Grizel Svane

Appearance
Grizel is a tall girl with white hair in a short chin-length bob, with a blunt fringe. She has hazel eyes and very pale skin. She's athletic and her body leans to an even hourglass shape.

Her outfit consists of a black/silver short dress with white and dark gray details that resembles the one of a ballet dancer. Over this dress she wears a gray corset with silver trimming. She also wears white tights, gray legwarmers with black ribbon tied over them, and white/black high-heeled shoes. On her hands she wears white gloves with silver trimming, and black, detached, tight long sleeves under them. She also wears a black collar that covers part of her cheeks, a dark gray/silver ballet hair accessory that covers her ears, and a necklace with a moonstone pendant.

Time skip
WIP

Personality
Grizel is, in some way, double-faced. To most of people -and most of times- she seems to be a cool, confident, and serious person. She's assertive, formal, and doesn't like to use swear words (unless she really loses her temper). Also, she tends to be cold and introverted, but not to the point of being asocial, and when she gets angry at somebody she reacts in a blunt, sometimes rude way.

Grizel has certain issues revealing her true feelings because she doesn't want to be seen as weak, and this is related to her "B-side": she's actually a very passionate person prone to anxiety. Since she's this way, she's a self-demanding perfectionist with fear of failure, and therefore a workaholic, and these traits make her hate when people do things in the "wrong" way, therefore get annoyed with Bruno, her leader, quite frequently. However, she doesn't have current mental health issues besides her anxiety that can get too strong sometimes; she's a logical person and tries to ignore those uncomfortable feelings she gets, though if she has been bottling up these feelings for too long chances are she could even get a panic attack.

Because of her childhood trauma (of being teased and abused because of her appareance) Grizel cares a lot about her personal image and hygiene, doesn't trust in people easily, isn't fond of kids, and always wears nice clothes.

In battle Grizel is probably the most offensive, harsher fighter of the team (even if she seems to be delicate), and this is reflected in her dominant, somewhat femme fatale-ish personality as well. However, even if she looks serious most of times, she does have a sense of humor, though she only shows it off to her friends and people she's close to.

Since she's a workaholic, she does a lot of physical exercise and dancing, and prefers to eat healthy; besides dancing, she likes to do kickboxing and kalaripayattu which complement her fighting style.

Even if Bruno is the designated leader of the team, Grizel is also a natural leader, being second in charge (and sometimes just plain rejecting Bruno's orders, specially in her first year in Beacon).

History
Grizel had a hard childhood. Being the youngest child of five of a lower middle-class family, she was rejected and abused by her parents and siblings due to her appareance (she had white, frizzy hair, was very pale and was considered "ugly"). Her parents abandoned her because they refused to believe she was their daughter because she didn't look like them or like her siblings (which was explained because she was born from an affair her mother had with another man who also happened to be a Faunus, and her father wasn't aware of this as her mother never assumed that relationship), and Grizel ended up in an orphanage. It was a bittersweet plot twist in Grizel's life; while she felt a lot better in the orphanage, she felt guilty about feeling better without her biological family due to social pressure, and the abuse made by them left her with emotional scars, depressed and with low self-steem.

While the orphanage seemed to be warmer than her old home, she still felt lonely and lacking confidence, as she didn't experience the feeling of having somebody that supported her.

One day, she heard an adult saying that dancing made her feel better when she was sad, so she tried it and enjoyed it; everytime there was music playing, she started to dance, and she found it easy to do as well. The adult that started it all with that phrase was Plamya Svane, an ex-ballet teacher in her 60s that sometimes visited the orphanage to teach kids how to dance. Plamya saw Grizel dancing and as she saw the little girl had potential and found it easy, she decided to take her under her wing, and helped Grizel to become a ballet dancer in her free time. Their relationship ended up being so strong that Plamya let Grizel live in her house, and Grizel considered her her only relative, and her true family; she took Plamya's surname and treated her like her adoptive mother.

In school Grizel was a relatively good student, standing out in PE due to her good physical state and constant training. While she wasn't very talkative she had a fair relationship with most of her classmates, and bullies were afraid of bullying her due to her appareance and because Grizel was good defending herself, both with punches and with words. In the end, Grizel chose to become a Huntress because of both economic (since she will earn more money as a Huntress than as a dancer) and moral (to help people and feel useful) reasons. She got enrolled in Beacon Academy thanks to her hard work and abilities.

Grizel really wanted to become the leader of her team as she was both strong and a good strategist, but fate decreed otherwise...

