CHARACTER Name: Malina "Stinger Butt" Nahualli-Roth
Age: 24, born Saaral 16th, 56 AC.
Gender and Species: Female human
Symbol: Sina'an
Occupations: Huntress/Teacher's Assistant at Beacon Academy
Appearance: 5’7” 142 lbs. Malina has short dark hair, coming down just far enough to reach her shoulders, with several raspberry colored highlights in it and purple eyes with a heart-shaped face. She usually wears her hair down, but will sometimes put it into a bun before a combat mission. She, like most Alapelagians, has a darker skin tone than the Valish. While most inhabitants of Vale have a milky white skin tone, she has a beige-mocha skin tone.
While Malina did have her own combat outfit when she entered Beacon, she continually redesigned it throughout the years she spent at the school and after she graduated, eventually ending with what she has now. Partially thanks to her year spent in Vacuo after graduating, Malina’s outfit is significantly lighter than it had been before. Her gold stringed and silver centered necklace with her own symbol has been replaced with as choker, her large coat, corset, and dress shirt has been replaced with a light, cropped, gray jacket with her symbol stitched into the back in gold with raspberry bars extending down her arms, a white blouse with some of the top buttons left open, and a raspberry halter top beneath it all.
Her skirt has been ditched completely and she now has a pair of very worn and ripped tan khaki pants with raspberry leggings that show through the rips and dark grayish-brown boots.
Malina, being no stranger to accessories, has a few essential and nonessential accessorizations to go along with her outfit. During the colder winter months of Vale, or during trips to Atlas, Malina has a much fluffier version of her old large coat that she can wear to beat the weather.
Although she doesn’t need a belt, she still keeps one wrapped around her waist. On her left and right of her hips are two large satchels often filled with dust components and significant padding to prevent unwanted explosions while she bounces around. On the front right of her hip, just in front of one of the satchels, is a magnet lock for her to store her weapon in its chime form and at the small of her back is a holster that she stores a simple, unmodified and non-dust pistol in case of emergency.
For rainier days, the jacket has a small hood that can be buttoned onto it, though it doesn’t do much good if it starts raining if she’s already left her room.
History: Malina was born in Toltecatl of the coastal settlements of Alapelagias. Her mother was one of the priestesses of Inogir, previously a huntress turned scholar, and her father was a hunter who, after meeting her mother, permanently settled in Toltecatl.
From a young age she was interested in her mother’s work with Dust and aura, wanting more than anything to become a scholar. While she wished to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a scholar and priestess, her mother was quick to encourage the life of danger and adventure while her father stayed silent on the matter. Malina did eventually give up on becoming a scholar due to her mother’s constant pushing and began to, reluctantly, study to become a huntress.
When Malina came of age to enter Oasis Academy, Vacuo’s primary school, she excelled at her studies and surpassed many of her classmates. At the end of her first year, she had ended up in the top 10% of her class and was very knowledgeable of Dust and Aura for a girl her age, much to the pride of her mother. The second year at Oasis marked the beginning of basic combat training. Malina, like all students was given a chance to both design her own weapon and her own armor. She chose to model her weapon off of the staves she had seen around the Temple of Inogir, with a few modifications of her own and a dust-based assault system, and her armor based on the original attire of Inogir as seen in statues. During the year, Malina was able to have her aura unlocked, her semblance discovered, and excelled at combat sparring with other students. She did so well, in fact, that she brought herself up to the top 5% of the class upon the end of the year.
During the summer break, her mother, while her father was away on a hunting mission, pulled her aside to talk to her. She told her that because of her high scoring tests at school, she was selected to be given the chance to take part in the Pseudo-Faunus project, a project started by the high council of Alapelagias to provide high achieving youth with combat augmentations in early life. In order to advance the Alapelagian people in general, people with high combat skills were given cybernetic versions of faunus parts from both existing faunus and nonexistent faunus. Malina chose to accept the offer and was taken to the capital settlement in order to receive the part of her choosing. In the end, she chose a scorpion tail with interchangeable poison chambers, “Manticore”. Upon returning to Toltecatl, she was put into a special class that ran in the summer before her third year at Oasis along with others who were offered the same augmentation and accepted. In the class they were taught how to properly use their individual augmentations in combat and regularly sparred with one another. While she didn’t outperform the other students in her class, she still did well and received special tutoring from her father when he was home from his missions, as infrequent as that was.
Once her third year at Oasis began, Malina was already at a small advantage over her classmates due to the tutoring and combat training over the summer but the disadvantage of not being used to the tail far outweighed that. Despite this, she still did well in her classes, even though she fell out of the top 5%, and finished the year with high enough scores to be accepted into an Academy.
At the end of the year she told her parents that she wanted to go Beacon Academy in Vale. Her mother told her that if she were to be accepted into the Academy, they would pay for her trip over as well as send her monthly supplies of Dust and Foci, if she needed it. Upon hearing this, she wrote out her application, sent in her combat reports, and waited. Eventually, a message came for her from Vale stating that she had been accepted. Elated that she had been accepted but still somewhat reluctant about becoming a huntress, Malina began to pack for her ride over. Once she was packed and ready she said her farewells to her parents and boarded an airship headed to Vacuo. Once in Vacuo, she transited onto a large boat for the rest of her journey. Once she finally arrived in Vale, she boarded an airship and stepped onto the property of the prestigious Beacon Academy.
TL;DR: Malina is born in Alapelagias on the far west of Sanus, doesn’t want to be a huntress but her mother forces her into it, attends Oasis academy, gets a dumbfuck metal scorpion tail between her second and third year there, does pretty well, well enough to get accepted into Beacon.
