Permission to make a professor was discussed over Discord on the RWBYFanon server.
CHARACTER
Name: Crystal Evermore
Age: 36, born Frost 25
Species and Gender: Female Owl Faunus
Symbol: A single tattered feather
Occupation: Professor of Aura Control at Beacon, as well as the fourth year elective course on Semblance Catalyst Focus Tuning
Appearance: Crystal is relatively tall, though not towering, and slender, with very noticeable curvature to her body. Her short, silver hair is styled back in a neat, symmetrical pattern away from her face. She has near albino skin and pale blue eyes, leading some to liken her to a ghost. The thin framed glasses she wears are purely cosmetic, not correctional in the slightest.
The only faunus features on Crystal's body were the talons on the ends of her hands, which were lost when she lost her arms. Typically, Crystal wears a soft, thin, long-sleeved white blouse that covers her prosthetics with some breathing room in the sleeves that enable her to dispense her weapons. She covers the robotic hands with a pair of silk white gloves. Over the blouse, she wears a black cardigan, buttoned in the front with sleeves that fall just short of the blouse's. She wears classy black pants and black slip-on shoes, or high heels depending on the occasion. She has no specific combat attire.
There are five pieces of silver jewelry with a variety of gems embedded in them around Crystal's body. She has four rings, one on the index and ring finger of each hand. These are embedded with, from her far left to right, a ruby, emerald, topaz, and sardonyx stone. Around her neck is a necklace with a large diamond on display, something which she is incredibly guarded about letting anyone touch.
History: Crystal was born as the illegitimate child of an aristocratic Atlesian woman, who conceived her from a casual affair with a faunus man while on vacation in Vale. When Crystal was born, her father immediately took notice of her talons and, with outrage, refused to accept her as part of the family. While her mother was more sympathetic, it was clear that the woman gave more affection to Crystal's legitimate older siblings than to her. Despite the tension between Crystal's parents, they could not divorce as per the arrangement between the wealthy families of Atlas. Basically, all the pieces were in place for a childhood of fighting and neglect.
Indeed, Crystal was strongly discouraged from even showing herself in public and absolutely forbidden from removing the gloves which covered her talons. Not only was she bound to be mistreated as a faunus in Atlas, but to reveal herself would surely create a scandal among people who knew the family, a family whose image was more important to them than their children.
Crystal was not oblivious to her unfair place in the world, but she never made a big deal of it either. The grand home in which she lived offered many opportunities for hobbies and intellectual pursuits, and the servants of the family were always good to her. She could basically get her hands on whatever she wanted by asking her butler to say it was a request from one of her older sisters. It was during this time that Crystal developed her obsession with Dust, both in its mechanical and combat applications.
As was customary of any member of the Evermore family, Crystal enrolled in Atlas academy at age 17. Her father was truly torn about the decision to send her despite her not being related to him by blood, but was convinced when he was forced to realize that not sending her would arouse public suspicion. However, before she left, her father gave her an ultimatum: Once Crystal graduated from the academy, she was never to return to his home again. Knowing this, Crystal's mother granted her a diamond necklace as a keepsake for her departure.
During her time at the academy, Crystal continued to expand her horizons, learning all about Grimm, Dust, aura, and of course, the duty she would undertake should she pursue a career as a Huntress. None of the military propaganda appealed to her in the slightest, and while she excelled as a student academically, the school administration nearly gave up on her. She never took combat drills seriously, and even well into her second year at the academy she had never even unlocked her aura. It was only out of respect for the hundreds of thousands of Lien her family name had donated to the school that she was not removed from the program.
However, Crystal was showing promise in one area. She was extraordinarily good with Dust mechanics and seemingly poured all of her spare time into improving her understanding of the subject. At the end of her second year, she made a declaration that if she could not fight, could not use aura, and did not have a semblance, she would find a way to use Dust to impress the administration. This led her to take some rather drastic action over the break between second and third years. In her private quarters at the family home, Crystal ordered large quantities of unrefined Dust and took to mixing together her own varieties.
Needless to say, a student doing this alone was never bound to end well. One day, when Crystal was home alone, a particularly volatile mixture created an explosion that would change her life. The blast was enough to blow her arms clean off, knocking her immediately unconscious and throwing her limp body against the wall. Here it lay in a pile of rubble and fire for a good half hour before it could be retrieved by emergency services.
When Crystal awoke in the hospital several hours later, a doctor was there to carefully explain to her that there had been an incident, and that her arms were long gone. However, he added, her body, which should have been horrifically scarred from the fire, was holding up surprisingly well under the circumstances. So that was something. Though the doctor was very careful about how he spoke, Crystal already knew everything about the situation. As a matter of fact, she knew more than the doctor did. She even knew why her skin hadn't been burned. And with this realization came a glint of hope that shone through the despair of losing her limbs, her pale blue eyes glowing like never before: She had finally activated her aura. Not only did she demand that she have prosthetic limbs prepared immediately, she required that they be combat-ready and installed by the start of the upcoming school year. The bemused doctor said he would do his best to have that arranged, and sure enough she was fully equipped to start school again in time for the third year.
Unfortunately, adjusting to the new limbs was not as easy as Crystal thought. She eventually had to give in and take a year off to get used to moving these robotic limbs. Crystal, ever a determined learner, used this time to train her newly acquired aura. She learned to control her semblance and developed a fighting style around it, now ready to make her grand debut back at Atlas academy.
