Kenji Bruin

"Mind the holes"

- Kenji Bruin

Appearance
Kenji is a monkey Faunus with an average height and lean build. He has short light brown hair and a chin-strap beard of the same color. He has a prehensile tail covered in light brown fur.

He wears yellow-rimmed goggles on his forehead in order to keep dust from entering his eyes when digging. He wears a black T-shirt with white trim with a white “B” for Beacon. On top of that he wears a brown hooded sweatshirt with a grey hood and the sleeves go past his hands. He wears black pants with several pouches and a hook to hold Mr. Sandman as well as black sneakers with white trim.

Personality
Being introverted and aloof, he does not converse much with other students. But if he is with people he is comfortable with he opens up to be an over-sized child. Often crafty and giving off a “wild-card” vibe not many people know what to expect from him. Even though he can be impulsive, it is because he always goes with his gut. He is always sincere and honest to those he cares about glorifies his independence.

His child-like attitude stems from a past of hardship from not being able to act like a child when he was a child, so he tries to make up for it in his older years. He is surprisingly intelligent, often stating that studying is nowhere near as hard as the job he had as a kid. Although he is smart, he does not excel in making friends and is usually seen as very cynical with his heavy use of dry humor. His impulsiveness has been known to get him in trouble and he has difficulty handling adult responsibilities without complaining. He is also very reserved in showing his emotions and often has trouble communicating them.

History
Kenji was born into a reasonably poor family in Menagerie. He might not have gotten everything he wanted as a young child but he got the essentials. Growing up, Kenji had dreams of becoming a hunter to travel the world and make enough money to support his family. Unfortunately when he was 6, both his mother and father fell ill died. Left with no one to care for him, he was put in an orphanage. His time in the orphanage was short as a farmer came in requesting to have a young boy, preferably Faunus, brought to him as a farm hand. Being the only Faunus in the orphanage, he was adopted by the farmer.

Life on the farm was awful, Kenji was forced to dig holes in a giant field day in and day out. He was given sparse breaks and meager food and water. He was even forced to work into the night because of his night vision. Life was hard but livable for Kenji, even though he still had aspirations on becoming a hunter he had a feeling that the opportunity would never come. One day when Kenji was 10, he met a girl the same age as him named Rust Conslow. It was love at first sight for him, so he began talking to her to learn more about her. To his dismay, he learned that she despised Faunus for their violent acts in the White Fang that killed her mother. Even though he was a Faunus, Kenji hid that fact from her so he could continue to talk to her. Two years passed and the two of them were beginning to grow closer as they realized they shared the same dream to become hunters. One day when they were out in the field, a Beowolf came out of nowhere and tried to attack them. Completely terrified, Kenji picked up Rust and ran as fast as he could. The Beowolf took chase and Kenji came up with a plan to get rid of it. He ran to a nearby cliff that had a tree on the cliff face. He jumped off it, screaming alongside Rust. Kenji was able to latch onto a branch of the tree with his tail as the Beowolf jumped off the cliff and fell to its demise. At first Rust was grateful that Kenji had saved her life, but then she saw his tail. Overwhelmed with feelings of betrayal, feat, and hatred, she pried herself from his grip and climbed the cliff, saying “Never talk to me again you lying Faunus!”

Kenji was heartbroken, so in order to get away from Menagerie, he convinced the farmer to let him go to Signal Academy in order to train and become a hunter. The farmer only agreed if Kenji would give him most of the money he would make as a hunter. Kenji made the promise, but he knew he would never follow through with it. At Signal, he modeled his weapon after the one tool he was most familiar with, a shovel. After successfully building Mr. Sandman, he trained and was able to graduate Signal and get accepted into Beacon Academy.

Weapons and Abilities
Weapon: (DEEH) - Digging Enabled Energy Hammer

Name: Mr. Sandman

Modeled After: Combat Shovel, war hammer, energy rifle

Constructed during his time at Signal it gave the impression of not a handy weapon. Although it doubles as a war hammer, Kenji normally uses it in its combat shovel form, and he has proven to be very proficient at fighting with it. He only uses the hammer form on large Grimm such as a King Taijitu or Death Stalker, and the energy rifle on things that are beyond his reach such as Nevermore. Also, in hammer mode, Kenji can let out an energy burst out of the flat part of the head when contact it made with an enemy.

Other combat skills that he has are his Faunus night vision, above average endurance and strength, an acrobatic fighting style, and he is able to use his tail in combat.

Semblance
Kenji’s semblance is named Digger. When in use, Kenji covers Mr. Sandman with his aura in order to dig through objects easier with the shovel mode, and make more devastating hits with his hammer. Although when using it, the toughness of the object combined with how many times he hits he makes can drain his aura very fast. For example, he can cut through smaller Grimm with no problem, begins to break a sweat when digging through stone, get faint when trying to cut metal, and he once fell into a coma for a week after killing a King Taijitu in one shot.

Trivia

 * Bruin is Dutch for brown


 * How many other people have shovels as weapons?


 * This is my first OC so be gentle
 * Let me know if anything needs to be changed or clarified