Viewing profile - Sona Pastel

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Username:
Sona Pastel
Groups:
Age:
17
Birthday:
Dec 19th
Gender Identity:
Female
Race:
Human
Nationality:
Atlas
Character Picture:
https://i.imgur.com/Nqg14sO.png
Height:
5'11"
Weight:
130 lbs
Eye Color:
Neon Pink
Aura Color:
Mint
Physical Description:
Sona Pastel is a tall, slim woman with a slender physique. Her hair is neck length and pastel green in colour, quite groomed overall but with tufts slicked back here and there and a comb-over at the front. Underneath thin, straight eyebrows are her neon pink eyes, demanding the attention away from her thin lips and pale complexion. Due to her well-defined cheekbones that could cut through paper and a begrudgingly flat chest, she has a more masculine appearance than most other women.
Outfit Description:
Though one could hardly describe it as 'casualwear', she wears a white blouse with puffy sleeves, tucked neatly into a black straight knee-length skirt at the waist and shallow black heels; on such occasions that fighting or off-terrain travel is expected, she will wear a pair of black leather ankle boots.

Sona doesn't deviate from the proper Beacon attire during schooling hours though she does make a point to iron her uniform at the start of each day.
Personality Description:
Hard-working and diligent, Sona is a grinder. Years of being pushed to perfection has warped her sense of personal achievement, unsatisfied with even the slightest mistake. She takes pride in her work ethic and sees any question of her efforts as an insult, and is quick to shun the idea of slacking off when there is a tangible goal within reach. Outside of the classroom, she is significantly less of a stressball, open to all sorts of discussion and always keen to offer an ear to those needing a chat. More of a listener, she isn't prone to running her mouth, preferring to be insightful than risk saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. On the flipside, she is the nosy sort, often going to impressive lengths to finesse her way into obtaining information she might not ought to know.

Although some might label Sona as a typical Atlesian elite by her appearance, she shuns the notion. She understands the flaws in her society's culture, as well as the socioeconomic divide which plagues Mantle and the city above, and is vocal in addressing her concerns about this amongst her peers (even if it often falls on deaf ears). Because of this, she is curious, if not downright drawn towards, those who are far from the hoity-toity types one would see in everyday Atlas, and is especially interested in Faunusfolk.

Thanks to her ruthless twin brothers and heartless father, Sona has inherent disinclination towards masculinity. All of the men in her life have made it difficult for her to form a kindly opinion of them and although she does try to not judge a book too quickly, she'll make her mind up faster when there's a man on the cover.
Backstory Highlights:
(Content warning: transphobia)

The Pastel family are proprietors of a string of businesses across Atlas and Mantle, members of the upper echelon through and through. Humble beginnings half a century ago have led to the family amassing a sizeable amount of wealth today; nothing that would turn heads at the gala, but enough to appreciate the luxurious comforts in life. Sona is the youngest among her siblings with twin brothers five years older and an older sister of one year. They are the children of Rayder and Marzipan Pastel, the latter of which passed away due to complications shortly after Sona's birth.

Left to their own devices growing up, the Pastel siblings seldom saw their father, a man far keener on keeping his businesses afloat than tending to the needs of his own children. Strict nannies and unforgiving tutors raised them in his shadow. The children coped with this in different ways; in the case of the eldest twin brothers, both were successfully moulded to be the spitting image of their father. The two were his pride and joy, as joyless as he was, and brutish towards the youngest siblings. Sona and her older sister, Blaire, found comfort and refuge in one another's presence, completely inseparable, and completely ignored by Radyer.

From a young age, Blaire had struggled with gender identity, and Sona was the first person that the older sister divulged to that she felt more like a girl than a boy. The moment that Blaire came out to Sona was freeing; all that the younger sister had done was offer an ear and listened, without judgement or prejudice, and it had made all of the difference in the world to the older sister. From that moment on, through thick and thin, their bond was solidified for life. Sona vowed to never speak a word it without her sister's permission, and for years, her vow would go honoured. Unknowingly, the moment had triggered Sona's semblance - a glorified tape deck semblance that allows her to capture and reconstruct sounds - and a recording of Blaire coming out was secretly stored within the confines of Sona's soul.