Malina’s first year at Beacon was, in retrospect, largely a blur for her. It wasn’t long after arriving that she, and the rest of the prospective students, were put through their initiation.
The mission was simple enough on paper, they were to be dropped off at a random point on one of the mountains to the east of Vale and their goal was to make it to the top. While she knew others were being dropped off as well, it wasn’t until she made it to an impassable crevice that she realized that the students would need to work together to reach the top. After waiting in the cold wind for a while, she met Carmine and with Malina’s semblance and her weapon, they were able to cross the crevice.
It wasn’t long after that the pair met up with the panther faunus twins, Aurelia and Candida, and with the four of them together, they made it to the top of the mountain, cementing their place at Beacon as Team MCCA and Malina’s disdain for the colder weather of Vale.
The rest of the first year passed as it does for many students, it went quickly as her combat prowess and knowledge on Grimm grew, as did her teammates. It wasn’t long before they were put on their first mission, a simple village protection mission to the south shadowing a much younger Titania. It was the first time Malina and her team truly fought Grimm on their turf and, although the fight was close and Titania preferred to only observe, not a single Grimm made it near the village. After a hard-fought mission, MCCA, like many of the first year teams, came back with a success to be proud of, though Malina was far prouder of her own combat ability than that of her teammates.
The rest of the year passed lazily until the Vytal Festival came to Vale. The team met and after some discussion and pushing from Malina, they decided to enter herself and Carmine in the 2v2 bracket. While no one can say they did perfectly, they were able to make it to the quarterfinals before finally losing to a team from Atlas. While she was upset that they hadn’t won, Malina still couldn’t help but feel pride at her making it so far.
With the rest of the festival open to the team, they decided to relax and enjoy the festivities and take the rest of the year easily. At the end of the year, while Aurelia and Canidida returned to their home and Carmine returned to her adopted father, Malina decided to stay in Vale in a small, cheap apartment for the summer.
TL;DR: Malina was launched into a freezing cold mountain and told to make it to the top because its hilarious to send jungle people into the cold, she meets Carmine first and later the panther twins Aurelia and Candida, they form Team MCCA (Mocha) because they are all tan, they went on and learned like many students in their first year, Vytal Festival came to Vale, Malina and Carmine joined the 2v2 bracket and made it to the quarterfinals, Malina did not return to Alapelagias over the summer.
The second year at Beacon would end up being less eventful that the first with most of their time being dedicated to study and training. The one stand out event was their team’s first solo mission, halfway through the year. It was a trip to the Vytal islands in the middle of winter, something Malina still believes was done intentionally by the staff to torture her with the cold.
The mission was to investigate a small settlement that had gone dark a week prior. When they arrived, they found a village with no sign of life, no sign of struggle, and no sign that anyone had prepared to leave. Doors were left closed but unlocked, food, now rotten and rank, sat on the tables, the ashes of a wood fireplace sat cold and undisturbed. Malina had her team split into two groups, herself and Aurelia and Carmine and Candida, and set out to figure out what had happened. Malina and Aurelia quickly set out into the cold forest to try and find any sign of tracks or anything that might help them.
While they didn’t find any tracks, they did find that the branches of the trees grew lusher the further from the settlement they were. Growing suspicious, the pair made their way back to the settlement where Candida and Carmine were only to find them engaged in a fight with a boy about their age. The boy had nothing but a large stick and yet, somehow, he was beating both of Malina’s teammates. Every move they made appeared slower than the last, every action requiring more strength. Malina rushed in, telling Aurelia to use her semblance to bend the light around her to go invisible, and got a god hit on the boy with her semblance just before he was about bash the head of a doubled over Carmine.
The two jabbed at each other for several moments, Malina not wanting to kill the kid, before she realized what was going on. Not only did the boy have his aura unlocked and not only did he have a semblance, it was a passive semblance. She had heard of them, sure, but never faced one and certainly not like this. It seemed to sap her strength with every passing second, every time she tried to move she found she had less stamina. Just when she thought she was done for, an invisible Aurelia tackled the boy to the ground and a nearly unconscious Carmine gave her wires to Candida to wrap around the boy.
After the boy was secure, and MCCA had moved a good distance away, they questioned him. His semblance, something he couldn’t turn off, was a form of time manipulation, specifically it fast forwards the degrative effects of time, people near him run out of stamina quicker, wounds bleed out faster, food rots and bodies decompose. When questioned on where the people of the settlement were, the boy told them they were all dead and decomposed.
It was then that someone, Malina doesn’t or chooses not to remember who, suggested killing the boy and reporting that he continued to fight until death. Malina argued against it fervently and eventually the boy pleaded that he didn’t choose to hurt them, that he can’t control his semblance and they didn’t have their aura unlocked.
After a heated debate within the team, MCCA decided to each punch him once in the side of the head as hard as they could and then release him, figuring it wouldn’t be possible to transport him without the people transporting him succumbing to the sapping effects.
When they were picked up to be taken back to Beacon, they reported the mission as a failure and reported that entire village was simply gone with no mention of the boy. Despite this very real failure to Malina, she was proud of her teammates for the first time.
The rest of the year passed much as the first half did, heavy focus on training and study. When time finally came for the students to return home for the summer, Malina once again chose to stay in Vale, though this time she was visited by Carmine halfway through the summer.
