“There's only an arbitrary rule that requires a bloke to give a lass chocolate on White Day. So it wasn't like I was bothered or anything by them forgetting.”
-Teàrlag
Name: Teàrlag Cirsium
Age: 17
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Nationality: Vacuuan
Designation: Huntress
Team: TSUN (Tsunami)
Appearance: A pale youth whose features clearly paint her as a native to the metropolitan city-state of Vale, Teàrlag is almost delicate in her appearance, false advertisement for those who know of her personality. Indeed, with her height of a metre sixty, slightly shorter than most girls her age, as well as her soft and gentle looks, she could almost be considered cute or waifish, but the cynical and dead gaze present in her otherwise beautiful purple eyes tell a different story. The twin-tailed girl is definitely pretty, but like the black-and-red and discs clipped to her violet hair, her soul is hellish, an bottomless pit of self-loathing and cynicism that contrasts immensely with her looks.
Her outfit consists of a black, hooded jacket (lined with red in certain areas), which is haphazardly thrown over a short minidress that shares a colour with her hair, albeit a slightly lighter shade. It extends down beyond her waist by only several centimetres, leaving a small gap of pale, almost-white skin visible before it meets her woollen, overknee thigh-high socks, which are also a purplish colour (violet of course, pretty much being her favourite colour in that she has absolutely no real negative opinion of it). Indeed, it could be said, in the tongue of Internet-going cartoon fanatics, that she possesses "Rank A"
zettai ryouiki, though whether or not this has ascended to "Rank S" is dependent on one's judgement of her personality. Digressions on forbidden territory aside, the purple-haired girl also wears simple but tough black boots.
Colour: Thistle Purple
Personality: A cynic down to her very bones (or so she thinks), Teàrlag Cirsium is not a girl with an overly favourable view of the world. To her, life is harsh, uncaring and utterly meaningless, an endless cycle of drudgery that seeks to wear away at one's self until death finally comes. It's a rather dreary and morbid opinion, but she's embraced it, and with racial tensions between human and Faunus, the constant fight for survival against the hordes of monstrous Grimm, and the knowledge that each day people you've met will find themselves at risk of dying, she feels like the world itself supports her beliefs. Not to mention the utter lack of mercy society holds for its own citizens, the vapid nature of the cliques and ingroups that promotes the concept of an "us and them", or even the innate selfishness of the common person. She hates it, and her grumpy, sour attitude to things is emblematic of that antipathy towards everything in the world. This makes her out to be somewhat of a rebellious loner, raging against the world and all its injustices.
The fact of the matter is, however, that she's resigned herself to it all. She sees the world in a pessimistic light and she knows she can't change it.
Deep down however, she still possesses an incredible resolve, and the courage to fight for those in need of being defended. She hates to see people cry, and will do anything to wipe those tears away, even if it's at great cost to herself. Her self-worth is utterly lacking; she doesn't believe herself to be worthy of care (though she can still be hurt, no matter how many excuses she makes or how much she tries to deny it), and it is for the sake of others that she fights. Teàrlag doesn't like to admit it, but underneath that grumpy, cynical exterior lies a girl who's really just like any other average teenager, a girl with self-doubts and flaws and precious people, even if she thinks she isn't. She can't accept praise or gratitude that easily, and frequently denies doing anything out of a sense of philanthropy. Because she doesn't believe she can, because she doesn't believe she could be that much of a help.
It gets her flustered, really.
She's not a particularly motivated person either, content with being another average student in Vacuo. It's strange then, to know that this girl is the leader of her team of huntresses, when she seems so lacking in any positive leadership qualities. But she cares for people (even if she does her best to avoid establishing strong relationships), has strong tactical sensibilities, and from time to time can muster up something surprisingly inspirational. Otherwise however, she prefers to take things easy and avoid the struggle. Teàrlag is also a gigantic nerd, and one would be surprised to note that she possesses an incredible singing voice honed from an almost fanatical devotion to karaoke. She also likes deep-fried foodstuffs.
Teàrlag Cirsium is a complicated girl with a complicated sense of self.
She might seem like she's just another cynic, but there's more to her than that.
Equipment:Her primary piece of hunting equipment is called
Lonnbeimnech Taranaich, which is split into a number of parts. The first is a six foot long lochaber axe (
Lonnbeimnech) made from a dense and highly durable metallic substance. It possesses an incredibly low resistance, a physical property that is quite conducive (pun intended) towards the use of Teàrlag's semblance. Indeed, it serves as a lightning rod, providing a path of least resistance and absorbing electricity into its body, as well as the reverse (which provides her foes quite the shocking experience). With its high heat capacity and low coefficient of thermal expansion, the blade of the weapon can be superheated to over three thousand five hundred degrees celsius, enabling it to slice apart foes with greater ease. Said blade can also be launched as a rocket, trailing long, fine copper wires behind it as it flies into the distance. This essentially leaves the weapon as a staff until the head makes it return (as it contains its own propellant).
