Mavro Nerada

Mavro Nerada is a first year student at Beacon Academy, member of team LMFL and partner of Leah Ragon.

Appearance
Mavro is usually seen wearing light, dark-colored clothing, usually plain shirts covered by a hoodie or a jacket. He also enjoys wearing rather tight clothing, even if it hinders his movements slightly. He sees no points to accesories so he avoids wearing them if he can. His symbol is stamped on the front side of his pants, usually covered by his upper clothing.

He has skinny complexion, with visible wolf ears as faunus traits, one of them scarred. His eyes are bright orange, and seem to shine briefly before his Semblance activates.

Personality
Mavro doesn't like being alone, and has trouble keeping down his voice, or his thoughts to himself, often talking more than he should, although he pushes himself to mind his words as best as he can. The company of people is what he likes best, besides enjoying nice days outside. He places his teammates over everything, and he cares for them as if they were family. His faunus senses are well developed, being able to hear and differentiate sounds from great distances. He's very clumsy when it comes to romantic relationships, and he even fails to recognize them when prompted about it. He enjoys training sessions and field missions the most out of all Beacon activities.

It's really difficult for Mavro to open up about the past events of his life to anyone, even his teammates. He hides those thought from anyone, sometimes forcing his cheerful attitude to hide them.

Mavro can be very picky with what people wear for clothing, and tries to compare with what he thinks it could be useful for hiding and going unnnoticed.

Strengths

 * Marksmanship: One of Mavro's strongest points, his accuracy and knowledge of his preferred weapon guarantees almost every shot to hit.
 * Stealth skills: In pair with his natural nimbleness as a faunus, Mavro trained to be able to go unnoticed almost at will, his movements being silent and quick, and well paired with his Semblance.
 * Sense of direction: Mavro has an easy time recognizing landmarks and understanding terrain properties, being able to quickly feel oriented on the field.
 * Shadow manipulation: Mavro is able to change the shape of the shadows he creates with his Semblance and change them into another one of his creation, although these shapes won't have any physical form.

Weaknesses

 * Very slow reloading time: The magazine of Penumbra only allows for one bullet to be loaded at a time, and the process of reloading is slow, taking several moments to complete.
 * High stamina consumption: His close-combat fighting style, rampant and with a focus on evasive maneuvers, alongside with the nature of his Semblance cause him to grow tired very quickly.
 * Sensitive hearing: His faunus heightened hearing has the consequence to be very sensible to sharp, high pitched noises, which cause him to flinch or even feel pain depending on the nature of the sound.
 * Fear of flying: His phobia usually gets in the way of his missions, causing him physical and mental distress, and often having to rest even after short flights to regain his composure.

Semblance
Mavro's Semblance is Darkness. This power allows him to create the illusion of darkness in a room, or around a certain area, effectively controlling the light levels his target can see. Due to this power being an illusion and not an actual creation of darkness (which is impossible to do), his Semblancle affects beings that could normally see in the dark as well, such as other faunus and creatures of Grimm. This however, is very taxing on his stamina, and requires high levels of concentration while doing so. Most of the times he won't be able to shoot accurately for great distances while his Semblance is active. His Aura is also drained quickly while this power is active.

Weapon
Penumbra Diplasios: His weapon consists of a pair of blades the size of a scimitar, joined together by a chain that usually goes around his back while fighting. These blades can join to turn into a bolt action sniper rifle. Incrusted in the middle of the chain there's a yellow Dust crystal, which can be activated to increase the speed of his attacks briefly, or to increase the weapon's swing speed.

The rifle has a magazine capacity for one bullet, so he has to reload everytime he shoots. In return, the size of the bullet he shoots is very large, and it's able to pierce many targets in one shot. The hilts of the blades are pretty big and form a guard around the handle.

Background
Mavro grew up in a rural part of Vale, very close to the outskirts of the Emerald Forest.Never longing for much than what he had, Mavro lived with his father quietly, by themselves and not having much contact with other people.His father, a tall and strong man, was always very protective of him, and he was strong enough to fend off the occasional Grimm attacks that they had to endure.

Mavro's father didn't allowed him to assist him when they had to defend themselves, despite the constant pleas of his son to let him help his father, and it was usually ordered to hide until the danger ceased.

However, one time, as Mavro waited his father's signal to come out, he heard instead a raging scream followed by silence. Gathering his courage, he decided to come, only to stare at splurts of blood all around his home, no signs of his beloved father, and only the sight of a giant bird monster flying off in the distance.

Months of grief passed as Mavro tried his hardest to relate more with society on his own, enlisting for various training schools to develop skills to honor his father's memory. Having no records or past experience in combat, he got rejected countless times and he had to build a reputation for himself slowly, becoming a self-taught marksman and rogue, helping himself with his knowledge of the forest surrounding his old home for honing his newly found skills.

These hardships were enough to make him improve and enabled him to start his career as Hunstman student, as he decided to dedicate is life to the extermination of the Creatures of Grimm, to avoid incidents like the one he suffered as a child.

At present time, his team feels like a family to him, as he slowly grows out from his grief.

Trivia

 * Mavro likes lasagna a lot.
 * Mavro often repeats a sound whenever he feels distressed. "Ghhh..."
 * The word "Mavro" stands for "black" in Greek; his second name, "Vashta", is a reference to the TV show Doctor Who, in which the Vashta Nerada were an alien type of creature that resembled a shadow. Vashta Nerada stands for "the shadow that melts the flesh".
 * The name of Mavro's weapon, Penumbra Diplasios, means "Double Shadow".
 * Mavro is better than Kutoj.