Safran Reise

"Sure, you COULD stop me, but you'd have to try and catch me first. Good luck with that.""

- Safran Reise There is one particular regular at the Blenheim Brew and Bunk that never pays for a meal. Nor does he ever shell over money when he needs a room to sleep in. In fact, he even runs odd jobs for Royce from time to time, and helps to keep the barkeep in the loop. This man- fleet of foot, sharp-eyed, and bright of spirit- is none other than Safran Reise.

Appearance
Safran is an athletic man, standing 5'10" and weighing around 180 lbs. His dirty blonde hair is in a permanent state of dishevelment, whether it's bedhead, his parkour excursions, or a fight to blame changes on the time of day. However his lack of caring about the longish, blonde mass remains permanent as long as there's a strong wind running through it. He has lime green eyes that have been honed from a life looking for outcroppings and handholds in the urban landscape, as well as potential easy meals.

Unlike many others with hunter-class abilities, it would probably be difficult to pick Safran out of a crowd. He dresses pretty casually for just about any occasion, his outfit being light-gray zip-up hoodie with saffron trim on the seams worn over a black t-shirt with his emblem on the chest in saffron. He also wears faded and abused blue-jeans, bare feet, and a pair of saffron fingerless gloves. While at work a small wireless headset hangs from his right ear, for relaying messages to and from the rest of his team, and a messenger bag that matches his hoodie sits across his back.

Safran acts cocky and brash to just about everyone, and has more than a little sass in him for anyone willing to ask for it. He caries himself proudly, the way a soldier of fortune normally would after a well-fought conquest, such is his enthusiasm for and pride in his work. While sitting idle, he'll often stretch his limbs, shadowbox, or otherwise sate his habit of perpetual motion. He just can't seem to stand still.

Personality
Safran could perhaps best be understood as a product of his environment. Most if not all of his habitual mannerisms he developed out of need to survive on his own. For starters, many see him as highly sentimental. He regards what few posessions he owns- his shoes, his gloves, his bag- They're all more than just posessions to him. On the street, stumbling across a usable bit of refuse is an invaluable find, to be clung to until it either falls apart or you happen upon a new one. Even then, he prefers to keep old belongings rather than throw them out. This can lead to impressive stockpiles of seemingly useless curios, that Safran will scatter about the places he knows are popular rumage sites whenever he collects too much. On the other hand, perishable things like food are to be enjoyed immediately, with as little waste as possible. As such, he can put away a lot of food in a little time, a skill that kept him alive for many years.

That said, he'd been to the absolute bottom of the barrel, and he knows it. While there, he grew to value and cherish the few things in like that were truly free: things like manners, honesty, and compasion. He sticks to these ideals even though his circumstances have improved greatly, and a few folks find his straightforward dealings charming. However, his honesty can come across as a bit brutal to those he dissaproves of- he won't hesitate to point out when someones being wasteful, dishonest, or any other trait he dislikes. He also can be a little cocky when running from or fighting people; and often taunts and ridicules them (because if he's already running from, after, or into a fight with you, he doesn't care about manners anymore). This leads people to think he's somewhat childish, and to be frank they're not entirely wrong. After all, total honesty can cause quite a few scraps on the streets, and Safran faces each and every one as a chance to defend his opinions.

Abilities and Skills:
Some would say Safran likes to run. Then again, there are some who would say fish like to take a leisurely dip on occasion. Safran LOVES to run, and thanks to a life avoiding beatings and escaping with ill-gotten food, he's pretty damn good at it, too. You see, he's grown to be something of a natural Parkour expert. A lot of the time, when a person's called fast, the speed referenced is straight-up running, with little or no obstacles impeding them. Safran, on the other hand, could move just as swiftly down a congested sidewalk or a cluttered alleyway as he could sprint down a stretch of open road.

This talent greatly helped him while escaping pursuers or asailants on the streets, as well as simply helping him get around. Climing, leaping, swinging, and just about any other momentum-based movement style come to him just about as easily as running. In fact, it's often more difficult for him to stroll- he's so used to his normal running, that slower movement bores him!

He had never attempted to train himself to use his aura defensively until very recently, prefering to focus on it's perceptive benefits. Given a suitably high vantage point and a moment or two to focus his thoughts, Safran can observe interactions and passers-by on street level as if he were standing right beside them. This makes him invaluable as a scout, as he can simply watch while people go about various dealings, totally unaware of his presence. He also shows great potential as a courier.

Safran's love of motion and his pursuit of overcoming barriers is well showcased in his semblance, which he calls Momentum Shifting. This ability allows him to alter the direction of momentum he's built up without losing any of it (i.e. using a running start and then momentum shifting upwards could let him leap much higher than would normally be possible). This ability is a great asset to one with such an athletic skillset, and Safran can't properly remember whether it was his momentum shifting or his Parkour talent that he discovered first.

The Momentum Shift isn't a foolproof method of transport however: to use it properly, Safran must have direct, skin-to-surface contact with a "root"- which could be a building, streetsign, the ground, or another sufficiently stable object- That is used as a focal point for the shift. Think of it as the vertex of an angle, with the two rays being Safrans begining and ending direction. This is why he runs around barefoot, as shoes actually hamper his movement considerably. Also, this means that in order for him to change directions in the air, he must find another means of propulsion. Whenever Saffran momentum shifts, the part of his body contacting his chosen root glows faint saffron, as does the part of the root he's touching.

