Dahlia De'Luna

"Love is a choice. Hate is a choice. Pick one, but choose wisely."

Appearance
Dahlia is a rabbit faunus. Her ears are not the same color as her hair (because of genetics). Her costume is China themed, mostly fashioned after one of her inspirational characters.

Dahlia wears a top in monochromatic shade of purple with white sen into the hems. Her top has two body cutouts shaped like curvy triangles, and its collar is stiffneck. A single light blue gemstone is sewn onto the collar. This gemstone matches her teardrop earrings.

Her cutoff shorts are the same color as the sleeves of her top, with the same white trimmings. They have slits towards the front of the material with two stitches sewn in fashionably -- not because her shorts are torn. Two matching transparencies are attached to the shorts. Another transparency rests on the bracelet on her left wrist.

Her leggings are a peach color with pale yellow trimmings like the tighter sleeves on her top. The leggings are styled assymetrically, as the one on the right is a few inches shorter than its pair. The designs on these leggings also differ.

Her white socks fall below the knee and have matchings bows wrapped around them. Her shoes are simple slip-ons with a white rose embellishing the front.

As for accessories, Dahlia wears three bracelets. One is the same peach color as her leggings and thin sleeves. They are beads worn around her thigh. The other two are worn around her wrist. They are made of a special metal that is used to attract the metal in her fan-blades. She also keeps a pink ribbon from Teagan hidden inside her clothes. She doesn't wear it visibly because she worries that the bubble-gum pink will clash with her color scheme.

Personality
   Dahlia is a polite and reserved young lady. She treats everyone around her with respect and speaks with formality. She knows her manners and follows them to the ‘T’. She has exceptional patience, and is wise and mature for her age. Dahlia likes stability and consistency, but she’s flexible, to the point of almost being a pushover.



 Dahlia is sweet to everyone, even towards people that are not friendly back. Even if she doesn’t like someone, she makes an effort to at least treat them with respect. For her, the Golden Rule is a lifestyle. That and karma. Dahlia is socially refined. She can strike up a conversation with anyone, from the ruler of a country to a homeless person. She is educated and eloquent. She even has a way of tuning in to a person’s psyche in order to extract their emotions and communicate on a personal level.



 She has an obsession with cleanliness. The sight of dirt makes her skin crawl. Dahlia always carries hand sanitizer with her and refuses to bring her shoes into her room. She hates cities because they’re usually crawling with dirt and germs, and seeing too much mess at one time pushes her into a meltdown. In addition, she wipes her clothes down after every battle and cleans her blades with anti-bacterial wipes if there’s time. She’s also quick to point out shortcomings in others. She has a habit of telling others to “fix their skirt” or “brush down their hair” In order to preserve her own sanity.



 Although her level of patience is enviably high, the one thing she has zero tolerance for period, is racism and discrimination. It’s the quickest way to incur the wrath of Dahl-zilla. When she’s extremely pissed off like that, she scares everyone. She’s not herself anymore! Dahl-zilla is prone to violence, rage, a 360 in tone of voice (sometimes sounding like a monster), and even swearing at times. She understands that rage is not the way to get her point across, but when she’s blinded like so, she cannot help herself. Dahl-zilla can also come out when she’s absolutely had it with a Grimm, when there’s so much mess that she cannot take it anymore, or when she’s just plain mad. However she seldom reaches this level of anger.



 Dahlia will inconvenience herself for the people she cares about, as well as the people who are not close to her. She’s like an open book with nothing to hide. She’ll help with homework or fix a hungry athlete a snack, or help a teacher grade papers after school. A lot of people will take advantage of that kindness, and Dhalia will often need a third party to get her to open her eyes. If she realizes that she’s been betrayed, she is very forgiving and quick to hand out second-chances so as long as the person is sincere.

 She is also a very loyal, dependable, True Blue friend. She’s a wonderful addition to her team.



Backstory
 Dahlia was born to a family of Faunus. She lived with her mother, father and two fraternal-twin, younger siblings in a little Japanese style home surrounded by nature and beauty. She grew up in a tribe or clan of sorts; all of her family lived together in a stretch of forest on the outskirts of a peaceful town. Both humans and rabbit faunus alike compose her family.



