[hider=Xander Steele]Name: Xander Steele
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Nationality: Vale
Appearance: Xander is an unassuming lad, standing at a tall six foot, four inches tall with swept steel blue hair. He keeps it long enough that he can have the bangs swept to one side. He has a lithe, yet muscular build, toned from years of combat training in both Signal and Beacon Academies.

He typically wears a pair of light blue jeans, custom made steel blue colored combat boots, blue t-shirt, and a darker blue jean half jacket, the bottom only reaching to just below his ribs. When he knows he’s going out into a fight, he dons a suit of leather armor with light plating along the shoulders, arms, and legs, with a couple pieces of plating on his chest. The focus of this armor is to allow him maximum mobility while allowing some measure of protection.

Personality: Xander is quiet, observant, and horribly awkward in a social environment. When approached by or approaching another person, he finds himself unable to speak in the form of stumbling over his sentences and being unable to get a full sentence out of his mouth.

However, if he does manage to break through his awkwardness, he usually can’t stop talking and will generally call you his friend so long as you don’t do something to warrant his distrust. Speaking of trust, if he calls you friend, he is loyal to a fault and will step up for you despite his social awkwardness. However, you can imagine any attempt at defending a friend is rarely considered serious unless he is angry.

Aspiration: Xander strives to see a world where people don’t laugh at each other for their insecurities or scorn each other for their differences. Growing up in Vale and attending both Signal and Beacon, he saw a lot of both, with the latter being directed at the Faunas. Having been taught that no one should be mistreated, he doesn’t want to see anymore of this.

Fears:
[list]
[*]Rejection-if he’s made a personal break through with someone, the worst thing they could do is brush him off.
[*]Being alone-The poor guy is already awkward enough, why would he want to be lonely?
[*]Heights-Being high terrifies Xander, but he does his best to cope with it, often times singing a song to himself to stay calm.
[/list]

Ethics: Xander believes firmly that all people should be treated kindly and with respect, no matter what their race or personal problems. To see people who would do otherwise makes him nothing more than angry. However, he’s also a realist and accepted that not everyone will share his views and as a result does what he can where and when he can, whether it be helping the odd Faunas with their work or getting a crying little girl a new dolly to replace a lost one.

History: Xander was born to parents Grey and Gale Steele. His father, Grey, was a well known known Hunter who turned down a position at Beacon more than once in order to continue making a difference in the field while his mother, Gale, was the owner of a quaint little restaurant on a street corner in Vale

Xander grew up spending most of his time with his mother since his father was often away on missions to protect the kingdom. However, to say that he didn’t love his father, or even resented him, as when he was home they did a lot of family activities together and Grey even helped out at the restaurant. It was from his father, however, that Xander got the urge to become a Hunter. You see, growing up for the young man wasn’t easy, what with his inability to be able to have a social life limiting the number of friends he had severely. And he was mercilessly mocked and tortured for it by kids both his age and those a few years older.

However, his mother had taught him that no matter how they treated him, to be kind and treat them with respect. And so he did. No matter how much he got pushed around, picked on, or called names, he didn’t retaliate. Of course, that isn’t to say he liked what he saw, especially when watching how people treated the Faunus. His father had never understood it nor had his mother and so as a result, Xander came to want to help make the prejudice go away. And the best way to do that was to become a Hunter and help work towards ending the discrimination the faunus faced by being kind to them where others would see because as a Hunter, he knew he would be looked to as an example.

He spent extensive time talking it over with his mother and father, the latter of which spent much time trying to persuade, if subtly, his son from becoming a Hunter. He knew all too well the risks of dedicating his life to killing Grimm and protecting the Four Kingdoms, but Xander couldn’t be dissuaded. By the end of his twelfth year, he was already in attendance at Beacon Academy, where he designed his twin bladed revolvers Nightingale Eclipse. Many of the other members of his class designed weapons like transforming axes and swords, but he like the Eclipse. He named it the way he did because the Nightingale was his favorite bird and it reminded him of hope despite the darkness.

Finishing his training at Signal, he moved on to Beacon with the rest of his class, where he first met the Scorpion Faunus Cyra. They talked a little and over the course of the airship flight, began to become friends, though he did not initially know that she was a scorpion faunus when he met her. That was revealed in their third year. While it caught him off guard, it by no means changed Xander’s perception of her and in fact strengthened his friendship with her, as it was clear revealing that about herself was a difficult thing for her to do.

After the Beacon Academy initiation test, he, Cyra, and two others ended up on the same team and the four came to trust each other immensely over the time they spent at Beacon. However, Xander took it upon himself to remind Cyra that sometimes she needed to care for herself as well, as she had a habit of putting others too far ahead of herself.

Over the course of their time together, everyone found a niche that they did well in. Xander became the team’s hit-and-run specialist, being in and out of groups of enemies before they could really register he was there while causing massive damage in the relatively short amount of time he was in their midst. He found he enjoyed it and that it allowed him to do the most for his team.

His time with his team has helped him to begin to finally outgrow his social awkwardness, but he has accepted that he may never outgrow his inability to really get to know new people despite his best efforts.

Semblance: [i]Quick Switch[/i]-Quick Switch allows Xander to manifest a steel blue copy of himself in a ten foot radius of himself that he can swap places with in order to quickly reach hot spots and allies around him. It should be noted that the double disappears immediately upon the swap and requires a brief “recharge” time of about thirty seconds.

Combat Style: Xander’s fighting style revolves heavily on rapid attacks preceded by, involving and followed up by rapid fire suppression shots. His reloading style allows him to effectively fire shots between thrusts and slashes and continue to keep a weapon ready while exchanging cartridges. 

When closing with a group of enemies, he will flip through the air and spin, firing all his shots into them to kill or injure as many as possible and then following up with sweeping shots while keeping minimum distance  for effective sweeps, preferring to avoid a situation where he gets surrounded. He will often use Quick Switch as frequently as possible when faced with a group of opponents as opposed to a single opponent, as it helps him to maintain his distance.

Against a single opponent, he’ll use his semblance to change the direction a key strike will come from when they least expect it, using the time in between switches to unleash rapid barrages of attacks to keep his opponent on the defensive.

Weapon: [url=http://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/c4d05b15-a996-4342-b841-46031e8548c4.jpg]Nightingale Eclipse[/url] is a pair of large caliber revolvers with blades attached to the barrels that allow for a close-to-mid range attacks with the revolvers and deadly hand-to-hand combat maneuvers with the blades. 

Non-Combat skills: Xander has spent an extensive amount of time on both his parkour and acrobatic skills, making his reflexes sharp. And somehow it translates into a really good cooking ability as well. The man is well known for his Cherry Jubilee.

Deficiencies: Despite his high mobility and reloading skill, he struggles with long range engagements and some short range engagements, especially against unusual weapons like scythes. He also, to reinstate, is socially awkward, so he doesn’t like to lead.

Miscellaneous: [url=http://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/df8ab2d5-83f4-4c76-a477-2828267c7c15.png]Emblem[/url]

NOTE: Imagine the blade in the picture for the Nightingale Eclipse as larger.[/hider]