Name: Bianca Strohmann
Filed Under: Team: RSBD - Bianca Strohmann
Age: 17
Race: Human
From: Mistral
Weapon: Webendämmerung (Variable Range Combat Pike)
Aura Color: Navy Blue
Semblance: Limited reality manipulation
Partner: Drake Maroon
Appearance:
Bianca is a tall girl with bright blonde hair, blue eyes, and a lithe, strong build. She typically wears dark, high-waisted pants and matching combat boots, and a blue quilted jacket made with her father’s patented ballistic weave. Recently, she’s taken to wearing thin leather gloves. She keeps Webendämmerung in a holster on her back.
Personality:
Bianca believes in community and the inherent worth of people, and she carries a deep-seated loyalty to Mistral and its citizens. However, acknowledging people’s basic worth and actually liking them are different things, and she reserves the right to decide who or what counts as “people” to her.
Raised in Mistral’s halls of power, Bianca is socially astute, unimpressed by authority, wealth, or prestige, and imbued with the understated, matter-of-fact willfulness of someone who grew up in a world that was often shaped to accommodate her. She strives to be a solid, dependable presence for the groups she cares about, but her stubbornness can get the best of her; she has no patience or goodwill for anything or anyone that refuses to conform to her intentions. (See: all the sighs and snarking directed at Beacon Academy and its staff.)
Abilities:
Weapon: Webendämmerung (Duskweaver), an Ahlspiess that can also function as a kyoketsu-shoge and a combat shotgun.
[Weapon design by @notsojollyjo]
Fighting Style: Thanks to her previous...extracurriculars, Bianca is all about efficiency and quick wins. She’ll hit hard and fast, and she’s not above fighting dirty if it means an easy end to the encounter.
Semblance: Bianca’s Semblance allows her to tear and sew tiny seams in the fabric of reality; this comes easiest to her when she can get a conceptual grasp of an object or material’s essence. Right now, she can manipulate space, allowing her to “speed up” by folding distances between points, or teleport short distances outright. To a more limited extent, she can also “re-sew” damage to her body. Due to the strain on her Aura reserves, though, she only uses this regeneration when absolutely needed.
Background:
Born and raised in the city of Mistral, Bianca is the daughter of Abigail, a surgeon and member of the Mistral Council, and Jacob, a materials engineer. Her parents strove to keep her childhood as normal as possible, even eschewing private lessons in favor of classes at Sanctum.
The summer before her enrollment at Haven Academy, Bianca figured in a major accident. Her devastated parents pulled her Academy application and tried to direct her to more conventional professions. After long, fraught negotiations, however, they eventually relented to continued Huntress training. But Abigail refused to let Bianca stay in Mistral, where she had all the means to endanger herself again.
No, Abigail decided, a fresh start was in order. It would not be found in Atlas, where her daughter would have to serve in another kingdom's military. Nor would it be in Vacuo, that lawless excuse for a nation. Instead, Abigail turned to Headmaster Lionheart for help with a last-minute solution.
Bianca, despite her objections, was enrolled in Beacon.
Relationships:
Driven mostly by their designation as a team, Bianca has committed to looking out for the rest of RSBD and fostering good ties with them. As for MERA, she frowns upon Eissen’s and Adrian’s apparent snootiness, though she does respect Marche’s sensibility, and she’s found herself fighting alongside Raphtalia often enough to develop a favorable opinion of her. Overall, she’s not very close to them, though the recent fight at the docks is starting to change that. As for the rest of Beacon, Bianca’s sentiments generally range from apathy to exasperation and disdain.
Trivia:
Inspired by: Rumpelstiltskin
Name inspiration: “Bianca” is an Italian name meaning “white,” derived from the Germanic blanc. “Strohmann” is a Germanic surname meaning “straw-dealer.” It’s also reminiscent of the straw man argument, which covertly replaces a proposition with a different one that is then attacked.
Clip Source: Beacon Academy Monitoring System | Camera: Hall H - 05
[A grid of video thumbnails. A cursor selects one, and the footage expands to screen width. The video player opens to a clip of pastries, fruit, and plates of bacon hurtling through the air. With a sharp click, the camera zooms in.]
A small girl with pale blonde hair skates across the hall on thick slices of buttered toast. The bread is strapped to the feet of her sleek, futuristic bodysuit. In each hand, she clutches a crusty baguette.
[System labels appear onscreen, a web of spider-thin lines connecting faces to names:
ROSE, RUBY
SCHNEE, WEISS
BELLADONA, BLAKE
EISENGARD, STEIN
The girl’s label reads: ANDRAZEL, RAPHTALIA.]
A pair of boosters unfold from the ankles of Raphtalia’s armor. With a quick snap of her wrist, Raphtalia activates a thruster on her right shoulder, sending her into a rapid spin.
Straight ahead, a grotesque fort assembled from upended tables and vending machines looms. Members of JNPR crouch in its shadow, each busy with their own opponents.
