Amber (Amy) Thysteine/Overview

"Fragments of the past can always be altered for any given situation. Memories aren't what define someone's true character; your actions in the here and now are the only things that matter."

Old Look
Amy has long blonde hair that stops half-way down her back. Her first outfit was a purple school uniform-like outfit (that was gifted to her when she exited the hospital she stayed at when she was found). Her eyes are a shade of violet and match the gemstones (Dust Crystal) in her red scarf and in the cufflinks on her sleeves. Amy also wears long dark purple socks and a pair of dress shoes on her feet.

New Look
It would be noticed that Amy has had a drastic change in certain areas of her appearance. Her hair for instance has gone from blonde to a light rose. Her new outfit is primarily colored purple and white being the overcoat top, skirt, and stockings. On her feet Amy wears a pair of heels and accessory wise she keeps her red scarf and cufflinks.

When she was Amber:
At first Amber wasn't the type of person who wanted to get close to people. After remembering one fearful memory, she's been reluctant to trust anyone. If she'd talk to you, the conversation wouldn't be very long and would only be about one of her tasks. She prefered to do everything by herself, missions, training, etc. because she just didn't know how to express herself. Her personality soon changed after being put on Team AMBR, because she learned to trust the members of the team after their first mission.

Now as Amy:
When you get to know her, Amy can be really nice. She's friendly to most people, especially her teammate Rina who thinks of her as a big sister, and can get really defensive when she's in danger. Sometimes she has a tendancy to be quite motherly at times, which can come off as a slight annoyance.

Amy's also quite the intellecutal, being one who values logic over absurd theories. Her grades never go below an A, due to spending lots of time studying before, after, and during class. She takes learning very seriously, and is always enthusiastic to discover something new.

Sometimes she can get mad when Rina and Blaine end up joking around too much, but she still enjoys their company. When she's angry, Amy doesn't hold back any punches; she'll say exactly what she feels about the situation at hand. Her temper can get the best of her at times, but it's not as bad as before the team got together. Back then, her anger was a major distraction to her mentally and caused her fighting performance to drop greatly; it's not a big problem now, but it still happens.

Her nice nature, changes into something more fierce and serious when in a battle. Amy isn't the type of girl to play with her enemies, and likes to finish them off as quick as possible. She's not the one to get cocky and underestimate her opponent either (that's Blaine's job); any comments on her enemy come after they've been defeated.

When at Beacon, Amy likes to spend time reading a good book, or studying in the library (yes she's quite the nerd). She's also one who has high appreciation for elegance and proper etiquette, so her manners tend to be on the formal side. Sometimes she'll be a part of Blaine's unusual tricks and pranks either as an accomplice, or as the target. If she's the one getting pranked, Amy will definitely use him for target practice.

Weapon & Abilities
Amy uses two hand held ring blades, or chakram, in combat called her "Lunar Graces" and follows a fighting style called Papillon's Grace. They can be thrown and will come back to her just as a boomerang would. She can also use them in close ranged combat, slashing enemies with grace, while implementing a spinning motion here and there (her battle style is similar to Colette Brunel from Tales of Symphonia with a little bit of Cheria Barnes from Tales of Graces; Dust casting based off of Cheria as well).

Lightning (Dust) Casting
Amy utilizes Amethyst Dust Crystals (Lightning Dust that has been altered artificially for the effect of purple coloring), the ones in her cufflinks as well as the one in her scarf, with electrical properties that let her throw bolts of lightning at her opponents. Her bolts can vary in number and size depending on how they are cast. When she activates her Dust crystals with her Aura, they glows brightly, and the palms of her hands start to shine as well. The ones from her palms are usually small most of the time and don't cause much damage, but they can be used for multiple quick attacks. She can also imbue her Lunar Graces with the element of lightning for a short time to increase damage and may inflict temporary paralysis.

She can also summon stronger lightning attacks with her Dust crystals as well; by concentrating hard enough, she can create a circular violet glyph through a Dust casting method on the ground, air, or walls to determine where these powerful bolts will strike (akin to Glynda with her hailstorm attack). Perfoming attacks this way takes up a lot of time and energy to use, so this technique is used less frequently (especially on airborne enemies as they are harder to hit).

