Avery Rachel Chere is a character I have created on this site.
| — Avery |
Overview
Name: Avery Rachel Chere
Color: Ivory
Sex: Female
Fighting Style: Secret Duster
Birthplace: Kymafos
Birthdate: March 10
Age: 17
Blood Type: B
Weapon: Staff
Height: 5 ft. 8 in. (163 cm)
Weight: 128 lbs. (58 kg)
Treasure: Feathers
Loves: Roses and feathers
Hates: Being weak; own flaws
Musical theme: Follow Fi - Skyward Sword
Battle Theme: The Extreme - Final Fantasy VIII
Vocal Theme: Stargazer - RD-Sounds (based on Love-Colored Master Spark from Touhou. The image in the video is not Avery.)
Touhou Vocal RD-Sounds Stargazer (spanish & english subtitles)
Vocal Theme
Appearance
Avery is a just-better-than-average-looking 18 year old girl. Her eyes are dark brown, almost black, and her face bears an innocent look about it. She has long, straight dark brown hair cut "princess style." She often has a white ribbon in her hair tied into two small bows on either side of her head. She usually wears her hair that way, but she can also be seen with it up. Either way, she always looks somewhat elegant. Her hands are covered by white gloves that extend all the way up her arms and she wears a white dress made of fabric with an ornate, ivory-colored pattern along the bottom of the dress and the parts of the gloves around her wrists and up her forearms. Also, small white wing-like structures sprout from the back of the dress. It is fastened at the back and the waist by a gold string. Below that, the fabric becomes transparent, long, and wide and pure white and ivory-colored ribbons flow from the waist. The two fabrics catch the wind and carry behind her as she walks. She also wears long brown boots. Sometimes, she can be seen holding a small white parasol. She also bears a scar on her right hand.
Personality
Avery is a kind, sweet girl with a rather astounding and commonly contradicting array of quirks. She is commonly very shy around strangers and superiors and often reprimands herself for not being able to walk up to other people and make friends, as she is very critical of herself and lacks a bit of self-esteem. Another part her shyness is that she is very isolated from society and knows that her social status makes it a little more difficult to speak with others on a common level. Because of this, she has a distinct lack of friends and is often quite lonely, feeling she has no one to confide in. Although, sometimes, when she is very excited, her shyness melts away and she becomes very hyperactive and talkative to the point of annoyance. However, when speaking to someone she is comfortable around, which many can become if they simply talk with her for a while, she shows that she is very sensitive, intelligent, and fun in a cute sort of way, though still somewhat annoying. She enjoys sarcasm, ironic humor, and playfully teasing her friends. She is rather stubborn and seems childish at times, but does possess the maturity required for a girl her age. These clashing sides of her lead some to believe she isn't shy at all, but instead loud and idiotic.
Adding to these various sides of her personality, she is somewhat lazy and dislikes work (other than battle). She has what some would call "never worked a day in her life" syndrome, as she is rather unskilled at most jobs besides battle. She has a tendency to become stressed over very little things, and when she is stressed, she can develop headaches and become snappish. She has a strong dislike for people who she finds conceited, but would never act on her dislike because she also believes that she can be this way at times, too, and is self-conscious because of it. She also has harbored a love for acting and music since her childhood, strangely finding it easier to express herself and make friends onstage. Avery also inherited gifted lying skills from her acting endeavors and loves deceiving people, preferring plans that involve trickery. To couple with this, she also is skilled at finding loopholes and enjoys exploiting them. She can sometimes be a perfectionist when it comes to art, but couldn't care less about perfection in most other cases. When in an uncomfortable position she adopts a more formal speech pattern, and she does this when in battle as well. In battle with Grimm, she will kill without a thought, but against humans, she can find it hard sometimes, preferring to incapacitate them and leave them with their lives.
Avery also operates on a very fine-tuned moral compass, knowing what is right and wrong and selecting right on most occasions. She also can come across as selfish sometimes, wanting things to go her way most of the time, but can actually be somewhat self-sacrificing when she thinks she needs to be. She has a strong sense of empathy and likes to use it to help her friends sort out their emotions, though she finds it incredibly hard to take her own advice in these situations. She has a very strongly driving desire to be a girl that people come to with their problems, but feels that her hopes are in vain. Avery also is a skilled diplomat in times of strife. Another defining characteristic of hers is her obsession with anything she finds beautiful, such as flowers, music, and sunsets. She also has trouble on the topic of boys, dodging it often, as she feels that she wants to find true love, despite the fact that she doesn't think that anyone who really knows her likes her that much, but also because she has a high rank in society, she fears it will be difficult to find someone who can sincerely reciprocate her feelings and believes herself to be alone forever. She is also an avid reader who composes eloquent poetry and aims to write stories in the future. She almost feels like she's addicted to stories, doing anything she can to find more that pique her interest.
