Ember Nightsparrow

"She is far from weak, in fact she's the strongest of us : she burned to death and raised from her own ashes, but the world isn't strong enough to do so. That's why she protects it as it is."

- Amsel

Appearance
She's quite tall and therefore seems a bit slender, but in no common mesure with the starving girl she was 6 years ago. However, she retained the same delicate features and an innate wistful expression along with a brittle smile. Amsel describes her scarce smiles of real happiness as " soothing and haunting", but he's obviously not objective. Her sharp dark brown eyes gives her a kind of insightful and peacful expression, growing uncomfortable when she stare at somebody. She has brown midlong hair with ash grey and red strands, often tied in a short horsetail. You can also notice two beaded leather hair wraps her friends offered to her for her last birthday she constantly attaches under her right ear.

She often wears a winter greenish trench coat with an iron spaulder on the right shoulder over a laced leather vest on which holsters are attached to and a grey wool cap (when it's cold) or a western hat (for hot and sunny days). Between her grey turtleneck sweater and tank top, she always wears a backspine armor to secure her prosthesis a bit more. Her bottom half is covered with reddish dervish pants and santiags.

Personality
She is seen as a reserved, even cold and taciturn person with slight agoraphobia and claustrophobia (she doesn't like to stay long in a room with too much people) but she stays calm and is neither unfriendly nor aggressive. This apparent attitude mainly comes from her semblance that has given her some problems and has made her disliking too much « social » environments in whitch she bores easily and loose control on her semblance, but also because she had no real social interactions in the most important years of her childhood an so she is a bit unease an awkward with strangers.

Even with a close friend she doesn't speak much but they often don't need more to understand each other. She uses sign language her teammates learned when she's tired or doesn't want to speak. Besides that, she is a very emphatetic, wise and protective being. In a calm place, she can be more extroverted and joyful, but she always does so in a quiet fashion.

She hated her semblance for a long time and her mind isn't totally fixed about it yet. She avoids to speak about this subject and the fact she walks thanks to a prosthesis as much as possible. She neither speaks easiliy about her childhood, even with close friends and she's generally a low profile girl when in comes to personnal stuffs and issues.

History
As a child, She were at first an active, clever and joyful girl. She was always climbing at trees and playing at war. She even proved to have unlocked her aura very early and used this advantage to play the dardevil. However she started to have a poor health around 7 and it didn't get better because of a permanent tired state. When she was 8, school started to bore her and she often came home earlier with a bad headache. She even saw "ghosts" in her bed or what she assumed to be ghosts, suffering sleep deprivation.

Doctors couldn't diagnose her problem even after many physical checkups and her parents asked to many doctors in the kingdom, without any results.

One day after another unsuccessful test among many others, she was quietly wainting in the office while her parents were speaking with a renowed doctor. She suddently said a computer screen had a problem : it was twinkling. The source of her problem was quickly identified with a new check : neural hyeractivity, like an overclocked computer. But it wasn't permanent, and tired her abnormally. The physician eventulally assumed this could be linked to an uncontrolled semblance activated from time to time but as she wasn't able to consciously control it yet, she couldn't desactivate it and so got quickly tired for the day after it leeched out all her strengh.

How to get across this complicated situation to an 8 years old child ? They have to tell her the unique gift that made some of the best known heroes so strong was making her sick and feeble... Semblance is only a matter of willpower though and the doctor hoped with help she could learn and control it rapidly to put an end to her problems.

She seemed to understand the situation and they asked masters for help, but she didn't progressed at all after a dozen of lessons. Even worse, that wasn't the biggest problem for the few instructors who tried to teach her : she couldn't even tell them if her semblance was active or not.

"It's like teaching a blind people how to describe a landscape, it's a waste of time." the last of them said while she peeked through her room's door late one night. From then, she disliked it more and more, and started to be less active and cheerful. She stopped lessons with masters and resigned herself to suffer her semblance's effects.