[As the camera focuses on the fort, labels blip to life:
VALKYRIE, NORA, swinging a watermelon hammer at MORRISON, MARCHE.
MAROON, DRAKE and ARC, JAUNE fending off a hail of peanuts.
Somewhere close by, obscured by the fort and a lurid pink van: XIAO LONG, YANG.]
Raphtalia extends her arms and spins faster and faster—a deadly rotor chopping through the battlefield, impervious to attack. Stray soda cans and rogue pies bounce off her. She rams through tables and chairs.
Too late, Nora spots the whirlwind headed their way.
“STOP! My castle!”
The fort shatters with a resounding crash. Table legs, soda cans, nuts and bolts spray all over the hall as the structure collapses in on itself, a baguette-and-biosuit hole blown clean through its base. Raphtalia emerges on the other side of the wreckage, spinning in stuttering circles.
“YES!” Marche pumps his fist, triumphant. “Your feeble Atlesian forts are no match for our superior combat armor!”
[The impact sends a shudder through the camera. It loses focus for a moment before scanning for new movement to follow. The sensors skip over Raphtalia and hone in on the pink van, now fully visible with the fort reduced to rubble.]
As the eviscerated fort spills the last of its parts out onto the floor, a flash of green skitters onto the roof of RSBD’s bakery van.
[A new label latches onto it: ANURA, RANI]
Beside her, a watermelon-frog construct lands with an ominous thump. Its mouth stretches into an unnaturally wide smile. Rani grins and points at the members of RWBY. The construct’s smile yawns open—and it spits watermelon after watermelon at its master’s targets.
Ruby, Weiss, and Blake scatter under the assault. Yang stands her ground, punching through every fruit that flies towards her.
“Alright, Suika! Nice work!” Rani thumps the butt of her spear on the van’s roof and calls out, “Hey, Biancs! Time for a combo!”
A muffled reply comes from within the van, and Rani lets out an excited whoop.
“HERE WE GO!”
She leaps off the roof. Wisps of golden light bleed out from her outline, and Rani disappears.
“YANG!” Ruby calls, searching the air frantically. “Be careful!”
Yang nods in response, sinks into a defensive crouch—and twenty feet above her, Rani pops back into existence, plummeting towards Yang in a flurry of breadcrumbs and golden threads of light.
“BAKED! DOOM!”
Lifting her arms above her head, Yang braces for impact. It’s not enough. The full force of Rani and her baguette-spear slam into her, sending Yang tumbling backwards into a pile of rubble.
Rani somersaults clear. The van’s door flies open.
A blur of blue and gold sprints out of the vehicle, straight towards Yang.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Yang growls, raising her fists. Fire leaps up around her. She narrows bright red eyes. “You are toast, Strohmann!”
She cocks a punch. Bianca stops just short of contact, pivoting her weight and momentum into a tremendous swing of her pike. Ember Celica rams into her jaw. Webendämmerung slips just under Yang’s blow, catching her across the middle and catapulting her through the roof and into the sky.
Both of them are out.
In the distance, somebody explodes through the hall’s massive doors. A manic roar of a laugh punches through the din.
“MERA! REINFORCEMENTS HAVE ARRIVED!”
[The screen returns to the video gallery. The cursor re-selects the file, along with a few others. A prompt asks: “Append?”
The cursor clicks “Yes,” and the screen switches to a different module: files bearing the names, team affiliations, and photos of Beacon’s student body. The system highlights the members of RWBY, JNPR, RSBD, and MERA.
A small loading pane appears, before being replaced with a new prompt: “Update complete.”]
[Blur of color as the player speeds through the footage. Someone hits pause, and the video resolves into a clear image. The clip starts playing at normal speed.]
Billows of pink smoke fill the alley. Bianca and Drake stand back to back, weapons drawn. Two burly men in identical black suits and red ties bear down on them from either side. They’re armed with sharp knives and even sharper grins, and one of them is moving in for a strike.
He slashes at the bleeding wound in Bianca’s side.
“What did I ever do to you?” she asks, exasperated, batting the man’s knife away with her Ahlspiess. A grimace mars her features, though, and her hand flies to her ribs. She falls to one knee.
Behind her, Drake is busy fending off the other goon, and Stein is a few feet farther off, barely visible through the clouds of pink Dust. The man in front of Bianca breaks into a wider grin and leaps into the air, blades flashing. She scrabbles to block what will clearly be a devastating blow.
It never lands. A streak of blue and white cuts through the smoke, and the shrill clang of metal striking metal pierces the air. A yelp of pain, the crash of body against pavement. Raphtalia rises from her crouch, unfazed, a solid, imposing presence that towers far above the man whose knife didn’t even dent the plating on her back.
“Wait — what?” Bianca unfurls slowly from her braced position, blinking up at Raphtalia in obvious surprise. “That was — Thanks.”
The briefest flash of gold illuminates the eyes of Raphtalia’s armor. She nods in acknowledgment, and a short blast of steam hisses through the joints of her metal plating.
