This is a competition entry for SephirothCrystal's character creation contest. I hope you enjoy reading it!


Mina Lenscraft


Appearance

Mina is a young, energetic woman with a bright disposition. Despite her line of work, she keeps her golden brown hair longer than she should – a little longer than neck length. However, a large set of goggles on her head obscures much of this. Her eyes are hazel in colour, with a bit of a greenish tinge, and are slightly larger than average, giving her a cute appearance. Mina’s small nose doesn’t help, which is normally a good thing, except when people underestimate her. Usually her smiles aren’t toothy, but when something is sufficiently amusing, it’s clear that she takes good care of her teeth. Around her neck is a bronze pendant in the form of a cog. It doesn’t look valuable at all, but she’ll never be without it.

Mina has fair skin and is quite strong for her small stature. Most people wouldn’t expect a woman of only 5”3’ to possess a lot of upper body strength, but working with machines most of her life has toned her muscles quite well. To her chagrin, she has slighter curves than a lot of other women, and her mechanic’s attire tends to conceal them even more. As a result, it isn’t uncommon for people to think that she’s a young boy, and for those people to get their head bitten off. Even being called a "pretty boy" poses the same problem.

Speaking of her attire, normally she’ll be wearing some overalls, due to the likelihood of her tinkering with some sort of mechanical object, and therefore needing the protection they provide. Her pair is well worn, with oil stains, patched holes and frayed sleeves. Mina is almost always with her belt of tools as well, which contain things from screwdrivers to hammers, and is even heavily weighed down at one side by a huge wrench. When not in her overalls, the young woman prefers lighter and more feminine clothing, such as a light pink tanktop and... trousers so she can wear her tool belt. Even though she’d like to be and tries to be more feminine, it unfortunately just doesn’t work. On the rare occasion that she doesn’t have her tool belt, she favours dresses and skirts, but this isn’t nearly as often as she’d like.




Personality

Mina is a tough and confident girl who is more than willing to speak her mind. She has to be this way otherwise her customers and competitors wouldn’t respect her. Few people think of short woman when they think of mechanics or engineers, after all. She can also be quite competitive – for example, if someone thinks that they’re a better mechanic than her, Mina won’t rest until she’s proven that she’s better than they in no uncertain terms.

Though she often looks and presents herself as a tomboy, she’s actually quite fond of typically girly things – for example, flowers. Despite them not being machines, she loves their natural beauty, and how it is impossible to create one through science. Also, her aggressive behaviour is just the way she expresses herself. If she’s yelling at you about your choice in boyfriend, it’s because she’s worried about you. Deep down, she cares about others, but it just manifests in a less than kind way most of the time.

One thing that Mina really hates is being mixed up with either a child or a boy. Unfortunately, it is often both at the same time. This will often result in the poor person in question being harshly told off for a minute or so. This greatly annoys her because she’s a full grown woman, and it highlights how unfeminine she looks at times. Despite a pretty face, she’s self-conscious about her body image, and aware that her occupation and love make it difficult for her to improve it.

She’s also got a bit of a taste for adventure. This is probably why Mina is so willing to travel long distances for tasks. Unlike her parents, who mostly let people come to them if they needed something fixed, or made only short journeys; she’d be willing to travel pretty much anywhere if the job required it. It gave her an excuse to see the world and learn about machines elsewhere – and charge more for her services – and it was more exciting than just running a mechanic’s shop. Mina was a fan of change rather than order, so a life where she could travel was one that she liked.




History

Mina was born to Willard and Leanne Lenscraft in a major city of the Linosinean Kingdom. They ran a workshop together, where they fixed everything from small steam engines to airships. Their business was never in lack of tasks, and their employees had a reputation for professionalism. Asides from repairing broken or damaged machinery, they also sold various mechanical gadgets as big as small, personal airships.

After Mina was born, her parents took it in turns to look after her, alternating between managing the workshop – they also took to not going on long trips as they did before, preferring instead to send their employees. It was only natural for their only daughter to get interested in the family business, and she had a knack for machines at a young age. Though she was teased at school for being a grease monkey and a tomboy, she didn’t let that get in the way of her interest in how things worked, how to fix them and how to make things.

Unfortunately, one day, when she was staying with her grandmother due to an important job at the workshop that required everyone, disaster struck. Authorities were unable to determine the cause of the explosion, but the fact was that the workshop was now nothing more than a smoking crater. Almost everyone was killed, and the rest seriously injured. Her parents weren’t among the handful of lucky ones.

Mina ended up living with her grandmother from then on – her only living relative. The death of her parents was a harsh blow to the girl, but there were two things that helped her get through it. One was a pendant that she’d received from her mother – it had been passed down through her family for generations, and she was to receive it when she turned 18. Because of the tragedy, however, she ended up getting it in the will. The second was a small, ancient airship that had belonged to her father, that didn’t even work anymore. The pendant gave her a piece of her parent’s that she could wear close to her heart, and the airship was something that would give her something to do other than mope.

By the time she’d finished school, she’d finally managed to complete the airship. Unfortunately, even though it flew better than the original design did, it was notoriously unreliable and looked like it was held together by duct tape. But Mina loved flying around in it, and was always thinking of workarounds for it that she could apply to other things. She hoped to one day fly around the world in the ‘Firebrand II’, as she called it. Until then, she was happy with running a small, one woman business out of her grandmother’s home, flying around and performing odd jobs for people unable to fix their own machines.