The very same year, she felt from a very high tree while she was playing with her friends as usual : the branch she was climbing broke and her semblance didn't helped her, she was too far to catch another branch in time even with better reflexes and balance. Because she was already tired, her aura wasn't strong enough to protect her and the aftermath was terrible : she was more conscious than anyone during her fall and she clearly saw herself falling and feelling her backbone breaking before the blackout. She woke up paraplegic, dispossessed of her main occupation. She cursed even more her own powers for what she suffered everydays after that and it totally discouragead her to try to control it, even if her friends took great care of her at first school. But the worst was to come.

When she started attending middle school, she loose many friend leaving for other places and new classmates treated her just like a poor disabled girl. It hurted her deeply and she definitly stopped working. Her school level dropped badly and she was expelled some month after the classes begining, loosing the last few friends of her except one : Amsel.

Amsel was her closest friend and one of the few people to still visit her frequently, even if their friendship was threatened by her more and more cold and distant behavior. She secretly wanted him to leave her, because she was feeling like a rock attached to his foot, and this way of behaving was her answer to this untold desire to not impede him anymore.

During a windy day of Ember's 13th year, he introduced to her parents a scientist who could offered Ember to walk again, thanks to a prototype of dust infused prosthesis he should be able to create. All of her old friends and relatives were gathered to announce her this good news : they wanted her to give him a chance.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She just declined the offer without any explanation and stayed tongue-tied for a long time after the event. She lived cloistered in her room back then, with only daily visits from her parents and Amsel. Her parents worried about her but didn't wanted to rush her and so they finally accepted her choice instead of force her to undergo the chirurgy.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Her parents quickly couldn't find how to interest her in something anymore, and it was even hard to make her eat, to bath her, in a nutshell : to keep her alive. As they wasn't rolling in money, they couldn't afford a nurse or a place in hospital and they had to work. They feared she would pass away silently while they were absent, they even feared they would notice her death only days after. Hopefully, Amsel visited her every day in the afternoon after school when her parents where working. So he could take care of her an hour in the day when they couldn't, and that was reasuring for them.

For her 14th birthday, no party, no cakes, no bursts of laughter from children. The only people to knock at her door with a gift was Amsel, and she didn't let him in her room. She stubbornly desired to be alone from now as she couldn't live with people anymore : she was feeling her semblance as a too heavy burden, and she felt herself as a waste of time for him. He said he'll never forsake her but the discussion, the only discussion they had with real words since months turned wrong. After a long dispute, he eventually broke trough the door, upset. He knock her down and furiously asked her if she would accept to live like that forever, if she would accept to mess up her life because of this difference she could control if she wanted to. She didn't responded and he left her lying on the floor, unable to get in her bed nor in her wheelchair before her parents came back from work late in the night, and found her silently crying. Amsel didn't came regularly anymore after that, but she wasn't feeling better. In fact, quite the opposite happened.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She decided to give and end to all this nonsense, about a year later. She started to climb her desk to open the window to crawl outside and lost herself in the wild but felt and broke a shelf. Old books, bad drawings and the still packed up gift from Amsel dropped in front of her on the cold floor. She missed a chance of disappearing. Ironically too weak to die, she had to wait for her parents during all the afternnon and evening. She was boring and tried to occup herself as she could. She didn't know why but an hour later she opened the gift, without any afterthoughts.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">A simple painting, a token of an old event she shared with Amsel, but what a colorful one ! She felt suddently warm inside, and she couldn't contain her tears. Her feelings was urging her to to fight and start to live again, but that wasn't what she decided after her accident. An old inner fight resumed : for all this time she managed to mute herself to make Amsel and the other going away. She didn't wanted him to be forced to help her because of their friendship and tried to bury it under all this time alone in her room too. But this so small and simple painting brought down all these efforts. She though she would be able to forget and to be forgotten in order to disappear without hurting anyone., but this friend was so stubborn... And this time, she finally surrendered to her deepest feelings : she decided to get the truth and went out to find Amsel. Perhaps it was already too late, but she was completely lost and needed to know about what she had to do now, before shame and seld-depreciation took over the fight again.

