Nickelette Melati

Nickelette is a 3rd year Huntress-in-training from one of the coastal cities of Vale and the ranged support member of Team DNDL, who attended Beacon Academy with the rest of her team before the Fall of Beacon interrupted their studies. As of now, she's since gone back to her hometown to stay with her mother, as the team decided they wanted to put their studies on hold until Beacon is back up and running again.

Appearance
Nickelette has naturally long and wavy black hair, with blue-gray eyes and pale skin giving her a bit of a frosty look. She's quite tall at a solid 5’11” without wearing heels, with a rather fit and athletic build and a relatively average-sized chest for a female of her age.

Outfit-wise, she dons a white chestplate with navy blue trim and a similarly colored version of her emblem, which fully covers her chest and the upper abdomen. Under this is a gray t-shirt and gray sports bra beneath that, with black matinee gloves, light blue bermuda shorts, and 1 inch heeled black boots closing out her look.

Personality
Nickelette is somewhat reserved and well-meaning, but not afraid to say ‘no’ when appropriate, which is quite often. She usually takes a long time to warm up to people, but when she does one can easily say they had obtained a loyal and dependable friend and ally. She’s hard to get through to romantically, as she prefers to be close friends with someone first before she tries to become intimate with, and romance in general comes second to her studies. That said, Linnéa has a tendency to try and push this aspect on her, though so far this has remained unsuccessful. Somehow this doesn't bother either of them: Nickelette knows Linnéa will keep trying regardless of whether she refuses her help or not, and both take amusement in Linnéa's attempts to find Nicki's "perfect guy," so she indulges her to keep her happy and their bond steady. Regardless of this previous point, she’s an intelligent and studious young woman who’s willing to help if anyone who asks politely, and quickly kick the ass and shut down those who don't.

Background
Nickelette was born and raised in one of the coastal cities of Vale with a single mother named _____, who was a biologist that put an emphasis on her studies on the relationship of Aura to the creatures it protects, even if this proved difficult with the amount of technology she had available at the time. Nickelette grew up alongside an elder brother who was a slightly more social version of herself, having 2 extra years to develop the skill. Compared to most siblings, the two of them never really got into many spats, since they had to be there for each other while their mother spent long periods of time away from home working extensive hours on her research.

She had a relatively normal schooling cycle as kid, even though her friend-making was limited due to her reserved nature inhibiting some social situations. When she was 15, her brother decided to become a Huntsman and study at Beacon Academy, and she decided to follow him into the career 2 years later since both of them were physically apt enough to do so and the money their mother made was sufficient to put them both through with no issues. During initiation, upon landing she first made eye contact with Linnéa Capillo, which she found reasonabke, given how she figured Linnéa was an effective method to becoming more social later on, even if she was slightly guarded regarding her obsessively cutesy and hopeless romantic nature.

Even in the beginning, the duo barely had any issues meshing in spite of their difference in personalities. Especially in combat, their respect for one another was mutual and remained intact over the entire extent of their time at Beacon. Over time she learned to work with the other members of her team as a cohesive unit and ended up being a valuable support asset to the team. During the rest of initiation the duo came across the rest of the soon-to-be team DNDL, a pair of guys named Daniel Dee Lyon and David Rhosyn.

The team accomplished a lot in their first year, and managed to make it into the 39th Vytal Festival Tournament, though they were quickly taken down in the first round by a Vacuo team in a rather explosive battle that came down to Nickelette and a single member from the other team. Her main drive through the entirety of her Beacon studies was to keep up with the legacy her brother was building just 2 years ahead of him and wishing to be just as good as him, putting in a lot of work over time to try and do so. By her 3rd year, her brother had just graduated and became a Huntsman who worked in transit between Vale and Vacuo, and for the first time in her life she'd had to say good-bye to family for some time. Even in his absence she'd vastly improved her skills and her occasional contact with her brother remained positive regarding her newfound skills, with this fueling her desire to keep improving. During this time he mentioned that as soon as she was done with school she could perhaps come with him to as backup on missions, given how much they trusted each other, a proposal she would then ponder for the rest of that year.

While Team DNDL qualified to be part of the tournament that year, the team didn't partake in the 40th Vytal Festival as David and Linnéa both fell badly ill the week of the tournament, and as such could not compete as a full team. The duo only started to recover as the Fall of Beacon took place, with David and Linnéa being evacuated early and mostly unable to fight, though still defending the civilians they were with whenever Grimm happened to go their way. While their friends evacuated, Daniel and Nickelette helped with the efforts in the city to try and clear out the swarm of Grimm, which was mostly successful. The duo kept doing this until full-fledged Huntsmen arrived to take care of the situation, before going to try and locate their friends and successfully doing so after hours of searching

As the situation was stabilized several weeks later, the team managed to come together in one of the safer, Grimm-free sections of Vale and decided they would go their separate ways until Beacon was back up and running, with Nickelette deciding to return to her hometown while the rest of the team returned to the various places where they lived. Since then she's been leading an active life helping out her brother, with enough experience to take on Huntress missions alongside him with not too many sideways glances about it. That said, she's still considering long-term where she truly wants to go to help people out, and whether she’ll work from within the kingdoms where it's easier, or outside them where it’s more dangerous but the work is more fulfilling and plentiful in terms of recurrence.

Weapons
Nickelette's weapons are a pair of deer-horn knife shotguns shaped in such a way they could be used as chakrams, (very similar in style and shape to the weapons Vernal used in Volume 5), where the shotgun triggers on each are surrounded by half-moon grips for the hands. The blades themselves are steel-blue and the grip & trigger are both white.

Aura Skills
Nickelette's Aura is lavender-colored and slightly above average in strength. She can use it to make blade beams by focusing her Aura through her weapons, and is quite proficient with making defensive shields with it as necessary, though tends not to use this ability that often.

Semblance
Nicknamed “Misty Days,” Nickelette’s Semblance draws upon the moisture in the air to her before being suspended and rapidly chilled or heated, turning it into a bitingly cold fog or hot steam which obscures the vision of enemies. Though she can use it in most environments, it’s generally most effective when it’s wet or humid out or there’s a body of water nearby for an infinite source of moisture where the fog can truly take off in scale.

The main problem with her Semblance is that it relies solely upon sources of water and moisture to form the fog; if the air is too dry and there are no nearby water sources, her Semblance can be rendered useless or ineffective. This would mean she'd be near useless in a desert or some other dry environment. Conceptually the ability is similar to the real life phenomena of sea smoke, which occurs when warm air passes over cold water, resulting in roiling fog.

Trivia

 * Nickelette's name is meant to be a feminine wordplay on the metal element nickel, a grayish colored substance and the name of the 5 cent currency in the U.S.
 * Melati means "jasmine flower" in Indonesian and Malay, with jasmine flowers usually blooming in white.
 * The name was chosen for it's spelling being similar to "metal", which can help solidify the color connection of her first name despite having nothing to do with metal in the slightest.