One evening, the twins took a particular dislike to Sona after they had found her in their room, trying to mend something she'd knocked over by accident. They chased her around the estate and finally, after dozens of turns, cornered her like wolves toying with their prey. Insults were howled in no short order as they shoved her onto the marble floor. Trying to shut it all out, the only thing that the young Sona could do was think about the one person who made her feel comfortable; her older sister. She tried to focus on the good times, blocking out her brothers' attempts at breaking her down, and it wouldn't take long for her mind to wander back to that one special moment with Blaire. Suddenly, her emotional attachment to the memory triggered Sona's semblance, playing aloud a word-for-word reconstruction of Blaire coming out for the twins to hear. Frantically and to no avail, she clawed at the cone of aura pulsing from her throat as it divulged a secret that would shatter her sister's world. It wouldn't take long for word to reach their father's ears.

Skipping ahead a couple of months, the twins would be relentless in their pursuit of making Blaire's life a living hell. Perhaps expectedly, their father withdrew further from the older sister than before, and all that Sona could do was watch from the sidelines as the person she loved the most became the subject of hate across the family.

After witnessing one too many instances of the twins bullying Blaire, Sona decided to take a stand. Convincing her father to hire a fighting instructor (under the guise of a 'dance teacher'), she trained in private, covertly learning to fight back against the twins.

Not long after she began her training, the twins' physical violence ground to a halt and their verbal abuse of Blaire became a rare occurrence; it would only take the sight of Sona to hush them along in hurried panic.

She began to excel in the art of dueling and was pushed by Blaire to pursue it in competition, placing highly in her school's junior league. The young girl engrossed herself in the role of protecting her sister from would-be oppressors and dedicated most of her spare time to practice, making it a point that nobody was to touch Blaire without going through herself first.

Having realized a passion for fighting and in defiance of her father's wishes, she enrolled into combat school. Naturally, their father assumed she would move onto Atlas and eventually the military, and so saw this as an opportunity to branch into the defense industry using Sona as a poster child for the Pastel brand.

One step ahead of their father, the Pastel sisters hatched their own plan as the end of Sona's combat schooling neared. On the night of graduation, at an event hosted by Rayder, Sona was due to announce her admittance into Atlas academy and endorse the Pastel family's expansion into weapons tech. Instead, she denounced her father's businesses, informing him she would attend Beacon academy and would no longer involve herself in future Pastel family affairs.

Saying their final farewells to the few people in Atlas they would miss, Sona and Blaire left home on a transport ship bound for Vale. It was an exciting start to a new life for the sisters; Blaire had lined up a job in a firm in the city and knew some friends she could stay with until getting set up herself, and Sona was finally able to rest easy knowing that she was forging her own path in life, not following in the footsteps of her twin brothers and their father before them.

A life of luxury in Atlas meant that she had never truly been exposed to the Grimm, and she was eager to change that. Rather than sitting on her haunches in a fancy office, looking down on the world from the floating city, she wanted to understand what life is like for the rest of the world and make a real difference. Naive, perhaps, yet her drive was real.
Occupation:
Student
Education:
Sona began formal training with a fighting instructor at around 10, learning hand-to-hand combat as well as becoming an adept user of the épée.

She experimented with a variety of weapons and techniques until settling on a kendo-based fighting style with dual-wielding as her secondary. She has a lot of experience fighting against fellow students but below-average exposure to Grimm, only fighting a few in a controlled environment towards the end of combat school.
Semblance Name:
Mimic Cry
Semblance Description:
Sona's semblance allows her to store any recent sound or voice that she hears and vocally reconstruct it as if it were a recording. That is to say that she cannot hear a sound from afar and project it at a louder volume, nor can a loud noise be quietened. The semblance is not passive; she must be channeling aura at the time of recording and remain still during the process. This presents as a cone of aura pulsing inwards toward her ears when storing sounds and a cone of aura pulsing outwards from her mouth when reconstructing them.

A small array of sounds can be kept in "storage" at once with complicated* sounds occupying a greater capacity than simpler* ones. Once a new sound has been recorded, the oldest one is lost. There is no limit to the number of times that she can reconstruct a sound, although the process of reconstruction takes a linear toll on her aura level and must be used in moderation. Should her aura be broken, both her current library of sounds and any that are being recorded are lost in their entirety. The longer the sound, the greater the strain on Sona's aura during recording and reconstruction.

Recordings imitate their source exactly. After recording another person's voice, Sona can only reconstruct it as it was heard - the same tone, pitch, intonation, accent, and words - with no detail spared. The same stands for animals and the creatures of Grimm. Because sounds that inanimate objects make are typically simpler, such as boxes clattering or water splashing, she expends less aura when reconstructing them.

