Chryssa O'Malley

Early life
Chryssa grew up an only child in a small city in south Mistral. Her parents both work for a dentist’s office, which is where they met: her father was a hygienist, and her mother was an accountant. They were middle class economically, and led a small, quiet life. While her neighborhood was a very safe one, the fact that she was one of the only faunus there often isolated her from the rest of the community. As such, she did not have many friends her age growing up.

One night, when she was around 10, she saw two young boys crossing the street by themselves, and a small grimm running at full speed right towards them. Chryssa rushed out into the street, and grabbed the boys’ hands while she tried to make a shield with her aura. The bright gold of her aura scared the grimm off, and she led the kids off of the street. She took the boys to the police, who in turn took them to a local orphanage. Chryssa went back to the orphanage later in the week, only to find out that the boys, whose names were Phrixus and Helle, had left. However, she kept showing up at the orphanage in hopes that she could find out if they were safe. She named her weapons in honor of them, and still thinks about them, eight years later.

Working at the Orphanage
While she never learned more about those boys, she ended upvloving the orphanage, and soon started volunteering there in her spare time. Her first job was to clean the dining room after meals, but she soon started helping to care for the younger children, and made many close friends there among the orphans. Unfortunately, as kids were adopted and new kids came in, Chryssa’s friends never stayed for long. It was at around the age of 12 when she became one of the oldest ones there, and from that moment on, she became the older sister to everyone at the orphanage. She learned to change diapers and how to burp a baby, but also how to soothe a kid who missed their dead mother, or how to reach out to a kid who was bullying others. Helping the kids at the orphanage became her passion. She learned how to knit because a child came with clothes that were falling apart. She learned how to cook when the old lady who used to cook for the children retired. She even created her wepaons so she could help the children who wanted to be huntsmen or huntresses train for combat schools. Nearly all of her fighting skills come from this training. Her aura and her semblance were used almost every day to keep hungry children out of the kitchen or heal scraped knees.

In school, she was a capable student who studied hard. She had friends there, but not close friends. Many people teased her about her weight and her faunus heritage, and so she preferred the company of her orphans, or her children, as she liked to think of them. At the time, faunus were not allowed to attend combat academies, and so Chryssa attended a regular, local secondary school, hoping to become a teacher herself and possibly work at the orphanage.

Menagerie
Faunus violence and discrimination had been going on all her life, but because her neighborhood was a relatively safe one, she did not experience it the way many others did. However, when she was around 13, tensions started rising slowly between the (largely human) government and the faunus. Around this time was when she got armor, and started training herself to fight, mainly by watching self-defense videos and acting as a sparring partner for children at the orphanage who wanted to attend combat academies. Throughout her time at secondary school, faunus violence became more widespread. Rumors started popping up that the humans were building a faunus containment facility, and were going to ship all the faunus away. When she was 18, she was one of the first faunus deported to Menagerie.

It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. No more did she have a secure future, or children to take care of. She was separated from her parents, and from the safe, comfortable life she had always known. The long, cold journey to Menagerie was made as uncomfortable as possible by the unforgiving human guards. Conditions were depressing and unsanitary. All had their weapons taken away. Since the faunus were taken without warning, most arrived with only the clothes on their backs. Arriving faunus were searched aggressively, for there was a seemingly endless list of banned items. Those who gave the guards a hard time were taken away and often not seen again.

The faunus who lived in Menagerie were dirt poor, and were often put to work doing menial labor. They slept in barracks of about six: it was in these barracks that Chryssa met her future team: Aylin, Lucinda, and Rowan, as well as Gunnur, Aylin’s twin brother, and Tyrian.

This is where she finds herself now: stuck into a terrible life and stripped of her dignity, trying to find some happiness and hope in the depressing grey of Menagerie.

Physical Appearance
Chryssa is short but fat and surprisingly muscular. She has a sharp nose and chin, with round cheeks, thin lips, and small but kind eyes. Her skin is a deep golden tan, and is significantly darker than her gold hair, which puffs out in a short, curly cloud around her face and her ram’s horns. She gave up long ago on trying to make her hair look nice—between the horns and the curls, it just isn’t happening. She keeps it cut short so she doesn’t have to deal with it. Her horns are sharp and curving and sandy beige.

She carries herself with a bright smile. Her hips are significantly wider than her shoulders, although her breasts are not what you would call “small,” and her arms and legs are short compared to her torso. She has excellent posture and balance.

Clothing
Chryssa loves to knit, and as such often wears sweaters and scarves that she has made. Her wardrobe contains mainly warm, earthy shades of gold and brown, with the occasional flash of blue or purple. She loves frilly skirts and simple patterns and warm, oversized sweaters. She almost never wears anything on her head, because not much looks decent over her horns. Besides her combat gear, she doesn’t have a particular outfit that she is known for, since she is always creating clothing. She owns an overabundance of knitwear, mostly in various shades of yellow and brown. Most notably, she owns enough knitted socks that she could wear a different pair every day for a year.

