Katsune "Kitty" Akatsuya

'Kitty' Lacuna is a member of Team JEGR. She is mostly inspired by the titular character of the fairy tale The Fox Sister, with a little influence from various anime shows. This is apparant primarily in her weapon, Heaven's Maw, which is both a chainsaw and an armor-piercing assault rifle.

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 pair of large, fluffy fox ears and a large, fluffy fox tail, which would be difficult to hide even if she was so inclined. Her shoulder-length hair and the fur on her ears are both fox-red, though her hair has yellow-orange highlights and is slightly spiky. She wears a short-sleeved, thigh-length dress with a loose, flowing bottom and a bracket-shaped 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 Maw 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.

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.

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, but her two eldest brothers did not. 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 Maw 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. 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 Maw is an Anti-Armor Chainsword Bolt-Action Rifle (ACKBAR). It has three forms. The first is a form used solely for storage, in which it folds up in half 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 Maw's second form is its ranged form, in which is resembles a chainsword with a gun stuck on top of it and a pistol-grip handle. In this form, it can be used as a saw-toothed sword, but its primary function is used as an anti-armor assault rifle. In both this form and its melee form (see below), it uses high-caliber rounds as ammo, and has a canister of red dust that powers the chainsaw component in its chainsaw form. The weapon is box-fed, with the magazine located on the bottom towards what would be the cross guard and swept back diagonally, and Kitty carries additional armor-piercing rounds for particularly resiliant enemies. It has a pistol-like grip, the kind normally found on standard gunblades, and a bipod hidden under the safety housing. A pair of gold exhausts decorate either side of the area where the chainsword meets the pistol grip, and spew fire whenever Kitty uses her semblance.



Finally, the safety housing and gun barrel on Heaven's Maw can retract, turning it into a melee form more closely resembling a chainsaw. In this form, the rifle portion can still be used for recoil via the exhausts, and the housing opens up at the top and folds to the sides of the chainsaw, leaving the chain almost entirely exposted for maximum cutting power. In this form, for all practical purposes, it is a chainsaw

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Heaven's Maw is fox-red with black underparts, a black barrel and rubber grip, gold exhausts and accents, gold teeth, and three gold warning stripes towards the tip.

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Semblance, Dust, & Aura Abilities
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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;">Kitty's aura is somewhat underdeveloped. She can use her aura for basic abilities, such as enhancing her strength to the point where she can wield Heaven's Maw effectively, and to exert the control over it she needs to not slice her limbs off. However, she does not possess good defensive capabilities with her aura, or much ability to manifest it in other ways other than through her weapon. She uses red dust to power Heaven's Maw's chainsword mode, as well as the detonation charge for a magazine of armor-piercing rounds, and she can use it to set its chain on fire for a finishing blow. In the most desperate of circumstances, she can overload the dust chamber and use up all of her dust at once to fire a massive beam of energy. Her semblance is Kinesis, which allows her to control the kinetic energy of an object. This allows her to enhance or alter her own movement, power her weapon, and create small kinetic explosions. This ability is often accompanied by a burst of flame.

Relationships
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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Kitty's father, Laurence Lacuna, nickname Lex, is her only living relative that she knows of. He is part of the board of directors for the Vulcan Refinery Corporation.

Quotes
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;"> <p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;">''"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 counciller

''"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

Trivia
<li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Kitty is based off the lesser-known fairy tale 'The Fox Sister'. <li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Her favorite food is liver. This is a direct reference to the character she was based on. <li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">She first appeared in an RWBY RP on the Giant in the Playground forums. <li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Kitty's last name (Lacuna) was based on the name of a protagonist from Final Fantasy VIII, Laguna Loire. <li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Kitty's first name was originally 'Katherine', but was changed to fit Monty Oum's naming rule. <li style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;-qt-block-indent:0;text-indent:0px;">Her first name, 'Jozakura', is Japanese for 'little cherry tree'. This fits Monty Oum's naming rule because cherries are typically associated with the color red.

Image Gallery
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