Akiba Tanegashima

Akiba Tanegashima is the eldest son of the Tanegashima Family and a former student of Beacon Academy. He is part of Team SSAN and alludes to Oda Nobunaga.

Appearance
Akiba is a 5'6 tall with long rust-colored hair with red highlights, blood red eyes, with a small diagonal scar on his right eye, and long eyelashes that make him look somewhat feminine. He has long front and side bangs while the back is thick and at shoulder-length, which he lazily ties together. Around his neck and covering a long horizontal scar on it is his trademark long red scarf that reaches down to his thighs, while on his head are his autumn themed closed headphones. At the start of his second year he ordered a new scarf, with this bearing the emblem of his family on both ends. He ties them the same way as his other but with the ends draped in front of him.

He mostly wears an elaborate robe embroidered with autumn leaves and colored with a gradient of brown, orange, and red. Underneath these is a white polo underneath a similarly white kimono with a brown collar and orange-red gradient autumn-leaves design embroidered on it. It is tied with a golden-buckled belt along with a dark-gray hakama and self-made armored tabi.

Whenever disguising as his alter ego Mr. Fox (which is usually for his detective work), he wears a smiling noh fox mask to cover his face and a closed orange trench coat. He combs his hair to a sweep back style and uses his original plain red scarf, sometimes he'll even remove his headphones to complete the disguise.

Personality
Akiba is a mute who usually wears a stoic expression. He's usually shy of others and often doesn't try to communicate since he sees it as a bother. His presence is also very weak that he could be mistaken for a ghost at times. Yet despite him actively keeping off of communicating with others, he is actually quite friendly, kind and more conscious of others well-beings rather than his own.

He normally shows an easy-going, laid-back, and somewhat lazy attitude and likes to take his time experiencing the things around him. Though this makes others look down at him, he is actually quite intelligent and sharp. He can easily keep up with most of the intellectual students, added that he was a bookworm when he was younger.

Background
Akiba is the firstborn of a noble family in Zen, an large island to the east. From the beginning, Akiba was never the social type. he and his sister never got along, and was very anti-social due to being influenced at a young age from his eavesdropping on visitors and hearing them bad-mouth his family. Because of this, he showed little care for others, even his own sister and in fact hated her for getting most of his parents attention. That was until Fuyuko was born, his second and youngest sister. Her existence acted as a bridge between the two and this led to both of them finally getting along. He attitude hasn't improved towards other people though.

During a fateful outing in a resort one summer he lost his parents, and almost lost his, by an assassin and has since been traumatized in terms of both physically and mentally. During his time recovering/rehabilitating his sister, Tempera, supported him and would sing him lullabies every night to help him sleep peacefully. Yet despite all this, in the end he never got any better, but by the doctor's standards he was now as healthy physically-wise, so he was thus discharged from the hospital.

When he returned to back home he was a shell of his former self, and his family couldn't help him one bit. Not even Tempera could help him. Fearing for his future his grandfather planned on having a friend's daughter, someone outside Akiba's family, come live at his manor before and when he enters the local combat school to hopefully soften him up again. Though he didn't care and simply ignored her at first, which was to be expected, he did slowly start to open up to her and after a month he became best friends with her which lasted throughout his time in school.

Seeing Akiba's improvements, his family also started to pitch in with his rehabilitation, with his two sisters being the ones who helped and influenced him the most. They both ended up becoming his strongest emotional support during this time. Tempera still sings him lullabies, as without it he would get nightmares of the tragedy, while Fuyuko tried to help him in any way she could.

Simultaneously when he started entering school, he had also started training in a dojo nearby by his grandfather's words, whose master is renowned locally for his swordsmanship. There he found an unlikely friend who happens to be the third youngest son of the dojo's master. The boy had a fire for competition that, one way or another, helped Akiba with his rehabilitation as the two quickly became friends despite their frequent challenges to each other. After hearing this, many of his family member also started teaching him things from sewing to cooking, even engineering as his family owns a weapons research and development facility.

Having a friend with him when going to the combat school helped in the betterment of his personality, and with another friend helping him in training was even better. Instead of being anti-social he is instead shy, while being more lax and open when beside his friends. He didn't treat others with hostility anymore and also began to trust his friends more. He even showed that he can express other emotions besides the poker-face he always wear, albeit are very small.

He also made some new friends as well, like Azsfar Al-Debraan and Copper Ventuo. During his 2nd year in the combat school he was involved in a murder of a classmate. With his family's murder in mind he tried to avenge her by asking the detective at the time, Douglas Moore. He agreed and after helpng him to successfully capture the criminal, was asked to be taught under him which he agreed. As he helped out in these cases with the detective, he was exposed to things like killing and the like. These did have some effect on his personality but he didn't mind the work. Also during this he has met with a young girl around his age who was training to be the "perfect soldier" as she describes it, as well as a few vigilantes and other detectives.

Due to his hometown actually permitting townspeople and visitors to challenge each other just as long as a police officer is present as the referee and a random witness, a normal day in Akiba's teenage life was very hectic as friends, classmates and even family members were allowed to challenge him, and challenge him they did. He usually got around 4 fights a day at least, which for him is quite intense as he would still need to come over to the dojo after school to train his swordsmanship, and that's not adding in the school's PE and sparring classes, not to mention that he can get challenged as he goes to school. These fights are also, more or less, for honor. And with how Akiba and his family upholds this its no wonder that he always accepts every challenger's request.

A week before graduating he was suddenly attacked by an assassin who claims to be have killed his parents. Akiba foolishly challenged the assassin despite carrying no weapon and with no help in a blind attempt of vengeance. He failed and almost died if it weren't for his teammates saving him. Though he was cut at the neck, it wasn't deep enough to kill him. He was able to fully recover but at the price of losing his ability to speak.