Aura/Semblance abilities
Since she cannot defend well against an attack with her Lunar Graces, Amy uses her Aura as well as her Semblance to lessen the impact of physical damage done to her like most people do. It appears pink in color.

With her Semblance "Lunar Phase", she can conjure up a barrier or shield as a form of protection through the usage of glyphs. Amy uses a base circular glyph, with a transparent center to start with (New Moon phase). Within that center, Amy can create a moon to take place in that center space, utilizing 3 other particular phases of the moon for 3 different effects with similar abilities (not including Crescent).

New Moon : Starting phase when using her Semblance. Has no effect, and is merely the in-between phase when changing phases.

Full Moon : Barrier

The barrier she creates is transparent and lavender in color, that is as round as a sphere in size, which envelopes the person she's using it on, and takes a lot of energy to maintain. It can be used to protect herself or an ally, even contain an enemy briefly, as long as Amy herself is focused. It can increase in size, but the bigger it is makes it harder for her to keep it from breaking.

Combined with her Dust, she can coat the exterior of the barrier with electricity so when an enemy touches it, they receive a small shock in return. For a somewhat opposite effect, she can create a small sphere with lightning inside: useful for illuminating an area or creating small bombs of condensed electricity to throw at her foes.

Gibbous : Bubble

This phase is quite similar to the Full Moon in barrier aspect, however, this form is weaker in defensive properties. The barrier summoned with this technique is more squishy and and can be used to hault an opponents attack upon contact like some sort of netting. It can even be used to soften landings or bounce up into the air.

Quarter Moon : 2D shield

Amy isn't limited to making barriers only; in this phase, she can make her glyph tangible creating a flat shield, but that can withstand only a number of hits before breaking. This glyph can be moved at her own will, so it can become a platform to ride on, and even move it to quickly help out an ally covering their blind spot. (You can say it's similar to teenage Gwen Tennison's abilities in Ben 10 Alien Force, Small example I found). She can make multiple of these, though sticks to forming two shields max as it would be hard to focus on anymore than she can handle.

Sometimes, she'll uses it as a small table to put a cup of tea on, protect her from the rain, or a stack of books back at school.

Crescent Moon : This glyph phase is mainly used when casting her powerful Dust attacks as discussed above. It's not exactly a part of her Semblance, just there to stay in theme.

 Basic Abilities : Her normal abilities are basic agility and speed. She can jump high and propell even higher by making platforms with her glyphs to jump, or just step up on. She doesn't have much in the strength department, but she's more Dust combative and defensive (adds a supportive mage to the team if you wanna think like an RPG).

Backstory
A lone girl, missing about 7 years of past memories, is found in the depths of a Dust mine unconscious and is taken to a hospital in Vale. The doctors there say that her body had once been infused with Dust over a few years, though are unsure on the reasoning behind it. In order to learn more, they asked if she could recall anything from her past, though she only remembers her name, Amber, and one frightening memory. In the memory, she felt like she was strapped down to some sort of table, in what appeared to be a laboratory, and there was a sole figure in a white lab coat who was standing over her. Before getting a good look at the person, her vision fades and she can only recall feeling large amount of pain afterwards.

After the memory had resurfaced in the hospital room, Amber had started to feel paranoid about the doctors around her. She already had gone through so much pain and didn't want to endure anymore torture, and immediately started to shun them. When one of the nurses tried to move to her bedside to comfort her, Amber had discharged last bits of Dust remaining inside her body, and almost electrocuted her. Before making contact with the hospital staff, a certain individual had intervened to block the blow. That person was a Hunter, as well as an instructor at Beacon Academy.

After taking the attack, he took a moment to observe Amber's skills. He determined her strike wasn't strong enough to be fatal, yet had enough power to push the Hunter back slightly. If his Aura wasn't active, he felt that he might've passed out only for a brief moment, and later deduced Amber didn't have murderous intentions. This Hunter then started to believe that with proper training, the young girl could become a successful Huntress. He kept his distance, and talked with the patient until she had calmed down. The Hunter then mentioned he had come from a combat school and taught many students how to refine their abilities. He had then tried to persuade Amber to come to his school, saying he would be able to train her as well as give her a home. He told her that she didn't have to make a decision at the moment as it was a big choice, though Amber had accepted his offer right away; she thought that gaining control of her abilities would be a good idea, especially if she wants to find out more about her past.

