CROSS:

The No. 7 ranked Crossbone and the overall second in command of the entire organization - alongside Harvest, of course, as well as its most prominent battlefield commander when Akane isn't present, and its recruiter as well. A demon from the Midnight Wind manga series, a dark fantasy story with a surprisingly intricate and in depth universe for a manga, with a variety of threats ranging from vampires, to demons, to mad alchemists, insane cults, werebeasts and more, all inside one shadowy world where the forces of light must combat them in any way they can. Born Nelri Klosse, a little urchin girl in the depths of Nerus city - the capitol of the Nerian Empire, the setting's ancient equivalent of the Roman Empire of our world, near the end of its glory - rife with decadence, religious strife, economic issues, roving bands of barbarians and monsters outside civilized society, and one mad, petty emperor who seemed to see the entire society as nothing but his own playthings. Klosse was an urchin girl, quickly turned orphan girl, who had no way to truly make an impact or leave her position of squalor in any real meaningful way, and instead had to swindle people out of their own money in various ways - rigged card games, hokey fake divinations, cup games with a magnetic die, and even good old pickpocketing through slight of hand. Cunning and swift, she always disappeared before anyone could realize they were being swindled by her, and she soon started to earn a reputation as a famous fortune teller and gamerunner in the slums, streets, and shadows of the great city, to the point even people outside her fellow poor folk started to know the name Klosse - and her handy Tarot deck. As she grew, she continued to draw more and more acclaim, but her dislike for the city around her - which cared not about her as a person, but merely her countless tricks, grew, and she began looking itno alternative ways to rise up in the world... in the books of occultism.

Once she was an adult she has learned many secrets of the art of Diabolism, the magic of the infernal powers and those who have paid the toll of blood to shed their humanity and become beings known as Demons, and... she wanted in. Just as it so happened, the emperor himself, in all his debauchery, had come to learn of Klosse and her many tricks and secrets, and so invited her to a massive banquet he and his fellow noble folk were to have, where she'd be invited to perform a game for them. She knew this was a trap - that as soon as they were bored of her, they'd "toss her away" like they did so many other performers, but she herself had a plan of her own... And so, when the banquet came, at the final act she unleashed her plan - a mass poisoning, hidden in the stylish, dissolving coins she had fashioned to give to the nobles in their wine, and they all came to drop like flies around her, their deaths paying the necessary blood toll - ending with the emperor himself - allowing her to ascend past humanity and become a Demon - specifically a Contract Demon, who specialize in more funky and reality-altering magical abilities at the cost of lacking somewhat for combat power. While her final act sealed the fall of the empire to invading monsters and barbarians in the coming years, she cared not, as she had already ascended past her humanity into immortality and power, and so took to her favorite passtime - tricks and games, going from city to city and suckering in the arrogant and foolish, offering her eternal servitude if they could beat her at a game, and various ironic fates if they failed to beat her - and every time she won, for centuries and centuries, up until the modern day of the story, where she had found herself bored by the predictability of the fools of her world - arrogant crime lords, kings who think themselves beyond all compare, vampire lords convinced they had obtained power, alchemists seeking to ascend to godhood, nobles with too much free time and more, and longed for new experiences - new challenges - new fools to dupe and ruin, and thus, when the invitation soon came to her, she had no choice but to except such a gracious opening into the Calling...

Cross' personality is, in every aspect, extremely smug and confident. This is not without reason, as she went for centuries without ever being defeated in any of her games, albeit mostly via her skill cheating and tricking others - both before and after she became a Demon, but that's a skill of its own, and one she is exceptionally well versed in, being easily one of the most cunning Demons in her setting, and by far one of the most influential due to how she set off the domino-like collapse that would eventually completely ruin the Nerian Empire - only survived by the Valetians in the south. She sees every single one of her encounters with enemies as nothing more than a game - a game she's sure she'll win, too, meaning that even in the most life-or-death situations, she always has an air that she's not completely treating the ongoing events seriously, and instead treats everything like just another distraction or time-waster for her to enjoy. She enjoys winning, but she enjoys being defeated even more, owing to how long it's been since she's tasted anything even close to actual defeat - and it's for this reason she doesn't mind being bound to Akane after Akane beat her in one of her classic "you win, I'm your slave, I win, I inflict some terrible fate on you" type games, especially as it gives her more options to give her enemies if they win against her, something that excites and intrigues her to the extreme. She loves both actual games - especially Tarocchi, her most famous game when she was a human - but also more abstract things which she considers "games," such as riddle competitions and fortune telling. What's more, after becoming a Contract Demon and gaining access to great, reality-altering power, she has a fondness for more out of this world games where the rules and environments are made up on the fly as she crafts illusions into reality and plunges her poor targets into the depths of their darkest dream. She is extremely well versed on the meaning of the various Tarot cards, both major and minor arcana, but is also well aware of their origin as just cards to be used in a game - which she doesn't believe strips them of their meaning or role at all. She is extremely impressed whenever her opponents manage to not only outwit her, but either cheat against her or outright deceive her, and her already glowing praise will become even more pronounced and excited whenever such a thing comes to pass. Despite her own talent for cheating and deceit, she is completely fair when it comes to rewards for her


