Castillo Canvass

Castillo Canvass is a travelling companion of Ruby and her team during their journey to Haven in the fanfic RWBY: Falling LEAVes. A non-combatant, he contributes to the group by caring for their weapons, their horses, preparing field medicine and being their cook when away from a town.

Appearance
Of average height, Castillo is a young adult man with the tan-brown skin and black eyes common of his village Aetna. Representative of his numerous travels across the continent of Mistral under the tutelage of his guide teacher, he has lean musculature, with his legs being particularly thin yet dense due to their extensive usage. His shoulder-length curly hair is dark chocolate brown and is a messy mop that noticeably has leaves and sticks stuck in its loose curls. His back carries 8 small scars in the form of a column of grooved horizontal lines carved over the top portion of his spine.

Castillo's clothes are purely practical. Colored in green-brown patches to act as camouflage, Castillo has a simple long-sleeve shirt, with a rain jacket. His lower body is dressed in hiking pants and boots. Over this, he can also don an additional full-body Ghillie cloak over him, with the cloak covered in loose strips of cloth made to look like leaves and twigs, allowing him to just lie down and blend in. A similarly colored mask helps to complete the camouflage.

Personality
A new guide desperate for business, Castillo is extremely enthusiastic in trying to impress his new clients, always asking if they need anything from him and doing his best to support them if they do. Compassionate, he is a good listener as well and is willing to be the secret-keeper for the members of the team, providing an outside perspective to their problems and their ultimate goal to hunt down Cinder. An avid and curious learner, he is fascinated by new things he never saw before and he generally likes to fanboy over the coolness of the Hunter students after their fights.

In actuality, Castillo likes to play up his guide knowledge and act stupid at anything else, but hides behind it a sharp eye and a gifted mind that has a keen tactical sense in almost any situation. His fanboyism is a method of keeping up the team's spirit to stave off fighting fatigue and he pushes his role as an open listener to keep an eye on team cohesion and to watch out for any mental issues that could risk the rest. To avoid his clients thinking that he is smarter than he lets on, Castillo never tells his clients about these secret efforts he does for them. While he talks and interacts a lot with his clients, outside of knowledge, support and exaggerated stories about his journeyman travels throughout the continent, he is actually very reticent about any personal details. His reason to himself for this lack of openness is that he has to maintain a proper client-guide relationship, but in actuality, such details would almost certainly go back to his past and the scars on his back. Wishing to move past that, he would rather bury it with optimistic stories and his hopes for the future, even if inside he knows that he says those things to trick himself into thinking he is alright.

Internally, Castillo tries to practice ruthlessness and pragmatism, but he has a naturally kind soul that makes this very difficult for him. As a result, he tries to avoid the guilt by not thinking about those he hurt, such as deciding the group needed to go somewhere in another direction when spotting beggars from afar and mentally exaggerating the danger he himself is in when seeing someone else in danger. However, if he directly sees the people being hurt, his guilt will be too strong for him to ignore and he would throw himself into great danger to save them.

Combat
The field support backbone of the Haven travelers, Castillo displays proficiency in combat on par with the typical village militia. In a fight, he stays back and fires pot-shots with his bolt-action hunting rifle, with a bayonet for a last resort in close-quarters. In terms of speed, strength, reflexes and even the accuracy of his shot, he is far below the Hunter students in the group.

Aura
Castillo does not have Aura. He was accessed by a professional Hunter a while ago that his Aura can only be awakened safely by someone who was properly trained in doing so, which can be expensive. Hence, he has the strength of a normal human and lacks the shield, making him very vulnerable.

''Despite the above, Castillo secretly has a Semblance. Lacking a name, he can consciously activate it but he lacks control over who it targets if let loose. In a 50m radius around him, it immediately forces every fighter in the area to fight on a level playing field to their opponent. ''

''To clarify, a level playing field is one where a fighter can only access aspects of their fighting style so long as the other fighter also has access to an equivalent aspect. For example, if a creature of Grimm and a Hunter were to fight, a creature will only have access to its natural physical body. As a result, a Hunter will in turn only be able to use their natural physical body to fight back. This in turn robs the Hunter of their weapon, their Dust, their Aura and their Semblance, all of which are rendered either too heavy to wield or outright unusable. Even accomplished Hunters would die to a single Beowolf under those conditions.''

The example above is exactly why Castillo never uses his Semblance, as his lack of control means his Semblance can completely cripple any defense efforts against Grimm.

Non-Combat
As a budding professional guide for Hunters travelling to the city of Haven, Castillo has trained himself in multiple aspects of field support that benefit his Hunter travelers out of combat. While the Hunter students have survival knowledge too, he is much more experienced at it and gives them time to relax and rest up after fights:
 * Weapon Cleaning and Care - Armed with a cleaning kit, Castillo helps to clear out Dust-powder, lubricate the frame-shift mechanism and clean any scopes. He also collects the bullet casings after every fight for refill and reuse.
 * Horse Husbandry - With horses as the main transport for such a group, he takes care of them, feeding them, cleaning them and fixing up any travel injuries.
 * Field Medicine - Along with keeping track of their medical supplies, Castillo diagnoses the other members of the team, cleaning and bandaging any deep wounds, along with looking out for any common diseases that afflict them. He also supplements their medicine with therapeutic herbs.
 * Cook - His most obvious role, he is a decent cook, while keeping out poisonous ingredients out of the pot. His hunting rifle is also used as it is named.

Trivia

 * The idea behind Castillo is to remind people of the field support. While all the coolness happens in the fights, behind the scenes there is someone making sure that their equipment works, that their wounds are treated, they are well-rested and that they actually know where they are going.
 * The name Castillo comes from the caves of El Castillo, where one of the oldest set of cave paintings was discovered. Canvass is obviously referring painting canvas.