The second part of the
Lonnbeimnech Taranaich, on the other hand, consists of two electrical amplifiers (
Taranaich) bound to her wrists that can launch bolts of electricity at her foes, but when combined with the lochaber axe, form what can be best described as a electromagnetic slingshot. Utilising lightning dust and her semblance in tandem, she can propel anything placed within the sling at speeds far greater than what is provided by a standard slingshot. Her projectiles for this tend to vary, but she does possess a stock of tungsten rounds to be used specifically for such purposes.
Beyond her main weapon, however, Teàrlag also makes use of a set of ten sgian-dubh knives, which are safely sheathed and hung from garters near the top of her thigh-high socks (with five knives on each leg). They serve as her backup tools, cooking utensils and et cetera, placed in a less obvious location in order to keep a sense of surprise. They are not particularly special, but have also been balanced so that she can throw them at enemies, usually with strings upon strings of copper wire (rolls of which she keeps pocketed) in order to further assist the usage of her semblance if necessary.
Fighting Style: Despite her apathy towards achieving anything beyond average in her studies as a Huntress, Teàrlag Cirsium is actually surprisingly skilled as a fighter (honed by the desire to actually remain alive, because no matter how much she dislikes the world, she isn't yet suicidal), and knows both her weapons and powers and weaknesses and strengths inside-out. She mainly serves as a sharpshooter, firing off highly accurate shots from her long-ranged weapons to neutralise her enemies and provide openings for the rest of her team. However, she is also decently capable in melee, especially with her electrically-infused strikes adding an extra dimension of pain to her blows. The techniques she uses are not particularly polished or well-thought-out, but her skill is respectable enough, and her willingness to make use of any resources available and her desperation if thrown into a corner is what makes her truly dangerous there.
Semblance:Marchysgallen - the power provided to Teàrlag by her semblance essentially transforms her (pun very much intended) into a dynamo, a walking producer of electrical energy that can be utilised in a number of different ways. When active, she is constantly converting her aura into electricity stored within her body, which she can expel from her body, though not in a particularly fine manner. She possesses zero fine control over her lightning (which takes upon a purple colour), with most of her tool-less skills with it boiling down to, with only one exception, essentially pointing and firing off bolts of electricity that end up dissipating after a short range due to the resistance of the air. As such, she tends to rely on the assistance of her weapons to best make use of her powers, though when she's dealing with her mundane, day-to-day life she doesn't need them; charging her phone or game consoles simply by touching them is incredibly useful, after all.
Her ability to channel electricity is heavily dependent on the presence of conductors, but there is one technique she has refined that serves as the one exception. With great concentration, she can envelop her entire body in a field of electrons, repelling outwards as a burst or wave of electricity that is both offensive and defensively orientated. Her most common use of this ability however, is to simply cover herself in lightning and run into people, which can essentially be considered an electrifying tackle. It is incredibly dangerous, especially taking into account the amplitude and voltage of the electricity she produces, but requires her to focus quite a bit on keeping the field stable.
When not active, her semblance can still be noticeable, thanks to the smell of ozone that permeates the air around her, and the infrequent sparks of electricity that leap off her skin.
History:The third of five daughters born to a family of Vacuuan hunters residing in Vale, nobody really expected much of Teàrlag Cirsium, the ignored middle child who really had nothing going for her. She was just another kid, another average little girl who was outshone by her more exciting and colourful family members. Not that she really minded. She was fine (or at least she claimed she was) with being just another number for the census, another statistic that went through school, where the drudgery and repetitivity of the world, where the knowledge that they could die at any moment, slowly but surely eroded away at whatever hope and optimism she had for becoming anything more. She became a loner, a pessimistic girl who spent her days sitting in the corner of the classroom, doing the bare minimum required for her to pass her classes.
When she was thirteen, her parents moved them back to Vacuo.
It was difficult, adjusting to both a new country and a new environment. But she managed (for a given value of the term), settling back into the endless drudgery as another average student once more. She woke up, went to school, did her work, went home, played video games, practiced fighting, went to sleep, repeat. It was an endless cycle, and it didn't endear her to the world at all. It was as if she was going through the motions, training to become a hunter simply because her parents and some of her siblings were.
Teàrlag barely made it into Shade Academy.
She would have left as well, would have given up on the career of a huntress, of a career that could easily end in her death, but something stopped her. She found people who she ... wasn't averse to, people whose presence she probably would have somewhat missed. And Teàrlag realised that she didn't want to see them hurt and crying. So she stayed. Even though she doubted her own skills, even though she found it all so utterly lacking and useless, she didn't want to see people hurt.
Being a huntress meant that she could wipe away some of those tears.
(Not that she cared or anything.)
Relations with other characters:Not yet applicable
Extra: -VA: Kakazu Yumi (JP)
-Cirsium is the genus of the spear thistle, the national flower of Scotland
-As a workaholic, my semblance would likely give me the ability to ignore sleep.
