Marain Havhek

"“People always feel the need to say something important to stand out from others...I wonder why?”"

- Marain Havhek

Appearance:
I’m poor so can’t afford an artist, also I have the precision of a drunken claw-machine. Have some descriptions instead.

Marain’s hair is a bright vibrant yellow, reaching down to her stomach in an almost tendril like manner. There are black spots splashed all around it, blue rings inside the spots that she claims are natural. Her eyes are a dull-shade of yellow, her pupils being a horizontal line rather than a circle. Just about the only indication of her faunus heritage, save for her abnormal maneuverability.

She wears a sleeveless navy blue Victorian styled layer dress that reaches to her ankles, the skirt portionsplitting off into eight pieces at her waist. Overneath that she wears a black short waist-length black zip-up jacket, the jacket not actually being zipped. Underneath her dress she wears a pair of black stockings, leading down to the plain violet flats on her feet.

She doesn’t accessorize much, if at all, but she does have a comically large witch-hat atop her head big enough to cover her face, a small crown going around the cone portion. Also an old coral bracelet on her wrist which she claims is a friendship bracelet. Occasionally, she wears lipstick, varying shades of it in fact. Most of the time dark. Her favorite shade has to be of the navy-blue variation.

As a side-note, her dress has dust sewn into it, the tips of it constantly dripping just about everywhere she goes if she doesn’t pay attention. Her emblem also happens to be a crown with tentacles coming out of it in a lax manner.

Personality:
Most people assume Merain is cold and apathetic just by looking at her, but in reality, she’s just really meek and quiet. She doesn’t speak up her own thoughts, preferring to keep them to herself unless they add to the conversation in a productive way, or if she’s asked. She’s someone who’d just go with the flow of things, accepting the outcome as it is and moving on with her life, knowing it’s pointless to harbor feelings for a past that can’t be changed. As such, she doesn’t get mad very often, if at all. She sulks instead.

Contrary to how most people view her as, she actually has quite the large heart, being the girl to go out of her way to help someone cross the street. She simply loves helping others, as she feels there’s nothing like it in the world to see someone’s gratitude, no matter how small. She’d go to great lengths simply to receive that, even if how she does it is considered unpopular to everyone else. For nameless citizens anyway...

She’s a rather big control freak though, surprising most people when they learn this. Things have to be her way if she’s doing something, no one else's. While on the subject of negative traits, she happens to get jealous quite easily, and happens to hold grudges for very long times as a result. It’s incredible petty, something she constantly denies. She doesn’t like being alone much either, in fact she hates it, choosing instead to relax in big crowds and noisy areas, as she prefers them far more over encompassing silence.

Something that many don’t notice about how is underlyingly insulting she is. You wouldn’t know it, given her bland tone making half of what she says sound either serious or pensive,  but chances are she’s insulting someone. Example above, her quote. She’s actually making fun of people who try too much to stand out. She’s rather superstitious as well, believing that every old wives’ tale has just a little bit of truth.

Though maybe the oddest thing about Marain is the odd mix inside her mind of cynicism and idealism, both aspects constantly clashing. She truly believes if she works hard enough, then she can make a difference towards the future. While believing that, she also believes that the world is unfair and won’t ever give her a chance. It doesn’t make sense. It’s highly irrational for someone to believe in two conflicting views as such, but she does regardless in hopes one day it’ll come true.

Though perhaps, it’s not that unexpected. Having low to non-existent expectations while aiming for large dreams often help cushion the fall that person feels should they fail.

Backstory:
Marain’s backstory isn’t really anything special. She had a fairly normal upbringing, with some fairly normal parents. Save they were faunus, and dealt with discrimination often. From her young age, Marain’s parents told her not to blame the humans, they were just scared. She didn’t really understand much, but a portion of her at that young age told it that was just a petty excuse for the human’s to get-off to see them suffer.

She grew up a fairly simple life, had lots of friends, no incidents really happening. True, her parents had trouble finding a steady job, but other than that, everything was fine. At least, until one day all her friends left her. She wasn’t sure if it was spontaneous, or gradual over a long period of time, but it happened, and that’s all that mattered. She was alone, and didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden, her own situation hit her. She was a young faunus girl, with parents struggling to find a job, barely managing to get food on the table.