 Her parents were traditional and conservative. They taught her the ways of the world, they taught her the history of her race as a Faunus. They helped shape Dhalia into a dignified young lady. They taught her to never be shy, and never be ignorant. Most importantly, they raised her to be proud of her heritage.



 She was exposed to discrimination when she entered school for the first time. Throughout her school life, she was picked on because of her race. There were days when she would run to her parents in tears, wishing and praying that one day her ears would just fall off. Somedays she was even tempted to cut them off herself. During some very dark times when she was around 12 years old, things got so bad that she tried to take her own life three times, but failed every time.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> Her parents were very concerned. They tried to surround her with positive influences, and even put her on home instruction for a while. It did help, but as soon as she got back into the real world, things became rocky again.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> Dahlia very desperately wanted to be a human, so she would sometimes go off to school wearing hats and scarves to cover her ears even though it hurt to do so. She thought that if she appeased humans, they would like and accept her. But she was wrong. She realized that she was hurting herself. Wishing to be something she wasn’t did nothing for her. She saw that everyone she became friends with did not accept her, but an idealized version of herself. It wasn’t until she got older that she truly understood this.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> When she entered high school at 14, she finally got it. She did away with the hats for good, and displayed her ears for the world to see. She was picked on of course, But after what she’d been through in the past, with all her emotional trauma and identity crises that she endured for 8 excruciating years, she decided that no amount of bullying was ever worth going back. She braved through discrimination (from people who were not just students), treating her enemies with kindness and respect to the best of her ability (aside from the occasional Dahl-zilla moments). She won some over, but couldn’t change others. The new confidence she was finding helped turn her back slowly into the Dahlia that she is now, However when things got violent with school bullies (she got everything from hate letters to death threats because people thought she was apart of the White Fang), that’s when she decided that she needed to get serious about protecting herself.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> She had not given any thought about becoming a huntress in her younger days. When she was 4, her mother taught her fan-dancing and martial arts. Dahlia didn’t take martial arts seriously during her early days because she thought it wasn’t “ladylike”. But at 14, she begged her mother to teach her again. She trained with one of her young uncles as well, and started to brush up on her fan dancing. It was the mix of dance and martial arts that gave Dahlia her unique and graceful fighting style. Originally, she was using this ability to protect herself, not to kill. But her history teacher, who just so happened to work as a martial artist master as a side-job, saw incredible potential in her when he watched her completely annihilate one very persistent bully on the school roof when she thought he wasn’t watching. He asked her if she knew how to fight because she wanted to be a huntess. It was the first time she’d ever thought about being one herself, but she wasn’t against the idea.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> After 7 months of careful decision, Dahlia decided to pursue being a huntress as a career. She transferred into Signal Academy that same year, with full support of her friends and family. Her whole life, she’d gone to regular schools, so Signal was a huge adjustment for her!

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> At Signal, Dahlia met other Faunus who were as driven as she was. One of them ended up becoming a very close friend. He gave her the inspiration for her weapon – the fan blade. Two blades that could be disguised as common fans, and use gravity manipulation technology to be thrown and swung around like boomerangs. It allowed her to keep her style of dance/martial arts with little adjustments. She also met a very special human boy who totally changed the way she thought of herself. His name was Ericson. He told Dahlia that she thought she was pretty, and from that day on, Dahlia's confidence in herself only grew.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm"> When she was 16, Ericson was killed in a showdown with a Grimm. Although he and Dahlia were very close, he always had his head blown up about his abilities since he came from a long line of hunters and huntresses. He ran head first into a fight he couldn’t win and was killed before help could arrive. Dahlia has never been able to forget it.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0mm;text-indent:0mm">   <span style="color:white;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;">At 17, she applied to Beacon Academy and was accepted. She still struggles at times with her own self-confidence, but she is reaching new heights. And becoming the best she can be.

Weapon
Dahlia's weapon is a pair of fanblades named "Tiaowu de Yue Guang" (Dancing Moonlight). They are very simple since her family is traditional.



They have only two forms: Regular fan and fanblade. And they also utilize "dust discs". Dahlia uses Dust in its particle form and its physical form to switch up her strategies. The particle form is mostly used so she can fan it away.

Despite its deceptive appearance, Dahlia's weapons are primarily ranged. The fans are more like fanblade/boomerangs that get distance depending on how hard she throws them. However they always come back to her facing the non-lethal way because of the magnetic bracelets around her wrist.