TL;DR: MCCA goes on their first solo mission to a village to the far north of Sanus and find it completely empty, Malina and Aurelia leave the village to check the surroundings while Carmine and Candida stay behind to check the houses, M and A return to the sounds of fighting and find a young boy fighting off both Carmine and Candida, turns out he has a semblance that appears to drain the energy of those around but it is later revealed to be a time manipulation semblance that fast forwards the negative effects of time, villagers were all decomposed and turned to dust due to his semblance working out of his control, MCCA decides that they can’t reasonably capture someone with a passive semblance that would continually drain their stamina or worse and, considering he said he never wanted any of this, decide to let him go instead of killing him, MCCA returns to Beacon and report an empty village without mentioning the kid, MCCA returns to training and Malina stays in vale over summer again but this time Carmine visits halfway through.
MCCA’s third year was filled with more solo missions, each more successful than the last, and more training and study. Malina truly came through as a competent team leader this year, accurately and effectively planning attacks both against Grimm and in training exercises against other teams; Carmine began to take shape as the team’s true bruiser, breaking anything that stood in the team’s path; Candida fell into her own by hanging back and picking off enemies from afar and calling out information to Malina; and Aurelia became the team’s silent and deadly assassin, quickly and efficiently taking down Grimm before they even knew she was there.
It wasn’t long before the end of the year approached, and the Vytal Festival once again came around, this time in Vacuo. MCCA, once more, attended.
This time participating in the 4v4 matches, the team made steady progress, utterly stomping the other teams in the qualifying matches and decidedly defeating the teams in the early rounds of the tournament. Their strategy of having Malina and Carmine fighting up front as Candida sniped from afar and Aurelia snuck around to take down the opponents was a tough one to beat, especially with Malina’s ability to force her opponent’s out of engagement. They did eventually lose, of course, but they had made it to the final round, losing to a home team from Shade. It was a good match, close but not so close that Malina could have seen an easy way to have won instead. Malina was proud of herself or making it that far, immensely proud, but she was prouder of her team.
During the festivities that followed the final match of the tourney, Malina snuck away from her team and visited the hallways of Shade academy. As she wandered down the winding, unfamiliar halls, she found who she was looking for. A doorway that lead into the office of Dhi Neelabadri, the professor in charge of aura study and application, a man she had read of when she was younger and dreamed of being a scholar in the field.
She spoke with him well into the night, talking about how she had wanted to become a scholar, how she had heard of him and his research, how she wanted to know more and understand it herself. The professor, being a man of teaching and invested in passing knowledge to the next generation, gladly and quickly informed Malina on a practice to master her own aura. It was rushed, incomplete, and not entirely comprehensive but it was enough. A method of meditation that turned one’s attention inward toward their own aura and then forcibly pushed it outward, thickening her aura shielding and making room for more aura to be generated at the temporary cost of some part of herself.
While Malina wished to know and learn more, it was late in the night and she still had one stop to make the next day. She thanked the professor and made her back to the transfer dorms that held students that stayed in Vacuo for the festival, but not before the professor told her not to practice the meditation until she was out of beacon and could spend a year under his supervision. That the beginning of the process, if done incorrectly could permanently damage one’s mind, body, soul, or all three.
The airship trip to Alapelagias was quicker than it had been from Alapelagias to Vacuo when she left for Beacon. When she arrived home, there weren’t any heartfelt hugs or “I’ve missed you so much” from Malina. Her father was silent, just as he’d been when she left, her sister refused to even meet with her, her mother simply asked how great life was as a huntress. To her credit, Malina played the part of the happy daughter if for no other reason than to make her mother think she actually enjoyed the life.
The rest of the night passed and the pair made idle small talk, her mother talked about her old hunting stories, not once mentioning her current job, and Malina talked about her missions so far.
She could tell neither of them actually cared about what they were talking about though, it was obvious.
In the morning, she left without a word and returned to Vacuo just in time to catch the ship back to Vale with her team.
She stayed alone in Vale that summer, meditating on her aura.
TL;DR: The Vytal Festival is in Shade now and, after a long year of training, MCCA joins the 4v4 bracket and makes it to the final round, though they do lose, during the festivities Malina heads to Shade and meets a renowned professor in aura study and application and they talk for a while, he eventually tells her a process of mastering her aura but tells her not to practice any of it until she graduates from Beacon so he can supervise her, Malina heads to Alapelagias before leaving for Vale and has an all around shit time, Malina returns to Vale and practices what the professor told her not to practice over the summer.
MCCA’s fourth year was the defining year for the team, as it is with many academy teams, though it wasn’t until almost the end of the year. Most of the year passed as the previous years, MCCA studied hard, trained her, and each member grew in their roles. Malina dedicated much of her free time to studying aura, dust, and practicing the meditation that the professor had shown her; Carmine harnessed her semblance to its fullest and destroyed anything in her path; Candida become an ace shot and a master of distraction, Aurelia become nothing more than a whisper in the wind on the battlefield.
The time eventually came for each team to leave on their final missions before the final examinations began, with each team taking part in a high priority mission. For MCCA’s part, they were specifically requested by the headmistress of Haven Academy for a mission on Anima, apparently she had heard of their consistent track record. When the team arrived and met with Eliana, they learned why they had been chosen and exactly what the mission was. The White Fang, not yet an outwardly violent terrorist organization, had been accruing members and power within a mine in the mountains that they had bought out.
MCCA, being an outside force, could come in to investigate and fight them without the risk of retaliation to their families. The plan was simple, as simple as infiltrating an organization’s HQ and taking down threats within can be. Aurelia, using her semblance to manipulate the light around her, would disguise herself as a White Fang member, a scar across her mask to indicate who she was to her team, while Candida would act as a recruit while using her semblance to remotely bend light to make restraints appear on Malina and Carmine’s hands to make them appear to be captives as well as making their weapons and Malina’s tail appear to be invisible. Once inside, Malina and Carmine would be lead to a holding area and stage a breakout while Candida and Aurelia would meet with higher ups to see if they could glean any information about the group.
