CHARACTER Name: Lynn Aubin
Age: 32
Species and Gender: Female wolf faunus
Symbol: Occupation: Ex-huntress / Module-003 of Shard Incorporated
Appearance: Lynn stands at 5'8 and is on the thinner side, mainly due to lost weight from her recent operation and recovery. Her hair is a light black shade and her faunus traits, namely her wolf ears follow this theme, although featuring small tufts of white fur. She currently has somewhat pale skin, mostly due to her recovery efforts from her recent implantation operation; it is usually closer to average rather than its current shade. Her eyes are not visible beneath the black and blue-lined faceplate that replaces them for her vision, keeping if not bolstering her faunus eyesight and allowing her to see through her semblance's flames. She has a rather frail frame due to several years of inactivity coupled with the invasive implantation operation, although she is actively working to try and rebuild her previous image so she can fight more effectively. ((OOC: The only images I could find for her general appearance do not feature her faceplate, which replaces her eyes; it's visible in her combat uniform)).
Casual Clothes:
Ignoring the temperature, Lynn can usually be found wearing a scarf of some kind as a force of habit from her more winter-y home. Her jacket usually changes in thickness but not particularly in style depending on the season, and she takes both the cold and heat quite well, one from being used to it and the other from small usage of her semblance to cool herself.
Combat Uniform:
Lynn's combat uniform is a dark grey and dark blue combat skirt along with a pair of high boots and a high-collar jacket, which she uses her semblance with practically as a defense buffer, and less practically because she thinks it looks cool.
History: Lynn had a relatively normal childhood for someone living in one of the village outskirts of Vale; a quaint, if occasionally hectic existence. She and her family lived a somewhat nomadic existence, having to move around to avoid the creatures of Grimm, eventually settling down in a small town further into the kingdom. While the village would always be home to her, she never liked how they had to feel constantly afraid of the Grimm, and sought to learn how to become a huntress from one of the local hunters. She never had much luck wielding any of the common weapons, mainly sticking to somewhat shoddy use of swordsmanship with only basic strategy and overconfidence, until her mentor sought to break it out of her by sending her alone against Grimm for the first time. Obviously, finding herself far outmatched, she fought on the edge until she realized what it would mean to properly fight and learn, awakening her semblance during the combat. With the edge that this offered her, she eventually enrolled into Beacon academy as a first year after several further years of training.
Despite her advantages, she still found herself lacking behind the other students with their mixture of both useful weapons and semblances, so she experimented with the resource she never had access to before; dust. The cost of it was simply too high to buy in the quantities necessary for combat usage, but now she had a much larger fund for said dust. She spent much of her second year learning to use the substance effectively by itself as a caster, and mixing it with her semblance for greater effects, widening her area of expertise and slowly becoming much more well-rounded. Forging Winter's Grasp during the middle of her third year to aid in the ease of use of her techniques, she started to build up a reputation for herself, graduating and returning to her home to help protect it and take the place of her old mentor. Despite her skills and weapons, though, everyone makes mistakes; hers just happened to be attempting to fend off too large of a force at once due to a refusal to know when to rest and recharge or back down. Her previous mentor had helped to fight off a Grimm attack, but with the defenses of the town weakened it came under attack by a threat that Lynn was not experienced at handling; bandits. Fearing the abandonment of the town that had finally come to act like a permanent home for the huntress, and with the disgust at people taking advantage of the Grimm attacks for their own gain, she gave it everything she had to try and hold the location. While the bandits were eventually fought off, it wasn't without consequence, with her aura falling during the battle and resulting in her taking a large cut across her face. This resulted in the loss of her eyesight and as such her forced retirement, much to her displeasure.
This changed when she received an offer from Shard Incorporated, who were testing out a new range of prosthetics for hunters and huntresses. Of course, this greatly interested Lynn, who had always wanted to return to her original occupation, and she immediately accepted. The faceplate that now covers her eyes worked perfectly, and she took advantage of this to return to her huntress career, training her skills once again and learning to use Dust to its full potential with her semblance, becoming a caster. Several years later, when they offered to provide some... 'additions' to further enhance her combat capabilities, it seemed simply logical to accept with the benefits that the first implantation had given her. Of course, that was when she was told accepting the upgrades now required her to remain in the facility for an extended period of time for analysis and rehabilitation, and despite her rather firm objections there were certain features of the implants that made her more willing to accept this argument. She is currently located with the other members of the Module project under the Vale Main Facility.
Personality: Lynn's personality to strangers is professional; calling her cold would, ironically, not be quite correct. She simply puts on a bland expression and states simply what she wants from people or her orders, not outwardly reacting to events taking place around her strongly. That's not to say she's apathetic, but rather that she prefers to save her energy and get to the point where possible. She says what needs to be said, and then tends to stay quiet unless questioned about something. If she believes she has something she can contribute to a discussion, then she'll wait for a pause before saying anything; however, aspects of her more talkative previous persona do slip through occasionally, making small remarks or even things that approach being jokes or sarcasm - although it's not exactly easy to tell.
