Iola Sky

Iola Sky is a member of Team SHIN. The other members are Shell Stillwater, Heather Sunrise and Nelia Golden. Iola's emblem has the appearance of an explosion, going outwards in waves, with a small orb of nothingness in the middle.

Appearance
Energetic. That's one word to describe the appearance of this girl's crazy outlook. Looking at her, it is almost as if looking at a child half her age, expression constantly overflowing with interest in the things around her and the newest inspiration to hit her mind. She can hardly stay still, and that is always visible in her slightly short and nimble body that is the limit between slim and normal. Iola's hair is longer than it looks, since it is always bound up into two rather major buns from which two short tails only reach to her neck behind her along with any reminder that she couldn't quite bind up. Her hair needs to be short or they'll be caught in things while Iola does her crazy antics, but she doesn't want to cut it so the buns it is! To deal with her near-sightedness (oh, the irony, she cannot plan ahead and is near-sighted, hahaha) she wears glasses sitting on the tip of her nose, that never seem to fall off. Ever. Around her neck she wears a necklace with three small orbs on it.

Iola is wearing a white t-shirt. Above that, she's wearing a dark shade of purple vest, covering her torso. She then has a more brightly purple jacket that she changes between wearing in two ways. The jacket is one of those thin ones that look like leather jackets but clearly isn't due to color and size. Either she wears it, and since the rather thin jacket got nice pockets in the front and further down she can store all kinds of things in them. Or she it has become hot or Iola felt too wild all of a sudden and she has bound her jacket's arms around her waist to keep it there while she does things, exposing her arms doing so. Iola is also wearing a dark-purple kind of frilly skirt, because she wanted to be girly. On her feet she wears two small brown shoes for outdoor use. Her skirt is bound to a belt which has a sheet and holster for Iola's two weapons. Her emblem is on the sides of her jacket.

Personality
This girl is crazy. Iola Sky is clearly not all there. A girl for whom discovery and excitement means all, she has discovered her passion within the research of this world, and she loves it. Iola can be heard laughing maniacally from her room in the darkest of times, her mouth running like a propeller about her latest achievement and her entire personality seems to have twisted into being something of an overgrown child with no maturity and too much intelligence for her own good. Dust fascinates her, but so does Creatures of Grimm and so does languages and mathematics and whatever area of science she had her latest burst of inspiration in. When she gets going, Iola forgets the world around her, shuts it and everyone out of her head (with the exception of anyone that happen to be her assistant (poor Shell)), just completely focusing on the project at hand. Iola has the fundamental logic and reasoning to make her science work, but her mind is too childish and things often do not work the way she wants, but even if her latest experiment or invention ended in a huge explosion, Iola will laugh at the result anyway and load it into her gun...

That said, she is very much like a little girl. If you manage to inspire her to play, then she will play with her full amount of energy and probably try to come up with a scientific and mathematical equation to thoroughly dominate the game. She dislikes things going against her a lot, and her basic morals are still there so hurting her friends and other things that should piss her off still does, and an angry Iola is a loud Iola who acts against whatever pains her. Scolding her can reduce her to an apologizing husk, from one extreme to another, and she does follow commands (up to a certain point) which makes her manageable, but the road to there is long and hard. She often speaks louder than she realizes, which can turn annoying, but telling her off works. Despite everything else, Iola's pretty smart, and can make up reasonable plans and intelligent notes on the fly. However, she's reckless and seem to entirely lack a sense of fear, so unless anyone watches over her complicated experiments Iola is clearly going to kill herself one day. It should also be noted that Iola can bore herself really quickly with one thing and will then look detached and lost for a bit until she finds her next inspiration.

While smart, Iola is very bad at planning long-term. As long as she can do what is right ahead of her and she doesn't break too many rules, she'll want to do it, regardless of later consequences. Such works her inspiration. In battle, Iola turns very excited and her lack of fear or nervousness of any kind and just grinning maniacally in the midst of battle, even trying out her new inventions in the midst of combat even if it will put her in mortal danger should it not work, seems to hint that her mind is even less there than what might be believed. Iola's simply too excited. While her grin is almost always there, should she hear about the bad things in the world it can quickly turn upside down. She really wants to focus on her research, hearing about those things are just... she doesn't want to. It makes her want to blow up bad guys, and Iola doesn't want to. Becoming a Huntress was something that she decided to become for the privileges and status that follow. If she hears too much about it, Iola knows she'll want to do something about it, and she avoids that to focus on her latest line of research... But should the situation require it, Iola will stand steadfast on the battlefront, ready to blow up some stuff for the good of the world, probably grinning like a madman(girl) while doing so.

