CHARACTERName: Kirkka Scarlet
Age: 37. Born Niege 6th, 42 AC
Gender and Species: Female Human
Symbol: Flameward (http://i.imgur.com/dgaa58E.png). Her symbol was designed and named based on her favoritism toward fire in her early days of combat school.
Occupation: Groundskeeper at Beacon Academy.
Appearance: Kirkka stands at an even six feet(183 cm) and weighs in around 161(73kgs)pounds. She looks like she keeps herself fit, but is hardly a bodybuilder. A very faint tan is sometimes present on her face and arms due to being outside often for her job, but otherwise, there are no visible markings on her. She has well-kempt auburn and black streaked hair, nearly always tied into a ponytail that reaches just past her shoulder blades. Her oval shaped face sports grey eyes sitting above her average sized nose, glancing about as she observes her surroundings closely but discretely with an innocent smile. She looks to be about her age, perhaps a few years older.
A cloth piece is wrapped around her chest to allow maximum flexibility while also supporting her. Its edges have small lacy flair. Over that, dual layer shoulder pads attached to a hood cover her shoulders, extending beyond them just slightly. She often keeps the hood down, especially when not on missions. Unless it’s raining.
Fingerless gloves extend all the way up her arms, reaching her biceps before ending with more decorative flair. Wind-like metalwork covers the back of her hand and her forearms. She can sometimes be seen wearing small caps on her fingers, similar to thimbles. These protect fingers from dust-related accidents while working with it.
Her lower half is covered by a mid-thigh length skirt, and over that, a waist cape that reaches just to her ankles. The cape is made of cloth, but layers of a leather cover the two sides. The uncovered backside is decorated with a few straps and buckles, but they seem to be decorative only. On the sides of the skirt where it meets with the cape, six large square rivets hold the two pieces together as one. Sturdy boots are covered by cloth leggings that end just before the skirt starts. The entire outfit is primarily dark red with a light matte grey. Album. (http://imgur.com/a/nFgrn)
Kirkka’s primary weapon, Ira, rests securely strapped horizontally to her lower back in its three segments. The power of MAGNETS allows her to draw them individually or at once. Each segment connects to the next as they are drawn. Just below this holster, attached to her belt, is a small series of pouches, which contain extra Dust canisters for her weapon, and other minor trinkets. Her symbol is seen on a pouch on her left side. Everything about her attire is designed with mobility in mind, and Kirkka is able to move very freely.
History: Kirkka Scarlet is the daughter of Claire and Reginald Scarlet, born on the 6th of Niege, 42 AC. The family lived in a small village on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Vale, but that only lasted until Kirkka was two, when they were forced to evacuate due to repeated Grimm attacks. The village suffered heavy casualties in an attack only a day before when a passing Huntsmen warned the village of another impending attack that was even larger than the last. The village evacuated together and managed to return to Vale, suffering only minor casualties on the trip back. Kirkka’s family all made it back to Vale where they moved in with Claire’s friends until they could get their own home.
Kirkka’s father was a huntsman who retired once she was born. As such, Kirkka had plenty of time to learn about his world and became very interested in Dust specifically. She spent much of her time learning all she could about the material and followed in her father’s footsteps by enrolling at Signal Academy when the time came.
While her time at Signal was spent learning both general knowledge, and how to fight, her time at home was spent further studying Dust, and its uses throughout the world. Ira, her staff, has been with her since she built the first iteration of it at Signal. As expected by everyone, it was designed in order to maximize the use and utility of Dust. Her abilities and focus led to her often playing a support role in battles, using Dust to enhance her allies, debilitate her enemies and control the battlefield. In her final year at Signal, her parents got divorced. Her father moved away when he learned of Claire’s affair with a neighbor of theirs. Kirkka did not speak with her mother for a long time after hearing the news.