He didn't care about this, and simply continued on and recovering fast enough just before the graduation ceremony. After the graduation he was sent into training with his grandfather, which was just a distraction so that he can enroll Akiba into Beacon. He found this out eventually and also found out that he was accepted.

His first years in Beacon was quite the experience, and has re-met many old faces while finding new ones too. He also saved a kidnapped girl from a group who planned on using her for ransom.

During the Vytal Festival on the fateful match of Pyrrha and Penny, he was at the floating stadium along with Summer when they watched Penny getting dismembered by the former, as well as revealing herself to be an android.

After that the video feed suddenly changed to a blood-red background with a black pawn in the middle. A woman then began speaking, questioning the audience on who to trust and questioning Beacon, the students, even the headmaster, before suddenly cutting off. Afterwards the Grimm attacked, causing everyone to panic within the stadium.

During this time, Akiba assisted in evacuation of the civilians along with Summer before boarding into an airship that led them down to Vale, where the town was being overrun by Grimm. They both decided to assist the police forces in defending the civilians from the Grimm.

It was also during this that Akiba got injured, his right eye getting scratched from a Beowulf's claws. The cut was luckily just a flesh wound but he wasn't able to open it due to the pain so he was forced to keep it closed for the entirety of the battle, which inhibited his sight and got more easily surprise attacked by the Grimm and soon enough the Altesian Knights. The battle also made light Akiba's weapon's fatal flaw, which was once the batteries were out he couldn't use the weapon's functions including the firing mechanism. These two factors lead to him being heavily injured by a Grimm whilst trying to save his teammate.

Surviving the battle with Summer, he regrouped with his other teammates and classmates the following day. His injury, large lacerations on the left side of his lower torso, forced him to stay in bed and unable to fight until the wound has fully healed. His teammates have been luckier: Nymbus suffered a dislocated arm and is now recovering, Scarlett and Summer only sustained minor injuries.

With the fall of Beacon the group were planned to move to Haven Academy, but Akiba discussed that he'll be planning on going back home to investigate the video feed at the end of that fateful match in the Stadium, as well as recuperate and improve his skills. His teamamtes though surprisingly decided to come to his home in Zen.

Kannagara (Separable High-Powered Dust Sniper Katana)
This is Akiba's former main weapon. Was heavily damaged beyond repair with some of its parts salvaged to make a new replacement.

Furukizuna (Dust-Powered Heavy Oodachi-Rifle)
Akiba's second weapon after the destruction of the first, is a large Oodachi/rifle hybrid similar to his previous albeit larger. Used during his second year until destroyed during the battle of Beacon.

Ten-no-Uta (Interchangeable Wind instrument Oodachi)
More of a downgrade then any, is Akiba's third weapon. Having found that he over-mechanized his previous weapon with too many functions that require energy including its main function of firing, he instead opted for a more manual approach.

It is a weapon that combines Akiba's love for music and his swordstyle. It is more lighter, with the blade being thinner than the last two but the width is made to be a bit wider, making it more akin to a saber rather than a katana. The gun mechanisms is located right above the hilt around the base to 1/3 of the mune (back section) and habaki with the housing styled with golden leaves. The hilt is wrapped in soft blue fabric with the a gold and stainless steel end pommel.

As with all of Akiba's weapons it has a unique aspect or design to it, and that is its extending barrel-blade which can be set in place via adding in a specially-made flute that can function as a barrel. To extend the blade, the user pulls a break-trigger besides the main trigger located at the hilt.

The blade is more or less a direct successor to Kannagara, having returned the bolt-action and ammunition, but has a manual dust ejection system thanks to the attachable flute at the back of the blade.

Sly Fox
Akiba creates a rune that acts as a reactive shield that is activated by a getting damaged. If hit, 9 fox tails will shoot out from inside the rune to either repel or bind the attacker to it by using its tails and if binded will keep hold until either Akiba wishes to remove it, his aura drops significantly, he moves 2 meters away from it, or if the trapped target destroys the rune, just as long as the maximum area of damage is more than an 1/2 cm in diameter and must be hit with a significant amount of force, if not it instead just breaks apart like shattered glass. This means the shield is ineffective against most bullets and bladed or piercing weapons.

The type of reaction is determined if its either a repel or a bind. With repel, dust is shot out in a condensed state, for instance fire dust is condensed into a fireball, while with bind is good for either trapping opponents or stunning them, like using lightning dust to shock an attacker. This reactive shield can also be activated by Akiba himself, and only he can cause its effects to fire out towards the direction of the rune rather than at its attacker, making it useful offensively as well.

Etymology
Akiba (アキバ) is derived from Akibagahara (秋葉が原) meaning "autumn leaf field". The word Aki (秋) means autumn.

Tanegashima (種子島) is the name for an island that is part of the Ōsumi Islands. It also refers to the japanese matchlock of the same name. The matchlock's usual colors are maroon or red-orange, which is also where I based his colors off.

Kannagara has mutliple meanings but it can simply mean "The will of the gods or kami." or "Because of being a kami."

Furukizuna is the combination of both furukizu (古傷) meaning "old wounds" and kizuna (絆) meaning "bonds".

Trivia

 * Akiba's character is loosely based on the character Hakumen from the Blazblue series.
 * Akiba's firstweapon on the other hands is inspired from the Beam Bazooka used by Gundam Vitrue in the series Gundam 00. His second weapon on the other hand is referenced from Gundam Barbatos' Smoothbore Gun and Launcher Strike Gundam's Beam Cannon.
 * Akiba has never danced before.
 * Akiba smiles wryly when frightened.
 * He has a surprisingly high alcohol tolerance, and can drink almost anything without getting drunk. Prefers sake.
 * This character is owned by Lux Capacitor.