Time skip
After the Battle and Fall of Beacon, Grizel came back to Plamya's place to help her with anything she needed, and also took up ballet classes again. She still wants to become a Huntress, but she doesn't mind waiting for a while, especially considering Plamya is getting older and needs to take care of herself more than before. However, Grizel can't help but feel worried about her partner Ryan, who's pretty much trapped back in Stela and his mother won't let him go, but Grizel tries to hide her worries so Plamya won't feel bad.

Some time later, Bruno and Della show up at Grizel's place, asking her to join them in their trip. Grizel is hesitant about joining them at first as she's worried about Plamya, but Plamya insists she should join them, especially because they also plan to reach Ryan. As Plamya insists on Grizel reuniting with her teammate, Grizel accepts joining Bruno and Della and travel with them.

Weapon
Grizel has the Semi-Automatic Dual Katars (SADK) Odette and Odile as her weapons. These weapons have 2 modes:

When Grizel activates her Aura, she can canalize it through the blades of them and make more powerful attacks. These weapons can be used for defense too to an excent; the blades are very resistent and sharp. Their gun mechanism works similar to a semi-automatic pistol and its caliber is 9 x 19 mm. Grizel can load Dust-powered ammunition if she wishes, although Dust won't be canalized to the blades.
 * Without their blades extended they work as guns.
 * With their blades extended they work as katars (though she can still shoot bullets with the blades extended, although it might be slightly harder to aim).

Abilities
Due to her physical condition, she's one of the faster and most agile members of her team; she's one of the most physically strong and resistant as well. Her main weakness is her lack of crowd control, and her defense isn't the best since she's highly offensive attack-wise and lacks armor, although she has good stamina and a strong Aura.

Grizel's Semblance is called Danse Macabre, and is a temporal physical boost that makes her stronger and faster, basically "overclocking". Her hair turns black and her eyes vermilion as a side effect, and leaves a trail of black feathers when in use, hinting at her mixed heritage.

This Semblance has limited use as it can give Grizel intense muscular pain when is used for an extended period of time, so Grizel tends to use it for ending a fight or going to.

Her Aura's color is vermilion and is one of the most powerful ones of the team.

Relationships

 * Plamya Svane: Grizel loves Plamya and cares about her a lot. She's easily the most important and influential person in her life, a role model.
 * Her biologic family: Grizel hates them, and doesn’t want to hear anything about them or see them, but when asked she avoids talking about the matter, since she doesn’t want to sound too resentful.
 * Bruno Erraunt: Grizel doesn't really have a good relationship with Bruno; she can't stand Bruno's behavior and thinks he isn't a completely reliable leader, and seeing her discussing, getting angry with him, or even hurting him (not in a physical way though, but rather insulting him) is not uncommon.
 * Ryan Chartreuse: Grizel has a good relationship with Ryan. She trusts him since Ryan's loyal to her and doesn't make noise like Bruno, and values him a lot. She's his partner and they synchronize well when fighting, becoming very dangerous to their foes (since both are resistant and strong). She doesn't know that Ryan is attracted to her.
 * Della Azure: Grizel has a fair relationship with Della; while Della is more of an acquaintance than of a friend, Grizel knows her since long time ago (they attended the same school before getting into Beacon, but they didn't share too many classes). Even if their personalities seem to clash, Della doesn't annoy or pester Grizel, and Grizel tries to not being too cold with Della.

Trivia

 * Grizel alludes to The Ugly Duckling.
 * This is directly reflected in Grizel's abusive family, but ending up living with a person (Plamya) that loves her just the way she is, and her different/"weird" appareance as a child when compared with her biological family.
 * Her color scheme, surname, and part of her design allude to swans as well.
 * Her costume, hobby, weapon's name and her "duality" motif are inspired by Swan Lake, since both this and The Ugly Duckling have in common the "swan" theme.
 * Ryan having a crush on her is another reference to Swan Lake, since he's a prince and in Swan Lake a prince falls in love with the main character.
 * "Grizel" is a variant of "Griselda", which is a name derived from the Germanic elements gris "grey" and hild "battle". "Svane" means "swan" in Danish.
 * "Griselda" is a nickname Bruno gave her to annoy her. Ironically, Griselda is a figure of certain folklores that's well-known for her patience and obedience, qualities that Grizel clearly doesn't have.
 * Grizel is used to wear heels (and uncomfortable shoes in general, as she already has to deal with ballet shoes), and likes looking taller.
 * Grizel smokes sometimes; she only does it when the urge is too big because she's consious she must stay in good shape.
 * When Grizel uses her Semblance, she scatters black feathers; when she deactivates it, she briefly scatters white ones.
 * Grizel is an INTJ.