Rosso Balbuzard

"I don't get along with people that play solo, like you."

- Ross

Appearance
Ross is build kind solid and tall. His impressive stature with wide jaw and shoulders is quite intimidating but he is a nice guy fond of sport and cakes. He usually wears blue uniform-like trousers and jacket. He bring along with him a backpack in missions. He often wears his weapons as pauldrons or he attaches them to his belt. Don't be misled by his military hair cut and clothes : he's not a soldier. He simply like to be simply but impeccably dressed when he's not practicing sport and uniforms are the best clothes ever for that from his point of view. Because he practices sport a lot he can often be seen in sportsuit too.



Personality
Despite his formidable stature, he doesn't bite. He is a gourmet and always tries new food when he travels. He has a really strong team spirit and doesn't like to be on the sidelines. He instead asks to take the most dangerous, dicfficult or frontlines places instead of others, because he's often "more adapted" than others for these jobs as he says. He is protective with his relatives and friends but also searches for their own improvement. "Fall back" "give up" and "surrender" don't belong to his vocabulary and sometimes leads to complicated situations on the battlefield. He can be easily heared and seen from far aways as he talks quite a lot, has a loud voice and is tall. So he isn't the kind of guy to take with you in infiltration missions... Humbleness isn't one of his qualities and he is actually quite proud of his feats, but he isn't (too much) boastful though.



History
He grew up in a rather happy home, with his hockey and rugby teams, his schools friends and his grandma's yummy pastries (he likes his grandma's pastries...). He has tested many sports and felt far more comfortable in team sports as he had a kind of innate gift to lead teams. And until the age of 13, he thought to be a sportsman, policeman, to take over his grandparents's bakery or any other « easy » job he would be comfortable with.

But when he tried extreme sports and wrestling, he was immediately interested in. He also realised things never go forward without efforts and at a larger scale, it must come from a whole group and especially leaders. He quickly changed his mind about his career : he needed adventure, he wanted to become a leader too for teams to to accomplish feats, as securing and exploring this still dangerous world.

Even with few practice, he felt comfortable with danger and he was already strong to deal with it. He readed about heroes, and was fascinated by legends. He dreamed to impersonate them, to become a strong and wise warrior and leader.

His whish to travel across the world resoluted him to become a hunter, about two years later. He wanted to explore it and to train new teams of fighters later.

He also decided he would fight on front lines not because he wanted a glorious life or for the thrill of danger but because he had the right skills to achieve perfeclty his job there, and in the same time, to save lives because he could take place of others. A team player needs the right place to use the best of his capacities and to improve the whole team at the same time : this was his way of thinking.

He owed a much to his semblance that made him a tough and still quite fast sport player and fighter. He progressed quite slowy technically but his strengh and toughness grew at a faster pace along with his semblance mastery. He passed his entrance exam at the age of 17 and joined the team AERS.

However, he wasn't chosen to be the team leader as he expected, and was quite unhappy with it at the beginning because he was obviously the most experimented and talented team player there, and he used to be choosen as the team leader of teams he played with, until that time. From his point of view that wasn't boastfullness, but it would have been an objective and wiser decision, instead of a bookworm addicted to dust equipments.

The team didn't worked very well during the first months because of a lack of complementarity and comprehention of each other martial art and approaches of the hunter job. Indeed the team recieved a lot of diversity in fighting styles, characters and interest, and the team leader didin't managed to tune their respective techniques and mindsets.

Ross was the most hard to control, reluctant in group practices, especially with Ember he saw weaker than the others. He didn't really liked her because she was very protected by Amsel and quickly by Sin too. This wasn't the way teams sould work and he didn't wanted to play this game, so he didn't found the team interesting, didn't gave his all to his training and didn't take time to learn his teammates's strenghs but quickly saw their flaws. He didn't realised this lack of motivation was putting aside his positive team spirit, only because he decided this team wasn't worth of being encouraged and improved.

Ember often sat and looked at his brawling trainings, but he didn't cared much about her. She clearlely wanted to fix the problem with him and tried things in this way. She even started to give him pieces of advice about his technic and opponents weaknesses after she watched him for few weeks but each time, he didn't took in account Ember's efforts, until Amsel came too and asked him to entrust her advices, as his teammate's advices. This request made him starting to see what was wrong with him, and when he tried, he finally found them useful.

