Canopy “Cano” Verdant

Canopy “Cano” Verdant
“Sweet! We’ve got a Green Green and a Moon Moon on our team now! Mauveine is a type of dye, and you can dye things black! Black Black! Raven, you c- oh, you’re just lame.” -Cano about her team’s names.

The preppy partner of Raven Nosgard and Team RCNL’s maturing idol.

Appearance
Cano’s outfit fits all of the criteria you’d see for ‘anime pop idol.’ Her bright orange hair hangs to the small of her back, and she has two small side tails on each side of her head, held down by green scrunchies. She wears a plain white dress and skirt, but over it is a red stage coat that shows her stomach with black trimming, gold buttons, and two chains that hang over her waist. She also has a white and green sailor uniform cape on. She wears a fashionable black and gold belt, white knee socks, green sneakers with black laces, and white gloves.

After the Fall of Beacon, Cano went on tour across the world, working up charity funds for Vale’s rebuilding. In that time, her outfit changed to represent the change of Remnant. She cut her hair into a bob cut and has two long braids that are held in place with her green scrunchies. She wears a white and green admiral hat which sits at an angle on her head to favor her right side. On her left ear is a white earpiece and microphone. She wears a green corset that exposes her lower waist, and over it is an unzipped, short sleeved white jacket with black and red trimming, gold buttons, and black cuffs. She has on a black combat skirt that now displays her emblem, black tights, and white combat boots. She has traded in her white gloves for black ones.

Personality
As portrayed by her nickname, ‘The Unrelenting Optimism,’ Cano is a very positive girl. Despite having every right to be melancholy, she glows in all situations, following every positive emotion she can in a world where negative ones can cause destruction. She is determined to see things through when they’re begun, and is an extremely diligent worker when it comes to the betterment of herself and her friends. She is very straightforward with her thoughts and feelings, and is very easy to read because of it, but takes no offense when she is laid out before people like a book. She doesn’t like when people are needlessly negative towards one another, yet understands that feelings can get the best of anyone, including herself, which happens on numerous occasions.

In regards to how she acts around Ecruteak Personne, her crush, she is very antsy to achieve her dream goals with him. She will plan for hours to get every variable right, but will then often over complicate things and lose her chance. She gets extremely flustered when he shows signs of affection towards her, and will usually get burned out before she can recuperate.

Background
Cano was the ordinary of ordinary as a kid, yet was born quite sickly. Cheery and passionate about being an idol when she watched the Achieve Men play in Vale, she dreamily hoped that one day she’d get the chance. However, as fate would have it, the dream would never be realized as her immune system crashed, and she contracted a chronic heart disease that had gone untreated, as doctors had initially believed it to be a simple cold with Remnant technology not up to standards in the small town she lived in. Now, with the chance to live her dreams dying out, Cano had delved into depression. Her parents, however, decided to give her the best life they could. Cano was applied for a local talent agency, and began to work for her dream of becoming a famous idol while she still could, regaining her happy personality when she realized she could still have that one, innocent hope.

Although Cano wasn’t the best at being an idol, her talents with singing and her energetic personality garnered her a small following, and such meant the world to her. She wanted to be known worldwide as a source of positivity, something that was a personal hope which was later reforged with steel when a Grimm horde threatened their village. When all of the citizens had huddled away in a cave to act as a makeshift shelter, Cano managed to mentally overcome the hurdle through singing. Unbeknownst to her, her singing brought out the positivity in the situation, nullifying the fear that the Grimm brought and saving the population of her home.

When she came to understand that her singing had counteracted the negativity of the Grimm, she made up her mind to become a Huntress and an idol to spread as much positivity across the globe. She spent a few years to become the most positive person she could, and in that time learned to fight and control her Aura and newly unlocked Semblance, negating the need for instruments and a band to follow her to make her magic happen. Knowing that the Vytal Festival was upcoming for the most recent Huntsman Academy year, she decided to take a chance at the closest Academy, Beacon, and use the event to make a name for herself worldwide.

Weapon / Semblance
Showtime is Cano’s weapon, a red microphone and stand. While it may not be the most fantastic in a fight, as it is practically a collapsible metal rod with a smaller metal rod clipped on it, what it is great for is being a catalyst for her Semblance. Cano fights with Showtime by using reworked dance choreography, as using it as a conventional mace makes it difficult for her to sing in a fight.

