Darius "Teeth" SilvergiltName: Darius Silvergilt
Age: 15
Race: Human(/shark???)
Height & Weight: Of average height, but a rather slight, somewhat underweight appearance.
Primary: Knight (Sword)
Secondary: Medic
Strengths: Darius is a dedicated worker. Although his perfectionism can occasionally get the best of him, he is highly motivated and is regularly among the top students in his grade. Not that he really has much of a choice, of course, but still. He's also very good at scaring small children by smiling at them. And adults. Most people, really.
Weaknesses: Darius has a perfectionist streak, which in the past has made him reluctant to share his work or put in too much effort into anything he couldn't do exactly right, however he's had to seriously work on that since coming to the Academy. Although he enjoys a dip in the water as much as anyone, he is deathly afraid of anything that might be living
within the water. The ocean is right out. The boy is maybe a bit too serious for his age, which makes him a bit awkward around his peers.
Physical Capabilities: Well... he's a pretty good swimmer. He's got decent endurance, too. Pretty average otherwise, really. Oh also he has gills and his mouth is full of absurdly sharp teeth. But pretty average otherwise.
Backgroundtl;dr: Evil mermaid demon curses a child to become 20% fish.Darius was born into a fairly low class family. Well, just lower middle class really. His parents were boring pencil pushers in fairly standard office jobs, and his heritage had never known even a single member with the ability to see--and therefore to hunt--the demonic forces of the world. It is unfortunate that he was born into this family, because had he been born to a couple more knowledgeable of those demonic forces, perhaps they might not have laughed and assumed Darius had a new imaginary friend when he introduced them to the mermaid.
The bay was a popular place to live if you wanted to see the water from your back yard, but couldn't pay for real beachfront and a private yacht. Even before the mermaid, Darius would catch fleeting glimpses of a world his family could not see. To his parents it was just the work of the hyperactive mind of a child. And so he grew up, never once realizing that he was at all out of the ordinary.
The trouble began at the tender age of seven. Oh, at first, nobody recognized it as trouble at all. Indeed by all accounts it looked like the average child of an average family enjoying an average day at the decidedly average strip of sand and gravel that passed for a beach. Having grown up here, Darius was confident in his rock climbing skills, and his parents confident in their ability to judge how far was too far and when to reign in their child. It was in a little cove, just out of sight of his family, where he met the pretty lady that seemed to like him an awful lot.
When he returned to his parents to tell them all about the fun fish lady he'd met, they were a bit worried at first. But a visit to his little cove made them relax a bit; where he pointed, they saw only a few large fish, pretty and perhaps out of season. He'd simply found a spot where the fish liked to swim and that was that.
It would be another several months before the incident. Summer was winding down into fall; in the intravening time, Darius had visited the fun fish lady whenever they went to the beach, exchanging sea shells with her and children's gossip about summer vacation and climbing trees and kelp forests and those wacky mermaids. On this day, the mermaid had bad news to give to Darius. It would be getting too cold soon for her to stay here, and she and her mermaid friends would be on their way to warmer seas soon. Darius expressed his great sadness at the news; the mermaid expressed her wish that he could come with her; Darius expressed a desire to ask his parents; the mermaid became insistently urgent; Darius became suspicious; the mermaid became forceful; Darius became
loud.
Like any good mother, the sound of her child screaming caused Darius' mother to immediately spring into action. She didn't know what might be going on back there--all she needed to know was that her boy was crying for help and whoever was causing it would be in a body cast soon.
What she saw when she barged in on the scene was as terrifying as anything in the Young Parents' Guide to Child Emergencies. Her son, crying for help, as a force invisible to her dragged him kicking and screaming into the water. Channeling her inner mother bear at this point, Darius' mother very nearly roared, and lifted Darius above her head. Any spectator with demon vision would have seen that she even lifted the mermaid along with him, before it deemed this one a lost cause and released its grip. The demon would escape here, but this would not be the end.
At this point, Darius' parents decided to bring in the hunters. True, their little community was hardly a blip on the hunters' radar, but news of an aquatic demon attempting to kidnap children around the bay would make enough waves to bring someone in. A team of hunters was in the area within the week, consisting of an exorcist, a medic, and a knight. At their recommendation, Darius was checked over for signs of possible demonic influence, and during this checkup it was confirmed that he had the hunter's eyes. Thankfully for all involved he did not appear to be harmed by the demon, but just in case his parents were told to bring him back if anything out of the ordinary should happen.