* - Complicated meaning that it could be described as high in any (or all) of the following categories: length, volume, variation/complexity (the amount of things going on in general, e.g. a crowd talking would have a higher complexity than a single person talking), and simpler meaning that the sound is rated low in all of those categories.
Weapon Name:
Zweiwestern
Weapon Image:
https://i.imgur.com/LEb6ZZU.png
Weapon Description:
In its dormant state, Zweiwestern appears to be two sword grips fused together at the point which blades would normally protrude from. Within each grip is a contraption containing 2 isolated stores of dust: one hard light, one ice. When the grips are pried apart, the hard light dust stores mix, creating a rod of hard light that grows the further the grips are pulled apart.

When the grips stop moving, Zweiwestern becomes a staff of hard light connecting the two grips. The length of the shaft depends on how far the grips were moved apart, limited by the amount of dust in the stores or the armspan of the wielder. In this state, the weapon is durable and can withstand a lot of force whilst remaining lightweight.

When in need of a more offensive weapon, the wielder hits a button on each grip to engage the stores of ice dust. The dust solidies along the hard light until reaching a predefined line where they should split and, with a twist of the wielder's wrists, they do, forming two blades with a diagonal edge. The hard light disappears, replaced by ice dust. In this state, Zweiwestern has increased slashing power but significantly reduced durability, to the point where a heavy attack might easily shatter the ice dust blades.

Wastefully, if the wielder wishes to return Zweiwestern to its dormant state, the blades must be removed from the grips; there's a mechanism within each grip that can send a concentrated sonic blast through the ice dust to shatter it into harmless fragments. This allows the grips to fit together seamlessly. If the weapon is in staff mode, the hard light can be 'switched off' with relative ease, and the grips fit together with little hassle.
Fighting Style:
Sona's fighting style is based on kendo with a dual-wielding set-up as her backup. Her weapon facilitates this; Zweiwestern has two offensive states, the first of which sees the weapon being used as a shinai (a stick weapon used in kendo) and the second has it splitting into two one-handed swords which are dual-wielded.

She fights reactively, often waiting for her opponent to take the first swing as she uses deflection tactics to open up windows of opportunity. When engaging with her primary fighting style, she plants her feet into the ground, pivoting and backstepping to prevent an opponent from getting around her. She becomes a 'fortress' and denies her foe the opportunity to get a free hit in.

Sona is more agile with her dual-wielding style, preferring to dodge attacks rather than block them. She uses the terrain to gain advantages over her enemy and searches for good attack windows, keeping light on her feet. Admittedly, she is less comfortable using this style and dedicates a good portion of her practice to perfecting it.
Strengths:
Sona is a great listener, able to tolerate most people in conversation. She prefers to be insightful and have constructive discussions, not one for small talk. That said, the girl's a sucker for gossip, unable to help herself when there's a hot secret up for grabs.

Thanks to her experience with fencing as a child, she's quick on her feet with impressive reflexes. Her experience fighting against opponents one-on-one makes her an exceptional duelist and she's been exposed to a wide arsenal of weaponry, giving her a baseline idea of how to adjust to a fight based on her opponent's weapon.

Also, due to her being taller-than-average, she can reach the top shelf a lot of the time.
Weaknesses:
Sona fights reactively, prefering to wait for windows of opportunity over actively creating them. Because of this, she can be caught off-guard quite easily when an opponent makes a move that she hasn't encountered before.

She's a lot less practiced with her secondary style of fighting, dual-wielding swords, and will only resort to it when she feels the need to adopt a different strategy. This could be due to one of two reasons: she's confident that she won't lose and wants to try something new for the fun of it, or plan A has failed and she's getting desperate. If she's lulled into a false sense of security, it's easy to get the upper hand on her.

Her lack of exposure to the Grimm means that she has a lot to learn when fighting them, and though she isn't threatened by their physical prowess, she remains cautious of their animalistic, unpredictable nature.
Likes:
- Being the person that people feel comfortable confiding in.
- Dueling, either with normal weapons or with classic fencing swords.
- When people make an effort with their appearance.
- Controversial conversations, especially when she's able to change a person's mind on something.
- Being with her sister, Blaire.
- Faunus. She'd never properly talked to a Faunus before Beacon, hence she's madly curious of them.
Dislikes:
- Discrimination of gender, race, sexuality, or otherwise.
- Being late, or when others are late.
- Being wrong/screwing up.
- Toxic masculinity.
- Those who cannot listen to advise.
- Those who do not believe in perfection - she strongly believes that some things can be perfect.
Alternate Characters:
Ava Blue

Contact Sona Pastel

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