After the Fall of Beacon, she decides to redesign Showtime. Instead of a microphone and stand, Cano upgrades to an earpiece and mic. To make up for her lack of close range protection, she swaps the mic stand for a Victorian showman’s cane, which doubles as a chain whip lined with lightning Dust.

Cano’s Semblance is known as Feedback, taking physical form as glowing sigils adorned with her Emblem. Cano uses it as a makeshift stereo that she can tap into with manipulating her Aura into Showtime, which causes music to flow through. However, by flowing more Aura into her Semblance, the output becomes overly saturated, resulting in intense feedback. By pushing even more through, it results in her weaponizing her Aura directly, shooting from Feedback in an almost laser-like state. Each level of intensity causes her Aura to drain at corresponding levels, but Cano has an unusually high Aura pool, so she can use her Semblance quite often. She can make about ten sigils at a time, but the strain of using them all at laser level will kill her Aura after about a minute of continuous usage. The sigils cannot move, and can be broken as well, causing a loss of the Aura used to create them, making them fairly easy targets. The sigils also require a type of sound to go through Showtime to work, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be Cano as long as she keeps them up.

Relationships
Cerulean Arealis: Cano sees Cerulean as a sister-in-arms and someone to look up to, as she is the leader of her own team. The two find out they have a lot in common about their likes and dislikes, and build a friendship off of that.

Ecruteak Personne: Cano is absolutely and irreversibly infatuated with Ecruteak, not that he understands or knows such. She sees him as a Prince Charming type of person, as in she doesn’t know much about him, yet is inexplicably drawn to him. Although her attempts to convey her feelings towards him are always somehow cut short or inexplicably interrupted - mostly by Sylvia, who finds joy in messing with them - wherever Ecruteak goes, Cano is sure to follow.

Amethyst Ilex: Cano holds Amethyst in extremely high regards for her desire to make the world a safer place for everyone. Amethyst has complimented Cano on her singing, something she takes pride in, and they both see each other as respectable, talented people.

Sylvia January: Cano and Sylvia have a love-hate situation with one another. On one hand, their personalities mesh well and they find working alongside one another as easy as pie. On the other hand, Cano perpetually wants to wring Sylvia’s neck because the silver haired girl continuously gets in Cano’s way of wooing Ecruteak, and Sylvia is a cackling lunatic when it comes to screwing with the assortment of Cano’s possible strategies on the topic.

Raven Nosgard: As her Team Leader, Cano trusts Raven extremely easily when they meet, understanding that she was given the title because her skills were geared towards that very role. When she confides with the rest of RCNL about her illness, Raven promises that she’ll be beside the girl until the end, and Cano is completely thankful for her support.

Noire Mauveine: Cano and Noire hadn’t gotten together very well initially, as Noire’s cynicism acted as the complete opposite to Cano’s own positivity. However, they do eventually work around their personality differences, and while she may never say it, Cano does see something of a sister figure in the serious Atlesian.

Charon Lunar: Cano is close friends with Charon, as they both understand the extreme importance of positivity on Remnant. Cano holds him in the highest regards as he thinks Cano and Ecruteak make a great couple, and he helps her try to flirt. She calls him the “Ultimate Wingman” as a pun on his Faunus trait, which he takes no offense to, as he knows she means it completely positively.

Trivia
Cano’s initial appearance is actually derived from the character of the same name, Cano, which featured in the mobile game Crusaders Quest, which RWBY had a crossover with. However, it only inspired how she looked, and the rest of the character’s personality, backstory, relationships, and outfits are completely new.

The canopy is a marriage symbol of the presence of God over the covenant of marriage. To toy with this, canopy was shortened to Cano, and the divine presence became a joke that something of a higher power seems to mess with her attempts at love, such as the numerous accidents that Cano seems to be prone to.

Canopy trees were also an inspiration for Cano’s name, as a running gag is that a few characters, such as Cano and Charon, have first and last names that mean the same thing. Hence the last name Verdant. Canopy trees have bright green leaves, and Verdant is a shade of green, hence ‘Green Green.’

Furthermore, Green Greens is a level in Kirby games, alluding to Cano’s bubbly personality.