Katsune "Kitty" Akatsuya (Discord)

Katsune Akatsuya, or Kitty, is a member of Team ????. She is mostly inspired by the myth of the Japanese kitsune, as well as the titular character of the fairy tale The Fox Sister, with a little influence from various anime shows. This is apparent primarily in her weapon, Heaven's Fang, which is both a giant spear/scythe and a bolt-action anti-armor rifle. Her primary nickname is Kitty.

Appearance
Kitty is fairly short for her age, not having quite hit her growth spurt yet, despite being 16 years of age. Despite her nickname, she is a fox faunus, possessing a large, fluffy fox tail, which would be incredibly difficult to hide even if she was so inclined. In fact, her shoulder-length hair is spiked on the sides in such a way as to create the illusion of a pair of fox ears as well. Said hair, and the fur on her tail, are both fox-red, though her hair has white highlights and is slightly spiky, with a yellow cross-shaped pin on her bangs. She wears a short-sleeved, thigh-length dress ("It's a battle skirt!") with a loose, flowing bottom and a gold bow on the neckline, as well as a vest, long gloves (not elbow-length), and boots. She wears a belt on which she wears a magazine of ammo for Heaven's Fang on one side, and Heaven's Maw itself sheathed on the other. Her dress is the same fox-red as her hair, blocked with gold trim. Her vest, gloves, and boots are black. Her eyes are green. She has a small scar on the bridge of her nose.

Personality
Kitty is a rather shy individual, stemming from a lack of social interaction. 'Once bitten, twice shy' is a motto that could easily be applied to her. However, once someone shows her some kindness and actually tries to be her friend, they'll find a rather enthusiastic, trigger-happy weaponsmith. Oddly, her shyness doesn't make her hide her faunus heritage, as she was encouraged by her father to always be proud of who she was, and if people didn't like it, then that was their problem. This sometimes makes her very nervous. She is a fan of My Little Pony, building weapons, and classic cult movies like Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas and The Big Lebowski.

Backstory
Kitty was placed in an orphanage as a baby, but she had the good fortune of being adopted by loving parents. The parents, high-ranking white-collar workers at the Vulcan Refinery Corporation, had three sons, but they wished for a daughter. Even upon discovering that she was a faunus, her new parents loved her and proceeded to adopt her. Her two eldest brothers, did not like her at all. They attempted to frame her for various wrongdoings, but the youngest brother stood up for her and helped her to expose their brothers' lies.

As she grew, even her elder brothers came to respect her, and she became more outgoing. At first, her parents tried to shelter her from the outside world, fearful of what they would say or do to her, but her curiosity and newfound outgoing nature proved too much. Around this time, her father, a graduate of Beacon Academy (or Bacon Academy, as he called it), taught her how to protect herself, in case anyone should ever try to harm her. A bit of a weapons geek (a trait he passed on to her), he helped Kitty build Heaven's Fang when she was accepted into Pharos Academy, a high-school level institution equivalent to Signal, and she's kept it with her ever since.

Training at Pharos was hard for her as a faunus. She experienced a great deal of prejudice and racism from the other kids, and even from adults who refused to do anything about it. As a result, she locked herself up with her studies and hobbies, which included video games, comic books, and building weapons. In fact, possibly the only person at Pharos to treat her like a decent person is Aurea Melankranz, whom she quickly adopted as a big sister figure. Her lack of a social life allowed her to focus exclusively on training, and as a result she was accepted into Beacon a year early, where she hopes to find less prejudice against her kind, and maybe even finally be accepted.

Weapon
Heaven's Fang is an Anti-Armor Bladed Lance Rifle (ABLR). It has four forms. The first is a form used solely for storage, in which it shrinks to make it easier to carry. It has no combat utility in this form, except possibly bludgeoning someone with it. In this form it can be placed in a carrying container that looks kind of like a heavy-duty metal briefcase painted in red and gold warning stripes. The briefcase is locked with a six-digit combination lock.

Heaven's Fang's second form is its ranged form, a .950 caliber anti-grimm sniper rifle with powerful anti-armor capabilities. In both this form and its melee form (see below), it uses heavy high-caliber rounds as ammo, using impact dust as the propellant. The weapon is box-fed, with the magazine loaded either in the back of the rifle, or in melee mode, where the gun mechanism meets the blade and at a 45-degree angle facing towards the butt end. Kitty carries additional armor-piercing rounds for particularly resilient enemies, and it has a pistol-like grip, the kind normally found on standard gunblades. In front of the grip, on the top of the gun, is a long scope for long-distance shooting. It can be set to either burst-fire mode, firing several rounds at once, or single-fire bolt-action mode for greater accuracy and recoil. The gun is big enough to fit .950 caliber shells.