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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She found enough strengh to climg on her wheelchair, laboriously went out and arrived to Amsel's house in a very poor and pityful shape, few hours after. His parents where still working, and she didn't expected he was the one who would open the door. Amsel was so astonished to see Ember here in his garden, alone, that his sorrow and bitterness faded away instantly and he hurried her in their ancient secret shack behind the house because she wanted to talk.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">There, they used to play to settlers and camp at night when she came during summer with other friends. In this place full of memories she confided everything to him, delivering her soul of her burdens. She eventually said she was ready to test the surgery if he would agree to help her and he accepted eagerly.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">After some month, the doctor finished the prostesis and he practiced the surgery : he removed two vertebrae to replace them. The first model was unreliable, buggy, it needed to be often charged and her mouvements weren't accurate but that was enough : she started to walk and attend school again, she even catched up all the time lost in her studies in less than 2 years. She revealed to be a math buff, especially in mental calculation and geometry. She explained she "tamed" her ghosts some years earlier and they were simply mental figures she was sometime able to visualise in space because of her suddent higher brain activity. She used to loose control on them in her half-awake state in her bed and so saw them as external beings. Now, she was able to visualise in front of her the problem and find the solution visually, or to perform very fast mental calculations. She started to practice at shooting ranges with her dad and to fence with Amsel, getting quickly skilled, especially with guns as she lacked a lot of strengh to progress fast with melee weapons.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Her prosthesis was perfectionned step by step and she started to gain control over her semblance with patience and training. She became more optimistic about herself and decided to follow him in his project of being a hunter. She mumbled to him she wouldn't let anyone wastes lifes like she almost did with her own, and she would at least make her semblance useful for others even if she still couldn't totally accept it as a incredible asset : it has made her life... quite difficult after all.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">At 18 she entered in Altlas hunters and huntresses academy along with Amsel in the AERS team. From the very begginning she has often been pointed out as the weakest member of the team only because she has the lowest results in duels. She didn't fully recovered of her exile of 7 years especially in physical strengh and semblance/aura mastership, giving her a big handicap in fights but people who works with her has always seen the strengh that motivates her, what she is really capable of and what she could really be capable of in some years.

