The Tide Wards Miko's family has lived on the same narrow street in the Tide Wards for three generations. Her father runs a crane in the Port. Her mother runs the corner shop that sells the onigiri Miko still swears are the best in the city. Two streets over lived a skinny kid named Han Jun-ho, who she beat at everything: races, arm wrestling, arcade games, insults. Her grandmother told them both the old story about the Sleeper under the bay, and they both laughed at it. She was eleven on the night of the First Tide. There were no shelters yet, so her family hid in the walk-in cooler at the back of the shop. Through a crack in the door, Miko watched something the size of a building walk down her street. In the Iron Years that followed, she watched the manual mechs fight from the shelter windows, and one night a battered old frame stood in front of her block until dawn and didn't let anything past. She decided that the next time, she would be the one inside. The Breakwater She auditioned at twenty, on a dare, and dragged Jun with her. They both made Class 7. Her first night in the dorm she talked at her new roommate until 4am. The roommate, a quiet girl named Yoon Rin, barely said a word, and by morning Miko had decided they were best friends. Rin didn't get a vote. Miko started calling her "captain" that first week, two years before anyone made Rin leader of anything. On the board she was always top three in rap and somewhere in the middle for everything else. In the sim bay she was the most aggressive pilot in the class and crashed more virtual mechs than anyone in Breakwater history. Kang Moo-jin yelled at her more than anyone else. He also smiled at her more than anyone else. On Debut Day she read her own name, screamed, and grabbed Rin so hard they nearly fell over. Then she read the other column and saw Jun's name in it. She found him that night in the hangar, sitting on a toolbox. "Somebody's got to fix your mech," he said. He's been fixing it ever since. In the cockpit Crimson Howl is the biggest and heaviest mech in the squad: 22.4 meters and 412.5 tons of magenta-pink and charcoal armor, built to be the wall that walks toward the threat. Where the others dodge a Class 4, Miko plants her feet and trades blows with it. When a tank kaiju surfaces, the rest of the squad goes quiet and Miko grins. Her signature opponent is Bulwark, and she'd fight it every week if they let her. Twin rotary cannons. Both forearms unfold into six-barrel cannons. Her default. Giga-Fist Gauntlets. The forearms rebuild into huge armored fists for boxing at kaiju scale: jabs, hooks, uppercuts and crushing grabs. Heavy Plasma Lance. Both arms lock together into one shoulder-braced plasma cannon. Her finisher. Missile array, chest vulcans, shoulder rams and booster thrusters. When the boosters fire, the slowest mech on the coast turns into a freight train. Overcharge. She can bypass the reactor limits and dump everything into her weapons at once. The HUD screams red. Miko calls that "the fun part." The combo. When Nari's hex-field locks onto Crimson Howl, the two mechs become one battering ram that can break armor neither could break alone. "NO BRAKES" is hand-painted across the chest plate. On hangar open days, kids from the flood shelters are allowed to sign the inner forearm with markers. None of them know whose mech it is. Her sync rating is the lowest on the team at 74 percent, and she hits harder than any of them anyway. On stage Main rapper. She owns the second verse, throws ad-libs over every chorus, and opens the bridge with a rap break. The first voice you hear on I'd Burn the World For You is Miko's. Her signature move is the Double Trigger: both hands pointed at the camera, a wink and a grin, and the arena loses its mind. Her light stick color is magenta pink, and the holographic glitter strip across her nose has been her trademark since her first evaluation. The people around her Rin. Best friend, captain, the person she would die for. Miko is the only one who suspected about Kaito. Nari. Her comedy partner. Miko sets up the joke, Nari lands it. Aya. Miko would fight anyone who looked at her wrong, and Aya could beat all of them herself. Jun. Childhood rival, mechanic, and the boy everyone in the Breakwater knows is in love with her. Miko is the only one who hasn't noticed. Yuna. Blows gum bubbles next to her ear in combat review. Miko has sworn revenge roughly four hundred times. Moo-jin. Her old drill instructor, and the reason she knows how to take a hit. Spoilers: Miko in Season One Everything below this line happens in Season One. If you'd rather find out on screen, stop here. Tidemaw's flood went through Miko's old street. Her family is in a relief shelter when Season One begins, and she spends every free hour there. When Kaito walks out of the sea, Miko sees the thing that might bring the water back, and Rin sees the man she loves. It turns into the worst fight the two of them have ever had, and for a stretch of the season they barely speak. Making up is the moment the squad becomes whole again, just in time for the fights that need all four of them in sync. On comeback night, she sings for the people from her street.