Name: Reiz Astra
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Mage Rank: A+
Magic Type: Belka
Magic Colour: Tangerine Orange (Hex Code: #FFA100)
Favoured Element: Fire
Specialty: Melee combat
Device: Impulse - Armed Device
Rank: Special Investigator (Corporal)
Unit: 37th Criminal Investigation And Apprehension (Squad A)
Build: Small, and usually trying to make herself look smaller. She does have a pretty good figure for her size.
Hair: Blonde, short
Eyes: Green; usually looking nervously hopeful
Clothing:
Usual - Reiz tries to keep her uniform perfect, and it shows, sometimes too well. Strangely, she seems happiest when she is out of uniform, and her clothes tend to be casual T-shirts and denims, usually in some bright colours.
Barrier Jacket - Black form-fitting sleeveless legging-less bodysuit with a white trim, with a black miniskirt. White suit jacket with long swallowtail coattails, with a red trim. Red leather fingerless gloves. Silver belt with an orange gem inset. White thigh-high stockings with a red trim, black metallic heeled boots. Finally, a white fedora hat.
Personality:
Reiz's psych profiles have many phrases in common: "low self-esteem", "lack of self-confidence", "needs to believe in herself", and "recommend immediate self-image course". She is one of those who have no confidence whatsoever in their own abilities, and is easily embarrassed, preferring to fade into the background whenever possible. This, needless to say, had adverse consequences on her training and subsequent postings.
In a fight, Reiz tries her best, and her best is very good. One cannot help but feel that she'd much rather be somewhere else, though, and only her vaguely-formed sense of duty keeps her fighting, instead of running away. She is always willing to help others, and will sometimes go through great lengths to do so, but has no expectation that she will actually succeed, and her depressive attitude has engendered feelings of both pity and frustration.
Despite her affinity for fire magic, Reiz does not actually like fire. In fact, outside of battle, she's a little scared of it.
Strangely, even though she looks as though she might be on the verge of breaking down into tears all the time, nobody has actually seen her
really cry.
Background:
Reiz would have had a much brighter future ahead of her if she weren't so, well, depressive. With indifferent grades in school and almost no social skills to speak of, Reiz enlisted in the TSAB at the age of sixteen, and promptly created a headache for administrators: where should they post a candidate who was obviously incredibly skilled in combat, but was completely unsuited for actual life in a frontline unit?
Fortuitous chance landed her in the 37th Criminal Investigation And Apprehension department. In the first ten minutes of her formal introduction to the unit, she was playfully assaulted by Lieutenant Ivey de Lorien, and then rescued by Captain Rancer LaSalle. This set the tone for the rest of her time in the 37th CIAA.
Armament:
Impulse is a staff, meaning a quarterstaff. Reiz received it from her father, who taught her everything she knew about staff fighting. How he came to own it, and why he has surprising amounts of knowledge for a convenience-store owner, is a mystery nobody has been able to unravel yet.
When not set up, Impulse is stored as a small rod, pencil-sized. Reiz does not need a pass phrase like Ivey to set her Device up, only requiring "
Impulse, set up!" This turns Impulse into a six-foot quarterstaff (as well as giving Reiz her Barrier Jacket), with optional flames at the ends.
The slot for cartridges is in the middle of the staff, and Impulse can hold up to five cartridges at once. Reiz tends to carry around ten more spares; she is conservative with her cartridge use, mainly because she doesn't like requisitioning for more.
Impulse either cannot talk or does not want to talk. Since it cannot provide verbal action triggers, Reiz has to do it herself.
Powers:
Surprisingly, Reiz can not only dish out a beating, she can also take one. She has proven to be rather resilient, with a good knowledge of battlefield tactics that none of her instructors remember teaching her.
Being an Armed Device, the more cartridges Impulse consumes, the more powerful Reiz's powers are. She has never used more than three cartridges at once.
Reiz is a
very skilled staff fighter. She has, in sparring sessions, been able to hold her own against Signum, provided high-level magic spells are not used, and the contest is purely with weaponry. She didn't
win, but she held out for an impressive twenty-three minutes before Signum overwhelmed her. (The contest was conducted with wooden training weapons.)
Offensive:
- Hitting things: Reiz hits enemies with six feet of quarterstaff with fire on the ends. That's got to hurt.
- Flares: With a swing of the staff, Reiz can send a blast of flame at enemies, at respectable range and speed. If she continues spinning the staff, she can effect a rapid-fire mode. Reiz only has very limited control over these fire blasts.
- Fireball: Reiz concentrates a large ball of flame on one end of the staff, and then lobs it at an enemy. This ball of flame is relatively slow, but more easily controllable, and it can detonate in a large explosion on impact or command. The more cartridges used, the more powerful the Fireball.