The plan, like most plans, did not go according to plan.
Once inside, Malina and Carmine were ordered to the holding area, escorted by Aurelia, while Candida was brought to an examination area to be assessed for the group. Once the two humans had been locked behind a steel door, Aurelia was sent off to a meeting of one of the higher ups. Deciding that leaving their teammates to their own devices surrounded by enemies would be a mistake, Carmine and Malina began the plan to break out. Malina took several minutes to meditate, anything that would protect her further, anything that could help.
Malina’s semblance blew the door off its hinges, crushing one member against the wall behind it. With no time to feel the consequences of their actions, the pair split up, Malina would go to Aurelia while Carmine would go to Candida. They didn’t get three steps away from each other before an alarm began to sound.
The next fifteen minutes of Malina’s life was an endless battle of fending off seemingly limitless white fang members as she made her way through the maze of hallways. She never wanted to kill anyone, she wasn’t that kind of person, she used her paralyzing and knock-out venoms and light grazes to incapacitate her enemies but there was only so much venom to use. When she ran out, she resorted to cutting them her tail, slashing their ankles and knees to get them to fall, but she was terrified and was only getting worse by the minute.
She was alone, alone and surrounded by enemies, she didn’t know where her teammates, her friends, were. Every passing second, the front crumbled and the terrified little girl underneath came out, every second invasive thoughts accusing her of being a coward swam in her head. Her attacks were becoming less trained, less practiced, they were becoming frantic and desperate.
And then she turned a corner, the flow of white fang finally taking a break, and bumped into one more enemy. There wasn’t any time for thought, no time to consider what could be, all Malina had time to see was a white fang member holding Aurelia’s knife and somewhere in that scared, lonely mindset she felt she knew what had happened to her teammate. Her tail shot through the chest of the white fang member, penetrating the aura and piercing their body.
The illusion faded away like melting ice, bits and pieces melting away to reveal the shocked, scared blue eyes surrounded by black sclera and framed by voluminous golden hair.
There was nothing in Malina’s head as she watched her teammate sliped from the tip of her tail and fell to the ground, gasping for air from punctured lungs as her life slipped from the hole in her chest. No regret, no fear, no anger, no pity, no sadness, nothing at all. Her mind was completely blank, unable to process what had happened, what she had done. She simply stared down at her teammate with wide, unblinking eyes. She stood there until Aurelia passed, staring.
She didn’t close her eyes out of respect, she didn’t place her arms onto her chest, she simply reached down and picked up her dagger and placed it in the satchel that Candida had hidden.
The rest of the mission, to Malina, was a blur. Her doing everything in her power to escape from the mine, finding Carmine and Candida at the entrance, fending off other white fang members, seeing Candida’s face when she saw Malina, her cold eyes looking just like Aurelia’s, Malina throwing up, being carried by Carmine as they fled.
It took two days to make their way through the wilderness back to a town where they could send for an airship to pick them up. Malina was silent for most of the rest of the rest of mission, managing a few attempts of comfort for Candida. Carmine did most of the talking to Eliana and explained what she knew, allowing Malina to stay silent at the back,
It wasn’t until Malina arrived back at Beacon and saw their dorm, one bed now permanently empty, that everything caught up to her and she completely broke down into an inconsolable mess. She stayed in her bed for the rest of the entire week, refusing to talk to Carmine, Candida, or anyone Beacon sent for her. She did eventually end up slowly opening up to her teammates and others though she refused to talk about her part of the mission in detail.
Unfortunately for the former Team MCCA, this lack of communication from their leader coupled with the loss of one of their members cost them greatly on the final exam. They failed the final team exam by several points even though they all passed their individual exams, Malina nearly failing hers.
They were, in the end, allowed to pass after a decision from higher up the chain though Malina assumes it was simply pity.
TL;DR: MCCA train real hard over the year and go on plenty of cool missions, eventually leading to their last mission before their final exams, they were invited to Mistral by the headmistress and told to infiltrate and cripple the budding violent White Fang, the gang gets fucked, Malina accidentally kills Aurelia, the rest of MCCA barely escape, Malina has an emotional breakdown upon returning to Beacon, MCCA fails the team exam but each member passes their individual exams (even though Malina just barely passed) so because of pity, MCC
A passes and become huntresses.
There weren’t very heartfelt goodbyes between the team when they went their separate ways. Carmine was most obviously shaken and near tears while both Malina and Candida were almost stone faced with the latter having a clear and new disdain for the leader. Malina promised Carmine she’d be back in Vale in a year and to meet her then, that they’d catch up and share stories just like the older hunters.
And then, nearly as the four had met, the three parted ways.
Malina returned to Vacuo to meet with Dhi once more only to be met with anger. He could tell she had practiced the technique he showed her, something he explicitly told her not to do, and could tell she had already permanently stunted her aura. From this point onward, the only way to increase her aura capacity was to follow the path he set before her, no longer able to naturally grow in power over the years.
The revelation that she had damaged the very thing she wanted struck an already sunken Malina in just the right spot for her front to break. The pride she had built up over the years and forced outward as a front came crashing down and she broke into tears once more. Tears for Aurelia, tears for herself, tears for her teammates that she left behind, the emotional breakdown was total and complete, every bit of emotion from the past six years of her life came pouring out of her. Hate, rage, fear, depression, joy, content, anger, loss, nothing was left alone.