Years passed, and Crystal graduated the academy with high marks. Though the military tried to recruit her, she turned them down several times until they finally gave up. With no home awaiting her in Atlas, Crystal made the decision to move into Vale, beginning her search for her birth father.
She wandered Vale with little direction and no leads before starting to feel the quest was pointless. Just when she was deciding it was time to settle down somewhere, an opportunity presented itself at Beacon Academy. Crystal quickly realized that the job opportunity was a perfect middle ground for her: As a teacher, she could settle into a routine of working and continuing her intellectual pursuits during the school year, and continuing the search for her father in her time off. Recognizing this, she applied for the job and started working for Beacon at age 28. It was at the academy where she refined her skills with Dust, learning to create Semblance Catalyst Foci. She first practiced on the four rings she wears before trying and thankfully succeeding with her mother's necklace.
Personality: Crystal is an aloof perfectionist. She holds her students and herself to a very high standard and has been known to be rather cruel in grading. This standard often causes her to look down upon others as inferior, though it also causes her to be very respectful of those who earnestly attempt to meet her standard. She admires the virtue of willpower in any person and strives to exemplify it herself.
Typically Crystal cannot drop the formal speech she learned from the servants back home. She often uses "Mr." and "Ms." with a person's respective surname and would never stoop to using a nickname. She never uses profanity and looks with disgust upon those who do. Crystal is fully aware of how she looks to other people, but it is hard for her to find it in her to care. She knows that her intentions are good, and that is enough for her regardless of whether others see it or not.
Aura and Semblance: Crystal's aura color is Diamond White
Her semblance allows her to create up to five simultaneous clones, each with a fifth of her physical strength but an equal measure of dexterity and speed to the genuine article. These clones are controlled directly and can in fact wield weapons, but shatter easily with force. Though they take on Crystal's body shape, they resemble her very little outside of that, not taking into account the shape of her clothing and refracting light through themselves like glass (although the arms appear more like a translucent smoke).
To produce a clone, Crystal must sacrifice 2% of her aura. Should one be shattered, she cannot create a replacement for approximately another five minutes. Controlling the clones effectively requires her to focus exclusively on them, often spending a fight never even moving her own body.
The most potent abilities in Crystal's arsenal are her Semblance Catalyst Foci, which can be used once per tuning and affect one clone apiece. She has five of these imbued with different dust, each represented by a different gemstone on her body: The ruby uses fire dust, the emerald wind dust, the topaz electric dust, the sardonyx earth dust, and the diamond ice dust. When a clone is given these elements, it not only glows the appropriate color, but also becomes very volatile and dangerous to melee focused opponents. Any affected clone that is shattered will burst with the fairly predictable dust effect:
-Fire will burst from the ruby clone
-Strong winds will emerge from the emerald clone, knocking back anyone nearby
-An electric shock wave rapidly bursts out of the topaz clone, shocking those around and potentially stunning Grimm
-A tremor shakes the earth in a wide circle around the destroyed sardonyx clone, accompanied by a cloud of dust
-The diamond clone is replaced with an ice sculpture of Crystal in the position in which the clone was struck, and several ice spikes emerge from its base
Combat Behavior: Crystal defiantly stands in the face of any opponent, knowing that her clones will dispatch them before they even have a chance to approach her. She typically does not move at all in combat and uses the clones to elegantly evade and blindside any fools who dare approach her. However, she tends to suffer against opponents that can match her clones' speed. When the basic strategy of attacking with clones is ineffective, Crystal has only two real options to fall back on. Either she can use her Semblance Catalyst Foci to enhance the clones, or as a last resort she can enter the fray herself. This is a very dangerous move, though, as her body (in particular her prosthetic limbs) is extremely fragile and use of her semblance costs actual chunks of her aura, making her even more vulnerable in a direct combat situation.
Against ranged opponents, Crystal will raise her voice and talk to them, pretending to open negotiations. In reality, she will have a clone or two sneaking up on the opponent while they discuss. In the event that the opponent should see through her ruse, she resorts to spreading her clones out as much as possible to cut off the opponent's escape routes before moving in to strike.
WEAPON
Name: Atlas' Miracle
Primary Form: Two prosthetic arms, both of which are nearly hollow (and therefore dangerously fragile). The space inside of the arms is used to hold her actual weapons, six daggers inside each arm which are dispensed by her forearm before being automatically caught as part of an overriding reflex. Obviously one person cannot wield twelve daggers, but in total ten are to be distributed amongst her clones, leaving two in her hands.
Secondary Form: The twelve daggers twist together end-to-end and form a deadly whip. In order to form this weapon quickly, Crystal stands with her two daggers in position, waiting for her clones to contribute their daggers and build the weapon in front of her.
Dust Functions: Surprisingly, none.
History: This was part of Crystal's demand that the prosthetics be "combat-ready." Though Atlas intended for the twelve daggers to be two plus ten backups, Crystal quickly realized that they could be distributed amongst her clones instead. While this does leave her without backups for herself, this doesn't bother Crystal in the slightest. Rather, it merely plays into her perfectionist narrative to not have any extra weapons to fall back on.
Topic: Professor Crystal Evermore (Read 2798 times)