All her friends were human, and chances are they all left her for the same reason. Rather than feel mad about it, she felt sad. Both for herself and her friends, them for their close-mindedness, and her for her loneliness. She figured if she had just been a bit more friendlier, or maybe controlling, they could have all stayed friends. That voice in her head told her it was impossible.

As the years passed doing odd-jobs, she realized just how little in her life she controlled, and that upset her. If she couldn’t control anything around her, then everything would slip through her fingers again, and she’d be left all alone. The voice in her head agreed. She didn’t want that. So she thought hard on what she could do, and decided to help people. If she helped people, they wouldn’t leave her, as they relied on her, so she did just that.

It was small things at first, helping find lost bets, paying for the last portion of the bill, helping out in soup-kitchens and whatnot, and over time the deeds began to grow in size. Eventually, she realized she really liked helping people, the smiles they gave her making her feel a warmth she didn’t she was capable of feeling. Eventually, for the sake of all the people around her, she decided she would become a Huntress.

She wanted to make a world where no one had to worry about being alone, or looking for a steady job, or making friends, or all the little things like that. She wanted to make a world where no one had to worry about the Grimm anymore, or hearing the news that a loved one died on a mission. Most importantly, she wanted to make a world where everyone could smile like they do at her..

The voice in her head told her it was never going to happen, not in a million years. She didn’t care. Instead, she managed to use all the money from her odd-jobs to enter a combat school, train hard, study hard, and work hard to the fullest, and eventually got into Beacon thanks to her all her hard-work. The voice in her head told her she got lucky. She told it to shut up.

Relationships:
Team NGRM

Nigrum Leicent: She hates him. For starters, he was chosen as leader, whereas with her obsession for control she wanted to be it instead. This feeds her jealously, further fueling her silent hate for him. She makes it a habit to subtly insult him, though it only infuriates her more whenever he smiles like he knows her completely. He even goes out of his way to treat her like a friend! Where did he even got that idea from!? He’s just the worst.

Grau Spiegel: Just about the only member of NGRM she likes, or at least puts up. He always does what she tells her, he’s an expert on dust, and he’s a faunus like herself who doesn’t hold a radical view on life. She kinda avoids him though, since she’s seen how he talks to people, pointing out all their flaws in a merciless way. She doesn’t have the heart to go through that, thank you very much...

Rory Carlette: She hates her. She was perfectly fine with her beforehand, putting up with her antics, even finding them a bit humorous, but then she went off and left her for Nigrum. Aren’t they supposed to be partners? Fueled by feelings of betrayal, jealousy, and her fear of being left alone, she simply hates her. No matter how much Rory constantly worries on her, babying and reminding her on things she forgets, checking to see if she’s okay and eating healthy. She just...hates her. Yeah. She hates her...Definitely that.

Abilities:
Well, thanks to her Octopus faunus heritage, she’s incredibly flexible, inhumanely so. She’s able to fit her body in what should be impossible gaps and cracks with ease in a way that unsettles others. She does have a bone structure. It’s very, shall we say, “adaptable.” The downside to this, however, is that it does make her rather squishy in regards to how much damage she can take.

Additionally, she’s surprisingly good at fortune telling and reading omens, something she heartily believes in. She’s also good with animals, along with dust and aura, knowing various ways to heal people with both. Not a very professional healing job, but it gets the job done.

Semblance:
Contractor, as she calls her semblance. Pretty much, it allows her to either link up with one or more people, the max currently being about two, and boosts their stats up tremendously. However, as the name implies, that’s not all. In order to get that stat boost, the reciprocant has to give up something in return. In order to raise their strength, they might give up some speed, or their sense of taste or smell. Something along those lines.

It doesn’t have to be of equal value, rather just something she deems as acceptable. Obviously, the semblance can’t help someone push past their physical or mental limitations, and actually has a large dependence on her own limitations as well. If she can’t afford to give something up, neither can that person. While the price doesn’t directly affect her, she affects it. As such, this actually makes Pay-off a rather limited system, hence where the “linking” comes into play.

