RWBY OC Lucy Iris

Introduction: She played with the prism for a while, turning it in her hand before finally deciding to guide it into the solitary beam of light filtering through the curtains.  The room seemed to catch fire as shards of color exploded from it, and she couldn’t shut her eyes fast enough.  It was too much; even with the crystal stashed beneath her pillow, the feelings were too sharp and too strong to keep another kaleidoscope from searing across her vision, this one a window to the east that filled the mornings with rainbows and the years with laughter and smiles.  And, she knew now, with false hope.  Child of light, they’d called her, as if saying it often enough would actually turn her into the savior they thought the world needed—the savior they didn’t have the courage to be themselves.  Lucy sighed, then retrieved the prism from its place under her head.  Tentatively, and for the first time in years, she pressed it to her lips.  I’ll save the world, she told her parents, but first I’m going to save myself.

Name: Lucy Iris

Age: 18

Color: white with the barest hint of pink

Race: human

Influence/reference: In The Star Coins by the Brothers Grimm, a poor girl gives away everything she owns and is repaid by pale starlight which gives her money and a beautiful new dress. 

Occupation/Setting: Third year student at Beacon and intern at the Schnee Dust Company, where she works on technology for retrofitting traditional weapons with dust projectiles. 

Gender: female

Appearance: A cloud of hair with the color and volume of cotton candy floats to the middle of her back.  It’s almost as pale as her skin, which quickly burns as red as her eyes when exposed to the sun.  Lucy is 5’ 3” with a wiry physique that matches the elflike upturn of her nose.  Her eyes are, proportionally speaking, too big for her face and are naturally very expressive, but after years of practiced nonchalance she’s adopted an eternally bored expression.

Lucy wears a gauzy light pink dress that reaches her mid thigh in the front and tapers to her ankles in the back, leaving her legs free for enhanced combat abilities.  It’s cinched at the waist with two leather belts that hold a guard for Lupara’s blades, which is hidden behind her.  Attached to a black, funnel-neck cowl are sturdy lobstered shoulder pads, which cushion the impact of her rifle’s kickback.  Reinforced forearm protectors add an extra layer between sharp metal and her skin.  Thigh high, sheer black stockings are purely aesthetic; though she’s found the garter on her left leg to be an excellent distraction to some of her male classmates.  Slouchy black boots (with steel toes) reach her mid-calf and are perfect for kicking ass. 

Personality: Despite her angelic appearance, Lucy’s demeanor is typically anything but light.  She entered Beacon a year early due to a lifetime of academic overachieving, but the accomplishment left her with a sense of intellectual superiority that rubs a lot of her classmates the wrong way.  Her attitude has been described as anything from independent to standoffish, which initially made teamwork a detestable experience for her.  Years on team COAL have mellowed those feelings somewhat, but Lucy is still reluctant to include others in her plans out of a belief that they’ll just mess it up.  Because of this, she tends to be very critical of others, especially her teammates, on the rare occasions that their missions don’t go as planned.  However, her assessments of others pale in comparison to the impossible standards she holds herself to, leading to infrequent but very intense emotional breakdowns.

Despite her critical nature and serious demeanor about her studies and career, Lucy has a dry sense of humor that’s generally overlooked by those that don’t know her well.  She has a hard time connecting with people, but she’s now fiercely loyal to her teammates and sees them as family.  She doesn’t like talking about herself and is reluctant to share details about her life before Beacon, mostly out of embarrassment.  In unfamiliar situations she doesn’t have a lot to say, but when she feels comfortable she can be quite emotive.

Skills and Abilities: Lucy is incredibly organized when it comes to school and naturally assumes the role of tactician on her team.  Having grown up in a sparsely populated area with minimal light pollution, she can navigate using only the stars and is very familiar with astronomy.  Much to her own dismay, she’s really bad at video games. 

Weapon(s) and fighting style:

The simple transformation of Lucy’s weapon, Lupara, often allows her to combine its rifle and naginata forms into the same attack.  Using the kickback from the rifle, she can propel herself great distances to increase the force of her bladed strike.  Similarly, the dust rounds fired from the rifle also enhance the abilities of the naginata, such as imbuing it with the power of fire. 

Given her small stature, Lucy tends to use attacks that keep considerable distance between her and her opponents and favors the use of her rifle when facing multiple enemies.  In a one on one fight, however, she uses both forms unpredictably to keep her opponent guessing.

Aura/Semblance: Lucy can control her body weight to better handle her weapon.  For example, she decreases her weight to use the rifle’s kickback as a propellant, or increases it to keep herself steady while firing.  In a combined example, she can lighten herself, shoot the rifle at the ground, and fly into the air only to drop like a heavy stone onto an enemy, often cleaving it right in two with her naginata.  Another advantage Lucy’s semblance provides is that it defies her opponents’ expectations of physics: they prepare counterstrikes believing she’ll be in a certain place at a certain time, and are often very…disappointed when she isn’t.

Lucy’s aura manifests itself as a pastel rainbow and increases her sensitivity to changes in aspects of her environment that affect her attacks, like atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, etc.  This ability has also saved her team from several would-be surprise attacks.

Backstory/History: Lucy was born in a small light-worshiping commune outside Vale where her parents fled after a Grimm attack destroyed their town.  Hearing of her older brother’s disappearance in the event left Lucy traumatized by any suggestion of darkness.  In an attempt to help their daughter cope with this fear, her parents built a house where she would be surrounded by rainbows and light, complete with kaleidoscopic windows that filled every room with color and prevented her from seeing anything scary outside—or anything at all.  Their cheery demeanor, meant to rub off on Lucy and make her happier, only increased her irritation with them until she demanded to be enrolled in a local hunter school.  They did, claiming that now she would be their salvation from the Grimm, their child of light born from the ashes of a former life.  This unrealistic view of the problems plaguing Remnant drove a wedge between Lucy and her parents, especially after she renounced her faith in the light’s ability to protect them from danger.  Having decided she could learn much more outside the commune than within it, she applied at Beacon Academy a year ahead of schedule and was accepted.  Since leaving the commune two years earlier, she hasn’t been back, instead choosing to spend school holidays in Vale .  Her work at the Schnee Dust Company is based on her belief that with enough dust-powered weapons, humanity can defeat all the Grimm in the world.

Lucy keeps herself busy to distract herself from the feeling that she abandoned her parents, but not because she wants to forget them.  Although she claims that she no longer worships the light as her parents do, she frequently touches the prism she keeps on a string around her neck.

Team: Carmin Phoenix, Ora Coine, Ash Sterling

Themes: Shatter Me by Lindsey Stirling