Kieran Castellano

WORK IN PROGRESS

Kieran Castellano is an original character for Kyran Kandosa's Silver Moon Chronicles Fanon. Kieran leads Team CRES, and is an initiate of the Silver Moon Clan.

Appearance
Kieran has brown eyes, chiseled features, and black hair worn just long enough to slick back. He is of average height, with a solid build. Prior to attending Beacon Academy, Kieran's outfit consisted of grey denim pants and a grey shirt, as well as a belt, gloves, motorcycle boots, and biker chaps all made of black leather. An black duster worn with an open front is the finishing touch. Kieran still uses this as his civilian attire. For combat, Kieran swaps out his duster for an black tactical ballistics jacket and adds thigh pouches. His biker chaps are now also made of ballistics cloth encasing scale armor, instead of leather, and his duster now has an magnetic plate to carry his shotgun on his back. His symbol is a black castle, worn on an armband placed on his left bicep.

Weapons:
Lupera II
 * Weapon: Variable Ordinance Assault Shotgun
 * Type: Ranged
 * Weapon Derivation: Kel-Tec KSG

Bianca II
 * Description: Kieran's shotgun, the original Lupera was modeled after a 20-shot version of the SRM 1216 shotgun with an folding stock and sling, easily hidden under his duster. After becoming friends with Arcturus Moonfang, Kieran copied the design of Arcturus' Kel-Tec KSG-based Threnody, recognizing the superiority of it's relative simplicity, selective fire, and ability to reload on the run. Hence, it is now a bull-pup, side-by-side double-barreled automatic shotgun, fed by two 10-round tube magazines for an 20+2 ammunition capacity. Lupera II can also fire one or both barrels at the same time. It also has an ammunition side-saddle and bandoleer sling.
 * Weapon: Variable Dust Lantern Shields
 * Type: Melee, Dust, Ranged
 * Weapon Derivation: Lantern shields
 * Description: Bianca's original form was an pair of Multi-Action Dust Bracer blades, the concealable nature of the weapon an product of Kieran's upbringing in the mafia. After meeting with Arcturus Moonfang, Kieran upgraded Bianca by rebuilding Bianca into a set of lantern shield gauntlets with retractable underslung blades and a dust mechanism fed by a rotating, multi-chambered disc inserted into the buckler. The hand armor also includes Dust lines to allow the hands to be used for more precise Dust attacks.

Notable Equipment:
Shadow: One of Kieran's favorite hobbies is riding Shadow, his black and grey, two-seater motorcycle. He uses an grey flip-up helmet with a black visor.

Semblance:
Kieran's Semblance is called Will-o-wisp, and creates hollow energy spheres that can act as lanterns and explode on impact when thrown or struck. The spheres can be created one or two at a time in various sizes and compressed into smaller sizes(This is done one at a time because it requires concentration and two hands to squeeze the sphere into a smaller size). Compression increases the energy density of the shell and the internal air pressure, with both factors creating a stronger blast, albeit retaining an highly limited, nearly point-blank range. The unaided sphere can act as a flash-bang grenade to stun opponents, while infusing it with Dust allows for an elemental blast that deals damage. The blast can stun or damage the user if they are too close. The energy needed to create a sphere increases exponentially with the surface area of it's initial size. It is also very difficult to use this Semblance in a stealthy manner, due to the light and explosions generated by the spheres. The color of the spheres and the light they discharge changes to match that of the Dust they are infused with.

Battle Style:
Kieran is an frontline fighter and point man, using Lupera and Bianca for close-to-medium range attacks. He will also use his Semblance to act as a grenadier, infusing the energy spheres with Dust from Bianca to turn them into weapons. For longer-range engagements, Kieran relies on using slugs fired from Lupera. When engaged in melee, Kieran uses a mix of taekwondo and outright street fighting. He is also good at improvising.

Abilities:

 * Baseball: To help himself use his Semblance, Kieran took to baseball, learning to be a pitcher to improve his throwing skills.


 * Street smarts: Growing up as an urchin, and then the foster son of an mafia boss, Kieran has learned a great deal about how to navigate and survive life on the streets. Part of this includes "cold reading" people's body language.


 * Martial arts: Kieran is principally a brawler and street fighter, using the environment and whatever tactics he can to win a fight. Due to his best friend and foster brother, Roderick Martin, his style shows some influence from Tae Kwon Do.


 * Leadership: Although never allowed to take part in his father's criminal activities, Kieran still learned a great deal about how to organize and lead others from him.
 * Psychology: Kieran studies psychology as an hobby, applying what he's learned to help navigate the streets, and work as a leader.
 * Music: Having a taste for rock music, Kieran plays the electric guitar and bass.
 * Improvisation: A quick and creative thinker, Kieran's talent for improvisation kept him alive during his days as an street urchin, and has continued to help him stay and get out of trouble on a regular basis.

Personality:
Though his usual persona is cool and fun-loving, Kieran is able to project a calm, confident facade in the presence of danger, a result of his living most of his life in the more unsavory elements of Vale's society. He uses his street smarts to make friends in and navigate the underground, as well as defuse or get out of bad situations. Something of an adrenaline junkie, Kieran enjoys a good fight on occasion, but prefers to get his thrills with motorcycles and music instead of more destructive pursuits. Baseball is another of his favorite pastimes. It has also instilled a sense of good sportsmanship and fairness in him, since he had to learn to avoid using Aura when playing with people who haven't had theirs unlocked. He also does his best to keep his word. Though he has learned restraint in situations involving himself, Kieran has a mile-wide vicious streak when someone hurts his friends, a product of his upbringing in the criminal world. Combined with his perceptive social skills, quick wit, and grasp of psychology, he is as likely to administer an emotional beatdown as he is a physical one.

Backstory:
Kieran Castellano was born an only child, and left homeless and eventually orphaned from an early age. Living in the city of Vale as a street urchin for several years, he eventually had a run-in with the mob boss Irving Castellano, whom he tried to pickpocket. Taking pity on the boy, Irving adopted Kieran and had him homeschooled to give him a proper education, which also included learning to fight and use Aura to protect himself from Irving's enemies. Wanting more for his foster son, Irving refused to allow him to be involved with the criminal activities of the mafia, explaining that while he was too deep in the underworld to leave it as he wished, Irving wanted Kieran to use his ability to choose his path to do the good in the world that his adoptive father could not. Several months before he was old enough to attend Signal Academy, Kieran came across several bullies beating an Kangaroo Faunus that was about his age, and intervened. Surprised by the youth displaying both his Semblance and a modest level of training, the bullies were quickly driven off, and the Kangaroo Faunus, an runaway from an abusive orphanage named Roderick Martin, quickly became Kieran's best friend and foster brother. Together, the pair attended Signal Academy, spending their summers working as bouncers for thier adopted father in his legitimate business, a nightclub, before being admitted to Beacon.

Trivia:

 * Kieran's name translates to "Black Castle", as Kieran means "Black"(his color reference) and Castellano means "Castle".


 * Kieran's weapons are named after the Lupera Bianca, an journalistic term for an mafia-style execution done in a manner to ensure that the body is never found. The term itself comes from the Lupera, an break-action sawed off shotgun popular with the Sicilian mafia and named after it's traditional use in wolf hunting. Bianca means "White".


 * Kieran and his father Irving are named after the NYC mob boss, Paul Castellano.
 * Kieran is considering getting an ATV to use on Huntsman missions his motorcycle is unsuited for.