Saizi Lepus

Saizi Lepus is a former student of Beacon Academy and a member of team CSTM. She is the partner of Cuf Chersina.

Name Meaning / Inspiration
Saizi is 塞子 in simplified characters and Sāi zi in pinyin. The line over the a indicates that Sāi is first tone, meaning it would be pronounced with no inflections up or down. While zi would usually be third tone on its own, the radical is just used as a suffix on this word and is a non-stressed sound. It’s tough trying to exactly describe its phonetics in English but it would be more of a “Zuh” sound than a “Zee” like saying the letter on its own. All together her name would sound kind of like “sighzuh” with less emphasis on the second syllable.

Sāizi translates into “cork.”  Cork wood and products are known for being a brown-orange sienna color. It is a strange material, flexible, relatively benign, low density, and diverse with many different uses. As for her last name, Lepus is latin for “hare” and the latin name for rabbits. It is also the name of the genus that includes both hares and jackrabbits. This is her last name since Saizi is meant to be the hare to her partner’s tortoise. Her speed and luck are also an allusion to the “lucky rabbit foot” superstition. Her first name is Chinese while her last is intentionally not due to her being an adopted child that kept her first name but took her last name from her adopted family.

Appearance
Sienna is a short, wiry, and often covered in minor scratches and bruises. She stands at only four feet eleven inches and weighs 102 pounds. Her hair is straight and dark brown, falling just above her shoulders. Her ears are pierced but she does not regularly wear earrings. Permanent Scars (???????) She wears a plain, grey crop top and short, red track shorts for ease of movement and to keep as cool as possible. Her clothes and hair are generally a bit disheveled and unkempt. She usually carries around her polearm in her left hand and keeps several different colors of batons hooked around the elastic of her shorts.

Symbol
Saizi’s symbol is the word 免 (miǎn)  written out by her. It is evident that Saizi rushed her writing as she intended it to be 兔 (Tù), or rabbit, but the final stroke was forgotten. The irony is that Miǎn translates into “avoid” which is what Saizi is like to do with most things. Her symbol even shows that the left and bottom stroke on the middle section are connected since Saizi even avoided proper stroke order to cut three strokes down to two. The right way to write that part of the character should have been done with the left stroke first followed by one connected top and right before adding the bottom stroke.

Personality
Saizi is an open book. She is straightforward and honest with how she feels and prone to over sharing with trusted friends. She rarely spends much time thinking about what to say before blurting it out. This can lead to insensitivity and conflict with others but it does keep the vast majority of what she says genuine to how she feels. She does not roll over easily and will argue over some things even it it’s not the time or with someone she rationally shouldn’t be challenging. Saizi does not take well to belittlement or even petty taunts and this is one of the easiest ways to rile her up. It isn’t that she’s dense or anything, she just feels strongly and doesn't look before leaping. Since she takes so much to heart, she can be surprisingly vindictive and holds onto grudges from unresolved offense.

The vitality, drive, and smooth charisma present in many leaders are all lacking in Saizi and this suits her just fine. She has little ambition and is mostly content to spend her time relaxing. Saizi is naturally a relatively introverted person. It isn’t that she doesn’t enjoy company, she loves it but only as long as she gets time to herself to recharge energy in between. If she doesn’t get this time it just drains her and makes her increasingly antsy to get away for a while. She has trouble committing to long tasks and it isn’t at all uncommon for her to just stop and never finish things if she doesn’t have to.

Heavy procrastination is one of Saizi’s most frustrating traits according to her partner. She never learned time-management skills over her youth and it definitely shows. She always likes to ignore problems as long as possible and do her work at the last possible minute. She won’t start right away because she has other things to do, plus there’s so much time so why start immediately? The longer she waits the more anxious she gets and the more she wants to put off the task. This causes her to work in sharp bursts and rush through tasks or pull all nighters, making her tired. Then she has to take naps instead of starting on other things and the cycle continues. She looks for shortcuts out of desire and sometimes need to get done fast.

Saizi regularly claims that she will get around to working on the procrastination problem later.

Semblance
Saizi’s semblance gives her an incredible burst of speed, so fast she has labeled it as blink. The cost to use something this potent is an absolutely massive chunk of aura for every moment she spends using it. The average use time is less than a second before needing to stop and catch her breath for several minutes, leaving her vulnerable to attack. Even after the semblance ends, physics says she can’t just stop instantly so she keeps the boosted momentum for a short bit of time following. She can keep her semblance active up to a full second but usually just passes out immediately after. Saizi is prone to using this ability too early in a battle and not having it when she needs it later. She sacrifices control for speed and isn’t great at the slowing down step, thus the ever-present scars and bruises on her body. As game changing as this ability could be, Saizi is nowhere near proficient with it and is just as likely to do harm to herself as she is to the opponent whenever she uses it. With years and years of hard, disciplined training and constant practice it has the potential to become an incredibly powerful ability with endlessly diverse uses. Unfortunately, it would be very out of character for her to commit to picking up this kind of routine as she is now, so the ability remains underwhelming at a mere fraction of its potential.

Strategy
Saizi lacks durability, and stamina, but is quick on her feet, flexible, and athletic even without her semblance. Her general tactic is to try and put down enemies as quick as she can before burning out. She struggles heavily against bulky strength or defense based enemies because she just doesn’t have the stamina to keep up with it most of the time. She doesn’t mind rushing down low-defense long distance fighters, though. Her weapons of choice are based off of track and field sports included at the summer olympics, more specifically the pole vault and relay race. Saizi wields a  long vaulting-style pole and several batons filled with dust.

Weapons
Saizi's pole can extend to a maximum of 10 feet and can collapse to a minimum of about four feet, reaching just below her shoulder. Like most modern vaulting poles, it has a flexible side and a stiff side for jumping. The taller version is used mostly for getting over obstacles but the shorter version is still a stick so it’s naturally good for hitting people. There is a strap across part of the pole so she can carry it over her shoulder if it is condensed.

Saizi’s batons are essentially dust bombs. They are concentrated and very dangerous. The idea behind them is to pull the pin, activate superspeed semblance to pass off the baton to an enemy, and get out of dodge asap because you have maybe a second and a half before these things explode. Depending on the type of dust in the baton, the effect will vary. For safety, the batons have very difficult to pull pins and, while this has probably saved Saizi’s life on many occasions, it can get in the way when she actually needs to pull it. Even without her semblance, these can be used but it is very risky because you have to throw it fast and far if you don’t want to get caught in the blast.

Background
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When the tower fell, Saizi and her team were assigned to clearing out a few grimm for a town in northern Vale. The small grimm problem got much worse over the next few weeks and they couldn't leave the small town without hunters, even if they are still just students.