Shield - Bio for Pony Kombat Clash

Shield is a unicorn who specializes in shield and portal magic. He's about 21 years old and has already graduated with a degree in electromagnetism and gravitation. After graduating he decided to take a year off and explore the world and see what there is to do. He found the Pony Kombat Clash and decided to enter for the fun of it. He hopes that this tourney will help him sharpen his shield and portal skills.

Shield is a long range fighter. He prefers to stay out of the heat of battle and instead control the battlefield from a distance, overseeing his teammates and opponents.

Shields
He can create electromagnetic walls with varying densities. The denser the shield, the harder it is to pass through, and the more painful it is to pass through. Low-density shields are easy to pass through but create a numbing sensation when doing so. High-density shields are hard to pass through and can stop blood circulation. Taking too long to pass through a high-density shield can prove fatal. Shield only makes high-density shields to keep opponents out, and never to kill.

He can make constructs out of his shields, such as everyday objects like trees, phones, and horse shoes. The objects will look lifelike but will have an electromagnetic texture and will rarely be usable as the real item it imitates.

In addition, he can construct life-like electromagnetic clones that behave and move like the original. The clone is made completely of electromagnetic fields and has none of the abilities of the original, but it can float in the air, and thus can fly. EM Clones are hard to make the first time, but after making a particular clone once, Shield can more easily make it the next time. Before each battle he practices making clones of him and his partner to facilitate clone creation in battle. EM Clones have another limitation in that Shield must animate it himself. He animates a clone by picturing it moving, and it moves in the way that he pictures it. Animating several clones at once either requires him to picture several clones at the same time, or to have all the clones do the same thing.

He can absorb any shield that he wants to. Absorbing a shield allows him to gain a percentage of the energy back that was used to construct it. Shields don't drain much of his magic ability, but this is still useful for him in a pinch. He can also absorb electromagnetic energy in general, such as from earth magnets. In fact, the reason his shields cost so little energy of his own is because he uses the planet's own electromagnetic field to create them (but trying to absorb the electromagnetic field of the planet has proven futile in past trials).

He is also polarized to electromagnetism. He can detect any electromagnetic disturbance in the planet's magnetic field within his personal range of about a mile. Both his shields and portals create a big enough disturbance to register on his electromagnetic radar. Everything, in fact, creates a disturbance in the field, but most of the disturbances are too small for him to detect. However, objects near his shields give off a disturbance that he can detect.

Portals
He can open and close portals. Using the planet's own gravitational field, he can distort space-time to bridge two points in space together. He can open portals on walls, on floors and ceilings, and in the open air, at any angle. Currently it only works in three dimensional space and he cannot create portals that travel through time.

Opening a portal takes a little more energy than creating a shield. The longer the distance between the two portals, the more energy it takes him to open it. A distance of about 100 meters is pretty short and doesn't take much more energy to open than creating a shield. Opening a portal a mile away takes a chunk from his energy, and 5 miles takes a sizable percentage from his energy pool. Opening a portal further away than that is risky and is likely to fail, partially due to his lack of ability to control it.

Another factor is surface area. The surface area of the portal (i.e., its size) only slightly increases the cost of opening the portal, depending on how big Shield wants it to be. Surface areas as big as a pony incur no additional opening cost, and neither do portals with surface areas the size of a house. The cost goes steeply up for surface areas wider than 100 meters. Because of this steep curve, Shield usually makes portals with a surface area 1.5 to 3 times the size of a normal pony.

Closing a portal costs no energy. Reopening a previously closed portal costs hardly any energy, even for long-range portals.

Strategy
Shield teamed up with Wing Slasher (completedarkness23.deviantart.…) because they synergize well, and their abilities complement each other nicely.

First of all, Wing Slasher will distract the opponents to allow Shield to isolate himself from the group. Then, Shield will build a maze with walls two stories high out of opaque, low-density shields. He will have previously prepared a maze design to facilitate this step. Then, Wing Slasher will lead the opponents into the maze. 

Once everypony is inside the maze, Shield will sharply raise the density of the outside walls, hindering escape. Then he will open a portal in the entrance that leads to a random location within the maze. After that, he will open random portals throughout the maze that open and close at random intervals.

At this point, he will be fully aware of every wall and portal in the maze, and also everypony's whereabouts within the maze. With this knowledge, he can proceed to the next step.

Wing Slasher will fly out of the top of the maze, and fly high in the sky at a really fast speed. When he flies over the maze, Shield will open a portal in front of him that opens up to one of the opponent's locations. Wing Slasher will attack the opponent, and then continue through an exit portal that Shield will open to the outside. If Wing Slasher misses or fails to damage the opponent, it doesn't matter, because he can quickly and easily escape and get ready for the next attack.

Shield and Wing Slasher will repeat this operation, or variants of it, for as long as it takes to wear down the opponents or until the opponents surrender.

Weaknesses
Shield is especially weak to psychological attacks. Telepaths with mind control ability can easily inject a thought into his mind that he will more or less mistake for his own intentions and do it without even thinking. He is also prone to telepathically-induced sleep and info spilling.

Other than that, Shield is not especially weak to anything. He is physically a normal unicorn and is not physically resistant to anything unicorns aren't normally resistant to. However, he keeps a personal shield on him and his partner at all times that protects him from several outside threats. These personal shields are usually mid-density and can repel anything that doesn't have active force behind them. For example, it would stop a bullet, a splash of lava, a drop of poison on the skin, or anything else flying through the air. It would not stop a sword swing, a stream of lava, a pony rubbing poison on his skin, or anything else that is actively pushing through the personal shield.

Contingency Plans
In case something goes wrong, Shield and Wing Slasher have a few tricks up their proverbial sleeves.

In case the opponents find Shield, he can escape via portal to another location within the maze. If he knows they are actively looking for him, he will create clones of himself that run through the maze. He can create at least one or two of them while still portaling Wing Slasher through the maze, but opening and closing portals causes him to lose focus on his clones, causing the clones to freeze for a moment.

In case a pony becomes injured during the battle, Shield can portal the injured pony to a safe location where Wing Slasher can use his healing magic to heal the injured pony.

In case Shield is taken over by mind control, Wing Slasher's personal shield has been equipped with a spell that nullifies Shield's portals and shields at Wing Slasher's will.

In case the battle lasts a very long time (18 or more hours), Shield can absorb the shields around him to regain energy for portal operation.

End Game
Shield and Wing Slasher win when
(a) they have immobilized the opponents, or
(b) the opponents surrender.

They can achieve endgame (a) by wearing down the opponent and then trapping them in a high-density shield cage. They can achieve endgame (b) in much the same way.

Either way, win or lose, they shake hooves with the opponents afterwards and invite them out to dinner after they rest up a bit.

Life Goal
Shield dreams of visiting places all over the globe, and not just Equestria. More than that, he dreams of being able to one day travel to anyplace on a whim and be back the next day. Currently it is not possible because "everywhere" is so far away, and it takes a long time to travel from one city to another, even by train. But Shield aims to change that. 

Shield wants to start a portal network that connects all the major cities throughout Equestria. Ponyville, Canterlot, the Crystal Empire, etc.; all will have a main portal hub where ponies can crossover to other cities instantaneously. Even though he won first place at a science fair for his idea, the princesses were still skeptical about the stability of such a portal network, especially one that utilizes spells that even Starswirl the Bearded had not known of. By competing in this tournament, Shield hopes to prove to the princesses that he is skilled enough in electromagnetic and gravitational spell casting to make a stable portal network.