Ecruteak Personne

''“I was born a Gladiator. Bred to be one. I… guess it’s all I’ve really known… until you all showed up. Thanks.” -Ecruteak to his friends.''

An Ex-Gladiator of the Vacuan Underground’s “Deadlock,” the partner of Cerulean Arealis, and a member of Team CEIJ.

Appearance

Ecruteak’s above average height and nimble physique allows him to wear fairly natural clothing. Unlike his peers, he wears an ordinary pair of black jeans, a silver long sleeve shirt, and a brown and black varsity jacket. Despite this, he never removes his pair of steel-toed boots, and on the left sleeve of his jacket sits a Grimm skull as a pauldron, and ordinary arm guard for his right forearm, which also displays his Emblem. His hair is a bushy and wild brown, but is shaved down at the sides.

After the Fall of Beacon, Ecruteak’s return to Vacuo leads him to get a new outfit. His coat, shirt, and breastplate have been replaced by black and brown body armor, with built in pauldrons, vambraces, and gloves. It is normally covered by the collared brown cloak around his neck. His black jeans have been replaced by cargo pants of the same color, and the belt he wears has numerous pouches for Dust and bullets, and also support Bloodline and its sheathes. His boots are the same, but bloodstained and are much more worn-down. His hair has been grown out, but he ties it into a ponytail. Ecruteak now sports a scar over his nose.

Personality

Ecruteak’s social personality is dictated on the fact that he knows next to nothing about how society works, having been taught to fight and nothing more as a child. With no knowledge about normal practices, social norms, or basic skills such as how to read of write, he often feels ostracized from his peers, feelings that are mistaken by his future ally and friend, Noire Mauveine, as attention seeking. This forces him to rely on others to understand how to act, and he has terrible lapses of judgement due to not knowing much about society, leaving him terribly confused in numerous situations.

Ecruteak’s fighting personality, however, is the complete opposite. He is cold and calculating in a fight, and with a bloodlust from so many years of life or death combat, can be prone to antagonize and then brutalize his opponents in battle. Given that he can and will willingly kill at the drop of a hat, he finds it even harder to understand why people would be scared of him. Having been told to hide such inhuman tendencies by the staff of Beacon, he is distraught when his murderous capabilities are outed after the Docklead Arc.

More recently, Ecruteak has found a balance between his two sides, cold and impressionable at the same time, his reliance on his friends a big part about letting him open up to them.

Six months after Beacon had fallen, Ecruteak has managed to completely control his bloodlust and uses it primarily as an intimidation factor. He still remains fairly oblivious to society, but he has a much better grip on the concept. His choice to return to Vacuo is fueled by his Huntsman desire to protect people, and he makes numerous rounds in Vacuo using this desire and fighting Grimm. He has become great at being more careful and caring, saving the last of the Deadlock’s captured slaves and doing jobs for Shade Academy.

Background

Born in Vacuo to an unknown family, Ecruteak is sold off as a slave at infancy to the settlement of Docklead, where an underground Vacuan arena was used for gladiatorial combat. Ecruteak was forced into the fighting at a young age, forcing him to learn how to kill to survive, molding him into a bloodthirsty warrior after years of combating stronger opponents. As he is treated like an animal, he never is taught basic skills, nor does he develop his own drive.

He only stops to think about what he is doing after he has to kill a sobbing opponent, begging him to let her life, willing to give anything to survive. His eyes are opened to reality when he witnesses other slaves sharing what little rations they have won in combat, and he dips into his own supply to assist as well. Ecruteak outright refuses to fight against one of his ‘friends,’ as they call him, and he has to watch the guards kill them and then advance on the gladiator. Using what he has learned, Ecruteak kills as many guards as he can and manages to fight his way out of the arena. With what other slaves had described as the ‘real world’ driving him to live, Ecruteak staggers through the desert alone and soaked in blood, eventually stumbling onto a small settlement and being nursed back to health, also having his Aura unlocked. It is from this that he travels to Shade Academy, almost dying from heat stroke before he attains the Semblance, Geokinesis, and uses it to survive.

Through contact with the Headmaster of Shade Academy, Ecruteak is given the chance to see the world, and he takes it. With a backing from the Headmaster, who abuses a favor that Ozpin owes her, Ecruteak is enrolled in Beacon while upholding the promise on Shade that he will control his bloodthirsty urge to fight. While he filled in his application (i.e a teacher filled in his in information as he fumbled trying to hold a pencil), his last name is put down as Personne, seeing as he could not remember his true name.

Weapon / Semblance

Ecruteak’s weapon is a pair of twin gladius blades known as Bloodline, originally the pair of blades that he fought out of the Deadlock with. Upon reaching Shade, they’re rebuilt to have a ranged counterpart, two long barreled revolvers he was taught to use by Shade’s combat instructor. Both weapons follow his color scheme, the blades and revolvers painted black, guards, hilts, and cylinders a dirt brown.

Ecruteak’s Semblance is Geokinesis. Through pressing his Aura into his surroundings, akin to Ren’s emotion-nullifying, Ecruteak is able to control stone. The weight and size of the stone he can control is dependent on how much Aura he uses to control it. His ability is not perfect, as it takes a large amount of Aura or a rush of adrenaline to move stones much larger than him, but he can control boulders up to the size of a car with little to no strain. He has an amatuer control over bending the stone to different shapes, but can make base objects such as walls or rods with ease.

Relationships

Cerulean Arealis: His partner, Leader, and self-proclaimed mother hen, Cerulean is a close ally of Ecruteak. It is through her efforts to get him to open up that he trusts her and his team with the truth about his social skills.

Amethyst Ivory: Ecruteak’s teammate. Ecruteak doesn’t make much of an effort to talk with the survivalist, but trusts her through Cerulean’s influence. They’re on good terms.

Sylvia January: A teammate and self proclaimed close friend after meeting. She often ropes him into her schemes by abusing his low social understanding, but genuinely cares about him, and he her. He has somewhat of a sibling bond with her, and it is through her he learns to be more expressive… only, it’s the Sylvia way.

Raven Nosgard: A friend. They don’t talk much, but respect the other’s fighting capabilities.

Cano Verdant: A girl with a romantic interest in Ecruteak, although it begins mostly baseless. Despite that, the two show great chemistry, and Ecruteak’s accidental compliments and flirts just make her more inclined towards him. He feels like he owes Cano his life for breaking him out of Jewels’ Control Semblance, and he takes Cano out on dates, as per her asking, without knowing the connotations to what a date is. It is implied he may feel the same about her as well.

Noire Mauveine: Previously Ecruteak’s rival and currently his best friend, the Vacuan trusts Noire with his life and all of his secrets after she gains his trust. She helps him control his bloodthirstiness in return for his help researching her father’s murder.

Charon Lunar: Ecruteak and Charon are close through the bond of guys in teams of girls. As Ecruteak doesn’t mind the Faunus and Charon doesn’t mind the eccentricities around the Vacuan’s social ineptitude, they get together fairly well. They often work together on out of team projects. Charon also tries to get Cano and Ecruteak into a relationship.

Trivia

Ecruteak is inspired by the Big, Bad Wolf - harmless at first, terrifying in the end.

Ecruteak’s name is a combination of two colors, Ecru - a light cream color, and Teak - reminiscent to the shade of teak wood. Despite this, Ecruteak’s color is a darker brown. It, and also his partnership with Cerulean, was inspired by regions and cities in the Pokémon series.

Ecruteak’s Emblem was jokingly designed by Sylvia.

His last name, Personne, is a reference to a persona, or a mask one would wear to face society. It also foreshadows him hiding his bloodthirstiness.