CHARACTERName: Zabar Aga
Age: 19 - Born Saule 10th, 62 AC
Species and Gender: Human male
Symbol: Etlu (Warrior)
Occupation: Second year student at Shade Academy, apprentice scavenger
Appearance: 61 212 lbs. Zabar was born with dark brown hair but the sun of the desert has since bleached it into the dirty blond scraggly mess that it is now. He has amber eyes and has a lean, muscular build born from the years of training and his first year of missions. His family was one of the original tribe members of ancient Vacuo and as a descendent of the tribe he has a darker skin than most Vacuans. Zabar usually has more bruises along his body and scars and cuts on his hands than most hunters due to his training without aura with his teammates.
Since his first year at Shade, Zabar has ditched his poncho and hat. His new accessories are a pair of tinted desert goggles he keeps hung around his neck and the tan and black patterned bandana he wears over it.
During his time at Oasis Academy, Zabar was given a chance to design his own armor and weapon, he chose to design an outfit that would provide protection from the harsh heat of the desert and decent protection against attacks from enemies. In his year since creating his outfit, he has refit much of it and scaled back unnecessary parts while adding better ones.
His casual attire consists of a pair of broken in, worn out jeans, a black leather belt with a silver buckle that has his symbol emblazoned on it, a sleeveless under armor shirt, and a pair of brown boots with both a steel toe and steel heel.
When in school, out on a mission, or just out and about looking for something, usually a fight, Zabar will adorn his combat outfit, though really its just the addition of chest armor, knee pads and gauntlets.
A lightly armored chest piece, colored and styled to match his armored sleeves fits snugly around his torso, protecting both the front and back. On the back of the armor are a set of three fan powered vents. These vents can be opened or closed via a push and flip switch located the base of the armors right side. These fans, improved by the addition of wind and minimal ice dust power slots, allow for wonderfully cool circulation of air when in the hot Vacuan desert.
A pair of steel knee pads that can fit underneath Zabars jeans. Theyre, in all honesty, fairly thin and dont provide great protection without aura but they can usually nullify or dampen pain to Zabar when hitting someone with his knee while increasing pain for them.
Zabar still has his poncho and will wear it if hes going into a particularly sandy area of the desert and the same goes for his hat and particularly hot, sunny days but most of the time he leaves them in the dorm.
The poncho itself has its sleeves reaching down about halfway down Zabar's arms and the front and back tips reach down just below his belt. While the poncho is on, he cannot extend his weapons all the way up to the shoulder. Underneath the front of the poncho, there are several pockets and pouches that Zabar uses to store dust canisters or anything else he might need. If he isn't wearing the poncho, he has a pouch that clips onto the back of his waistband that he can store whatever he needs in.
When traveling too far north or too far south, Zabar has a heavy winter jacket to combat the cold since he isn't accustomed to colder climates. It is light tan in color and has a white fur lining inside. The coat itself is extra padded and is able to protect Zabar from even the more mild Atlesian winters. Some time after purchasing it, Zabar had his symbol stitched into the back of the coat in a bronze stitching. Because Zabar is a bad boy, he cut off the sleeves of the jacket so he could wear his weapons instead. Theyre better insulated anyway.
History: Zabar was born the fifth child to one of the old families of Vacuo on the 10th of Saule. His mother and father were both ex-hunters who had settled down into the teaching profession at Oasis. His grandfather, Uli, sat on the council of Vacuo. His two of his brothers and one of his two sisters had all gone out and started training to become hunters and huntresses, either already graduated or nearing graduation by the time he was born, while his remaining sister trained to become a professional scavenger. Because of all of this, Zabar had always dreamed of becoming a hunter or scavenger and hunting through the wastes and ruins of the Sunkissed Sands, fighting Grimm and discovering buried treasure. Unfortunately, he was an unruly and impatient child when he was young and went out into the wastes several times with his friends, none of whom had any way to protect the group. Zabar knew of a rarely guarded section of the wall near the northern edge of the city and led his friends out several times to visit the wastes beach, which had a few ruins, cleared out long ago by scavengers.
