Benjamin Blackwell

**Benjamin Dominic Blackwell**, known by the alias **Spinal Tap** to the public, is a pro hero operating in the country of Japan. While many of his fellow Heroes took up the job to save others or out of a desire for personal greatness, Benjamin decided to become a Hero simply out of a desire to become a more interesting person, drawing more people to him and helping him make friends without having to put in effort to instigate social interactions. He is a member of the Hero Association known as **GUILD.**

## Appearance

Benjamin has light blonde hair and striking golden eyes, both received from his American father, whom he takes after much more than his Japanese mother. Contrary to his somewhat slender physique, Benjamin possesses a much greater weight than most would assume, due to his Quirk making his body naturally weigh more from his extra-strong bones.

   Benjamin's Hero costume can best be described as dark yet goofy at the same time. The outfit consists of a black body stocking with a skeleton motif printed on it, along with gloves, boots, and a red scarf that's constantly flapping in the wind.

## Personality

Benjamin is a quiet and reserved man who has a bit of a hard time talking to others. He often feels that he never has that much to say, and doesn't find himself to be that particularly interesting, leading to him not really having any friends and living a simple and quiet life outside of his job as a Hero. Him feeling like he didn't have much to say was what led him to pursue a career as Hero, as he felt that following in his parents' footsteps of working in an office for the rest of his life would only lead him further down the path to becoming a boring person that has absolutely nothing interesting or unique worth talking about. He made his Hero outfit to reflect this desire to become more interesting, feeling that its mixture of coolness and goofiness would serve as a crutch for people to get endeared to him until he got used enough to the job to talk to them himself, though this ended up backfiring quite considerably.

## History

Benjamin's father, Jeremiah, had moved to Japan to pursue a high-paying job at a branch of the company he worked for. It was at this job where he met Setsumi, whom he would later marry and have Benjamin with. Even as a child, Benjamin was very quiet, and did not seem to enjoy playing with any of the other kids around his neighborhood. Because of his lack of drive to be sociable, he often watched TV in his house, where he saw the escapades of many Heroes as they saved the lives of people in the city day in and day out, inspiring him to learn how to use his own powers in the hopes that it would make other kids drawn to him, helping him get friends without having to do much of the work himself. When the time actually came to it, however, he could never just start showing off with his abilities as intended, due to his shyness, leaving him to just continue practicing and mastering his Quirk in the reclusive safety of his own house. As he went through school, just as quiet and friendless as ever, he realized that he had no real idea of what he wanted to do with his life, and that he needed to hurry and find some sort of aspiration that could turn his life around for the better. While he always thought that he would probably just end up getting some sort of office job, like his parents, he realized that it would do nothing to help him as a person, and that he needed a major change to get the results he wanted. It was then that he decided that he would become a Hero, thinking that such an active and dynamic occupation would surely have to make him at least somewhat interesting.

Despite having made the decision to become a Hero so suddenly, leaving him somewhat unprepared for the U.A. Entrance Exam, all the time he had spent honing his Quirk over the years paid off, allowing him to pass the exam and join the school, which he graduated from a few years later, gaining his Hero License and taking the name **Spinal Tap**. Once he started his career as a Hero, he intended for his costume to handle the entirety of the social aspect of the work for him, with him not talking at all while taking down criminals and being seen by the public, due to his shyness. However, this ended up having the complete opposite effect, with his dead silence while carrying out his job leading to him being seen as a source of absolute terror to criminals and a scary sight to children, causing him to gain the exact reputation he didn't want. In an attempt to rectify this before his status as a symbol of fear was solidified in the eyes of the public, he applied for the Hero organization known as GUILD, with him hoping that being seen with other, more positively viewed heroes would help his reputation get to where he wanted it to be.

## Powers and Abilities

**Bone-Make:**A Transformation-type Quirk that allows Benjamin to create, shape, expand, and manipulate his bones for various purposes, such as forming weapons and armor around his own body, as well as firing them like projectiles. In addition to making new bones, he can also reinforce his own skeleton, which is already naturally stronger than the average person's skeleton as a trait of the Quirk, by forming extra layers over his bones, giving him more physical strength and increasing his durability by a good amount. While Benjamin is able to create more elaborate constructs using his Quirk, he prefers to stick to more simple techniques, as the amount of concentration required to form a more complicated structure with his bones forces him to lessen his movements until it is complete, hindering his movement capabilities and leaving him more vulnerable to enemy attacks.

## Trivia

* Benjamin's appearance in his Hero costume is based on the character Skullomania from the Street Fighter EX game series.