Despite all this jollity and affability however, Cross isn't a perfectly nice individual - no, far from it - in fact she's rather cruel and mean-spirited in just as many ways as she is fun and jovial. She holds an extremely dim view of other people, seeing most people as extremely boring, predictable, and enslaved to their circumstances and vices, and isn't afraid to make that clear - often saying it's why they always lose to her - indeed, she even viciously mocked and demeaned Akane, even after learning of her history, when they first met, only coming to respect and appreciate her once Akane showed her cunning, beating her at her own game, and her surprising care and respect for her servants - not something you'd usually expect from an angry demon lord. She believes that in general, humans and beings like humans are doomed to fail and meet unhappy endings eventually because the nature of a human drives them towards self destructive behavior out of petty things like pride, though she's slowly been losing this mindset the longer she's been in the Calling and has met people who far exceed her expectations. She takes a special pleasure in punishing those she has defeated, often choosing a fate for them she specifically believes highlights their own flaws and poor attributes, with no intent to revert it - unless somebody else challenges her to do exactly that. Her pessimism and cruelty isn't limited to humans, and even inside her own world she was prone to seeking out and toying with other Demons, Vampires, alchemists and more on the daily, treating them like any other fool that she could dupe. It was because of this that she had a poor reputation even among other creatures of the Night, but this mattered little as her power was always known across the world, and those who sought power would always believe they'd be the one lucky person to know how to beat her and earn her servitude, sealing her fate. However, as she's begun losing battles more and more ever since she entered the Calling, she has begun to wonder if the only reason that she did so well in her world was because she was specifically written to always be the victor in any circumstance, which she herself considers rather lazy.

When it comes to interactions with other contestants of the Calling, she perhaps has the single most varied responses - largely because of how often she shows up in comparison to the other Crossbones, but also just because she's filled with such personality in general. In particular, she shows a great respect towards Akane, but is also prone to teasing and messing with her when she can, knowing that Akane would not risk trying to kill somebody she worked so hard to get on her side, and she has a pronounced, semi-friendly rivalry with Harvest, who she enjoys teasing and mocking due to her stuck up personality and distaste for explanation-less magic - which is exactly Cross' specialty. In general, Cross almost always seems to come out on top of their feuds, simply due to being the more cunning and less easily offended or bothered by remarks and cutting jabs. She likes Roa and considers her the purest Crossbone, and often finds herself playing games with Roa just to entertain the "young" Vampire - though it's worth noting that Cross is the only Crosbsone that is legitimately Roa's senior when it comes to age, and she doesn't have a poor opinion of Zero either, though she does like to scare Zero just for fun now and then. However, when it comes to the other major Crossbones such as Absynth, BP, Kreuz, and Malie, she mostly takes the role of a serious boss who helps them, especially on the job, and whenever she doesn't, she's instead a teasing, quizzical overseer whot hey can't really wrap their heads around whether she likes them or dislikes them - though, of course, she's fond of messing with each and every one of the Crossbones no matter what, as it's simply her personality. When it comes to those outside the Crossbones, she considers Magia showing exceptional promise as a wielder of magic and a master of games, and is even proud to say that Magia is the first person since Akane to beat her in the Calling, accepting the prompt ass-kicking she got from the young witch the moment her game was ended. She has a somewhat frienemy-like relationship with the other Protagonists and House of Glass, though in truth she has a dim view of most of them, especially Akira and Jade. However, unlike almost every other Crossbone, even BP, she has a great interest in Amber, considering her perhaps the most fascinating person she's met in the Calling as of yet - even if she initially saw the girl as nothing but another foolish human - this change in attitude coming to how Amber managed to quickly figure out how exactly she was cheating and warn Magia against it in their battle at the village, and ever since then Cross has shown exceptional interest in Amber's activities and her future among the contestants of the Calling.

Cross' powers are extremely unique and otherworldly, and oftentimes it seems she has no limit as to what she can do with her abilities outside what she personally wants to do at a given time and what she believes is fair. Most of her attacks are via warping reality in various ways, and every time she wants to play a game with an individual, she draws them into her endless Tarot Deck, leading to a strange, illusionary world where she is in complete control - being capable of summoning deadly spinning tops, chessboard soldiers, crushing checkers, massive rolling dice, and more, and even outside this reality she is capable of summoning massive cards which she can use to create barriers, attack enemies, float through the air, and more. In addition, she has great mastery of polymorphic magic, and is especially prone to changing people into cards during battle, though this is always temporary - whether it's innately that way or she limits the time to play fair is somewhat unclear, though she only ever permanently transforms people into objects if they lose a game against her, suggesting it may be tied to the "Contract" part of her powers. As well, she's skilled with illusion and glamour, and can easily disguise herself as others. This is all counterbalanced by how she has almost no actual combat ability outside her magical powers, and thus at close range she's easily stunlocked so to speak. Her Void Eye is imbued with the power of Challenge and makes it so that whenever she challenges an enemy to a game, they are unable to hurt her until the game completes - effectively forcing her foes to play along. Her named rank about the Crossbones is Joker and her symbol is a skull made from jumbled playing cards, with two giant black dice serving as the eyes.