One day, while one of his friends was climbing to the top of one of the ruined towers, he spotted it across the wastes; the border between the desert and the jungles and forests to the north. They had all heard the stories of the north, dense jungles and forests jam packed with Grimm but they had also heard of the bundles of fruits and vegetables and beautiful flora that the green woods held. They all knew their parents would never let them try to cross the wastes, they wouldnt even allow them to be just outside of the wall, in the ruins. In spite of this, they all knew they wanted to go there, the chance to see something other than the orange sands and beating sun was too great to pass up, so they made a plan. Theyd leave in two days time, after getting some water to bring with them, and theyd cross the wastes.
At first, everything went fine. They got through the wall easily enough, and theyd gone past the ruins, the furthest theyd been before. But, of course, they were children, there was no way they could have made it across the desert, even a short trip from the north of Vacuo to the jungles above. They werent far past the ruins that they heard and felt the rumbling. At first, they assumed it was just the shifting of the sand under them and maybe the wind picking up. They were quickly disproved, however, as a Landshark, a large worm-like Grimm with many rows of teeth, shot out of the ground and started moving toward them. The children screamed, and ran, as children would be expected to do, and started to run back to the ruins for protection. As they ran, one of Zabars friends tripped and fell to the sands before quickly scrambling back up and dropping the water that was on his back.
Just as they were at they made it to the ruins, the Landshark swung around in front of them and blocked their path. It reared its jagged toothed mouth up to strike and shot downward toward Zabar and his friends, but before it could reach them, they heard a gun go off, and the Landshark fell to one side before shooting off toward where gun had been fired from, one of the ruined towers. Just then a hunter appeared next to them and told them to run back to the wall. They did. They ran faster than any of them had run before as the hunters behind them fought and killed the Grimm.
Back at the wall, a group of city police and two more hunters were waiting for them. They were all in a very large amount of trouble but were alive, and thats all their parents cared about. However, while he didnt know how his friends felt, Zabar had never felt so alive. From that moment on, he knew he had to make his dream of exploring the wastes and going to other lands a reality.
Once he got into Oasis Academy, he knew he was one step closer to achieving his dreams. Every day, he studied what the desert was like. He learned its history, its Grimm, its dangers, he learned first hand what one of the infamous elemental storms were like when one blew through the city, though thankfully his family could afford a retractable house and they were safe from the storms wrath. He learned out to perform combat in the desert, how to use it to his advantage. Every day, he dreamed of leaving the city and exploring the wastes, and he knew exactly how to achieve this. Oasis. They trained hunters and scavengers there, he knew they got to go out on missions to the wastes from his siblings, and at the end of his final year at Oasis, he was accepted into the Academy.
During his first Year at Shade, he was teamed up with team DAWN with the three other students Dustin, Weigela, and Narina. Together they steadily rose in the ranks of the first year's and were sent on several village protection missions while shadowing trained hunters.
Toward the end of their first year, Zabar was able to make it into the biannual Vytal Tournament with Weigela accompanying him as support. While there he met several of students from Vale which he would later fight in the tournament including Juno, a boy who would give him one of his tougher fights on his way to the championship and his inspiration for adding a grappling hook to his weapon.
He eventually did make it to the championship match and faced off against Nathan Eau, another boy from Vale. While it was a close match by all regards, Zabar pulled ahead in the last few moments of the fight. Like Juno, Zabar took inspiration from the other finalists semblance to add a booster to his weapon.
Almost immediately after the tourney was over, he returned to Vacuo to find that The Shiru, a massive and deadly Grimm, had attacked while he'd been away and was forced back by the remaining students and teachers. While classes weren't in session, the rest of the year's extra curricular activities were devoted to assisting in the rebuilding of surrounding villa and the increased defence of settlements in the desert.
Other than that the year, what was left of it at least, went smoothly and Team DAWN transitioned into their second year with flying colors.
At the start of his second year, Zabar started taking rookie scavenger classes at Shade partially because the trade actually interested him and partially because he wanted to get out more. Here he met Kris, a first year student who had recently come in as a refuge from a previous Shiru incident. Since then, she's taken to hanging around with DAWN outside of school more often.
His second year also marked the start of a new training regimen for DAWN in addition to the standard team training.