With people who know her better, she remains to the point, but also manages to hold conversations about different topics. Lynn can be expectant of people to lead conversations unless she has started it, preferring to remark rather than to begin, although she does tend to tease her friends on occasion. In addition, she is more expressive, her face going through a greater range of emotions than 'I'm bored' to 'I'm curious'. She can even approach being flirtatious with others on occasion. She can be witty, and she is intelligent in that she can quickly adapt to different situations or topics, but she often struggles picking up advanced concepts outside of her subject areas; these being mainly related to her previous occupation (such as tracking or survival) but also edging into literature and psychology. She isn't much of a scientist.
Lynn's pastimes include reading, mostly about different huntress magazines due to nostalgia or more serious fiction books (with her guilty pleasure being superhero comic books), experimenting with dust and her semblance (sometimes even for fun, making shapes or effects with a combination of the two), tending to or looking after different animals and swimming, the latter of which she hasn't had much of a chance to do recently with her rehabilitation efforts and development by Shard Incorporated.
Aura and Semblance: Lynn's aura has a faint appearance, not showing up very vividly. It is coloured a very light blue, with wisps coming out of it like breaths in cold weather.
Frostburn: Lynn's semblance allows her to generate vivid dark-blue flames. These flames don't spread infinitely, spreading a certain amount before dying out; there may be some lingering flames left behind for a short period, however. The spread and temperature of the flames are dependent on energy and oxygen; colder temperatures require more energy input (be it raw materials or forced through usage of stamina) to fuel, and the oxygen requirement can be replaced with aura usage in a pinch. The main feature of this semblance is that these flames, rather than being exothermic, is instead endothermic; they absorb energy (this mostly being in the form of aura, but dust or more explosive sources still working) and use it to spread and rapidly lower the surrounding temperature. Just as a touch from a real flame without protection would cause burns, these blue flames quickly inflict cold burn, otherwise known as frostbite. Lynn can generate these in large amounts at the cost of a loss in physical energy, tiring over time - due to her training with the semblance for many years, however, she is adept at using them and takes a long time to tire from raw manipulation. Creation takes more energy, but can be aided through the use of dust. Fire dust causes a greater amount of flames to be generated, at the cost of a slight increase in temperature, causing frost to appear on surfaces and frostnip, while ice dust causes flames created to be much more frigid but also created in less quantity, with its coldest temperature causing hypothermia and gradual freezing. Other forms of dust allow for more specific attacks to be created, such as lightning dust creating a brief beam of said flames rapidly moving forwards, similar to a flamethrower, or earth dust causing the ground around Lynn to freeze over with slight lingering flames. Her flames generally are cold enough to leave frost where normal flames would leave cinders, but can be greatly focused down up to a blowtorch-like effect which can immediately freeze over what it touches. The former would cause frostnip and frostbite similar to flames causing different degree burns, while the latter can be used for effects such as freezing and then proceeding to shatter part of a Grimm - any kind of freezing cannot pierce through aura, however. While frostnip and hypothermia can be caused with prolonged exposure to Frostburn, the effects of the flames are mostly kinetic with residual aftereffects when it comes to fighting people with aura, as you'd expect from a jet of flame being sent towards someone. The max range she can create flames at is twenty feet, although it is more efficient in both power and efficiency to create them directly from her body, requiring cumulatively more energy the further away it is. Her semblance with constant active use can allow her to fight for around ten to fifteen minutes of constant combat at good efficiency.
Combat Behavior: The most obvious feature of Lynn's combat style is that it isn't particularly specific - even basic swings can leave jets of coldfire after them. With the large set of limbs on her back combined with her dust patterns, she can be a threat at nearly all ranges, although she specializes at medium to close range combat. At long ranges, she'll either use basic dust patterns (raw manipulation of dust) or use focused blasts of her semblance, although both suffer from slower speeds. At medium range, her preference in combat, she will send out large swaths of her semblance using various dusts to bolster its effect, weaving in different attacks while trying to overwhelm her opponents through area denial techniques. Lynn is still getting used to subtle manipulation of her large limbs, and as such can't perform precise maneuvers with them quite yet; however, with the force behind them she doesn't particularly need to, able to simply claw forwards with fast speeds or use them as a shield, while using Winter's Grasp as an aid to her hand-to-hand combat. If needed, she can send out a small burst of dust from her gauntlets and use it for a close-range explosion to get some distance, and she has an emergency stock of dust in each for a widespread, if weak blast of her semblance as a last resort. Her large limbs, once coated with her semblance (a process that only takes a matter of seconds and some focus) can be used as additional points to cast spells or use her semblance from, being directly linked to her body. Her main weaknesses, however, are that the Reaper Module starts to wear her down from her own semblance over time, her relative inexperience in the use of the larger limbs (that's not to say they aren't a threat, but rather that if she does use them they'll be predictable if the opponent can actually manage to dodge the blows, since they only head in a straight line) and that she struggles with maneuverability, due to the large space and weight of the limbs. Since her old combat style was based on dodging, she occasionally missteps in combat as she tries to move out of the way of blows, although she is starting to get used to using the bulky claws for blocking - in high-stress situations, however, old habits die hard. This is more important of a weakness than it would otherwise be for most people trained in aura, as hers is often stretched thin over many different constant usages, meaning that if a hit does actually get through her defenses it hurts her quite badly; not particularly draining more aura than usual, but simply more of the impact going through it. In more temporary weaknesses, she is still recovering medically from the implantation process and has low stamina - she prefers to make small movements that don't require her to exert lots of energy, as she already has enough strain on her aura from use of the Reaper Module without needing to expend it to make up for her lake of stamina. This means that, while her hand-to-hand combat is still very effective, she cannot maintain it for extended periods of time, preferring to fend opponents off with her semblance, dust spells or her prosthetics.