This event started to improve their relationship and she finally asked to tell her what she was doing wrong. Afer all these weeks, he have had enough time to figure out the problem of the team, especially about her, and said what he though. She strangely took it well and she asked how to fix it, but he didn't gave her an answer. This day's evening, Amsel narrated him her story. More humble and clear minded about what forced the team to work in a quite bad way, he apologised for his attitude with him and Ember, and told him his thoughts about how teams should work and what was wrong with them. The team leader too apologized for his lack of knowledge of his teammates and real leadership. He asked him for help to improve their teamjob and … to make the play more enjoyable for everybody. They started to design and practice team building exercices and Ross finally achieved to build strong bonds between them all in the first year, making the team far more cooerative, tuned and effective.

He eventually guessed why he wasn't a good choice as a hunter team leader in the middle of the year : he treated fights more as games than serious battles, he drasticly lacked of generalship and he didn't had the right mindset to develop it and to command warriors, not players.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He teached a lot to his team because of his experience in team plays, but he also learned a lot from already more mature warriors. They could improve their skills, devellop tactics and a battlefield (sign) language but also learned to fully cooperate, especially in close quarter.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Nearly 4 years after, They fight as one man, with an almost instinctive comprehension of each other's thoughts and that make them a very powerful team able to deals with nearly any situation even if they form a strongly specialised team with no real versatility.

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Semblance : memento momentum
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Rosso's semblance allows him to "save" a copy of his (and whaterver he carries) linear momentum and to "load" it up to an hour later. At anypoint during a movement, he can save his direction and the momentum of his body (or a part of it), always in the ground frame of reference.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">By activating this "save", he deletes these informations completely (and so need to define another ones to use his semblance again) and his body aceelerate or decelerate to moves with the same momentum and direction than when he saved it, deleting his previous momentum (they don't add together). It often results in shot glides on the ground. The momentum doesn't apply instantly (infinie acceleration is impossible) but very quickly though. He learned to never load momentum that could lead to a too higer relative speed, to prevent blackouts due to the acceleration he has to sustain during the short transition phase. He is actually capable of memorizing up to 4 different momentum. He can't use his semblance immediatly after another activation, he has to wait for a split of a second : he loses a bit of his momentum meantime (quite a lot if he glides on the ground due to friction) and consequiently can't move for long time at all relying only on his ability. In a nutshell, they are one-shot moves.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">For instance, he could save a forward sprint ot catch up an opponent, two sideway glide to dodge and a punch he could load a split of a second after a normal one, to increase his damage output or to have another chance to hit an elusive target with a astonishly far faster punch than the previous one. Shortly after he uses some of these moves, he saves other ones to always be ready if he needs a quick help, but he must make new « normal » moves to save them if he wants his semblance to be efficient and so can't always benefit from this « speed » boost.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Because he retains also the direction of his momentum, he also uses it to change his direction to dodge and escape. Before going high (traveling by plane, climbing...) he save a small fall at ground level (typically after a jump). If he would fall or jump from high, he could therefore slow down his fall juste before he hits the ground to land harmlessly. He never load momentum when it leads to an upward movement when falling, this could create a too high g-acceleration. However, as he can spin during his fall, he can save very quick and powerful moves in different directions he could use in a fight shorlty afterward. Ross can also use a forward move to stand up nearly instantaneously if he get knoked prone and generally take advantage of moves if he gets thrown away or pushed back.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">If he load a too high momentum while immobilised or if he carries a too heavy load, and can't move fluently enough, he can severely injury himself : it's like rushing into a wall, it hurts.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">When he loads a memorized momentum, a blurry and ghostly image of himself carries on his previous movement for a short time before fading away.

