"God damnit, why me?"
| Age | 17 |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Han |
| Status | Active |
| Gender | Male |
| Race | Human |
| Species | Human |
| Handedness | Right |
| Hair | Black |
| Eyes | Brown |
| Height | 5'11 |
| Weight | 143 lbs. |
| Affiliation | Beacon Academy |
| Occupation | Student |
| Relatives | Joseph Petrie, Marie Petrie (deceased) |
Appearance[]
The odd insignia on his armband.
Raymond is an aspiring young man that measures roughly five feet, eleven inches in height. He has fairly tanned skin, black hair, and a pair of brown eyes. At face value, one could surmise that he weighed around the 140 pound mark.
His general, everyday attire starts with a short, gray tattered cloak, which is lined front and back with an almost life jacket-like black metal plate used to absorb impacts to the center and side torsos. The cloak's almost baggy sleeves hang down by his elbows, and the right sleeve is tied down with an armband bearing an unknown insignia, which is likely his emblem of choice. Under the cloak is a long sleeved, black form-fitting shirt, of which only the sleeves can be seen coming from the baggier, short sleeves of the cloak. His legs are covered by a pair of navy blue cargo pants, lined up and down with multiple pockets, although time has taken it's toll on the clothing and many of them do not function properly. He rounds out the outfit with a pair of animal-hide boots, althought he doesn't know in particular what type of animal the hide came from. As for accessories, he doesn't use them much, but occasionally wears a heart rate monitor on his right arm for unknown reasons.
Abilities[]
An illustration from an advertisement featuring a weapon similar in style to the weapons Raymond has, which are curved at the ends. (Credit to SOE)
Raymond's semblance, nicknamed Center of Being, allows him to greatly enhance his agility in combat, is almost a meditative trance state. Countless hours spent using meditation as an escape from his troubles of life allows Raymond to become centered with as little as a thought, and practically allows him to subconsciously dodge incoming attacks, although not with a ridiculously high success rate. Regardless, becoming centered allows Raymond to keep his aggressive, point blank fighting style while not risking severe injury. However, Raymond can only stay centered for a handful of minutes, and his thoughts gradually drift back to the surreal reality of combat. After a burst of several seconds, his vision begins to blur, making his attacks much less accurate while centered.
Raymond possesses no extraordinary abilities, but an odd phenomenon occurs when his semblance, Center of Being, is active, causing moderately sized bright red ribbon like bands of what appears to be energy to emanate from his wrists and ankles, causing a dazzling show of light whenever he's in combat. The phenomenon only occurs when Raymond enters a centered state, and even he is clueless to how it even happens. Nonetheless, the red trails serve as a slight distraction despite being fairly transparent upon closer examination.
Weapons[]
Raymond's tools of destruction are two commercially available brass knuckles that are constructed with a built in blade for additional damage to organic tissue. Raymond's personal pair have the ends extended and rounded out like a blade, allowing him to gore opponents with crushing blows. With the intent of causing as much damage to tissue as possible, the lightweight and small nature of the weapons makes them a poor choice against targets that have thick natural or man-made armor. While capable of denting heavier armor and potentially able to pierce light armor, doing so can cause substantial damage to the blades, to which Raymond usually abstains from attacking heavily armored opponents.
Personality[]
While at face value, Raymond may seem like an outgoing and funny young man, behind the scenes he is rather aggressive and eager to fight others.
However, while not beating up on someone or cracking dark jokes, he is often described by fellow classmates as a friendly fellow, who tries to make friends with people that he meets and attempts to uphold his promises whenever he makes them. Often times he'll crack a regular joke or two, but knows where to draw the line-to an extent. In combat, he usually prefers to trash talk his enemy, even mid-fight, and incorporates many curses into his speech.
History[]
Born Raymond Han Petrie on a farm as the only child of two relatively poor parents, Raymond generally had to find ways to entertain himself with objects around the small, old house, choosing to create elaborate mechanisms akin to Rube Goldberg machines, a complex process for a simple task. The way everything fell into line felt natural to Raymond, who took much interest in making these mechanisms, much to the dismay of his father, Joseph Petrie, who wished that Raymond would spend more time learning how to work the fields instead of fiddling with petty objects in a fruitless effort to achieve a simple goal. Regardless of his fathers opinions, Raymond continued up until he was around ten years old, where an accident involving a gardening scythe and a misplace contraption led to the gruesome decapitation of his mother, Marie Petrie. In a furious rage, Joseph relentlessly beat his son nearly daily, and Raymond lived the life of an abused child until he was sixteen. During his traumatic teenage years, Raymond was desperate to get away from the abuse he endured nearly daily, locked in his room upstairs. He turned to meditation, and gradually began using meditation as an outlet for his stress. When he was sixteen he escaped from the small rural settlement and hitchhiked until he came upon the famed City of Vale, where he took to the streets, owning nothing but the clothes on his back, a grey cloak and standard civilian attire, and begged for money for a living. Meditation had become part of his normal routine by now, and eventually the memories of earlier days had passed. He lived well for a beggar, at least.