Additional Notes: Linked to the Shard Incorporated worldbuild.
WEAPONName: Winter's Grasp
Primary Form: Two gauntlets, black in colour and with several small extensions leading out of the wrist and behind the elbow respectively. In terms of physical attacks, they can slightly aid in hand-to-hand combat, as you'd imagine a solid piece of metal would do. However, their main purpose is to store various levels of powdered dust within for use in two main purposes; she can cover the gauntlets in a brief coating of the respective element, or she can use the dust to enhance her semblance, as detailed earlier. Dust is loaded into the fingertips and palm of the gauntlets through subtle but specific hand gestures, making it hard to use when precise movements are restricted, but allows for rapid changes and distribution in selected dust types. Each gauntlet can store three types of dust in reasonable quantities, with a one-use stock of fire dust that can be activated with a flick of the gauntlet for emergency measures.
Dust Functions: See above. The whole weapon is essentially designed for enhancing dust usage with the helpful side effect of providing a mean left hook, rather than the other way around.
History: Winter's Grasp has gone through several upgrades through it's lifespan; the first version only had one dust loaded at once, the next could contain three and the final upgrade both linked it to her other weapon for dust enhancement of the Reaper Module and gave it the emergency supply for tense situations.
Name: Module-003 'Doorknocker'
Primary Form: A set of imposing interlocking rings connected to her back and shoulders, and a matching pair of large, hollow, claw-like prosthetics. Using similar theory in how aura anchors can store aura, the Reaper Module allows for a person's semblance to 'stick' to their aura instead of immediately dissipating. This would likely not prove useful to semblances outside of those that directly generate substances of some kind, such as aura constructs or elemental attacks; however, for those that do (such as Lynn's Frostburn semblance), it offers both a defensive and offensive boost by being able to coat the user in their semblance without having to constantly generate additional material. The claw-like gauntlets can be filled with the semblance, and can expel it from the hollow tubes when a ranged attack is required. However, these benefits come at a price; without even mentioning the usual medical disabilities caused by the extensive implantation process iconic to the module series, M-003 also causes the user to slowly take damage from their own semblance if they overuse the cybernetics as the user's aura being used to hold the semblance reduces the shielding of the user from their attacks. Lynn feels this downside through gradual lowering of body temperature, eventually resulting in a lack of ability to fight due to extensive cooling of the body. The limbs themselves are very unwieldy, limiting mobility due to the change in balance created until Lynn adapts to having them out again. Despite the size of the gauntlets, their strength without conscious application of aura and only using the passive amount required for movement (a negligible amount without constant activity) is only slightly stronger than a normal aura-enhanced punch from a non-martial-arts specialist - packing somewhat of a punch, but nothing in comparison to those focused on the subject. However, with direct application of aura at a rate of 3 to 5% per movement, depending on the weight, their strength can be briefly multiplied by up to five times; however, this is in terms of raw strength only, and their speed remains the same - so useful for carrying/throwing or for a close-range attack.
Modules do not base themselves off physical strength, using majorly mechanical components coupled with aura to create their movement. However, it relies on muscle movements in the connected location; as such, if exhausted of either physical energy or aura, then a person will be far more sluggish to not being able to move any implants. Due to the hollow nature, they aren't massively weighty, as that would limit the speed of the person too much: however, they are certainly at least a good two to three times as heavy as her normal arms.
Secondary Form: Due to the extensive process, Module-003 is unattachable at any point; however, the limbs can compress into a much thinner coating of her shoulders and arms respectively, appearing as claw-like coverings of said body parts.
Dust Functions: By using her gloves as a focal point, Lynn can briefly manipulate the attached flames using any dust released. Fire dust allows her to send weak waves of flame through wide movements of the gauntlets, Ice dust causes flames to wrap tightly around the metal of the gauntlets and decrease the temperature and Lightning dust allows her to focus flames from the 'hands' of the gauntlets to send them forwards.
History: Known more technically as the M-003 Reaper Module, it was one of the first modules created, and one of the most ambitious. It required a very heavy implantation process that as of yet hasn't been repeated due to the costs and delicate procedures required, but it mostly succeeded in it's purpose of greatly boosting combat capabilities for a hunter or huntress. She has spent the last five years working with the limbs to make them an efficient part of her combat behavior.