[Kiith]

CHARACTER

Name: Xanh Lo Kurstein (Usually just called Xanh whenever there is no risk of confusing her with her older brother, Xanh Luc)

Age: 17, born 21. of Hitahita

Species and Gender: Female Human

Symbol: A wave dashing in front of a willow
Occupation: First year student, Beacon

Appearance:

Standing at just barely 170 cm, Xanh can not exactly be considered the biggest flower in the garden. Other than her brother she has a more close resemblence to her mother than her Atleasian heritage, with a rather tanned skin colour and the black hair she usually keeps relatively short, its longest tips barely reaching the lower end of her neck. Deviating from the otherwise unintrusive black colour scheme is a single strand passing close to her left eyebrow and ear, being coloured in a bright green. Her eyes in contrast show a dark blue usually also widely seen in the colour pallete portrayed by her clothing: Whenever the circumstances do not necessitate wearing the typical school uniforms Xanh can be seen in light, unrestrictive clothing such as short shirts, lightweight vests and bermuda shorts, or simple sweaters, thin jackets and slim jeans for colder occasions – all usually held in some variation of blue, with the occasional green nuances in places.

History:

Xanh Lo was born in Vale as second offspring to a family of which both sides did not have an all to long history as citizens of the city yet. While her father Buchhold and his parents had migrated from Atlas when he was still a child some time after the Faunus Civil war, her mother Rong Bien had left her birthplace Vacuo only a few years prior in search for work. Here in Vale, Buchhold worked for the local police force, while Rong Bien was taking care of a small set of ponds she would use to grow decorative water plants to be sold on the local markets. While both professions ensured Xanh Lo and her three years older brother Xanh Luc a sound childhood, it never was anything to be bragging about either. While their father was often preoccupied with the huge rat's tail of work that his job dragged along, their mother soon had them included into the daily work around the ponds whenever it was possible. On weekends, after school and on pretty much every occasion both were helping out with the plants in some way. In these times, the different mentalities of both siblings would clearly show themselves:
While Xanh Luc always was a gentle soul, perhaps not being very fond of the ever returning chores they had to partake in either, but always being calm about it and accepting of how things turned out, Xanh Lo could not take it this easily. From a very early age on she was not content with the always same daily routines, not satisfied with just wading through knee deep water, caring for some boring plants. She wanted to go places, do things. Always shift around, always be in motion.

Following this, it came as no surprise to anyone who knew Xanh Lo when she presented her parents her wish to prepare for venturing out into the world possibly assist in making the world a better place – not as a police officer, or a travelling merchant though, but as a huntress. Something that indeed came as a bit of a surprise, and was initially not enjoyed at all by her parents. Quite a few discussions – some relatively heated in nature - came after this, but in the end, nobody parted on bad terms or got shut down. In fact, the dispute was settled by Xanh Luc of all people, who as calmly as always had stated that “This is the way the water flows. To send it down its path and help it find its way would bring life and help everyone, while inhibiting it and forcing it into artificial reservoirs would only hinder itself and everyone else”.

While an admittedly weird statement to make for a 16 year old boy the words spoken seemed to have the intended impact, and to this day Xanh Lo deeply thanks her brother – who helped her out even though he himself preferred to continue his calm lifestyle, using what faint glimmer of a semblance he showed to continue working around the ponds, caring for the plants -  as soon after she could take the first step towards the big end goal by enlisting for Signal academy. After attending the combat school for the following three years, eventually graduating with satisfying results she came by the next big crossroads – and was surer than ever about wanting continue along the path she had started to take, finally gaining entrance to Beacon.

Personality:

“She's just always flowing along, mind and body ever in motion. It is hard to really be mad at such an energetic personality simply trying to solve all the problems at the same time, even if she keeps making stupid mistakes because of just sweeping over everything she does”, Xanh's mother once said in an attempt to describe the mindset of her daughter. And indeed, Xanh can be described as a highly energetic, generally cheerful person, always willing to encounter new and old faces, and never behind on the witty remarks and jokes, and hard to really anger. Driven by the desire to take in as much of the world moving around her as one person can be able to, she is very attentive, while at the same time being quite susceptible to any kind of distraction quickly shifting her attention away from what she was just doing a moment ago. Coming together with this, patience is hardly one of her strong suits, standstill and stagnation being issues she has absolutely no sympathy for and has a hard time dealing with.

While Xanh combat style, general physical behaviour and even parts of her persona almost seem to be based around the flowing nature of water, when it comes to one thing she appears to be more hard as rock than anything else: her opinions and views on how the world works. Once a train of thought has formed inside her mind anyone trying to redirect it will be in for a bit of a hard time. She is also not hesitant to search the conflict with those who oppose her, likely leading to verbal duels – or on some occasions, more physical forms of discourse.

Aura and Semblance:

Xanh's aura is displayed in a deep blue base colour. Depending on certain feelings, mostly influenced by great stress or similar states of emotional turmoil, her aura can start to show faint, constantly moving white stripes at the outer edges.