With Dustin, Zabar would train with his gauntlets and no aura against his suit of armor while Zabar helped him learn to think on his feet. With Weigela, he would train in weapon less hand to hand and no aura, partially training himself and teaching Wei how to fight hand to hand more effectively as well as helping Wei train her semblance by shielding him while he takes constant damage from his other teammates, seeing how long she can keep him shielded. With Narina, he would train his semblance and mid-range combat while helping her aim better at a close-to-mid ranged opponent who moves quickly. Admittedly, he was the worst at the last of the training sessions.
Personality: Zabar is before everything else, determined. This may not be readily apparent from his every day demeanor which is closer to someone who would rather not get involved with something that doesn't affect him, but once he has his mind set on a goal, he will relentlessly pursue that goal. While this is respectable, it is also one of his largest faults. He will often put himself in harm's way to accomplish a goal, even if the ends aren't worth the means, and it has landed him in very painful positions in the past and will continue to get him in trouble in the future.
His family is one of the more wealthy in the Kingdom, but he has made a point to avoid talking about it or taking part in the benefits that come with it. He doesn't concern himself with thinking about whether or not this is a good or bad thing.
It is very rare to see him angry, at least visually, as he is usually either rather upbeat, though he can be frustrated with enough prodding or the occasional Atlesian.
While he was originally intending on becoming a hunter in order to explore the world and be able to leave the city, he's been grappling with whether or not he truly wants to leave after dealing with the aftermath of The Shiru first hand.
Hes rather pragmatic for a boy his age and is willing to ask almost anyone for help if they can he useful, another trait that has put him in rough spots before by becoming indebted to those who helped him.
While he is laid back and a somewhat slow talker in normal circumstances, he is excellent with dealing with situations under pressure and will be one of the last to lose their focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately this sometimes comes at the cost of losing focus on the periphery and not noticing little details. Because of this, he isn't a great team player, favoring to fight alone in fights or at most with others simply supporting him. This isn't to say he doesn't like working with others, he just has a hard time coordinating with others in a fight and often causes more harm than good but accidentally bumping into others are trying to attack at the same time as someone else.
Zabar, like many other hunters, is happy to accept challenges, and usually even happier if he loses, seeing it as a chance to learn and grow as a Hunter. This ties in with his fault of determination, he will relentlessly seek challenges that put him or others in harms way if it means he can test himself.
Aura and Semblance: Reversal ShieldZabars aura comes out a bronze color. It was unlocked in Oasis Academy along with his semblance.
Zabar has the ability to create shimmering shield of aura in front of his hands, each half as wide as his upper body and as tall as waist to head. These shields have the ability to catch and store projectiles fired or launched into them.
With one hand, he is able to stop a bullet from anything smaller than an average sniper rifle, with two hands he can stop anything up to a vehicle mounted military machine gun. The shields have a maximum uptime of 40 seconds, though that uptime is rarely if ever hit in combat due to the shields also having a mass and velocity limit.
The shields are able to store up to 30lbs of mass breaking and dropping all stored projectiles. Similarly, if several high velocity rounds or a round from a rail gun, we're to hit the shield it would puncture straight through.
If the shield doesn't break, Zabar is able to use his aura to fire the stored projectiles back to wherever he's pointing. Since it's dependent on the aura he pumps in and not the energy of the bullets fired, if a bunch of small pistol bullets and a sniper round were in the shield and he fired them off, they'd all go the same distance but if only a single pistol bullet was in the shield he could fire it extremely far.
Additionally, the more projectiles stored in a shield the more scattershot the launch will be when the projectiles are fired, similar to a buckshot from a shotgun. Inversely, with only one projectile in the shield it can be fired exactly to where the shield is pointing. Unfortunately due to having a hard time aiming a shield exactly where you want it, Zabar is no crackshot and anything past midrange has a low chance of hitting its target.
While the shields may start mostly translucent save for shimmering and wavering in the air, the close to the mass or velocity limit the shields get the more opaque with Zabar's aura color they get before becoming completely opaque just before breaking. If the shields break from stress, it takes 12 seconds (arbitrarily equivalent to 3 posts) to be able to reform that shield. If projectiles are fired from the shield, it takes 6 seconds (arbitrarily 1 post) to be able to reform that shield. If Zabar cancels the shield on his own and drops whatever was stored, the shield can be restored immediately.