The show of pure emotion coming from the girl who, two years prior, had sat across from him only showing curiosity and excitement was enough for Dhi to look past the mistake Malina had made and attempt the help the girl move beyond it.
Malina spent the rest of that year in the scorching heat of the desert meditating with Dhi when he wasn’t teaching classes at Shade and going on missions while he was. She learned to turn her attention inward and visualize her aura as a version of herself with no inhibitions, no filters, not front. A pure, unaltered version of herself that she and she alone could see. She learned, assisted by the meditation, to temper herself and, despite not learning to not rely on her front and let herself be open, she learned to be less abrasive than she had been before.
But more important than any of that, she learned the first stage of mastering her own aura. By visualizing herself when meditating and splitting herself and what she thought made up “her”, she could focus on removing parts of her and filling the void with aura, temporarily increasing her shielding. Despite her knowledge on aura and natural affinity towards it, it was a slow, grueling process.
Near the end of the year, during a standard search and rescue mission into the desert, Malina came across the House of Paine, a bandit group headed by the boy she and the rest of MCCA had let go when she was in her second year. Not only was he visibly stronger than her now, not only was he surrounded by people stronger than her, but this new visual reminder of a failure she didn’t even know about entirely messed her up once more. She chose to avoid confrontation and, just like three years ago, the mission was a failure.
By the end of the year, she was able to increase her aura by a tenth of its total, the milestone for no longer needing to be observed and supervised by Dhi in order to continue her training. Despite this milestone, Malina feels much of her progress over the year had been reset, though she didn’t tell Dhi.
Malina thanked the professor, truly and genuinely thanked him, and then boarded an airship to do what she couldn’t two years ago in an attempt to convince herself that she wasn’t a complete failure.
The humid jungle heat of Alapelagias had grown foreign to Malina in the time she had been gone, now feeling sticky, uncomfortable, and somehow even hotter than the desert sand of Vacuo.
Her trip wasn’t a long one, she arrived in Toltecatl, the settlement where she was born, and waited by her home at a nearby shop until she saw her mother leave. With her gone, she approached her childhood home and knocked twice. A moment passed before the door slowly opened to reveal her father with a mix of regret, pity, and joy on his face. The two shared a hug as tears threatened to spill down Malina’s cheeks once more. It was a special hug, something her mother could never in five lifetimes give her, it was the kind of hug that only two hunters who have lost those close to them could share, the kind of hug that her father never wanted to have to share with her.
The two sat with one another for some time, talking solemnly about the life they had both been chosen for, discussing the losses both had come to experience. For her father, it was the loss of his first love at the hands of the Grimm while on a mission, something he had never told her mother. For Malina, it was the loss of Aurelia at her own hands, something she had never, and will never, tell another soul, and the loss of Candida when the rift between the two grew too large.
They talked and talked and the hour grew later and later until finally Malina’s mother threatened to come home any minute. She gave one final goodbye to her father and left her childhood home and settlement behind, returning to Vale.
When she met with Carmine again, she was no longer the stone-faced leader that they had parted ways as, she was more like her old self, before Aurelia, but seemingly more open and friendly. They spent time talking about their year, Malina who had been training her aura and occasionally gone on missions. The pair chatted well into the night and near dawn, catching up on talks they had lost following their mission to Mistral. It felt good for Malina to open up to her closest, and now only friend after over a year of silence, somehow more cathartic than the talk she had with her father or her meditation.
The pair spent the next two years sharing an apartment in Vale with Carmine going out on missions, occasionally dragging Malina with her, and bringing home more than enough money for rent while Malina studied to be accepted as a teacher’s assistant at Beacon, having both a recommendation from both Dhi and Eliana.
Eventually the time came when she was able to apply and was accepted in a rotary TA position. Starting under Titania as a combat assistant, Malina would rotate under different professors each semester under the time came when she might be able to teach her own class.
TL;DR: The remains of MCCA part ways with little in the way of goodbyes, Malina goes back to Vacuo to continue to study her meditation under Professor Dhi, spends a year there, finds the boy she spared during her second year now living in the desert as the leader of a large and very dangerous bandit group, this new reminder of failure messes up a lot of the meditative progress she had made in the past year, visits her dad and shares a heartfelt hunter hug with him, returns to Vale and meets with Carmine to share their stories of the past year, the two share an apartment for two years while Malina studies to become a TA, eventually being accepted into Beacon as a rotary teacher’s assistant for the first year.
Personality: The face Malina puts forward is, at the same time, very different from and perfectly representative of how Malina feels about herself.
Outwardly, Malina is an abrasive, prideful, rude, and stubborn woman. Anyone around her for any significant amount of time will be able to say that she is frustrating to deal with and be around, that her unwillingness to compromise and unwavering pride in who and what she is will absolutely be the death of her one day. In any situation where she can, she tries to assume control and disregards the arguments of those who try the same thing even if they may be better suited. Her pride, a vicious, angry, hateful pride, is apparent to anyone who’s fought her in battle or seen her fight. Her manner of pushing anyone who tries to get close to her away without any thought to their feelings. Her way she tries to completely shut down anyone who stands against her. She is, without a doubt, a horrible, mean, inconsiderate person who cares for herself and how she’s doing considerably more than anyone around her. Even when she’s helping teaching class at Beacon, when she tries her hardest to suppress the pride and stubbornness and be as neutral as possible, she sometimes comes across as smug and condescending.