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Weapon : Jericho


<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Jericho is composed of twin towershields/catpults (T²SC) he wears attached on his hips as two thick tassets or on his shoulders. He can partially unfold them to create two shields with sharp edges over his hands. He can launch these anchor-like blades attached to chains to swing them around. He can also completely unfold his shields, forming two towershields, with still the blades at the bottom. He has been seen joining them in front of him to create a large cover for him and one or two other teammates under a particularly sustained fire.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">In any modes, the single shot catapult can be fired forward. The bombs are highly explosive and cover a large aera of effect, with either ice-, lightning- or fire-based explosions. He recently tried slashing ones that create a vortex of blades that flies forward and cuts everything on its way before exploding in shrapnel. He choose the dust load when he takes one bomb in the lower-part of his bag that acts like a distributor, charging the dust just before he launches it. This way of doing slow down his rate of fire but he don't need to carries a bunch of bombs of each type, saving a lot of space. He also gets some smoke or flash bombs he uses as conventional smoke or stun grenades.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He can launch them like a discus thrower do, but unfolded, the shield's catapult propel them farther, to mid or long range, depending on whitch form the shield is deployed. The mechanism relies on the expantion of gaz created with dust cartriges. A shield contains 20 of them but it uses two at a time and they are also used to fire the blade. They mechanism is accessible enough however to feed other cartriges in fight or between two shots for a well trained man to always have at least one loaded weapons.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">To rearm his weapon, he has to unlock a mechanism, swing his shield sideway and feed another discus he carries in his backpack. The shield turns over his arm, rearms the spring-driven feeding and catapult mechanism, and after a complete turn using the shield angular momentum, it is ready to fire again. It needs to be partially deployed to recharge though, the larger version is too unhandy to reload and the compact one hasn't enough momentum. In the end, the catapult isn't really convenient to use and really slow, needing him to be protected while using his weapon in its ranged specifications. However, he can claim to have one of the biggest caliber of his year.

Fighting style
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He is a tanky and defensive fighter. He fights with boxing and pygmachia styles. He doesn't uses his discus often (AoE remember?) and have average slow punches but he can withstand multiple and powerful direct hits thanks to his thick shields and his toughness and still giving back powerful puches shortly after.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Moreover, his semblance helps him a lot to be far quicker and mobile from time to time. He uses his semblance a lot to accelerate or stop quickly, dodge and deliver powerful punches in a row or to catch up a fleeting/dogding opponent in a surprisingly fast way for a man of his build and weight.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He is very often seen moving and showing off on the battlefield. In fact, he uses these moves to save basic momentum he could use in the fight later thanks to his semblance.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He lacks advanced technics and reflexes but a strong, durable an mobile opponnent is already a big shard in a vilain plan. On the battlefield he mainly revolve around his teammates, intercepting blows, delivering powerful punches and large aera firepower. His anchor blades can be used to capture a fleeting opponent, cut things like a woodsplitter, break doors or to climb up buildings, cliffs or anything he can't jump over. He is the fortress, the ordnance and the drop pod of the team (see trivia for this one).

Trivia

 * Rosso comes from the color Rosso corsa, litt. racing red, a bright red used in international motor races by Italian teams. It refers to his surprising rapidity on the battlefield thanks to his semblance.
 * His emblem is the emblem of the French 17th jetfighter squadron
 * Balbusard is the French name of the osprey.
 * His family name therefore refers to the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor transport aircraft. This idea of a very though but mobile character kinda correspond to the plane maneuvrability (a vertical take-off plane is quite uncommon isn't it?), mixing the rapidity of a plane and the mobility of an helicopter. His support role also fit the plane's transport and support jobs for ground units, and his obsession for team cooperation is born from the purpose of this plane, made to improve the combat radius of its marines squads.
 * Jericho is a city near the Jordan river in the West bank. In the Book of Joshua, The Battle of Jericho was the first battle of the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan. A seven-day procession took the wall down, without a fight. Historically, the wall of jericho is dated 8000BC (far older than the bible story) and is one of the most oldest manmade public ruins known and the oldest fortified town known. I also designed it a bit on an air carrierer (anchor and catapult), because of its intimate relation with planes.
 * Do-you-know-that the momentum formula is p=mv ? (vector speed scaled mass, and p is also a vector, but I have no arrowed letters to correctly distinghuish the two mathematical objects...) Here is a little trick I found  for this character, because it's funny to play with physics : if Ross carries a heavier load than when he saved his momentum, he moves slower than when he saved it. If he carry less, he moves faster as his body follow the law of conservation of linear momentum. So when he fall, if he grabs and carries teammates for instance, this lead to a bigger mass and so reduces his speed when he load his momentum, and therefore slows his teammates too. If he unhands them, saves, catches them again and loads, he can decrease slightly again their falling speed if it's done quickly enought. By repeating this process while falling, he can drop his team anywhere from a passing bullhead, even from a high altitude. He owns his surname from that since the first time he saved Sin from a fall during a mission.