Weapon and Fighting Style
Safran wields a Wide Guage Shot Crowbar named Landstrasse. This weapon is surprisingly simple in its design, in matching with Saffran's simple tastes. In melee mode, the weapon resembles a gray crowbar about three-and-a-half feet in length, with a Saffron grip attatched near the straight foot and with several mechanical parts running along the length of it. It can then be folded into ranged mode, with the straight-ended half of the crowbar forming a tube-magazine, reciever, and pump, and the curve-ended half forming a pistol-grip, ejector, and barrel. In so many words, it becomes a sawed-off pump-action shotgun. The weapon can hold around 5 rounds plus one in the chamber, maybe more if Safran's using a shorter (and therefore weaker) shell type. These shells are quite similar to the shells used by Ember Cecilia, with the exception that they are both larger and cannot be fitted to a belt- they must be fed into Landstrasse one at a time. Thanks to firing a powerful round through a comparatively long barrel for the RWBYverse, it has a large amount of recoil, albiet not as much as Crescent Rose.

I bet there's no way you ever could have guessed that Safran's fighting style focuses on mobility. Now that the obvious is out of the way, let's move on to the particulars. Contrary to what you might expect, Safran doesn't blindly charge into a fight- in fact, he's quite a smart fighter. If he's not absolutely certain that he can overwhelm an enemy in a straight up attack, then he'll begin by harrying the foe. He'll rush an opponent at high speeds and momentum shift when he enters their attack range, causing an enemy unaware of his unpredictable movements to miss entirely. While he'll cover it up as cocky showboating- complete with snarky one-liners- he's studdying how his foe moves, the style of their attacks, the nature of their weapon, how fast they strike, and so on. After scoping out the enemy he'll use varrying tactics, from an all out attack on hollow threats to hit-and-run strikes against durable foes to bolting from cover to cover in order to approach more long-ranged fighters.

He uses Landstrasse for recoil-boosting just as often as he uses it for actual attacks. Doing so allows him to build his momentum over very short distances, and is the only way he can change his direction and speed when he's in the air. After building up speed, he likes to use Landstrasse's crobwar form two-handed, swinging with powerful strikes that are only heavily telegraphed to an enemy if their eyes can manage to follow him. He also heavily favors buckshot and other close-range shell types when on the offensive. Technically Landstrasse can fire long-range slugs, but the weapon's short barrel, lack of stock, and simple sights combined with Safran's constant movement and lack of shooting expertise means he is an absolute rubish marksman at any kind of range. The primary fault of Safran's fighting style is exactly how much it relies on his speed and misdirection. If ever faced with another fleet-footed fighter, it will become clear to the opponent exactly what Safran is- a simplistic-styled fighter with next to no formal training, and an attack pattern that is just as honest and  easy to predict as its user.

History
Safran never knew either of his parents, or any family for that matter. The earliest he can remember was living in an orphanage in the poorer end of Vale's industrial district. While living there he had learned that his mother had apparently died in childbirth, and no other family had stepped forward to claim him. There was once a time where this bothered Safran, but it has long since passed. In his eyes, anybody without the courage to accept a child has no business rearing one. The main thin he remembered about the orphanage was how absolutely awful it was: run down, overpopulated, and run by folks who didn't even seem to like kids. IT probably didn't help that Safran was constantly on the move, even then, leading to a few accidents, subsequent punishments, and his eventual distrust of authority figures. At around the age of thirteen he fled the orphanage, armed with his freshly discovered semblance and convinced that if a family hadn't taken him in by then, then he probably wouldn't be.

He took up residence on the streets of vale, amongst other vagabonds and the like, and learned how to scavenge to get by. While he has stolen from shops a couple of times, it was only ever in times of desperation. And even then, always felt guilty over it. Over the years he became more and more adept at parkour, which he had originally studied as a means to escape police and social workers (they're persistent, but not leap-across-rooftops persistant. Usually.) Additionally, he picked up basic fighting skills as well as a knack for anticipating trouble through encounters with street gangs and the like. At the age of sixteen he started applying his talents practically: he took up some odd jobs as a courier, and after an incident involving an illegal Ciano weapons smuggling operation he managed to become a plainsclothed police informant, hich he was quite good at on account of his aural perception.

Over time, he eventually attracted the attentions of Royce Blenheim. The two built up a friendly relationship, and Royce began to regularly hire the young man for courier and messenger jobs. Eventually, when the barkeep basically intoxicated the fact that he was still technically homeless out of Safran, he took pity. Royce almost immediately designated one of the Brew and Bunk's bedrooms as Safran's permanent lodging. The blonde man still doesn't use it all the time, mind you. In fact, if you asked him directly, he'd ssay that he;ll probably never settle down. But he still keeps most of his odds and ends stored there, and you can find him sleeping in the bar on colder nights more often than not. Perhaps something about the bar's patrons and staff remind him of the family he used to wish for?