Aki Granger

Name: Aki Granger

Nickname(s): (None at this time.)

Age: 15

Species: Mobian Kitsune

Gender: Male

Occupation: Mechanical and architectural engineering specialist, Restoration Corps of Engineers. Though the Restoration has little need for rank or uniform, even less so than did the Resistance, with some pride Aki retains his old suit and insignia.

Appearance: Aki is a fox of predominantly cornflower blue fur, standing at about 3'3". This coat is somewhat thinner from his jaw down to shortly above his heart, under which is some old burn scarring. For related reasons, he ordinarily wears a breathing mask over his muzzle. Overall, he tends to be in a close fitting outfit similar to the one he wore during the war.

Currently, Aki keeps his mop-like hair short. Often he also keeps a visor or goggles over his jade green eyes, which are easily irritated by smoke and fumes. Regularly he'll be wearing gloves with substantial electrical insulation and tromping around in boots that serve as well in rough terrain as they do on paved ground.

At this time, he has two rather poofy tails which shift from his pale blue towards a soft gray.

Appearance References:
These unfortunately only show one tail, but otherwise are generally reflective.

First an approximation from Forces-



Then, a thanks to Aqua Lilac for the following-




Known Family:
- Jasmine Granger (Mother) (+)
- Ian Granger (Father) (+)
- Aurora Granger (Younger Sister) (Alive)

Likes: Tinkering with machinery, playing board games. Amateur gardener. Has recently picked up acoustic guitar, though self-teaching is a slow process. He appreciates having his work and efforts noticed and complimented.

Dislikes: Aki is quite averse to open flames. As he tries to stay focused on the present and future, reminders of the pain in his past don't usually go over very well. Though he can't be called a pacifist, he has a distaste for conflict whether fought with weapons or words.

Personality: Usually fairly upbeat. He prefers to keep his paws busy, and prefers to keep his focus on the moment. Despite having a history of working on weapons, he avoids pointing them at other people whenever possible and is generally conflict-averse.

Aki tends to consider dwelling on the past an unnecessary risk. He's somewhat come to terms with a traumatic background, insofar as he can, but finds the easiest way to avoid relapsing is to set his focus on the present and forward. As such, between temperament and training, he's usually fairly resolute and maybe a bit stubborn when his composure isn't broken.

Powers: Above-average electrical capacitance and tolerance with some degree of command over the electricity. He's not exactly going to be shooting lightning bolts from his paws currently - at least not without more training or specialized equipment - but can give off a few sparks or self-power small electronics. Time will tell how this tentative electrical control develops.

More relevantly at the moment, without insulation he can build up or accept a relatively potent charge across his fur and skin. This does not render him totally immune to electrical burns and related injuries, but does grant a significant resistance to them and tends to shield his vital organs and nervous system as a separate 'circuit'. (Though if he ever goes into cardiac arrest, he may be out of luck.) He also has to be careful to discharge before he gets too close to anyone else or when he's actively working with sensitive components.

Strengths:
- Chief among his skillsets are mechanical and electronic engineering. Mostly grown from a personal curiosity and fascination with electronics in his younger days, he is fairly reliable when it comes to repairing and slightly tuning existing machines given the time to examine and understand them.
- He's no expert inventor, but rarely has crafted prototypes both unexpected and useful if he's been able to make many careful case studies of related concepts. He's also offered ideas and designs on how to improve existing structures and tools.
- Once his mind is set on a task and he has some momentum, he's rather unlikely to give up or be persuaded to stop.

Weaknesses:
- Stubborn to the point that changing his mind once he's made it up is generally an exercise in frustration. He's polite about it when someone suggests he's in the wrong, but if he doesn't want to listen he's probably not actually paying attention. If he's going to change, it usually has to come from within.
- Currently, Aki has a poor grasp of his electrical-related abilities. At present, said uncontrolled abilities mostly manifest as a gradual buildup of static across his coat. Without insulation he tends to be at a fair risk of static shocking others or discharging into electrosensitive equipment he's working on - thus he also rarely is without insulating gloves and keeps some distance from others.
- Aki doesn't usually irritate easily...except for when his past and his mask are questioned at length. Both are fairly touchy subjects for the vulpine, as the pain associated with either has never quite faded. The strain on his respiratory system is still quite real, with its own challenges, despite medicine and time bringing some healing. Due to the issues he already has with breathing, heavy physical activity tires him easily.

Positive Relations:
- His adoptive porcupine family: parents Amelia and Meekael, and elder brother Codak. While at this point Aki serves in the Restoration and is not always at home, he does return often.
- His mentor who helped quite a bit in his recovery process, a raven named Smoke. The two mostly keep in touch by semi-consistent mail at this point.
- Younger sister Aurora - or at least, what ought to be positive relations. Aki hasn't seen her in quite some time and still wants to know where she ended up.


Negative Relations:
- He doesn't have a name yet to put to those who captured Aurora. If and when Aki traces the kidnapping to the Onyx Vanguard or its remnants, there's going to be hell to pay. Especially if he finds her.
- Commodore Feltwright, a mink and former superior officer in the Resistance whom Aki acquiesced to in the past (per chain of command) but whom the fox considers to be much more interested in red tape, formality, and decorum than in the sometimes importance of expediency.