Inwardly, however, she is aware of these things, painfully aware. Her front of being unquestionably prideful and unmovably stubborn are born from an unending sense of insecurity and cowardice. Every time she’s put herself above others, talked down to them, shunned them, beat them for disrespecting her apparent authority has been nothing more than a mask. A mask to hide what she feels she really is despite standing up to Grimm she has no chance beating to protect others, despite standing up for her teammates against those that talked down to them, despite going to find a lost faunus child when no Atlesian would.
A coward.
She feels that if there isn’t a front of complete and unyielding pride and superiority put forward, if she ever does something that might make her look weak, people will know she’s a coward. Even the thought of people suspecting she’s a coward terrifies Malina, though she’d obviously never admit it. She’s so invested in not being found out that her horrible pride and stubbornness loop back around from being poor characteristics to being positive ones.
She’ll stand up to anything stronger than her, even if she knows she’ll be beaten, if it means protecting something or someone because, to Malina, that’s what a strong person would do. She is immensely, incredibly proud of her teammates, and might one day feel the same of her students, even when there are bad feelings and memories mixed in and will stand up for them just like she would stand up for herself because in her mind that pride she feels for them and the pride she puts forward for herself are one and the same. But at the same time, that pride she feels in them is fake, or she thinks its fake, because having pride in them would mean she in some way helped them to become who they are. Her stubbornness that prevents her from compromising with others is the same stubbornness that she stands with when she goes in to complete a mission no matter the cost to herself. But at the same time, that stubbornness is simply born from the desire to never be seen as a coward.
Her positive traits and one and the same as her negative ones and despite her ability to see those negative traits and even willingly put them forward, she only truly sees the negative outcomes. Despite the proud mask toting the victories and accomplishments she doesn’t feel like she actually accomplished anything because, to her, it
wasn’t her. It was all the front she puts forward. Any negative outcome is her and any positive was the front, anything outward is a front and anything inward is a coward. Even her closest and only real friend, Carmine, has only seen brief cracks in the façade in the seven years they’ve known each other.
The truth of Malina is that she is lonely, she can’t or won’t open up to even her closest friend, she can’t help but push away those around her even when she’s known the for years and she feels she can only blame herself.
And none of that shows.
To anyone around her she is, was, and possibly always will be the abrasive, prideful, rude, and stubborn woman.
Combat Behavior: Once the type to rush in and constantly press the offense, the years have and schooling has tempered Malina, she is much more willing to allow her opponent to strike first and take time to observe them as she skirts just out of danger. With her semblance, she is given the option to choose when to engage her opponent, outside of ranged opponents, and uses this massively to her advantage. When she does choose to engage, she often falls back into the sort of combat style she had as a student, ruthlessly attacking and pressing the advantage. If she ever feels like she is in a bad spot she can take advantage of her semblance and disengage, returning to skirting outside of danger and observing her opponent.
When in that ruthless press of attacks, though, she often uses her tail as a quick follow up on attacks that leave her with an opening in an attempt to cover it. While she also uses the tail to deflect attacks, it is harder for her to do so in the quick close quarters fights.
Since her weapons have multiple forms, she can mix and match the weapon to the fight, however she'll almost always use the spear to open the melee before continuing with her tonfas while using the staff and chime to cast dust while skirting outside of danger.
She's a fast opponent to fight in a close melee but she's also skilled at moving quickly outside of a fight, being able to utilize kinetic dust in her weapon to make quick bursts of movement as well as taking advantage of her tail to turn quickly or bounce her out of the way.
Due to her years at Beacon, as well as tutoring from her mother when she was younger, Malina is able to cast with her semblance which, combined with her knowledge of Dust, makes her a hard opponent to break into. Her casting provides her ranges and area of effect options she wouldn't have otherwise. In those fights where she is out of any immediate danger, such as one large opponent being attacked by her entire team, Malina is given the opportunity to stay back and prepare her most massive attack with her weapon’s chime form. While attacks with in this form provide Malina with a much longer ranged and much more devastating attack, the time it takes for it to actually charge and attack make it useless in any fight where Malina is being directly attacked.
Thanks to her years as team leader, she has become exceptional at making on-the-fly plans and tactics, making her a tough opponent to face even in a one-on-one fight where she usually at her weakest. In addition, she's made a point even since before attending Beacon to understand her own weaknesses and find covers for them and, while not perfect, she believes she has covers for most of her weaknesses such as using her semblance to defend and retaliate against ranged attackers.
Despite this, they are still weaknesses and can be abused if she can't protect against them fully. While she can defend against ranged and use both the semblance and weapon’s ranged form to fight back against ranged opponents, she is still utterly outclassed in a purely ranged battle and her best option is to try to close the distance. If disarmed, or even just without Dust, Malina is at a severe disadvantage and must rely on her semblance and tail. Thanks to years of training with her semblance, she is in less of a shit position as it could be, partially thanks to intensive aura training.
Fighting opponents who specialize in hand-to-hand fighting is where she is at her largest disadvantage. Due to the smooth nature of her staff, it is easy for those who specialize in getting close and handsy to disarm her, with only real defense being her semblance. She fights much more recklessly and savagely if she is disarmed in an all-or-nothing attempt to get her opponent to back off enough so she can retrieve her weapon or give her a moment of reprieve. Even if she does get them to back off, getting the weapon back might not be an option. In addition to this, anyone who can properly grapple her tail and pin it will be at an advantage due to the fact that Malina can't risk using her semblance without the possibility of it not blowing the person away or them taking her tail with them. If a situation arises where her tail is either removed or she is caught without her tail, she will be at a massive disadvantage and rely almost entirely on semblance keeping anyone away from her. The lack of weight in a fight after having the weight there for nearly 10 years throws her completely of balance and makes moving and fighting properly almost impossible.