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Semblance
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">What if a semblance could be felt more as a drawback rather than an advantage, like a genetic or psychic disability? Indeed, aura's and semblance's mastering are a matter of willpower and practice, and so there could be some pathological issues especially when subconscious get into it.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Ember's semblance is called trough the aeons. It was unlocked during her childhood but subconsciously rather than consciously discovered and mastered as anybody else (about 6 she thinks but she has no precise idea). The only problem is that the level of activation isn't increasing suddently but slowly and constantly in an mischievous way she can't detect easily, even now. As her sembance often activated itsef since she was young, it monopolized the majority of her energy and accustomised her mind to its low level effects, making its detection even harder with time. Her body and aura are now far more resilient but she faces difficulties to detect when it is active or not and that lead to rather long use periods and sometimes still grow her tired at the end of the day. To reduce this problem she sleeps a lot, moves as less as possible to economize her strengh, even in fights. Under this stress, her body didn't turned out well : she has a poorer health and a feebler body than an average person of her age. Doctors predicted she would also have a shorter life than other humains, but they couldn't find out more that is reliable enough.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Actually, her semblance allows her to think faster (imperceptibly up to a significant pace) and therefore accelerate her cognitives capabilities, her visual perception rate and her auditive and gestual acuity. However her physical abilities aren't improved so it doesn't allow her to see/hear farther/in a broader spetrum, to have a super smell sense or to move quicker but she can clearly spot tiny and fast details normal humains couldn't notice for exemple because she has better attention. this neural hyperactivity confers her really good control on her moves, a shorter reaction time and she can be quite a living calculator if she uses mental calculation tips and tables she learned. She is otherwise limited to her human physical capabilities  that are rather poor even after 4 years of training compared to huntsmen and huntresses of her year. In few words : she has more precise senses and motions.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">For comparison purposes, she processes informations faster, typically like an overclocked computer that can make more operations in the same amount of time or display more FPS, making it more precise, accurate and swift to use but still limited to what its equipment can do.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Speaking of computers, the refresh rate of screens isn't high enough for her vision when her semblance is too active and so give her quickly headhaches, and potentially epileptic seizues (like looking at a stroboscope for a long time). It is a good way though to find if her semblance is too active and Amsel is working on a custom nomad device that could define absolutely her level of "overclocking", but their recent mission forced him to stop his work on it for the moment. She can't look at movies too, so she reads a lot instead.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">However she has treated it more like a drawback than a benefit for many years. Its often unconscious activations leaded to health and aura issues. She compares this problem to a constantly and slowly increasing steam pressure in a pressure cooker, but she must activate the valve consciously and externally, with no clues aout what pressure is inside. Speaking, listening to music or people seems to annoy her too. She has been diagnosed with an apparent attention deficit but in all of her social interactions, she is rapidly forced to occup her mind with something else, even when her semblance isn't active at first.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Because of her brain adaptation to these repeted level of perception, even when her semblance shouldn't be active she processes far more stimuli than an average human, especially visual and auditive ones : in one hand it was proved helpful in fights (she has a better presence of mind and so she can more easily and instinctively analyses the situation) but in the other hand, it overloads her brain with data she don't need that a regular brain would handle at a subconsious level, and in a way her semblance still gives her problems and headaches even while it is not active.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Since she attends Atlas academy, her control over her semblance tunred to be better but she can't always concentrate enough to stop subconscious activations. It would anyway use too much attention so she simply turn it off back to a normal state when she realize it is clearly active, or more precisely what she believes to be normal as her subjective perçeption of her environnment is tempered by her semblance itself. She hopes to be better at defining the level of activation in next years though to turn it off earlier without any exterior clues and then she would have a good mastery over it to accept the title of huntress.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">He semblance made her life not paved with gold, but hopefully she found 4 occupations in which it isn't an hindernance and this helped her a lot to change her mind about it :


 * Reading : an easy way to focus her attention and to escape a world and all the stimulus she sometime can't stand anymore, even if it often lead to unconscious activations of her semblance.


 * Walking in the wild : if it wouldn't be as hazardous as it  currently is, she would walk for days in the wild with its calm and restful athmosphere, the fresh air and everything there is to discover outdoor that her semblance could help her to notice... That's why she likes missions in the wild.


 * Dancing and juggling : as it requires full attention and synchronicity to move in the perfect way, it is still enjoyable to her while her perception of music or movies could be quickly distorted by her semblance and she has no patience to sit in frond of a landscape or a piece of art.

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 * Fighting : for the same reasons, she can use her full reflexes, accuracy and calculations capacities, even if she's not very tough. That's why she developped an unique fighting style that matches her love of dancing and juggling.

Weapon


<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She uses three identical semi-automatic saber-shotguns called Polaris. When unfolded they look like shashka and the burning blade can be stealthed between the barrels, dividing their length by two for transport in holsers : one on each side of her waist and one concealed in her back, under her ample coat.

They shoot highly energyzed fire dust shells, whitch can be either explosives, incendiaries or tracing, all of them customised by Amsel. They are stored in the handle that can hold 24 of them as they are very compact but deadly at close range. This feat is possible because of their polygonal section, far more space-efficient than conventional cylindrical rounds, even if it greatly hamper thier accuracy at midrange. The handle can be changed like a conventional rifle magazine, but she also changes it by hurling the weapon high in the air without the handle she keeps in her hand, she grabs another one and catches the barrel with the special lock mechanism, ready to fire it again.