Her semblance, Hydrophilia, allows Xanh to aggregate, shape and move quantities of water in her immediate surroundings. May it be using bodies of water for crude techniques such as throwing them against foes, directing thin strings towards enemies farther away to slash at or restrain them or using masses of liquid in order to protect herself, Hydrophilia allows for multitude of applications, coming at the cost of varying strain on Xanh's aura.

An important factor in using all of this is of course the availability of water, for multiple reasons. Not only does the amount of material Xanh can work with obviously depend on this, but also the amount of effort required to aggregate any amount of it is directly proportional to its concentration around her. While it proves most easy to just swoop some water out of a pond, river or even very humid air, sources with low concentrations of liquid or significant impurities such as thick mud or the typical desert atmosphere pose a significant stress on her aura and – over extended periods of time – make Xanh feel exhausted and quite literally drained as she has the tendency to draw from her own body's water reserve under severe strain.

The pressure put onto her aura also depends greatly on how much water she actually controls at a time. Simply shaping the small strings she uses as part of her weapons or using small amounts of liquid to slash at opponents from a distance might be easily accomplished, but when shaping the huge amounts of water used for sending out surges of water or setting up the protective layers she can use to deflect impacts it becomes hard to keep every single droplet in harmony with each other and her aura, forbidding extensive use by the amount of concentrated aura required, and thus calling for a clever use of these more powerful abilities.

Combat Behavior:

Often shifting and flowing about like the very water she controls, Xanh likes to use a speedy, adaptable and at times very reactive approach to fighting. While not shying away from conflict by any means and knowing her semblance – which she tends to make extensive use of whenever possible – can grant her most significant offensive abilities as well as some means for protection, she is hesitant on taking plain head-on engagements, as her abilities clearly lie with outmaneuvering the enemy punches, not just taking them and continuing. Playing these cards to her best, Xanh prefers to shift between medium range engagements mostly through the use of her semblance and dashing in whenever an opportunity opens to deliver a few quick, well targeted blows with her blades, only using the full ranged combat capabilities of her weapons on rare occasions. While often times providing an edge against more massive opponents who trust in slow, but powerful attacks and the value of heavy blows fights against enemies with similar fighting philosophies and equal or greater agility can turn into a true drag as the focus shifts from avoiding hits while constantly dishing out herself to actually getting and staying close to a very mobile counterpart.

WEAPON

Name: „Nuoc“ and „Gischt“

Primary Form:

In their primary form, Nuoc and Gischt take the form of two roughly 50 cm big Kama, each with about 40 cm long, sickle like blades attached to the shaft, sharpened on both the front and back side, which can be deployed via pressing a simple button on the shaft bases, similar to the blades of some butterfly knifes, only exposing the most deadly parts of the tools whenever Xanh's fighting style requires it. In this mode, the weapons mainly operate as short range slashing tools, while they also may function in a role as supplementary equipment used in getting a grip on difficult to access surfaces, such as in climbing or on ground wet or otherwise too smooth to easily move around on.

Secondary Form:

While the weapons' blades are retracted and hidden inside the shafts, Nuoc and Gischt are mainly used as support in certain hand to hand combat situations where it is not intended to possibly inflict serious cut wounds to the opponent, providing the basis for a more basic, even more short ranged fighting style. Also, Xanh uses this form of her weapons for a big variety of moves including use of her semblance, as when she was still starting to use it the short sticks provided good focus points to direct her concentration towards, and since then it has become more of a habit than a real necessity.

Tertiary Form:

Through the use of several small attachment points, both Kama can be connected with their blades deployed, thus creating a new piece of equipment akin to a short crossbow with the launch string missing. This incarnation of Xanh's weapons can also be used to create a more massive one handed fighting tool as it might be useful in a few situations, but it is most commonly used by her wielder in combination with her semblance. By aggregating water from nearby humid air – or using her small liquid reserve in some cases – Xanh can create the thin string required to make the ranged weapon truly operational, allowing her to fire small crossbow bolts over medium ranges.

Dust Functions:

Xanh usually carries a set of small single use cooling units fuelled by ice dust, which allow her to either create freezing bolts to be shot by the crossbow form or to cool down the Kamas' blades for short amounts of time.

History:

Nuoc and Gischt first really came to be soon after Xanh started education preparing her for entering prestigious Beacon academy. By this time, she had long known about many aspects of her semblance, and how to apply it in competitive situations, mostly using a pair of short wooden sticks to focus her concentration on and channel her efforts in manipulation close by water. With the nature of how Xanh applied her semblance - flowing and pliable just like the water she controlled – this very often left her in a too reactionary stance, having to rely on what the opponent does rather than being able to apply initiative herself, while at the same time when there were possibilities to engage on her on terms, she lacked the capabilities and motivation to properly exploit them. Only when one of the combat advisors, after having seen Xanh struggle time and again, approached her on the issue the situation changed. Giving the simple advise to “Build upon what is already there, not just exchanging, but shaping and gradually improving things – just like the flow of the waves on the coastal cliffs”, Xanh saw herself encouraged in a search for a real weapon, not completely changing the way she fought, but complementing it. And thus she came up with the idea to create Nuoc and Gischt as enhancements of the simple wood sticks she had relied on using, allowing her to still use them as previously intended, but now also having a versatile and adaptable weapon, fitting an always shifting, light hitting combat style.