Weapons And Abilities
Iola uses two weapons that don't transform rather than one which does. The first, Paradeisos, is an automatic fire handgun with a long handle to include all the ammunition, the look having a really distinct old feeling as it fires. However, this automatic gun does not fire regular bullets. Where the bullets hit, dust-effects arise. Each bullet is a different kind of dust, and Iola is firing them automatically. Her shots therefore switch between different effects, and they're as crazy as she is. Though, there is actually a pattern to them, for Iola idiotically wants to test out her enemies and reward them for being smart, as well as it means that she (who knows the pattern by heart) can still decide where to fire what kind of bullets, such as ice-bullets at their feet etc. The weapon is wielded in a single hand and is not all that strong, but with the added dust-effects it is sure to become really inconvenient for the target of her bullets. Also, Iola can seem really crazy when she's firing this weapon all over, the randomness representing her inner desire quite well. Though, she does have ammo-rolls with only a specific themes (like, ice of fire or so), and her really special bullets which effects differ from day to day she usually only keeps one or two around per day, so those she saves until they are really needed. Some of those bullets can actually be fired at her Team-mates to boost them. For example, that Haste spell Weiss threw at Blake? When Iola has developed a bullet like that, she'll fire it at her team mate in question and it will blow up at them and add the effect to them. I will write down what kind of bullets she is bringing to each mission in the beginning of it, so I cannot cheat and invent new bullets on the spot. Teh-heh.

In her other hand, she has another weapon that looks mostly like something a Magical Girl would wield. It is a pole, roughly 0.6 meters in length. The shaft looks like something dark-purple plastic. The tip of it is a round ball, with large openings showing how hollow it is. The thing is filled to the brim with dust, and when Iola swings it and it hits something... ... ... It is called Meta Thanaton, and the weapon is pretty much a bomb on a stick. The hilt is loaded with plenty of kinds of dust which Iola can use at will by the handle, and when she swings the staff and hits something with the round ball or clicks a button, the charged dust-item explodes forward in the face of whatever it hit (or didn't hit). The kind of explosion will depend on what kind of dust was used in that explosion, but all things considered they blows are pretty major and each one actually has to be absorbed a bit by her Aura, but not nearly as much for her as for what she attacked. It doesn't transform, Iola's weapons don't, she simply dual-wields her semi-automatic random handgun and her explosive bomb-staff and laughs happily as things go boom around her in all the colors of dust.

Iola's Semblance is the Semblance of Quick-Thinking. ... Or something along those lines. By activating her Semblance her brain can work supernaturally fast, making the slightest calculation and consider the slightest possibility or read an entire page in a moment. Using it, she can solve riddles and questions that should have taken her forever in mere moments, the answer to all things coming to her intelligent mind as she spends way longer than she seems to with the same question until only a single solution remains. She also uses it to read through books and other works of research in record time, slowed down only by the speed which it takes her to leave through the work. In battle, it means that when she activates it she will be perfectly accurate with every shot and attack, having been given so much time to aim and consider each, and that any attack aimed at her better be unavoidable or Iola will have thought out the perfect way to dodge it and do so. It should be noted, though, this made takes a considerable amount of energy and Iola will collapse within minutes if she stays in this mode of hers for too long.

As for other abilities, assuming she is inspired Iola has the skill to never, ever run out of energy. Where other people might grow bored or desire to go somewhere else, Iola can focus for days on the same subject, assuming it is something she burns for. Though, the flame can very suddenly be extinguished on a seemingly random basis, or maybe a different flame started burning while she wasn't done with the last one and she leaves it immediately. Iola is experienced with many areas of research, having read many books about lore and dust and all what it matters, and also knows the weaknesses of many of the modern kinds of Grimm and weapons. Also a good mathematician and logician, she can come up with reasonable explanations to even the weirdest things in short period of time. Yet still she does stupid things all the time. She reads and writes oddly fast, and her experience with researching on dust is quite significant. Do not underestimate her capabilities.