The shields feel like thick, viscous air to the touch and do not affect melee weapons however they do affect pure dust attacks and thrown weapons. If a weapon is thrown into the shield, it will get caught and reorient to have the sharpest end pointed forward and/or orient to be the most aerodynamic. This also applies to bullets fired into the shield, they similarly reorient to point forward.
Dust attacks are slightly more complicated for the shield to parse than normal attacks. If the attack is something like fire, the shield will suck it up into a ball and when fired back it will explode on impact, the same is true for pure lightning attacks though the explosion is electrical based. If the attack consists of solid dust attacks, such as ice spikes, they will act as thrown or shot projectiles and fired back accordingly. For other dust effects or weird dust attacks, like a pure gravity attack, the effect is dependant on the situation and what form the attack takes.
Despite attempts in training, the shields are not able to stop pure aura based attacks. When an aura projectile makes contact with his shield, both the projectile and shield cancel out and disappear, the counts as breaking under stress.
It should be noted that since he has two shield, if one goes down he can still use the other unless they were brought down will combined into one.
Combat Behavior: Zabar's fighting style could be described as a bit self destructive. He is extremely focused on hand to hand combat and will do whatever possible to stay within his range. While he does have the ability to fight at mid range, he very much prefers fighting up close and personal. That would all be fine on its own but due to Zabar's weapons of choice, a pair of heavy armored sleeves, he chooses to drop the aura around his arms and rely on his weapons for defense. He also takes advantage of this by using his gauntlets to directly grapple enemy weapons, assuming they aren't moving with too much force. While this is great for keeping more aura for the rest of his body, it opens his arms up for serious, if not permanent, damage. This doesn't mean he can't bring his aura back up around his arms easy to defend against a potentially damaging attack, but he can't do it quickly on the fly. Additionally, this causes constant and growing damage on his gauntlets, making them more likely to break in a fight due to a particularly heavy hit if not covered by aura.
His actual hand to hand fighting style could be described as a mixture of MMA fighting and taijutsu. He does his best to take enemy movements and attacks and work with them, turning them against the opponent, but he doesn't keep up the action with quick fluid movements. Instead, he focuses on getting his opponents into a compromised position and then landing exceptionally heavy hits with either his kinetic dust enhanced punches or dust-thrower stream. When he wants to throw an extremely heavy punch or lift something or someone very heavy, he needs to coat his arm in aura once more to assist in his strength, opening it up for attack to drain his aura.
He isnt the fastest on his feet but thanks to his gauntlets and kinetic dust, he is able to evade in quick bursts or cover large distances quicker than most on their feet. This is limited by kinetic dust, however, which is why he usually has mostly kinetic dust loaded with his gauntlets.
Unfortunately due to the cost of using his heavier hits with his right gauntlet, he has to choose between being able to evade during a fight or one very, very heavy hit.
Thanks to Zabar's training with his teammates with no aura, he has slowly but steadily increased his pain tolerance
Nothing spectacular, of course, but above average. Although the actual effectiveness of his semblance hasn't increased, he remains skilled at utilizing it in combat.
Zabars weaknesses come out when his opponents are faster than him, purely long range, can outclassed him in hand to hand or, as he learned with his teammate, can fly. If his opponents are faster than him, he may not be able to keep up and wear himself out or he may not be able to block fast enough. With someone who is purely long range, he will be able to utilize his semblance to attack back, but only for so long and if he cant get close to them, he wont be able to do any serious damage. Additionally, he is extremely poorly suited to long range fights and many more hits will miss than will hit.
Inversely, if someone is purely close range, he will be in his element, but he wont be able to utilize his semblance. If someone outclassed him in hand to hand, he doesn't have too many tricks up his sleeve he can use to beat them other than spamming dust, which could only work so long.