However, she does harbor a secretive side. Avery is a Duster, a slang term in Kymafos for those who use Dust and/or Aura. She tries to keep her identity as a Duster under wraps, as Dusters are hated and feared by almost the entire population of her city on a level akin to terrorists. Also, because of the blatant slaughter of the Dusters for something where they may have had good intentions, like her, she has tried to give everyone a chance to be trusted, but because of this, she has become incredibly naïve and often winds up trusting her enemies. Then, when she later realizes this flaw, she tries to correct it, but only allows herself to become gullible and easily swayed by lies. Sometimes she even allows herself to listen to lies from her enemies and turn on her friends because of them. She simply cannot tell who she can trust, another thing that makes her more of an outcast than anything else. She hides her power and constantly lives in terror of the day when someone witnesses her using it.
Battle
For Avery, battling is a bit of a dilemma. When fought, she will use a simple staff capable of using Dust to generate fire, ice, lightning, and the like. Of course, she keeps the fact that it's actually Dust a secret from most. Basically, the way it works is it uses the end of the staff as an opening through which the desired effect can spew out of when she waves the staff (similar to Yang's flares, to clarify). As a last resort, it can use Dust of all different colors to make a multi-colored laser. She can also use it as a battering weapon, and is also prepared to punch and kick if necessary. She also carries crystalline Dust cleverly disguised as bombs to use as... bombs. However, she's still somewhat feeble fighting in this state. She's honestly hoping she just gets lucky. Or she winds up alone.
Avery never uses her Semblance when anyone is around... unless she doesn't intend for them to escape alive, which is rare. However, on the off chance no one's able to see her, she breaks out the "big guns." Her semblance is a unique one that allows her to use glyphs to manipulate light into a tangible form, so long as it is connected to her. This means she can use light to create weaponry from thin air, so long as she remains touching it. If disarmed, what she has created will vanish. Smarter foes might use this against her, disarming her until she runs out of energy. She can usually only make up to two things at once (she only has two hands) and can usually only make up to five things in one battle until she drains her energy, but things like small barriers that she would only summon for a moment might not count toward this total. The amount of time they last depends on how many she has summoned before. If she only summons one, it could potentially last hours, but after summoning a number in rapid succession one could fizzle out in a matter of minutes. Time management is key in difficult battles.
But in other ways, it's a fairly useful ability, as the weapons she makes are nearly weightless, and, at the cost of more energy, can be bent to her will, such as lengthening the blade of a sword to strike farther. The longer sword she ever made had a blade ten feet in length. The weightless effect does get in the way of summoning weapons used for blunt force, such as hammers (it'd be like getting hit by paper), but she doesn't like those anyway, preferring cutting weapons and things like ropes and whips. She can even make barriers with her glyphs. If she wanted, she could even use this ability to do housework. Sometimes she does when she's too lazy to get the broom. She can even make her creations as detailed as she wants, but that's more of an aesthetic touch.
However, she is extremely reluctant to use it, leaving her in a much weaker state than she would want. Although, if one sees her practicing her ability in secret, she'll not hesitate to do whatever she can to make sure they never say a word to anyone.
History
Avery Rachel Chere was born as the mayor's daughter in Kymafos, a city separate from Vale. As she grew from a small child to a young woman, she lived a relatively normal life, apart from her status. She attended school, made friends, developed a healthy interest in theater after quickly overcoming stage fright, and enjoyed reading from a young age, soon becoming the smartest person in her class.
Through her education, she learned of the Dusters, people who used Dust and Aura in the past of Kymafos. One large group of Dusters long ago used their abilities in an attempt to rob power from Kymafos's leaders, and an incredible battle ensued. The wicked Dusters annihilated the forces of the army and obliterated cities on a whim with their power, but their power led them to become overconfident and careless. They were struck down eventually by a squad of snipers that they failed to notice.
As a result of this war, Dusters are commonly thought of in normal society as evil, malicious people with nothing but a lust for power and the extinguishing of human life. Any found Dusters are put to death without trial. While most did not argue with how the Dusters we abused by society, Avery silently wondered why every Duster had to be exterminated. The senseless killings led the youth's mind astray. Why did they all have to die without even learning the reasons why the had decided to use Dust?
Then, just after turning 13, Avery went for a walk alone. After walking through along the path that she wished to wander, she came to a lake. Feeling hot and thirsty from the long stretch and a little lost, she ran to the water and scooped some up so she could drink it.
Then, in the mirror-like surface of the pure water, she saw someone else, a man who then ran up behind her and attacked her, kicking her in the leg and slashing her hand with a sword, creating a deep wound that bled heavily. He closed his hand over the girl's mouth. "Let's go for a little walk, shall we, Avery?" The man said.
As he began walking her in the direction of her kingdom, he whispered silently into her ear, her leg hurting too much to struggle. "Now, little girl." He said soothingly, which only made him seem even scarier to her. "We've become very... Annoyed with your father, you see. Ridiculing the rest of society just because he and his city have convinced themselves Dust is evil. We wanted you to know... If he doesn't change his ways, we may have to... Show him what Dust can really do."