If needed, one of the two or three linked parties can give something up instead of the one attempting to gain the boost. If she can’t afford the ghost-payment, then someone else can just make an actual payment. While being mainly a support semblance, it can also be used solely on herself, and even on an opponent if she can manage to link up. However, trying to lower someone’s stats who’s against it is rather difficult, actually being near impossible at her current level. Theoretically, if she could do it, she could lower someone’s strength and place it all in their hearing, or something along those lines.

She’s highly confident that her semblance originated from her desire to help people, though that's only partial true. It's also because she likes to be in control, and because she’s afraid of being alone. Essentially, as she’s the one providing the contract in the first place, she could cut her team off and leave them hanging, making her in control of them at least to some degree as she helps them and as they rely on her. As such, they can’t leave her if they need her.

Weapon:
Marain has two weapons. The first obvious one being the broom she carries around, the Multi-Purpose Everyday Deadly Household Dust Infused Object (MPEDHDIO), as she calls it. Or just Jetsam. It’s simple in nature, simply clicking a button on the side to switch to the cartridge wanted, then swinging the broom around, well, like a broom, and having the desired effect splash out in front of it like dust. She holds odd pride in the weapon both being able to sweep up dust and Dust. Additionally, the broom also has a slight levitation feature, being able to lift her up a few feet off the ground.

Jetsam does have a transformation, one she doesn’t use much as she uses it in tandem with her second weapon. To put it shortly, Jetsam turns into a trident. Specifically the bristles. In the first-place, the bristles aren’t normal, lest all the dust coming out from them would horribly backfire. The top portion pops out two sections from the side, splitting the bristles in a way that leaves space between them. With the space between them, the bristles begin straightening and hardening, until eventually a makeshift trident is made. Besides being sharper and deadlier, it also conducts electricity and can even shoot out bolts. It does however use the dust in the broom previously as a power source for this.

Her second weapon isn’t really as simple, or conventional either. It’s her dress, or as she calls it, the Leviathan. Manipulating the water-dust inside the eight seconds of the dress, she can move the sections around in an almost tentacle like manner. Many wouldn’t think fabric makes a powerful offense, or defense, but the multiple layers actually serve as armor for the dress, increasing its defensive power and its blunt physical power. A top, most assume her range is the dresses length range, but that’s not true either. The tendrils are capable of stretching quite a bit, covering a total length of 24 feet.

Even without that, there’s still the dust in the dress. Because of it, she can also shoot out high-pressurized streams of water, both to propel herself and knock enemies aside. Besides water dust, there’s also ice type accompanying it, something which she uses to freeze the droplets of water on the tendrils edges, making them sharp. As for long-range purposes, she could easily throw icicles at a target. The dress blows through dust rather quickly however, the recharge rate for it taking some time. As a result, she uses Leviathan sparingly as her ace in the hole.

Combat:
She’s by far the most versatile fighter of her team, using her dust in an intuitive way that suits enemies of varying skill and fighting styles. In her most cases, she works as the support, helping out her team from the rear with her dust attacks while also healing them up. Also acts as the strategist and second-in-command, offering different creative ways to defeat an opponent compared to Nigrum’s simple “kill it quick and easy” style.

If push comes to shove, than she could easily end up becoming the deadliest one of her team, using both Leviathan and Jetsam in tandem to wipe the floor the with an enemy.

Notes:

 * First name is made to sound like marine, alluding to the ocean, alluding to the color blue.
 * She’s based off the Sea Witch from the story the Little Mermaid. No, not the Disney movie, the actual fairy-tale on which the movie is based off.
 * Her last name is Danish, referencing the nationality of the author of The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen. It means Sea-Witch (very rough translation)
 * Her nickname Meekkin comes from a play on words on Munchkin, and how meek she is. Plus she’s short. Her other nickname, Squishy, comes from her flexibility, and how easy she is to bruise.
 * Her hair is based off the Blue-Ringed Octopus
 * Her semblance isn’t really based on anything special, per say, more so how the Sea Witch happened to make beneficial deals with prices.