Another particularity of these guns is Ember's ability to fire them without pulling the trigger : a tiny device was incorpored in her backbone prosthesis 5 years ago. With enough practice she has mastered since years, that allows her to mentally trigger them thanks to a short range encrypted wireless connections. Shells can be configurated to explose without hitting anyting at a certain distance to create a wall of fire or to disloge ennemies hiding behind a cover.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She mainly uses one or 2 guns at a time, the third is often used as an instant reload if she gets short of ammunitions and doesn't have enough time to reload. She use all three guns simultaneously less frequently by juggling with them if she needs a tremendous firepower as she can fire them simultaneously from different positions and angles.

Fighting style
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Thanks to her weapons specifications, her high body control and her mental capabilities, she developped a unique and quite impressive fighting style. She basically spin or juggle with her gunblades while firing or sparring. This martial art form blends together the actual cossack sword dance tradition, the rifle spinning show and even revolver spinning techniques when the blades are folded.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Because her guns are well weight-balanced and suffers no recoil, not only her hands but every part of her body can serve as support for her gun when firing without making them fly away significantly: her neck, waist, a thigh or an arm, even foot or in mid air. As she has a far better space visualisation acuity, she can know when the gun is in the right direction to shoot accurately while they are spinning.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Therefore she can create a sustained firestorm in one particular direction or all around her, creating a barrage of gunfire very efficient against many targets and low armored opponents and still defending herself and concealing her strikes with her very dancing style (alike capoeira).

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She defends herself mainly with her reflexes, parring manoeuvers and a precise suppressing fire, keeping her opponnent away and forced to defends himself. She can wait this way for an attack through her barrage that could creates breaches in her opponent's defenses she could exploit to overcome powerful ennemies, or to try to overload his defense with a dense saturation fire until she creates the breach to strike the final blow.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">However, she's less deadly at mid range (because of her guns intended close range specifications) and she isn't a thread anymore at long range. Even if her melee fighting style is very impressive and rather beautiful to see, against an experimented or heavily armored melee opponent she isn't skilled enough to win by herself even for now as she still lacks raw melee power. She can unleash flurries of blows but without enough strengh, she breach someone's defense with difficulty and saturation techniques aren't easy to apply in melee. Yet, with her good reflexes and her dissuasive firepower, she can buy time for her team to come and help.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She also uses her semblance to help her team in long range fights : her accurate and rapid mental calculation made her the team's official observator for trajectories correction in sniping.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She is the point blank defense and living computer of the team.

Trivia

 * Ember can refer to the obvious red glow of burning wood or the grey of ashes. (as it suits your mood!).
 * Bismarck brow is a dye used in biology to color cells, and it is also called « vesuvine » and the Vesuva is the famous Italian volcano that burried Pompei under ashes and pyroclastic flows.
 * Her name is a portemanteau using the sparrowhawk, a raptor that can be seen in France and the Nighthawk, a famous stealth bomber the US army used between 1983 and 2008.
 * I choose the Nighthawk because of its experimental and advanced technology state, its uncapacity to defend itself alone and its long 7 years secret existence. Moreover, it was aerodynamically unstable beacause its unusual design. I therefore choose to give to this character an uncommon life alike, experimenting something about her semblance, unstable. Her quiet, introverted and low-profile temper also match the solo and quite slow (non supersonic) type of plane the F-117 was.
 * Polaris, one name for 3 guns ? Do-you-know-that Polaris it is a triple star system, also known as the famous pole star ? Ember sees no reasons to give them 3 different names because she uses them as one weapon. Moreover, she compares them to herself who is broken in 3 parts (top, bottom and her prothesis) and still has only one name. As Amsel though it was a bad agument, he carved Alpha Ursae Minoris (the other name of the star) on the barrels of her rifles during their latest upgrade, one word for each gun.
 * Geeks thoughts the grey cukoo was a matamorphosed small sparrowhawk. Tthat's the reason why Amsel fondly calls her « cuckoo ».