History:  Hailing from the town Stonebrook in the subarctic, Aki had the benefit of a fairly calm and stable existence for the first decade of life. Expressing an interest in electronics, he would more often than not be able to disassemble them to satisfy curiosity but then prove unable to put the components back together again. That assumed the components even survived; it took a bit before he learned to wear specialized gloves given how often he seemed to build up sizable static.

In Aki's eleventh year, an unexpected attack on the remote location caught the town off guard. The raiders swept in, lighting fires, demolishing buildings, and inflicting extreme casualties against an ill-prepared populace. Though this attack was later ascribed to international hostility (with murmurs of a false flag operation) and relief supposedly sent, Stonebrook was essentially gone - most of the residents were killed, the structures ruined, and the refugees fleeing into darkness.

Aki in particular was heavily injured, having tripped onto a pile of flaming rubble while running from the wall of death behind him. Rescued by his parents and younger sister, he weakly clung to life as they used snow and what bandaging they had to help the second- and third-degree burns on his face, neck, and chest. After that they hurried off with a small party of other survivors.

The raiders struck again, killing off most of the remnants of the town. Most of the refugees who actually survived this second strike were the youngest and who hid...though in Aki's case, given the extent of his injuries the pillagers either left him for dead or presumed he was already gone. He was, at the least, unconscious, verging on comatose.

As such he was unawake and unaware as a rescue party from the nearest town (responding to the original distress signal) encountered the young survivors. He and his sister were taken to safety together with the few other juvenile remnants. The vulpine siblings ended up in the care of a porcupine family in a more temperate area, though for a time Aki remained unconscious.

When he opened his eyes, he started gradually coming back to the world. Catching up on what had happened took a severe strain on his already damaged constitution. His body had somewhat healed on the outside, especially with additional medical support - fresh skin where the burns had been, even some regrowth of his coat though nowhere near as thick as in unburnt areas. Internally, however, the flames that charred away his flesh also damaged his respiratory system. He tired easily and was chronically at risk of asphyxiation because he barely had enough oxygen intake to get by.

The fox regained a small part of his strength over the next couple of years, restlessness driving him to leave bed and try to do something practical that wouldn't totally exhaust him. Gradually, and with quite a bit of support from adoptive family, he started repairing broken devices and saving for his own set of components and tools. More trial and error got him to the point where he built a filtering mask for himself - an improved version of which he still wears today.

This helped strengthen his capacity to be up and around. However, tragedy did not will to leave him be. In the dark of night during his thirteenth year, kidnappers came to the home and whisked away his younger sister. Their adoptive brother Codak was awakened and severely injured in an attempt to stop the crooks; he managed to call for help but the pursuing search in the hours and days following never turned up any conclusive leads.

Aki was in a dark time after that. He couldn't focus on his work. Nightmares of being taken himself and locked away plagued his sleep, as did recurring images of Stonebrook burning down. Keeping his mask on more frequently, using it as an means to hide his expression, he even largely stopped eating until exhaustion confined him to bed.

He might never have broken out but for the intervention of his adoptive mother, an avid gardener, who gradually managed to coax him into helping her with outdoor work. Though Aki's stamina was still poor, he helped with the lighter aspects of gardening as a mechanical sort of routine task.

The day that Amelia listened to him suggest a mechanism he might be able to make in order to harrow the soil automatically was the day that she saw a spark return to his eyes.

Slowly, painfully Aki returned to some degree of liveliness. He made more of an intention to think about the present and the future. The phantoms haunting his sleep gradually lessened as time went on. He repaired, adjusted, and built more, gaining a local reputation for technical skill.

At the outbreak of the Empire-Resistance War (cf. Sonic Forces), both Codak and Aki volunteered for the Resistance. Aki was understandably rejected for regular service in light of his frail constitution but conditionally brought on to perform maintenance and engineering support in the back lines.

During this time, he ended up the primary arms maintenance technician at a prominent Resistance weapons depot. Armaments both physical and energy passed through his workshop, and he gained a degree of familiarity with a variety of weapons. Aki repaired what he could, salvaged what he couldn't repair, and started making modifications (with permission) where he saw opportunities for improvement.

He still wasn't on the front lines when the war ended, and he was okay with that. In light of how many individuals he did repair work for and how few he saw again, with casualty reports trickling in regularly...he kept his own sidearm at his side - self-defense, at least in theory - but found the idea of personally lifting a weapon less and less palatable given the loss of life in wartime. Certainly the fight was still necessary, as large as the Empire loomed, but if he'd had any resolve to pull a weapon on someone else...it was largely gone, unless perhaps he was imminently protecting his own safety, or maybe a civilian's.

In the time following the war, Aki remained with the Restoration. He's been primarily assigned to help provide engineering support in damaged areas or Restoration bases. His role has been some odd mix of quartermaster, civil engineer, handyman, tech support, and machinist.