Daniel Dee Lyon

Daniel is a 3rd year Huntsman-in-training from Menagerie and the leader of Team DNDL, who attended Beacon Academy with the rest of his team before the Fall of Beacon interrupted their studies. As of now, he's since gone back to Menagerie to stay with family, as his team decided they wanted to put their studies on hold until Beacon is back up and running again.

Appearance
Daniel has short and wavy brown hair, with piercing orange eyes, and tanned skin from living in Menagerie for 17 years of his life. The Faunus is rather tall and athletic, standing at 6'-2" aand having a fairly muscular build. His Faunus trait is a visible lion tail colored roughly the same as his hair.

For his typical everyday outfit, he wears a burgundy bomber jacket over a casual gray long-sleeve shirt with the top two buttons unbuttoned. With this he also dons near-white khakis with a brown belt--this has a gold-colored brooch of his lion emblem pinned to it--and brown dress shoes of the same color as the belt.

Personality
Despite his leadership position, beyond his strategic mindset, he tends to have issues with connecting to the other members of his team and frequently finds himself annoyed by their antics, particularly David’s optimism; and has a tough time opening up to them. He finds himself rather pessimistic (though he refers to it as “realistic”) and generally doubts the success of their group, but is proven wrong often enough he’s learned to accept his being wrong as a fact of life, and planning accordingly. He wishes to be respected and isn’t afraid to express himself as such, which leads him to show his lion tail publicly and proudly, with those who disrespect him for it swiftly finding themselves regretting it in the long run, even if he can’t immediately resolve the issue. Despite his grievances with his team, he can’t help but begrudgingly respect their faith and attitudes, and he does consider himself friendly with them, caring about their well-being beyond his own goals of being a popular Huntsman.

Backstory
Daniel was born into a poor family from Menagerie, living with his parents and his paternal grandparents. His grandfather was a retired Huntsman, and his tales of glory were always intriguing to the young boy, who wanted to be just like him but to be respected even more than his grandfather. So through years of saving and hope, the family managed to send him to Beacon, where his grandfather’s tutelage ended up being just enough to pass him though the entrance exams and earn him his spot at initiation, where he partnered up with the rest of DNDL (specifically with David). Needless to say David bothered him at first, but he’s learned to work past his grievances anyway. At this point, his main goal is to keep up with everyone else who’s much more experienced than him and work twice as hard to achieve the same as some people might do without any effort, though being in his 3rd year, this has become second nature and no longer much of an issue most of the time.

Weapons
Daniel wields pair of single-bladed and slightly curved dao swords which can fit into a single scabbard located on his back. These were his grandfather’s weapons of choice, and each can fit a single Dust cartridge at a time to have the edges of the blade coated in an elemental shell. Daniel rarely has anything beside Fire, Lightning, Ice, and Earth on him, but has practiced with several types of Dust before. These swords can be wielded as one weapon when clamped together, but are usually kept apart when unsheathed due to Daniel's proficiency in dual-wielding.

Aura and Semblance
Daniel has a bright orange-colored, rather strong Aura. He lacks the level of control to make this truly dangerous, but he's fully capable of making blade beams with little effort.

His Semblance is nicknamed “Predatory Glare,” an ability which induces hesitation or momentary fear in a person or animal who happens to accidentally make eye contact with him. These gaps and hesitations in judgment and action are generally very minute, momentary things, but taking into consideration the fast pace of battle; can lead the victim to make mistakes and rethink their actions, which can be exploited. When taken to the extreme, he can also do this as a sort of “leave me alone” measure, intimidating or frightening the unaware person or animal into submission or flight from the situation.

The ability has a few limitations to it, however:
 * His ability only works when making joint eye contact. For this to be the case, both people have to see the other person directly (i.e., be aware of one another).
 * It can happen uncontrollably when making eye contact in an emotionally compromised state, making it a bit easier to exploit openings he would otherwise cover.
 * The ability has a small chance to attract nearby Grimm to the user and who or whatever he affects due to the emotional component of the ability.

Fighting Style
Daniel prefers to get up close and personal with his opponents, given his weapons are best suited for close ranged combat and have essentially no ranged capabilities. He's generally quite good about switching between offensive and defensive maneuvers, relying on his natural speed and agility to effectively blitz his opponent's defenses or stonewall their assaults. Daniel also has the tendency to use the environment around him if possible, kicking up sand or dirt, launching off walls, and other tactics to trip up his opponents. His swordsmanship in a standard duel would be enough to beat the majority of 1st and 2nd years and put him on par with the average 3rd year.

Even when disarmed he has a solid grasp of hand to hand combat, though his skills are limited to more defensive maneuvers and he would likely not win a straight fight doing this in spite of his bodily strength. In addition to Aura techniques, this is the area of combat he'd like to improve next.

Trivia

 * Daniel's full name is a pun for the dandelion, a weed which flowers in a bright, golden yellow.
 * Daniel also means “God is my judge,” where themes of religion are concerned, God is often associated with white.
 * Lyon is a pun referencing his Faunus type.