Lucy Aureum

Appearance
Out of armor, Lucy looks nothing like a Huntress. She is short, skinny, and all-around non-impressive. Her hair is cut relatively short so as not to snag on her helmet. Lucy’s face is the last one you’d expect to have a smile, but when she does, it’s among the best.

Lucy prefers to wear comfortable clothes. Only the softest, most well-fitting, least intrusive clothing has the right to be hers. Her favorite piece of clothing is a gray hoodie that looks a lot like stereotypical knight’s armor. The jaw and visor of its “helmet” are removable for reduction of ridiculousness.

Lucy’s everyday shoes are quite watertight, even though they look like normal sneakers. This allows traversal of puddles or shallow snow with no discomfort. The shoes are gray, silver, and gold in color, and the tops’ design is vaguely invocative of chainmail. Lucy wears straw-gold titanium-framed glasses for nearsightedness, but they aren’t necessary for basic navigation.

Lucy's armor is made of titanium, so it’s not as heavy as it could be. The helmet has a specially designed vision-correcting lens inset in the opening, so her glasses remain safely off the battlefield. Where the armor is painted, it’s silver, with gold accents. The unpainted parts have a darkened finish, similar-looking to forged iron.

Lucy wears her weapon, Belligerent Valor, in a scabbard on her left hip.

Personality
Lucy is a shy individual by default, the perfect introvert. She lives a more sheltered life than most Huntsmen due to the nature of her Semblance. If not for her team, Lucy would be an emotional wreck; their support makes her excellence shine through. Lucy spends most of her free time studying or training.

Lucy’s armor is a psychological boost as much as a physical barrier. She is much more confident wearing it, and holding a sword helps too. In armor/combat, courage is her companion. Lucy often thinks back on her childhood memories to tune out the flow of negative emotion.

Lucy is highly altruistic. She understands the necessity of positive emotion, and strives to apply it to everything it can be applied to. Her altruism drives her to help people with both physical and emotional problems, and she always goes for a win-win scenario, if possible.

Backstory
Some little girls pretend to be a damsel in distress. Lucy played the knight in shining armor. Lucy grew up in the City of Vale, near to Beacon, actually, so she was exposed to Huntsmen for most of her life. She felt confident enough that she could be one that she applied to Signal Combat School. There, she forged her armor and Belligerent Valor, and she graduated in the 90th percentile of her class.

Lucy’s first few weeks at Beacon were splendid: she made friends, excelled in classes, and was enthusiastic about her career. In her third month there, her Semblance manifested, and it couldn’t have been at a worse time. Lucy woke up one morning to find that she couldn’t move, talk, or even blink. She felt like all the negativity in the world had crashed down on her, crushing her like a black hole. All she could do was cry. Her team (ANGL) stayed with her all that day, sacrificing education for emotional support.

That evening, Lucy found out that her mother had died. Still feeling negativity, and realizing not all of it was hers, she knew a dreadful fact: her Semblance had manifested that  morning, and it was a curse. By classtime the next day, her feelings about this had stoked into a boiling rage: why her? Why did she deserve this? The first class of the day was Grimm Combat. As the professor demonstrated how to evade an Ursa, Lucy felt something flip. The Ursa stopped in its tracks, swiveling its head towards the stands. As it charged towards them, it pounced at Lucy and proceeded to maul her, or at least attempted to.

When the Ursa’s massive paw landed, it howled in pain. A flash of light emanated from its back, as the armor plate there cracked. Another crack appeared on the second hit. Taking advantage of this, the professor stabbed the Ursa in the back. With the spell broken, it was now fighting both student and teacher. A punch from the former, a stab from the latter, the Ursa falling in record time. Lucy’s thoughts afterwards were that maybe it was a more sacrificial Semblance; she felt people’s pain, and turned it on Grimm.

The rest of Lucy’s life at Beacon were spent training, studying, and learning to tune out the negative flow from bullied students and frustrated teachers. Team ANGL graduated from Beacon Academy the year of the 39th Vytal Festival. Lucy participated in a team round that year.

Lucy was unable to participate in the Battle of Beacon; she had to be evacuated out of town because her Semblance overloaded and rendered her a sobbing mess. The culprit was most likely the widely televised “murder” of Penny Polendina. She returned to Vale after the battle and helped fight off the Grimm swarms with the rest of Team ANGL.

Weapon
Belligerent Valor takes the form of a gold-hilted longsword. Where the fuller would be on a non-transforming sword, a rifle barrel is visible. One side of the blade is separated from the hilt to make way for magazine stowage.

Belligerent Valor can transform into a semi-automatic rifle (IRL reference: M1 Carbine). The side of the crossguard with the finger loop forms the trigger/handguard. The other side expands into a wireframe stock. The blade retracts in such a way that the sharp edges are hidden, but there’s still plenty to hold on to. The magazine’s place is directly in front of the handguard. The firearm components of Belligerent Valor are chambered in 7.62.

Belligerent Valor has a half-transformed mode, wherein the rifle components are in battery, but the sword is still mostly unfolded. The weapon cannot be shoulder-fired in this mode, but it can be fired and is usable as a sword.

Semblance: "I feel your pain"
Lucy's Semblance has both an active and a passive component.

Passive: Lucy is telepathically receptive to negative emotions, and can feel them -- and their general direction -- within a distance of 1 Km. Traumatic occurrences can trigger the active phase of the Semblance.

Active: Lucy sends out a massive AoE of negative energy, one strong enough to attract Grimm to her within 250 m (Grimm farther away can detect it, but aren't obsessively drawn). This effect is continuous throughout the active phase. Grimm attracted within the AoE ignore other people unless they are attacked by them. Grimm who strike Lucy during the Active phase take damage in the form of their armor plates cracking. This can technically affect any bone-like structure, but bounces right off of Aura. New fractures flash with a golden light.

Tests on captured Grimm have shown a damage rate of one fracture per hit. The fractures often span from edge to edge on an armor plate, in a random direction. Where they intersect, a point with a 1 cm diameter crumbles into dust. Chunks of an armor plate isolated by the fractures are prone to falling off, if their area is less than ~7 cm2. Bone spikes always fracture lengthwise, starting near the tip. A bone spike with multiple fractures can easily be smashed off, or may even crumble.

Lucy can deactivate the semblance at will, if voluntarily triggered. If involuntary, Lucy will need shelter from negativity before the Semblance can return to its passive state.

Other abilities:
Lucy is surprisingly fast, even in armor. Out of armor, Lucy can reach speeds of 20 mph in a sprint, and maintain a running speed of 15 mph. In armor, these speeds are 17 and 12 mph, respectively.

Lucy is an excellent defensive swordfighter, able to hold her own against an Alpha Beowolf while her Semblance whittles down its armor.

Lucy is both street smart and book smart due to her only hobby being learning. She is also very empathetic, due to literally knowing what others feel.