- Extension: Impulse can be extended to poke enemies at range. The largest range thus far recorded is sixty meters, although it is likely that it could have continued indefinitely.
- Burning Hand: Reiz can touch someone and cause an explosion of flame. This generally is not enough to break through most barriers of rank A or above, but can be dangerous to an unprotected opponent.
Defensive:
- Defensive Arc: Reiz can extend a shield to encompass a one hundred and eighty degrees arc, and maintain this while fighting. This takes a fair amount of magical energy, though, and Reiz can only do so for a minute or so.
- Impulse Spin: Reiz spins Impulse rapidly, blocking just about every form of attack from one direction (up to AA rank).
- Firewall: Reiz can summon a wall of fire to block attacks or attackers. She can do so in a sizeable radius, generally enough to encompass herself and her friends. This wall of fire is easily penetrable by barrier-breaker spells or thermal-hardened armour. She is currently learning how to reverse the Firewall to trap foes inside.
- Warmth: Reiz can heal wounds, either on herself or others.
Support:
- Flight: Reiz can fly. She needs her Device to be set up in order to do so.
- Rocketstream: A standard acceleration spell. Reiz's boots appear to have rocket flames, and she makes an interesting smoke trail in her path. This smoke is not true smoke, being made of tiny magical particles, but Reiz can make use of it to blind a pursuing foe.
- Recall: Reiz can summon Impulse to her hand, provided she knows where it is.
Excerpt:
Spoiler:
Reiz looked down at her spoon. "Captain LaSalle made this?"
"I learned to cook when I was living on my own," Rancer said, ladling more curry onto his plate. "It's not that hard, if you pay attention."
Reiz seemed to shrink in on herself. "I, um, I can't make something like this, and, um, it's really good, and I don't think I'll be able to cook as well as you can, or anyone can, and I don't think I can cook at all, ever, and I don't think-"
"Everyone has something they're good at," Rancer added hurriedly. "I'm sure, uh, I'm sure you have your own good points that we can look up to." He looked desparately at Ivey. "Right?"
"Mmhm," Ivey said. "For one, Reiz has bigger boobs than I do."
Reiz squeaked, and reflexively hugged her chest.
Rancer covered his eyes with a hand. "Accurate, Ivey, and yet thoroughly unhelpful."
Trivia:
Spoiler:
Potential Voice Actress: Ai Nonaka (Mika Inamori,
Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight)
Character Analogue: Any timid, naive, small-and-cute female character.
- TBA
Spoilers:
Spoiler for Major spoilers inside:
Be warned: clicking the spoiler button will result in
extreme spoilage. If you do not want your enjoyment of the story to be
completely and utterly removed, then go no further.
I speak from the viewpoint of a spoiler-seeker myself. This is
not the sort of thing you want to be reading lightly, as it constitutes
all the major plot twists of the story.
Spoiler for Really major spoilers:
This is your last chance.
Only go further if you are
absolutely certain that you are willing to have the entire plot of the story revealed.
Spoiler for Final barrier:
You have been warned.
Reiz's ambivalent attitude towards fire was due to the incident when her mother was killed by a rogue member of her father's team. Galant Astra had incinerated his wife's killer, and then swore never again to take another life. He tried to instil the same pacifist sense into his daughter, with mixed success: Reiz would certainly never start a fight, but her passive nature and immense magical talent (a product of her father's own magical skill, and her mother's unwillingly-altered genes) nearly caused a disaster, when she lashed out against a bully. Only her instant realization of what she was doing, and her quick reflexes, saved the bully's life. The incident caused her to be even more withdrawn and fearful of her powers.
Galant decided to teach his daughter how to fight, and more importantly how not to fight, to control her strength and channel it towards productive ends. He gave her his own Armed Device, Impulse, and under his guidance, Reiz became an accomplished staff-fighter and knight under the Belkan tradition.
When Reiz decided to join the TSAB, Galant was initially disapproving. He wanted his daughter nowhere near any situation where she might have to take a life. But Reiz believed that the TSAB was the best way to use her powers to protect the innocent and helpless. In the end, under the condition that Reiz must never kill another person, no matter what the circumstances, Galant reluctantly let her go.
Reiz has the potential to become an Ace on par with the three legendary Aces. However, even though Reiz knows that her father's power was the only thing which saved her life when she was a baby, she still remembers the horror of a person being burned to death. With the knowledge that her own magical power exceeds even her father's, she unconsciously holds back every time, even in crisis situations. This mental block is unlikely to ever be lifted.