Until one fateful day, on which he encountered an angry group of muggers in a back alley who refused to believe that Raymond, looking rather well-fed and rested for a homeless beggar, did not have anything of value. He fought valiantly against the five thugs by using a nearby wooden four-by-four to strike down the first mugger, who approached him wielding a baton, hitting him over the head with so much force that the plank broke in half and rendered him unconscious. The only other mugger who carried a weapon, a small knife, came next, and lunged forward only to be dodged by a quick sidestep and subsequently tripped by Raymond. The mugger fell to the floor with a thud, however still conscious, and the small pocketknife shattered next to his body. The remaining three muggers came at him at the same time, overwhelming his ability to fight and therefore overpowering him easily, and in mere seconds Raymond was on the ground, curled up and squealing. The mugger who was tripped had only become angrier, and searched for the baton while his affiliates continued kicking Raymond's body. Once he found it, the four muggers proceeded to beat Raymond into a pulp, until finally a mysterious figure swooped in and dropped all four of the muggers rather easily. They scrambled off, dragging away their unconscious ally.
And then there laid Raymond, lying bloodied and half-dead in an alleyway. A strange way to go for a humble son of a farmer.
A sudden sound woke him from his "slumber", and his eyes opened only to be barraged by light. Squinting, he could barely make out the outline of what appeared to be a woman. Upon closer examination, the woman kneeling next to him appeared to be middle-aged, and waved her hands in front of his face. The first words uttered by Raymond were "am I dead".
The woman turned out to be Caerulea Lyricia, mother of two and one of the few remaining teachers of the martial arts form "Grimm Chance". After helping Raymond recover from the alleyway fight, she rented him a cheap apartment in Downtown Vale, not far from the studio that was rented out for her classes. She then offered to pay rent for a limited period alongside free lessons for the Beowolf style of Grimm Chance, to which he agreed to partake in.
The apartment wasn't particularly in a good neighborhood, and it seemed to be a tad old and in need of renovation. Of course, having lived on the streets for the past few months of his life, it was all good. The first thing that entered his mind was income. The woman in the alleyway said she'd only pay for six months, which meant that Raymond had to find work besides sitting on a corner and pleading for money from passerbys. He eventually picked up work at a local comic and game store, not particularly Raymond's cup of tea, but it paid well enough to make Raymond financially stable. He also purchased new clothing, in particular the attire he still wears to the present.
He began to attend the lessons on Grimm Chance as scheduled, and proved to be quite an efficient student. He showed proficiency in the power of his strikes and his agility, the two coupled together making for the ideal Beowolf user. However, Raymond had a thirst for more, and eventually came upon a premier set of bladed brass knuckles, advertised to be purely handcrafted and made out of the finest steel, folded a thousand times. He pooled some funds together and managed to haggle with the shop owner, eventually becoming the owner of two fine weapons for use in unarmed combat. The two knucklers, as he called them, were never presented to his teacher, but were always carried with him for extra defense.
One fateful day, he came upon the same group of muggers again, one of which was missing, and the four who were present hopped on the opportunity to get back at Raymond once more. He pulled the twin knucklers on them and coupled with the Beowolf style he quickly dropped his foes, this time severely wounding all of them. The four escaped, hoping to never encounter "the damned kid ever again". With blood on his weapons and hands he turned to go home. A figure sat and watched from a distance, sipping a cup of coffee.
He took up hiking in the months following the encounter, and often took treks out of the city and into the forest. On his third trek around the woods, an enraged Beowolf ambushed him, and he had nothing to defend himself with aside from his martial arts and the twin knucklers. He charged the Beowolf, ducking under it's arm as it lunged forwards, and swiped at it's exposed skin with the sharp knucklers. A flurry of attacks followed, and while a gash was present on Raymond's right torso, he emerged victorious over the beast, having used nothing but his fists and the will to survive. The same man was overlooking the forest, and saw the beast get taken down by a seemingly regular civilian. Upon a closer look, the professor from Beacon Academy saw that the civilian was a teenager, precisely at seventeen years old. After reporting to his superior, it was ruled that an appointment was to be made to see if Raymond was capable of attending Beacon. An interview showed that Raymond had potential to become a Hunter, and he was enrolled into the ranks of Beacon Academy.
Before his departure to the academy, he purchased a custom-made armor vest, designed to be worn like a life jacket, and made to absorb blows like the ones from the Beowolf who made a deep line across his chest. He now had a bright future ahead of him, perhaps one of a Hunter. Something that his father certainly would be surprised at hearing.
Trivia[]
This character has gone through multiple different iterations after it's creation in June of last year.
Han is a shortened term for "Han blue" or "Han purple", a shade of blue/purple devised in China.