She completed two years of training as well as a few solo missions issued to her before being officially enrolled into the school as a first year. Although she was against being put onto a team at first, eventually Amber opens up to the idea and befriends three other students: Mason Donovan, Blaine Azuria, and Rina Rouge. The four of them make up Team AMBR and they are dedicated to unlock the secrets of Amy's past.

Secrets revealed:
On a mission where Amy got separated from the team, she was aided by Alton Royale, member of Team RAVN. He informs her of her true identity, Amber Styner, a human experimented on as a means of finding out what Dust can do to the human body besides just giving them power. He explains to her that they both can't recall their full memories as a side effect of the testing. He then says to Amy that her genes were considered to be slightly unstable and could possibly end her life if she isn't careful.

Alton then says that he is not her enemy, but he cannot disobey his orders from the professor who experimented on them; he isn't allowed to say his name either. When Amy tells her friends this fact, they treat her no differently than they used to. She may be just an abandoned experiment, but she's still a human girl with real feelings.

Amy's Themes
Normal Theme: Lightning's Theme FFXIII



Reasoning: Amy and Lightning actually have a bit in common personality-wise.

Battle Theme: My Sword Shall Open The Way Tales of Xillia



Reasoning: It shows that she's more of a person that fights with grace and elegeance.

Amy's Emblem
Version 1:  Amy's emblem is a cresent moon with a lightning bolt on it (designed on MS paint). The moon represents the shape of her weapons and has a meaning revolving around her memories. The cresent represents the many things she knows, and the black area is all the memories she has lost. The lightning bolt is a reference to her offensive abilities as well as the effectiveness of her normal attacks.

Version 3:  With assistance from my friend, I was able to do the final version for Amy's emblem (v2 is just a crappier version of v3 on paper). The message is still the same, only the fragments of the moon represent her memory rather than the surrounding area.

The places Amy's emblem are on would be the collar of her top (old outfit), a sticker on her notebooks, and on a pair of earmuffs used for missions in cold weather. In her new outfit it's the buckle of her belt on the overcoat.

Extras

 * Her name is supposed to be a play on words as a reference to the gem Amethyst (Amy Thysteine).
 * Her birth name is revealed to be Amber Styner by Alton.
 * Although her name is Amber, an orange gem, her color reference is Amethyst, a purple gem (though retains both color references).
 * Her original last name "Styner", and new last name "Thysteine" are both based off the name Stein, which is a cognate of Sten being an Old Norse name meaning "Stone".
 * Her birth name can mean "Amber Stone" and the name she goes by "Amethyst Stone".
 * Opposite of Rina within Team AMBR's "Solar System" motiff, Amy represents the moon in her attacks and emblem.
 * I had just realized this within my writings: her attitude, love for studying, and concept of friendship all lead up to being similar to the unicorn (now alicorn) Twilight Sparkle. Weird Brony Sub-conscience. XD
 * When taken to the hospital, Amy is 16 years old, so her memories from ages 9-15 are missing.
 * After learning of her unfortunate past from her brother, Amy grew a fear of losing control of her abilities, and in the end fading away into Dust.


 * Amy had trained under the private instruction of Althea Pallas during her two preliminary years at Beacon.
 * When coming up with her weapon name, Lunar Graces, I wasn't thinking of Tales of Graces, being the game where part of the inspiration for her came from.


 * Rina was the one who gave Amber the nickname "Amy". She didn't like it at first, but it grew on her as did their friendship.
 * Although her first drawing said otherwise, Amy's chest size is at least a B-cup.
 * The good-looking art done for Amy was done by my good friend irl, xxlittlecherryxx.
 * Due to certain unintentional similarities, I've changed Amy's hair color as its one of those things making her a bit similar to Colette from ToS.


 * Her fighting style is similar to Cheria Barnes from Tales of Graces F, except she doesn't have an ability to heal allies; she just mainly imitates some of her lightning based artes and physical artes. English Dub example with all offensive spells (including Indignation, PS3 exclusive spell, and All 4 mystic artes). This example includes  mostly her physical artes.
 * After getting started on Tales of Symphonia, I've decided Colette Brunel's tech moves would better fit her fighting style physically, though with some of cheria's artes.