Thirdly, Heaven's Fang can turn into a melee form resembling a spear at least twice her height, with the blade taking up half the length. In this form, the rifle portion can still be used for recoil using the gun trigger mechanism, which is right where the blade meets the pistol grip with the ammo magazine below it, almost like a crossbar or hand guard only at a 45-degree angle. The magazine is flanked on either side by gold-plated exhausts, like those on a motorcycle. The recoil can propel the lance forward, diagonally forward and to the side, or diagonally forward and up, allowing for both mobility and greater cutting power. The blade can also split in half, forming a channel down which the rifle can be fired.

With a flick of her wrists, Kitty can cause the blade to transform into its final form, a scythe. The blade rotates ninety degrees, the segmented blade curves into the scythe shape, and the handle lengthens slightly to compensate for the reduced melee range. While sacrificing some small bit of melee range, this grants her extra slicing power to deal with heavily-armored grimm, putting her full force behind the tip of the scythe, using it almost like a war pick to cleave through enemies. In addition, the rifle portion of the weapon can be used more effectively in this mode, using the scythe blade as a stabilizer. In short, the scythe form is for greater slicing and piercing power, and the long spear form is for greater range and versatility.

Heaven's Fang is fox-red with black underparts, a black barrel and red rubber grip, gold accents, a gold barrel tip, and three gold warning stripes towards the tip. Always visible on the side is an inscription reading "Gun ex Machina".

Semblance, Dust, & Aura Abilities
Kitty's aura is somewhat unevenly-developed. She can use her aura at its most basic level in all areas, like all huntresses. However, while she's skilled in using it for offensive purposes (channeling it through her weapon or through her fists/feet), she does not possess good defensive capabilities with it, or much capability in manifesting it in ways other than through something that can hit an enemy. She uses red dust as the detonation charge for a magazine of armor-piercing rounds, and carries a spare magazine of fire dust ammo for recoil-based attacks, and to cause small explosions on impact. Her semblance is Foxfire, which allows her to absorb fire and channel it into her aura to become more powerful, much like Nora does with lightning. The fire turns the color of her aura when she uses this ability. She can then channel this energy to manifest various effects, although the only ability she's capable of now (and for a while yet) is using it to make her attacks more powerful.

Relationships

 * Aurea Melankranz is an old friend of Kitty's from Pharos Academy, during the summer before they attended Beacon. Aurea was one of the few people to accept Kitty as a friend, and they formed a strong sisterly bond.

Quotes

 * "Machines are great friends. They don't care if you're a human or a faunus, they'll never bully you, and they will always be there when you need them. Some of them can be a bit ... picky, though." —Kitty, to her school councilor.


 * "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning pyromaniac." —Kitty, when confronted about her fighting style, paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes.


 * "I want an explosion the size of Vale." —Kitty, when asked about what she hoped her semblance would be.
 * "My cause is just, my will is strong, and my gun is very, very large." —Kitty, quoting that Doom guy after building her weapon.
 * "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire." —Kitty, quipping about her semblance and use of fire dust, quoting Robert Frost.

Development

 * Year 1
 * Semester 1
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 * Event
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Trivia

 * This character is a duplicate, intended for use only in Discord.
 * Kitty was originally based off the lesser-known fairy tale 'The Fox Sister', though she is now based more on the legendary kitsune Tamamo-no-Mae.
 * Her favorite food is liver. This is a direct reference to the character she was originally based on.
 * She first appeared in an RWBY RP on the Giant in the Playground forums.
 * Kitty's first name was originally 'Katherine', but was changed to fit Monty Oum's naming rule.
 * Her family name, Katsune, refers to the Japanese nine-tailed fox. This makes her fit in with her team, all of whom are based on various mythological animals. In addition, katsune refers to 'kitsune', which is the Japanese word for fox, and foxes are red. Her first name is Akatsuya, meaning 'red glow' in Japanese. This satisfies Monty Oum's naming rule.
 * Her family name comes before her given name because she is Japanese-inspired, and likely hails from the same land as Lie Ren.
 * Her weapon was partially inspired by Gundam SEED's GAT-X103 Buster Gundam and its anti-armor shotgun.
 * Said weapon is also partially inspired by the Austrian Steyr IWS 2000 semi-automatic anti-materiel rifle.