As you can probably guess, this would not be the end. Within a few days, Darius had developed a curious rash on his neck. Worried that this might be more demonic business, the parents took their child to the hunters for help. Lo and behold, it was indeed more demonic business; according to the hunters, this was the beginnings of a curse the demon had set on him. As a parting gift, the demon had set his impressionable young body to mutating into some sort of horrific fish/boy hybrid.
Left unchecked, Darius would lose the ability to live on land before transforming entirely into what appeared to be some species of shark. As cool as a kid would find it to discover they were turning into a shark, most parents would be horrified to learn their child would soon be a fish, and Darius' parents were no exception. With the help of the hunters, they made an appointment with the best supernatural healer they could afford.
It would be two weeks before their healer was finally available. By this point Darius had developed gills and his teeth had been replaced with rows of terrifying needles. His skin had also broken out in patches of rough scales. His parents, meanwhile, had developed a lot of stress. But it would be fixed soon and their boy would be back to normal...
Well, he would be back to normal if they had more money. As it happens, their healer could only halt the curse where it was; rolling the changes back was deeper magic, and would require a much more intensive--and much more expensive--procedure. Although the changes were frightening to think about, they were fairly minor in scope, and for the most part Darius still looked and acted like a normal boy. He was now at least 20% fish, but he was still alive and still capable of living a reasonably normal life, and in the end maybe 20% fish is the best a parent can hope for out of a child anyway.
Eventually, the news came to Darius and his family that the hunters had been successful and eliminated all traces of demonic influence in their little neighborhood and would be moving out again to the next emergency. Before then, however, they decided to make a stop at Darius' house. It was at this point that they recommended to his parents that they send him to the Demon Hunters' Academy.
They were at first opposed to the idea, the mother more so than the father. Darius thought it was quite a neat idea, but nobody tends to consult nine year olds about such decisions. It took some debate, during which many good points were brought up, but eventually his parents relented. Hunting was dangerous work, but the Academy would keep him safe and teach him far more about his capabilities than they could. Besides, becoming a hunter wasn't necessarily
required; perhaps Darius would graduate from the Academy and take a nice safe job in accounting.
Two years and a number of loan and scholarship applications later and Darius would find himself at his first day of school.
Fast forward now to the present, where fifteen year old Darius, a B-ranked student, has been barred from the annual field trip due to a terrible misunderstanding. There is no way that
he would ever break the rules in such a flagrant way; his financial position was much too precarious for that. Any screw-ups--academically or behaviorally--could cause him to lose a number of the scholarships that funded his continued existence here at the school. And that would be terrible. But the best thing he could do right then was not rock the boat.
Other:Darius is top of his class academically, but not so much physically. Though an odd set of traits for a Knight, he excels at strategic thinking and can often outthink his opponents if not overpower them. If he had the physical skills to back all that up, he'd probably be rank A; conversely, if he didn't have his minor sharky advantages, he'd probably drop to C.
Although he has not been able to 100% confirm it, Darius is ~90% sure he is a tiger shark. A magical tiger shark.
------
KNIGHTType: Sword
Weapon: A horribly mangled and slightly rusted piece of scrap metal that Darius forged into a sword with the help of a metalworking teacher. He can't really afford anything better.
Weapon Abilities: It has been known to give its victims a mean tetanus infection.
Fighting Style: A cautious fighter. Prefers to keep his distance while assessing the enemy, and has no problem ordering people around if he sees an opening that can be exploited.
MEDICType: Knows basic first aid.
Detail: 4.0 GPA in health and anatomy, baby
Healing Capabilities: 5/100 (Chances are his first aid kit doesn't have supplies to treat more than that, assuming moderately serious wounds)
Tools: He carries a first aid kit on his back during mock missions.
SOUL WEAPONEffect: Darius' soul weapon causes weapons and objects he is holding to become sharper, pointier, and more brittle. In addition, pieces that break off (usually in an opponent's skin...) grow back with a material not entirely unlike teeth.
Endurance: Passively, Darius can maintain a regenerative effect on his weapon for as long as he's in contact with it; however, regeneration is slow and comparable to the rate at which a person would heal. Actively causing an item to regenerate or sprout teeth requires more energy, and he can power a rapid transformation from non-pointy to pointy for about two minutes on a small object. Useful if you ever really, really need to bean someone with a rock covered in spikes.