There are weaknesses she has no protections against as well, weaknesses in her personality. Malina is very prideful and will become overconfident in matches she believes she has an advantage in or if she's facing someone she doesn't deem a threat. She pays less attention to any advantage they might have because, in her mind, she's already above them in every way and can't be beaten by them. She will become less rational if her opponent insults her pride, despite all her mellowing out and trying to control herself, a good cut to her pride easily makes her revert to that “I'm going to do anything and everything I can do destroy you” mindset. She is aware of these weaknesses, of course, but in the heat of battle she is faced with a loss of self-control. She's can't simply ignore her personality and she finds it extremely hard to keep herself in check.
While not a weakness exactly, Malina has a heavy aversion to killing human beings or faunus, choosing to do everything in her power to incapacitate but not kill. This feeling was reinforced following the events of her fourth year at Beacon and, if the other side plays smart, it is something that can be exploited.
Malina tends to try and conceal what her semblance is by using it in tandem with hits or not using the full dome attack unless she needs to. While she doesn't go out of her way to never use it and the tactic is not useful against people who have seen her fight before, it is useful for new opponents.
+ Quick and relentless close quarters combat.
Fast moving.
+ Can temporarily boost her aura.
+ Exceptional with planning and improvisation.
+ Attempts to find covers for faults.
+ Semblance allows her to disengage when she wants.
+ Excellent knowledge of dust and its applications.
+ Heavily trained in her semblance and aura.
+ Chime attacks do massive damage.
+ Conceals semblance's true nature against new opponents.
- Less rational when pride is hurt.
- Hand-to-hand skills are reckless in addition to being at a disadvantage against hand-to-hand fighters in general.
- Cannot defend well against long range.
- Can be overconfident in matches where she believes she's already at an advantage.
- If Malina is without Dust, she is significantly vulnerable.
- Exceptionally restricted movement if tail is restricted.
- Extremely off balance if in a fight without her tail.
- Chime attacks take enough time to be useless in fair fights.
Aura and Semblance: Malina’s aura was unlocked at Oasis academy in Vacuo. Once unlocked, it became a purplish-red raspberry color. Some time after, she was in a sparring match with another student who had their aura unlocked and during the fight she discovered her semblance.
Concussive Burst
Malina has the ability to send out their aura in a concussive blast outward 30ft (9m) in all directions. This can cause others to get knocked far back and even knocked out if they don’t have aura shielding. The aura moves at a quick enough speed and is strong enough to make a charging Goliath fall over if hit from the side at full strength. Needless to say, it can deflect small and large caliber bullets and thrown projectiles as well as close range attacks, but cannon-like projectiles pass through significantly slowed or have their path altered. The wave of aura disrupts energy, light, and sound-based weapons when coming in contact with them, effectively cancelling out attacks.
Though the default use is a dome shape that expands from Malina's core, she can vaguely shape the aura into cylindrical shapes, allowing for directional attacks instead of an area of effect. These directional bursts can be loosely controlled as rush through the air, though they don’t have a tight turning radius. Malina can control up to 3 controllable bursts at a time though if she has that many out she can’t move herself at the same time.
As she's grown their power through the years of missions and classes, Malina has been able to gain the ability to launch the bursts from specific areas on their aura, such as the aura covering their hand or the aura covering their weapon, instead of just from her core.
Because of her training, Malina doesn't necessarily have a maximum amount of times she can use her semblance as much as the semblance slowly, but surely, weakens with each subsequent use. This weakening is reset if she has enough time to rest between uses.
Malina was taught from a young age by her mother on the properties of Dust and aura and had them enforced during her four years at Beacon. Thanks to this, she became a caster, she has the ability to augment her semblance with Dust in order to cause more powerful hits or new abilities.
Fire Dust causes the aura to be set alight and leave a trail of fire where it passed over, aside from on Malina.
Ice Dust can cause temporary ice dust to form in the aura’s wake, cause a protective ice dome to form around Malina, or for ice spikes to be launched outward. (These same properties are shared with
Earth Dust and Malina can swap which effect happens.)
Electric Dust causes the aura to become electrified and, if it hits something conductive, will spread the electricity throughout it and outward.
Kinetic Dust causes the concussive nature and range of the semblance to increase tenfold but puts an enormous strain on Malina. When practicing to use this, she has ended up bedridden for several days each time.
WEAPON Name: Manticore v3.1
Primary Form: A large, dark purplish-black, cyber-organic, scorpion tail; made of a carbonized steel that was forged in Alapelagias and attached to a connection plate on her lower back between her second and third year at Oasis Academy. Along the tail are several segments that can spin individually of each other, allowing it to almost act like a drill. Almost. Along the tail are several bladed segments that stick out, on both sides, off of the “spine” of the tail, which are retractable for when she wraps it around her waist. The plating at the base of the tail where it is attached to her body is still navy blue from the original tail’s coloring but has been painted over to match the rest of the tail.
On the end of the tail is a pointed tip that can be loaded with multiple kinds of venoms. The stinger itself is shaped like a scorpion’s stinger and is serrated so that anything it stabs into will have a hard time getting out. Malina has full control over the tail and usually uses it for fast sweeping attacks or jabs although it can be used to capture someone or something, by wrapping around them, or block hits. Blocking hits, however, is dangerous when she has no shielding as the joints of Manticore are it’s weak-points. When she is not using the tail it can be disconnected and stored elsewhere for use.