+ Has a strong aura and can take a lot of punishment
+ Heavy hitting
+ Excellent at close quarters combat
+ Able to grab enemy weapons with gauntlets
+ Fast
+ Specifically skilled with aura to strengthen arms
+Skilled with semblance
+ Above average pain tolerance
- Long Range fighters can outlast his semblance
- Speedsters can out speed him and avoid attacks
- Can be outclassed by skilled CCQ-only fighters
- Is too self focused to be great use in team fights
- Not good at paying attention to smaller details on his periphery
WEAPONSNames: Zumani (Zu=Flesh, Ma=And, Ni=Aura)
Primary Forms: Zumani is a pair of nearly identical, silver gauntlets that can extend from Zabars hands all the way up to his shoulders ending in double layered shoulder pauldrons, protecting his both arms and are split between right (Zu) and left (Ni) and just like his pants, they are scratched, battered, and worn. While the gauntlets are almost always fully connected and extended, Zabar can retract the armor around his hands to allow him to perform more dexterous activities. The fingertips are usually rounded but can be activated to reveal pointed, sharp tips at the end to allow Zabar to use them to cut others or stab into the ground to halt momentum. At the top of his right bicep on Zu, and extending up to the shoulder as well as around the arm, Zabar had bronze implemented into it in the shape of his symbol, a hawk.
Due to their use with dust affects, the gauntlets have been insulated and reinforced to prevent Zabar from freezing, burning, or shocking himself. This also prevents him from being shocked or burned from external sources through the gauntlets.
Zu (Right Gauntlet): Zu is designated as the punchy gauntlet as Zabar is right handed, though he can pretty much use either hand equally in a fight. Zu has a small dust vent extending from the elbow piece that can be loaded with kinetic dust. This dust vent activates automatically by Zabar clenching his fist and punching as hard as he can, causing the dust to be vented make his punch hit significantly harder than usual. The propulsion of the punches uses all currently loaded dust in one burst, making it an extremely hard hitting and risky attack. If it connects, Zabar will be able to dish out serious damage but takes some himself from his aura working to defend against the kinetic force. If it doesn't connect, he is thrown very off balance is essentially open for a free hit.
Ni (Left Gauntlet): Ni is designated as the zappy gauntlet and is used more often to utilize dust attacks. On the underside of the forearm, Ni has a grappling hook launcher with a range of 40ft and a non-traditional hook. The hook itself is a flat disk that could comfortably fit in someone's palm and is coated with a layer of gravity dust. When launched, the hook shoots out and activates the dust upon first contact, causing a gravity well that traps the hook to whatever it hit. This gravity well lasts for 10 seconds before shutting off. Once spent, the small disk falls from the wire and the wire quickly retracts to the gauntlet to attach a new disk out of the six he has loaded at a time.
The wire is made of a strong kevlar rope wrapped around a small silver thread that opens up on both ends. This makes the line both hard to cut and hard to snap.
Dust Functions: Along the arms of Zumani, there are slots to insert dust canisters into. These canisters let the dust flow through the arm to the palm of the hand where there is an outlet, that lets it act as a short range dust-thrower reaching 4 meters outward. The gauntlets have a maximum of two canisters in Zu and four in Ni.
Fire Dust - The gauntlets act as a flamethrower.
Ice Dust - The gauntlets shoot out ice dust particles that activate after coming into contact with something, causing it to freeze over.
Lightning Dust - The gauntlets can shoot out bolts of electricity.
Kinetic Dust - The gauntlets can shoot out bursts of propulsion dust so that Zabar can dash to avoid and attack.
Gravity Dust - The gauntlets will act as gravity wells, allowing Zabar to do things like scale walls or hold onto someone or something better
Water Dust - The gauntlets act as a commercial water hose. Great for cooling off on a hot day or dosing your opponent in water and shocking them. Best not to drink it though.
Some of these functions can also be applied passively to the gauntlet and, by extension, the arm. With fire Dust, the gauntlets become scalding hot and with electric Dust they becoming electrified. He can also insert as many different types of Dust as he wants at once and cycle through them in combat. If he runs out of dust mid fight, it can be a bit tricky to reload the gauntlets while dodging attacks.
Zabar also has the ability use his semblance and gauntlets in unison as a jury rigged Semblance Catalyst Focus. When using his semblance and collecting projectiles, he can use his gauntlets to coat the projectiles in the dust of his choice, causing them to have an element effect upon contact.
While his semblance is active, he can also feed his dust-thrower into it to build up strong dust attacks, however these can be disrupted and blow up in his face if a projectile is fired into a shield with a dust attack charged up.
On Ni, there is an insert point below the forearm for the six gravity dust disks.
Each gauntlet has a toggleable cooling setting where a minimal amount of ice dust will flow through the innermost sections of the armor, keeping the skin within from becoming sweaty.
History: Zumani was made at Oasis Academy and modified at Shade.
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