Combat Gear
The clothing she prefers to wear in combat consists of a russet brown short-sleeved hoodie with cobalt trim, over which she wears form-fitting, golden, Greek-style breastplate armor. She wears a deep brown combat skirt with yellow ruffles on the bottom, and on top of her knee-high gladiator sandals are bronze armored greaves. The bronze vambraces that she wears spread the whole length of her forearm, and can connect to her shields, which she normally keeps stored on her back when not in use. She wears black gloves with buttons on the side that she can use to control her shields.

Symbol
Her symbol is two golden ram’s horns that form a heart shape, surrounded by a circle that represents her shield. Her symbol appears on both of her shields, on the back of her gloves, and on both the front and back of her breastplate armor.

Personality
Chryssa is one of the loveliest people you will ever meet--honestly. She’ll let you cry on her shoulder after a bad break-up, and then she’ll bake you cookies to help you feel better. She’ll throw you surprise birthday parties and braid you hair when you want her to—honestly, she’s such a mother, and cares for everyone she meets so deeply and genuinely. She believes that everyone is truly good at heart. Unfortunately, this often comes at a cost. If someone truly is bad, she will often not recognize it. She has trouble accepting that people can do bad things. In addition, she spends so much time helping others and catering to their needs that she rarely stops to take a moment for herself. To her, the only happiness that matters is the happiness of others, and not her own. She is greatly lacking in self-confidence as well, largely due to the bullying she received from her peers in school.

Since she was sent to Menagerie, her sense of hope and optimism has been dulled. She is beginning to question if everyone is truly good: in such a hopeless place, she is finding it harder and harder to be the unflinching optimist she once was. This has taken a huge toll on her emotional health, because she is being forced to reconsider viewpoints and opinions she once thought were completely right.

She has a strong sense of justice, and will always do what she deems to be the “honorable” thing. She has a low tolerance for those who bend the rules. This has not backfired on her yet, but the longer she is in Menagerie, the less clear the distinction between right and wrong will become.

Chryssa can be quite timid. She won’t take chances on doing something a new way when the old way works just fine. Traditions are a very important part of her life, and she is often afraid to try new or adventurous things. Comfort, sameness, and routine are of prime importance to her.

Hobbies
Chryssa is an avid and talented knitter who owns a diverse collection of sweaters and scarves and socks. There is a 95% chance that she will knit you a fuzzy sweater if she likes you—and it will be the warmest, most comfortable piece of clothing in your closet. Her knitwear has been christened “Golden Fleece” by some, because it’s just so comfortable (and often gold in color). She also is a talented baker, and while she does not cook as much as she knits, you can bet that any dinner cooked by her will be delicious.

Skills
Chryssa is incredibly good at dealing with and talking to young children, due to her many years of volunteering at the orphanage. She is the kind of girl that kids look up to as a mother figure, even though she was only a couple years older than some of them. This puts a lot of pressure on her, but she doesn’t let the children see that. It has also made her a very motherly person, and excellent at resolving arguments.

Weapons
Her protective nature manifests itself in her weapons: Two identical Bronze shields named Phrixus and Helle that have sharpened edges and are 4 feet in diameter. Unlike most weapons in Remnant, they have no long-range capabilities. Each shield is round, and its outer circle folds up so that she can carry both of them on her back. Each shield straps on to her vambraces, but they also can detach, and Chryssa can control them remotely through a series of buttons on the side of her gloves. In this form, they are not only protective, but can also be used as massive extensions of her fists in order to smash grimm in their faces. Unfortunately, since the remote mechanisms of her shields are magnetic, she would be dead meat against anyone with a polarity semblance. While the edges of each shield are sharpened, she rarely takes advantage of this function, because using them this way greatly lessens their defensive power.

Aura
Her aura is very strong, and she has built it up through years of using it as a barrier to stop playground quarrels at the orphanage, or to heal herself of bruises she obtained from trying to restrain a crying 6-month-old to change his diaper. Her aura will last her a long time, and she uses it extensively on the battlefield, often for healing purposes. When used defensively in tandem with her shields, she can be a formidable defensive force. She rarely uses her aura offensively.

Semblance
Her semblance works as almost an extension of her aura. It allows her to project a golden bubble around herself that is max. 16 feet in diameter. This golden bubble has the shield like capabilities of her aura: it can slow down arrows and bullets, and grimm find it more difficult to penetrate. The less aura she has left, the smaller the bubble will be. As well, the bubble will automatically heal anyone who is standing inside of it, whether that person be a teammate or a foe. The larger the wound healed is, the more of Chryssa’s aura it uses up, and the smaller the bubble gets. It will not heal anything that won’t naturally heal itself—no reattaching severed limbs or healing mortal wounds. It simply speeds up the body’s natural healing processes.

She still has aura left after her semblance has been used up, but she cannot use it effectively. She can activate her semblance at will, but using it drains her aura much more quickly, and so does not often use it unless she needs to heal others besides herself.

Combat style
Chryssa’s Aura, stamina, and defense are incredible-she makes a defensive wall on a team. Her attacking power is pretty good, but she is fairly slow, has no dust capabilities, and must attack at close range. She is also not very agile, and since her speed is also not great, she prefers not to move around too much during a fight.