She can use them in close range, but it's difficult to do so because of the way they are made.

Strengths
One of Dahlia's strengths is her natural speed and stealthiness. She is the fastest member of team PRDT next to Raye. She attacks at blinding speeds and prefers to take cheapshots if she can by attacking from behind or whenever it is least expected.

Another strength is the range of her weapon. The fans can get a good amount of distance on them if they are thrown hard enough. They don't lag when they come back to her either, often times they zip back almost as quickly as they are thrown.

Dahlia is alos good at handling dust. She can store four miniscule dust discs in her fans at a time--two in one, two in the other. She uses the dust in versatile ways to add to her fightning finesse.

Weaknesses
Dahlia is not very strong. her speed compensates for lack of strength. Furthermore, she handles her weapon gracefully, but its functions leave her vulnerable. Whenever she throws them, she is left totally unarmed. This is why she would not are well in a fight where the opponent is as fast as or faster than she is, or if the oppenent has a strange combination of speed and ridiculous strength. Unless she distances herself quickly, short ranged fights are not good for her either although if need be she will resort to using good 'ol hands and feet to get the deed done.

Relationships

 * Her Parents - Dahlia's family values are very high. She repsects both of her parents and loves them dearly. She feels the same about all the elders in her family "clan". She especially revers her father in matters of becoming a huntress. Her father was a hunter in his younger days and used a simple katana as a weapon without any gimmicks. Dahlia kept her weapon as plain yet modern as possible for this reason.


 * Peyton Bronte - Dahlia thinks that Peyton is a very capable leader, but that she is first and foremost a good friend. She and Peyton are surprisingly alike in many ways, including their traditional upbringing and approaches to different situations in life. Dahlia is like the "big sister" of the entire group although she's only the 2nd youngest. So she gives Peyton advice when she needs it, and helps her a lot from the sidelines, and especially with Raye. These two have a sense of strong mutual trust.


 * Raye Kuria Delsun - Dahlia and Raye get along like two sisters with a severe age difference. Dahlia does not treat Raye like a child, she asks for Raye's opinions all the time -- especially in subjects related to school like science and math. She also admires Raye's strength because of how much she suffered during her childhood and its for this reason that Raye looks up to Dahlia so. Dahlia is the only teammate that Raye will listen to without a second thought. She bugs her sometimes, but its nothing Dahlia doesn't have patience for.


 * Teagan-Blaise Shouree - As much as Dahlia loves people, she is uptight when it comes to Teagan. She and Teagan are so drascially different from each other in just about every way possible. Teagan's intimidating and strong character as well as her overall way of thinking comes off as arrogant and standoffish to Dahlia, who sometimes feels as though Teagan tries too hard and is an attention graber. These two argue all the time and clash just about everyday, yet they still have some things in common. Teagan's determined to become Dahlia's closest friend, and Dahlia knows this, so she is willing to compromise.


 * Ericson Jays (deceased) - Dahlia will always have a special place in her heart for this boy.

Creation and Development
Dahlia was inspired by Yuna of Final Fantasy X and Xianghua of Soul Calibur. Many also speculate that she has some kind of connection to the myth of "The Rabbit on the Moon."

She was named mostly after Yuna. Yuna's name means "Moon" in a certain Japanse dialect. And it also means "Hibiscus". It's for this reason that Dahlia was named after the Dahlia flower and drew her color scheme from this said flower, although orignally she was to be resemble a sea hibiscus flower. The above reason is all why Dahlia's last name is "De'Luna."

She has a chinese-themed outfit because of Xianghua. Also, in the beginning she had a chinese sword as a weapon but the idea was scrapped.

Etymology

 * Dahlia - A flower. This flower represents Dignity and Elegance.


 * De - Spanish contraction for "of the"


 * Luna - Spanish word meaning moon.

-Her full name means: "Flower of the Moon." Which directly hints at Yuna.

Trivia

 * Dahlia is a good jumper.


 * She sleeps early and wakes up early. She doesn't snore when she sleeps.


 * She makes a unique tranquilizing tea. Sometimes, she makes this for herself before she turns into Dahl-zilla.


 * She has a nice singing voice.


 * She and Teagan go shopping together and sing duets all the time.