The group left her on the edge of the forest, hoping that someone would find her as her leg bled out and she lost consciousness. Someone eventually did and rushed her back to a hospital. She recovered quickly, but she retained a scar on her hand for the rest of her life. When her father asked her what had happened, she told him that she didn't remember, that she must have hit her head. But the memory was indeed fresh. These men, whoever they were, planned to kill her father. What could she do? Suddenly, an idea struck her. If she wanted to help her father, she needed to learn how to be powerful. She needed Dusting.
At first, she denied the thought that she could be one, thinking that it was going to be much too hard to do. She didn't know what to do, but then she saw something. Her family's weaponmaster was using Dust. She saw him do it one day. Weeks later, she confronted him about it and asked if he could help her. He eventually made her her tonfas which were capable of using Dust, telling her parents that the Dust was not Dust, but a "special function" of the tonfas he crafted. They believed him.
At first, she thought that she had made a horrible mistake, that she must have renounced her family. The daughter of a leader who so greatly feared Dust was a Duster. She feared herself. But then she realized. Dust. When she used it, she felt so good. It was a rush. She wanted to feel it again. She asked him to teach her to use Aura, but he himself still did not know how. She continued to practice Dusting in secret, sometimes in the forest or the mountains, by the lake. Maybe in an abandoned temple or a tomb or a desert. She practiced until she became a very adept Duster, though she didn't know this as she had no knowledge to compare to. However she still kept her powers secret.
One day, Avery overheard her parents speaking and dismissed it as nothing she cared about until she heard the word Dust. She began to eavesdrop on them and found that they had learned that people in other places were using Dust and Aura more and more commonly and were keeping it a secret from Kymafos. She heard that her parents were prepared to confront them and warn them of their mistakes when her father said that he was prepared to wage war with them if they did not stop. This statement shocked her. They had always stayed on friendly terms with everyone who they could and couldn't believe that they would let something so trivial ruin that. She was more surprised when her mother agreed wholeheartedly.
Avery, disillusioned by her parents' blind rage, felt that her friends and family would no longer love her if they learned of her antics and, losing faith in herself, almost committed suicide with her own Dust, but then a girl approached her hiding place and she was forced to flee. Her desperate effort to keep her secret reminded her that if she ended her life, she would only continue the destruction that the Dusters of the past were known for and disbanded her attempts to kill herself, hoping to save her father and, someday, maybe even make her parents realize that they were letting fear cloud their judgement.
When she was 16, she began to realize just how cult-like her home really was and began longing for an escape. One day, she heard her parents talking about the outcome of their confrontation with the Dusters. They said that they refused to stop using Dust and Aura. Avery was ready to leave at that point, driven to a dark place yet again, when a certain statement from her mother piqued her curiosity. Her mother had said, "They are going to kill us all before we can finish!" Avery wondered what she was finishing, but decided it was better not to ask.
Now, Avery is 18. After graduating from Kymafos's school with straight A's, she will soon be going to Beacon Academy in order to hone her skills with her tonfas. The heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss Schnee, will also be attending this school, and it is rumored (rumors that are indeed quite false, as the two families have barely ever associated, much less their children) that this is because her parents heard of Avery's enrollment and thought that having Weiss attend might create a friendship between the girls and that that, in turn, will improve relations with Kymafos, who had cut off contact after learning of Dust.
Avery patiently awaits her arrival at the school, eager to become a better fighter, and also hoping that she can make friends there that don't care about her father's place in society, as this school takes people of all ages and origins and she hopes that some people there will not be as concious of her status if they didn't hail from her city. She's openly hoping her adventures will be akin to those in her books. She also wondered if Weiss's prestige, especially in a place where Dust was commonplace, may distract from her own, as the Schnee Dust Company was far more powerful and well-known. Avery also wishes to learn to use her Aura, but she doesn't know how that would happen. She also hopes deeply in her heart that she will find love there, having long since believing that she will be alone for all of her life. Her Dust still remains a secret that she does not intend to reveal anytime soon, except maybe to the Team she is assigned to, for it is quite unlikely they will be from Kymafos and will probably not be as irrationally terrified of magic. Until then, her life continues on. She can commonly be seen twirling the ribbon that she keeps in her hair through her fingers, deep in thought. She is seen looking at it with a troubled expression as she sits under her parasol, appearing rain covered, but only once you come close enough can you see the she was not rained on at all, and the teardrops flow smoothly down her face.
Author's Notes
- Avery is based on Rinoa Heartilly from Final Fantasy VIII and Ultear Milkovich from Fairy Tail
- Her last name, Chere, is the same as that of Celes Chere from Final Fantasy VI.
- The name Kymafos is a combination of two Greek words, Kyma, meaning wave, and Fos, meaning light
- Read my page on Kymafos for more information about the city.