#intelligence-type

[sunder-the-gold]

Beehunter – Boxer’s Concentration

Growing up without a proper education or any formal training, the bear-faunus known only as Beehunter doesn’t realize she’s discovered her Semblance, despite how much she uses it in her daily life.

The harder she hits something (human, Grimm, or inanimate object), the more she understands its structure. After five of her lightning-fast jabs, she can completely grasp her target’s most durable and most vulnerable points, and therefore understand exactly where to strike for maximum damage. Wounds both fresh and old become crystal clear to her, and completely new species of Grimm can hide few surprises from her.

Whether from a limitation of her Semblance or her own careless disregard, Beehunter completely loses this understanding the moment that she begins hitting and Concentrating on a new target. But she seldom leaves a previous opponent intact enough to worry about.

This Semblance works extremely well with her boxing fighting style, which doesn’t allow her to inflict as much damage per attack as swordsmen, but which does allow her to attack far more rapidly.

Whenever possible, she wears her opponent down with a shockingly rapid series of jabs, first probing for their weakness and then exploiting it ruthlessly. Otherwise, she concentrates on her defense, floating around attacks and launching stinging counterattacks when an opening presents itself, patiently outlasting her opponent.

Much like herself, the potential of Beehunter’s Semblance seems limited by her lack of self-reflection and imagination... but she’s happy and successful in her chosen lifestyle, so finding a way to inspire her to grow presents a challenge.

Though recently, she has shown a remarkable aptitude as a combat instructor and personal trainer. In addition to her own infectious enthusiasm and the considerable skills she can impart, her Semblance alerts her to physiological weaknesses in her training partners and students. So warned, they can then seek appropriate physical conditioning or medical treatment before those problems get them killed.

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Gilda Laurels – Golden Discernment

Yang Xiao Long is loosely based on Goldilocks, of course. She has the golden hair, she fights bears, her Volume 4 clothes had three Ursa heads as a logo, and she sometimes gets Too Hot... but the only time she gets Too Cold is her post-Beacon depression, and this emotional state isn't reflected in her eyes the way her moments of anger are, and her Semblance allows her to generate fire, but not ice.

So I think there's room for a different student Huntress based on the same character, but in a different way. A way that highlights Goldilock's three decisions, each with three choices, and how she always sought The Golden Mean; the perfect choice.

Therefore, Gilda Laurels is an inexhaustibly patient young woman, an exacting perfectionist, and also extremely curious and open to new experiences. She would be absolutely insufferable to everyone around her if not for her Semblance.

Golden Discernment is an intelligence-type Semblance with a number of applications. The first of which allows her photographic recall of any past experience, allowing her to strip away the dross of time and nostalgia to relive her previous experience clearly. Among other things, this allows her to objectively compare a previous experience to her present experience.

Her Semblance's alternative application is to speed up Gilda's perception of the world around her, which makes the world around her seem to slow to a crawl. This extends the amount of time she has to consider and judge her present experience, which helps her to compare it objectively to her past, as well as helping her quickly make decisions for the immediate future.

Finally, Gilda's Semblance seems to render her immune to decision fatigue.

Even though no one really sees her Semblance at work (at most, her eyes might glow while she's using it), Gilda inevitably begins to stand out to people through her quick thinking and confident decisiveness. But she can still make mistakes based on ignorance or personal feelings, giving her detractors an opportunity to mock her for being too clever for her own good.

She might be a student of particularly complicated forms of combat, including the use of raw Fire and Ice Dust.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Fox Alistair – Lights in the Dark

Fox's intelligence-type Semblance allows him to sense the minds of other living creatures, whether man or beast. Grimm don't even register as beasts to his sixth sense, but instead as voids even emptier of thought than inanimate matter. Fox has incredible range with this Semblance, being able to recognize the presence of humans miles away from his location, and recognizing any individuals even at that range if he's sufficiently familiar with them.

Though totally blind since birth, Fox perceives minds as lights. People's lights seem dim to him when they're barely conscious, flickering when they struggle to remain alert, blotted with darkness when afraid for themselves, and burning brightest apparently when the person is most focused on protecting others. (If he knew what colors looked like, would he perceive this light as silver?)

This sixth sense is separate from his ability to sense and measure the Auras of others, as Coco recognizes that as an advanced technique universally available to any huntsman. Though it stands to reason that Fox's Semblance might make it easier for him to practice such a technique.

Fox can't read minds except for the surface thoughts of people consumed by overwhelming emotions, when their mouths are already shouting what is on their minds anyway. But he can offer others a way to silently speak their minds to him.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Livie Collete – Medium

Livie’s Semblance allows her to communicate with the spirits of the departed. The trick is contacting the right spirits, and convincing them to help.