Upon graduating from Signal, Kirkka made plans to study Dust at a specialized school. Her father, who was living in Atlas at the time, convinced her to attend Beacon instead, citing that she can learn so much more there. She agreed and was later accepted to the prestigious Academy.
It wasn’t until Kirkka’s third year at Beacon that her mother had married another man. She learned this man was their neighbor for years, and they had been having an affair. This only drove Kirkka and her mother further apart. A few short months later, Kirkka's mother Claire gave birth to Kaali Charen, Kirkka’s half-sister. Unfortunately, there were complications during birth, and Claire did not survive the ordeal. Kirkka despised herself for not reconciling with her mother.
Graduating top of her class in Dust mechanics and in the top five for Aura mechanics, Kirkka parted with her team and went on to a trade school specializing in Dust, Dust based weaponry and tools, such as Semblance Catalysts. She spent a few terms there before taking an internship and eventually a job at a facility that researches the creation and evolution of Dust based weaponry.
At the age of 24, Kirkka became the legal guardian of her half-sister Kaali Charen. Kaali was four years old by now, and Kirkka struggled to raise her despite her aversion to children.
One year afterward, Kirkka met an unusual person. She called herself Rose, and she claimed to be from the future. Kirkka’s unique semblance granted her the ability to have proof of that, but even then she remained skeptical. When they went together to meet with the Headmaster of Beacon, he was much more quickly convinced of the fact. The Headmaster insisted that Kirkka accepts a job at Beacon Academy based on this recent revelation, and explained that her abilities, especially her semblance, will be extremely useful in the coming years. She agreed, and it has been twelve years since then. Kirkka assists with running a small shop that sells specialized Dust and Semblance Catalyst Foci to students, but her actual position is Groundskeeper of the Academy.
Personality: As someone who interacts with others often, Kirkka is typically quite friendly when approached, but she rarely starts conversations with others, preferring to remain with her own thoughts. When engaged, she prefers to discuss her hobbies or expertise: Dust, weapons, Aura and semblances.
Kirkka has had quite some time to get over it, but she still recalls the pain of her mother's death. They were on very bad terms when it happened, and Kirkka struggles to forgive herself for allowing the situation to evolve into what it was. She becomes awkwardly quiet when the topic of family comes into the conversation, with the exception of discussing her half-sister, Kaali.
At Beacon, she mostly stays out of people’s way unless it’s to complain about their reckless disregard for the school grounds. She also has an irrational hatred of those who damage benches. Some say it's because of a past relationship she had with a mysterious person named Bench. She denies everything about it.
Aura and Semblance: Kirkka is a master in the use of both Aura and Dust. Manipulating her own power comes second nature to her, and as such she is able to perform a wide variety of functions, from detecting nearby Aura sources or approaching Grimm, strengthening her melee strikes, and sending out short range blasts of pure force, capable to knocking back and damaging targets.
Kirkka’s semblance is
Psychometry, which allows her to read the history of any non-living object she is touching. Typically, she concentrates when she does this, allowing her to quickly read a great deal of the object’s history over a short period. However, if she knows the time and date a specific memory happened, a graze of her hand is all that’s needed to extract that particular memory.
Kirkka has received very advanced training in the use and mechanics of Dust. She is an expert at manipulating dust to create desired effects. She is also skilled both at mixing and creating various types of dust, along with constructing Semblance Catalyst Foci.
In addition to the Dust she carries, Kirkka usually carries supplies with her to produce a limited amount of Semblance Catalysts and can recharge other’s Foci in the field.
Combat Behavior: Kirkka has two distinct styles of combat. One focuses on combat with allies, which she prefers. When allies are present, she maintains a support position with line of sight to the battlefield. Focusing on battlefield control, her allies are given temporary enhancements through the use of Dust, such as speed or strength boosts. As for direct control, walls of ice or flame, firestorms, lightning storms, and the like are just a few examples of what she is capable of. Such attacks can be a double-edged sword, however. While she can control the amount of dust that is released when she unleashes and attack, she cannot always control who is going to be caught in the area of effect. As such, combat in a limited space, like indoors, makes it difficult to assist allies or hinder foes.