Venom Types:Heavy Heartbeat: Paralyzing anywhere from a limb to the entire body for a short period of time depending on the dosage of poison used.
Love Me Not: Able to numb parts of the body and ease pain.
Whiplash: Once hit, the victim will experience extreme pain in the area of contact.
Long Farewell: The poison takes up to several hours to take effect and once it down, it quickly incapacitates and kills the victim.
Goodnight Kiss: Able to knock out someone for up to an hour.
Empty Chamber: For non-venomous strikes.
These venoms, obviously, do not work through aura.
In addition to this, there is a small slot just below the stinger where Malina can load, and fire, small pins coated in the venoms. These pins move quickly enough, and as small enough, to penetrate through any normal clothing and stick into the target's flesh.
Name of Secondary: Tecuanitlan (Lit. “Among wild beasts”)
Primary Form: Bladed Dust Staff - Teocuitentli's primary form takes the image of a 5’11” dark purple, metal staff with golden rimmed edges. At the top of the staff, the metal forks and splits into a curved Y look, in the image of a scorpion’s pincers. From the area where the staff splits to the tip of the pincers is one foot. On the sides of each pincer is a blade, allowing the weapon to be used for sweeping attacks or jabs as well as blunt strikes with the non-bladed bottom and top of the pincers. The bottom of the staff features a bladed replica of a scorpion’s tail and stinger, which is 11 inches long and can be loaded with the same poison as Manticore. The staff itself can be loaded with dust which is then stored in the pincers. When needed, Malina can use her aura in tandem with the dust and weapon to shoot out of small holes in the pincers, causing it to act as a “double barreled” Dust-Thrower. Dust shot out of the pincers can shoot out as far as 10 meters and can be used with any type of dust. Alternatively, she can fire dust missiles for a long range attack.
Secondary Form: Spear - With the flick of a switch, the two blades positioned next to the pincers of the staff flip backward, now pointing toward Malina, while the pincers join together and reveal retractable blades along the edges forming a large arrow shape at the head of the staff. In this form, Malina cannot use dust attacks but does have increased range on her melee attacks and is in a better position to do damage with them.
Tertiary Form: Tonfa and Staff/Half Spear - With another flick of a switch, a cylindrical grip pops up from the back half of the staff, allow Malina take the back half off and turn her single weapon into two weapons. There is a button on the top of the grip that allows Malina to retract the blade at the base of the staff.
While the back half is always a tonfa, the front half can either be the staff and have the ability to shoot dust or a Spear to allow Malina more effective melee attacks depending on what form the staff was in when it entered this form.
Quaternary Form: Bladed Dust Chime - In the exact middle of the staff, there is a foot long cylinder, wider than the rest of the staff, with a trigger extending out of it. When pressed, the staff collapses, like a telescope, and folds down to fit the shaft inside of the cylinder, leaving only the pincers extending out of the top. On the bottom, the scorpion tail also folds in on itself, leaving only the stinger extending out of the bottom. This form cannot be achieved if the weapon is in its tertiary form.
In this form, a third dust canister slot opens at the base to allow for a third type of dust. Once something in that slot is inserted, the chime begins to mix the three types of dust together in preparation for a massive, one off attack. It is extremely important for Malina to not be jostled around or make any sudden, quick movements as the mixing process could be disturbed and cause a premature explosion.
Dust Function:Fire Dust - The staff acts as a flamethrower.
Ice Dust - The staff shoots out ice dust particles that activate after coming into contact with something.
Lightning Dust - The staff can shoot out bolts of electricity.
Kinetic Dust - The staff can shoot out bursts of propulsion dust so that Malina can shoot around the battlefield.
Dust Mixing Effects:Fire + Kinetic + Wind = A massive fireball rips out from the chime and shoots forward, wrapped in a swirling wind. When it connects with anything, it lets out a massive, fiery explosion followed by a swirling vortex of flame that consumed the point of contact.
Ice/Earth + Gravity + Kinetic = A glowing bolt is shot out from the chime, soaring into the sky. Eventually, and hopefully over the target, the bolt explodes. Dozens of ice/rock shards begin to rain down on the ground below with increased weight from gravity dust and increased kinetic energy from the kinetic dust. When they impact the ground, they cause small craters to form around the point of impact and small shockwaves to race out.
Ice + Fire + Lightning = A massive firebolt fires out of the chime, surrounded by swirling ice and electricity. This attack is significantly slower than the others but the explosion and damage it brings when it impacts is larger than any other attack, causing indiscriminate damage to the battlefield and any caught within.
Fire + Earth + Kinetic = A thick, bubbling fire ball is shot out from the chime and races across the field. When it contacts its target, it explodes and coats the surrounding area, people, and anything in between, with a sticky flame.
Wind + Wind + Ice/Earth = A bolt of is shot out of the chime and explodes almost immediately. The explosion is directional and sends everything away from Malina. From the explosion, hundreds of shards of ice or rock shoot across the field at incredible speed to eviscerate the target and anything in its way.
History: Due to being near of the top of her class in Oasis, Malina was given the chance to receive a cybernetic enhancement as a new weapon through Alapelagias. She agreed and Manticore was attached to her lower back.
While in Oasis, Malina, like most students, made her own weapon. When she made Teocuitentli, she modeled it after the staves she saw around the Temple of Inogir but added her own personal twist to it. (Further additions made throughout Beacon life)
Name of Tertiary: Hangun
Primary Form: Issa
knife gun
History: She bought it at a store, a gun store.
MISC. Trivia: Voted most likely to have a bad nickname in her class.