Strengths
Chaos is Iola's greatest advantage. Randomness and speed. Iola isn't physically strong herself, but with her wide arsenal of many, many kinds of dust-ammunition Iola can quickly turn any fighter on his or her head. It isn't safe to be within range of her automatic handgun, so one could try to get closer... only to find that she wields one of the most random and destructive close-combat weapons imaginable. Iola is perfect for putting pressure on opponents, and the fact she wields both a ranged and a close combat weapon at the same time is in her favor, no transforming needed. In addition, with the many different effects her guns can give, Iola could become the single reason the battle is turning in her team's favor quite easily. In addition, due to her research and other things Iola can quickly find out information that is needed by the team and her dust-projects can often turn out really dangerous for her opponents. Iola is very, VERY dangerous.

Weaknesses
She's crazy, she's reckless, she gets distracted by everything and cannot plan ahead of her next experiment. Iola does everything in her power for her science and will not take the time to reason if it is a good idea or a bad one, and her weapons might blow up in her face one day. Her shooting weapon is inaccurate and lacks power, while her close combat weapon can be too short or self-destructive to be used at times. If you know what she's capable of, Iola is not all that hard to deal with. She also gets easily frustrated if her opponent refuses to be defeated by her means, and can rather quickly do way too dumb things without thinking it through. It is in her character, and therefore that is what she'll do. Also, long-range fighters can rather easily gun her down if she's too absorbed with firing randomly and laughing happily. And then there are the glasses. If you pull of her glasses, she won't be able to see anything that isn't five feet in front of her. But seriously, preying on that fact is foul play. Really.

Backstory
Iola Sky was born the daughter of a local policeman inside the city of Vale. She was rather well-off, all things considered, and due to her father always keeping himself up to date on the latest happening and incidents around town, so did Iola hear about everything as well. And her father didn't hold back, he told his dear little daughter everything. The slightest little detail about that newest machinery that would soon be put to the test, about that famous hunter blasting that Grimm to pieces with a newly developed dust-thing and how much intestines were leaking out on the floor in that latest murder in the neighborhood next door. Iola was ecstatic with the information she was given, and this in turn inspired her father to tell her more and more. His daughter enjoyed it, after all. He had no idea what kind of inspiration he was giving her.

Sometime later, there was some reports about dust being stolen. No, not those canon large thefts, just smaller amounts from bigger shipments. It really wouldn't have been so bad if it was just once or they caught the criminal, but it happened repeatedly, and with nobody being caught. That also would not have been so bad, had they not been receiving anonymous letters about what was being done with the stolen dust. See, Iola dearly wanted to be a scientist, and having researched the appropriate dust, lore and language information to make her own little laboratory at home. The vast majority of what she found in her experiments was either incorrect or already found, and while she could be seen as slightly impressive it was still a fact that dust had been stolen and it was getting on some people's nerves.

Iola got to know that they were getting annoyed and did the unintelligent thing to do; she taunted them. Knowing they couldn't trace her due to her own means with which she sent those letters, she continued her experiments and started including somewhat more offensive contents in her letters, her confidence growing with each day and more and more risks being taken. She knew she was a criminal by now, but honestly, what did it matter to her? ... A lot, it was proven, when a bunch of standard police-men intercepted her and Iola used her own dust-experiments to defend herself from being caught and thrown into jail, or worse. Realizing slightly that "Oh, dear. Am I in trouble? Tihihihihihi!" Iola decided that she may have taken this just the slightest way too long and moved to escape her father's men.

Her Aura had already been activated previously as a part of what it meant to research dust. As a smaller scale scientist, it was no problem for her to research the most efficient way to develop a weapon that supported her experimental dusts. Yes. Iola was going to be caught if she remained, but there was so much more to life as she knew it. It was not with desperation, but with a grin that she sought to enter Beacon. After all, what good is her experimental weapons if she cannot take part on a real battlefield and see the result of her developments herself? This reasoning made perfect sense to her. As well, Iola figured, if she was a huntress it was more likely that her research would be accepted. That being a huntress meant fighting Grimm for dear life and protect the planet? Secondary. ... Oh, so, secondary.

Trivia

 * Iola is a Greek name meaning Violet.
 * Iola was based on the Zodiac Killer, following the theme of famous killers.
 * Paradeisos and Meta Thanaton is Greek, and respectively they mean Paradise and Afterlife, though without strange marks over some letters.
 * Image made using the Mega Anime Avatar Creator by Rinmaru]. Surely, a shame I cannot draw myself...