If directly engaged, Kirkka will focus on distancing herself from her assailant and deflecting attacks until she can retreat to her allies’ side. If she is alone, she chains wide area attacks to attempt to suppress her foes or kill them outright. Fighting her in small areas, or getting into her face and staying there is the best way to deal with her incredibly powerful spellcasting. Though, her staff is not to be ignored. When forced into a situation like this, she tends to focus heavily on trip attacks or other distractions in order to distance herself. If she cannot gain that precious distance, she will likely lose a fight. She is quite resourceful, though, so keeping her within reach of a claw or blade may prove difficult.
WEAPONName: Ira
Primary Form: Ira is a six foot long staff made up of three equal length segments. The end of each section is enlarged, using a magnetic locking system to keep the segments together easily. Around these systems is a complicated storage system, capable of storing six different cartridges of Dust on each end of the staff, totaling 36. When the segments are joined together, the ports to release Dust are blocked. As such, only the two ends of her staff can be fired at once, but due to the design of the weapon combined with Kirkka’s practice and use of Aura, the order of the segments can be very rapidly changed. Kirkka has been known to use the segments separately as well, one in each hand.
Storage Form: Kirkka wears a holster most of the time that straps securely to her back. Each segment compresses by half a foot when being stored at an angle in the holster. When drawing the weapon, pulling on a segment from the left will pull only one segment, but when removing them from the right they will chain together and form the whole staff, fully extending to max length at the same time. This allows her to draw one long staff or two short staves as the situation requires.
Dust Functions: Ira has many, many functions, and Kirkka is capable of changing out which Dusts she places within the staff, along with being able to mix her other types of Dust. This gives her an extremely wide range of functions. Some, but not all possibilities are listed below.
- Energy Missiles: Kirkka employs these often. They tend to fly in a straight line toward their target, and can take various forms, such as fireballs, ice shards, energy blasts, explosive blasts. They have long range and vary in speed, but are generally fast.
- Energy Cones: A stream of energy erupts from one end of Ira, causing high damage in a wide area and at close range. Difficult to use when fighting alongside others due to the wide area of effect.
- Energy Walls: Creation of a wall of energy. Firewalls and Ice walls are the most common, these barriers allow powerful control of a battlefield. Walls and barriers vary in length and height, are their size directly affects their strength. Massive ice walls will be thin compared to very small ice walls. A huge fire wall might have dispersed flames and be less damaging to anyone passing through.
- Storms: This is Kirkka’s offensive specialty. Raining down fire, or ice shards upon a massive area, or creating a freezing windstorm or even a sandstorm are only some of the things she can do. These are devastatingly powerful attacks, but incredibly dangerous if allies or Kirkka herself is caught within. The storms consume a localized area, but can easier cover all enemies in a small skirmish.
- Enhancements: Dust can be manipulated to interact with another’s Aura, granting powerful but short duration enhancements such as increased speed, strength, agility, and/or durability.
- Kirkka can also grant elemental barriers to others. These barriers are highly effective but dangerous when the target doesn’t know how to control it. A fire barrier would ‘ignite’ the Aura surrounding a target, causing them to burn nearby targets while themselves being protected from fire attacks. If the wearer of the barrier doesn’t have very good control of their aura, this technique can go out of control, or even harm the person. In the right hands, this effect is devastatingly powerful, but very dangerous to inexperienced people. As such, Kirkka only rarely uses on others, typically only if she knows they can handle it.
- "Healing": Kirkka is skilled at controlled use of Dust, and can cauterize wounds with fire. Not the best healing ever, but excellent in emergencies.
History: Ira was constructed by Kirkka at Signal Academy. Originally it could only contain and use 12 types of Dust, but it has been since upgraded to the current amount of up to 36 types.