Sifting through the endless dunes of departed souls to find the desired grain of sand requires a number of advantages. The more Livie knows about the departed – name, appearance, personality, relationships, passions – the easier it is to find them, rather than anyone else with similar attributes. Livie also finds it helpful to employ things significant to the departed's life... or death. Standing in the place where they worked their profession, or where they died. Riding their prized horse, wearing their cherished badge of office, holding their signature weapon. Speaking with their loved ones, or confronting their murderer or a life-long enemy.

But finding the right soul is just the beginning; once she makes contact, Livie must endure the wrath of a soul rudely awoken. The departed rest in peace, and so always find it disorienting and even painful to experience the living world once again through her senses. This leaves most souls ill-disposed to communicate, let alone cooperate, and they will lash out and hurt Livie's mind and Aura until she breaks contact.

The departed are most cooperative when Livie calls upon them to help her accomplish something they care about enough to forgive her and work with her. So, learning as much as possible about them not only helps her find them, but also to correctly identify what they will help her accomplish.

That also makes it easier to avoid those souls who want abominable things but have the cunning and subtlety to hide their true goals and appear to work with her toward hers, while steering her to accomplish their ends. One terrible experience cost her enough, already.

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For more posts about Livie’s Semblance or my other RWBY work, please search my tags.

[sunder-the-gold]

“Therapist” – Phobia

This intelligence-type Semblance allows one to understand another living creature’s worst fear simply by looking at them.

Simple fears can be understood instantly, in flashes of insight. A single glance is all one needs to realize someone's greatest fear is a phobia of spiders. Extended study can dredge up visions of the memories surrounding that fear, and further study can peel back the layers of reinterpretation to arrive at the raw, unfiltered experiences.

More complicated fears, such as a mortal terror of a specific person, demand extended study to grasp all of the relevant details, such as the third person's appearance, voice, name, exact relation to the subject, the abilities which make them a threat, and the experiences which inspired the fear.

A person's other fears can be glimpsed when the subject actively thinks of them, but the Semblance cannot dig up more details after the subject's thoughts have moved on.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Peni Parker – Spider-Sense

Peni’s intelligence type Semblance gives her an inhuman level of sensitivity to vibrations, especially those frequencies below and above the limited range normally audible to human hearing. Though since vibrations travel through solid substances faster and more clearly than the air, she usually feels danger coming before she hears it.

Unlike Toph Beifong’s Semblance, Peni’s Spider-Sense doesn’t allow her to detect the presence or locations of particular substances, but Peni’s tactile sensitivity to vibrations is unhindered by plastic, wood, or metal floors. Indeed, metal’s greater conductivity makes it better than stone for transmitting vibrations. Since Peni is not blind, she is not as skilled at constructing mental models of people based on vibrations alone, but this heightened sense still helps her remain aware of people’s locations and movements even when she loses sight of them, and alerts her to people approaching her unseen.

Her vibration sensitivity is so acute as to detect people lying through minute changes in the rate of their breathing and heartbeats, as long as she is touching her subject, or the two of them are in contact with the same solid surface. Despite this sharpness, her Semblance does not render her senses of touch or hearing more vulnerable to overwhelming stimuli.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Toph Beifong – Listening to the Earth

Toph’s intelligence type Semblance gives her a psychic awareness of a wide variety of chemical elements that make up what people call “rock”, rather than the ones which make up what people call “metal”, “air”, or “water”. She can sense the presence and direction of solid land while at sea, as well as rocks flying through the air over her head, to distances at least as far as she would have been able to see, if her eyes were not completely blind.

What’s more, bare-skinned physical contact with rocks grants her hyper-sensitivity to any vibrations running through the minerals. This works almost like echolocation, allowing her to construct mental pictures of people standing or moving upon the same earthen ground on which she stands. This does not work with plastic, wooden, or icy surfaces, and is only as effective through metallic ones as the level of non-metallic impurities in the alloy.

Her acute sensitivity does not render her senses of touch or hearing more vulnerable to overwhelming stimuli, even though it is so sharp as to detect people lying through minute changes in the rate of their breathing and heartbeats, as long as she and her subject are in contact with the same earthen surface.

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[sunder-the-gold]

Zuko — Blindspot

His father favored his sister and ultimately banished him from his sight. In time, Zuko learned kinship with the places of the world that people deem not important enough to observe.

His intelligence-type Semblance gives him an intuitive sense of those places, which to him seem darker and colder in some way he cannot explain to others. Naturally, these are the best places in which to hide, to move unseen, and from which to strike.

He feels the attention of others like something akin to the rays of the sun, alerting him when spotted or assuring him that his allies have his back.

When someone recognizes him, he feels it like an electric thrill down his spine. The strongest shocks reveal that someone has realized his true identity, weaker reactions mean they recognize his face and voice but still believe in his cover identity, and the absence of any reaction assures him that ignorance, disguises, masks, or simple darkness has concealed his identity entirely.

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