Cross' body takes the form of a womanly upper torso with brownish red skin covered in white markings, particularly two diamond-like markings below the eyes and covering most of the front of her cheeks, with black fingernails on her hands, while her lower body appears like that of a satyr's, having goat-like legs covered in red, fluffy fur that looks vaguely like flames and ending in black hooves, and two long, black, furry tails energy from her lower back. Her hair is white with red, spike-like stripes around the sides, ande has two long trails which droop in front of her most of the time. She has black, goat-like horns curling from her head. She has prominent piercings in her ears, with both her earlobes pierced with golden earrings dangling designs of the sun, moon, and a star in that order, as well as two rings on the upper portion of both ears, a cup and pentacle hanging off the rings on the right ear while a sword and wand hang off the rings on the left ear. Her remaining non-Void eye is golden with black sclera, and has a horizontal pupil akin to a Goat's, while her Void Eye has black sclera and a golden Crossbone symbol pupil. She has no genitals. She wears a somewhat complicated outfit which primarily consists of a strange, black, hooded uniform, with a prominent, golden zipper down the middle of the uniform, stretching down to her waist, styled similar to the spikes on the Crossbone cross, and the tab is styled like a Crossbones cross outright, and when zipped hangs at the top of the zipper. The hood has a golden design at the top styled off of a skull, with holes corresponding with the eye sockets for her horns to stick out of. The coat has distinct tails at the bottom, each one created from four cuts in the material shaped like jagged crosses, and these tails flow as Cross moves. Likewise, she has long, large sleeves which have similar cuts at the top, which expose more tight, red gloves over the rest of her arms. The inner lining of the coat looks like a slowly moving black and red checker pattern, and the coat has a prominent golden mantle over the shoulders and back again styled off of a skull. The coat exposes the waist and thus the goat-like legs of Cross, and has a miasma of floating, black cards with glowing red outlines around the waist, which slowly slide and move over time, and overall she has an ominous dark aura around her at almost all times - only exceptions being when she's having fun or being casual.

Her invitation read: "Cross, Demonic Bane of the Foolhardy, we hereby invite you to the Calling, the festival which crosses all worlds. Should you partake of our offer, you shall find countless new fools to entrap in your gambits, strange sights your goat-like eyes have never seen, new and interesting faces to challenge you, and most importantly, experiences and challenges unlike anything you could ever find in your boring little home. Sign your name below, and the door shall open for you."

BLACK POWDER:

The No. 8 ranked Crossbone and their dedicated infiltrator and saboteur. A strange, not quite human girl from the world of the Artifact Seeker manga series, a series taking place in a world of near-endless oceans with various islands in archipelagos throughout, each one vastly unique and different and possessed of its own unique secrets and treasures - of various types, both literal and not, and the Seekers who go from island to island in order to seek out and find these artifacts. Named Kuroi Kona, she was born to unknown parents on an unknown island - all that's clear is that whoever they were, they did not care about her, as shortly after she was born they took her and sold her off to a boatman to abandon on the artificial island of Scum City - a massive island of waste and trash that eventually became so large and compact that a society of exiles and the abandoned grew to develop there, a place where those who are hated by society are left to live and die far from their eyes, and where the young Kona spent her developing years, living off trash and mutated sealife and trying desperately just to survive - it was a miracle she even survived considering she was abandoned as an infant. As she grew, she came to survive mostly by stealing the fortune of others, owing to a mysterious power she had developed - a Delta Force, as they're called in the scientific community of the setting - specifically, hers allowed her to generate explosives from effectively nothing by burning her regrowing fuse on top of her head, which she used to develop a strangely loud and proud method of "thievery" by blasting her way in, taking what she wanted, and getting out of dodge right after. However, despite this, what she wanted most was to experience the world outside her island prison, having learned of its wonders via various washed up newspapers, magazines and books that had ended up in Scum City. Thus, one day she hatched a plan - one which she got lots of support from her fellow Scum Citygoers, half due to the sort of bond she had developed with them, and half because they wanted her gone so she'd stop stealing their stuff, and made a daring escape using a rockets propelled by the explosives Kona could generate, and she soon achieved what she wanted, having gained a ship, going from island to island, experiencing what they had for her, and stealing what she could - same loud style as always - coming to be known as the legendary thief, Black Powder. However, in the end she was still quite lonely, only realizing she had abandoned her friends in Scum City long after she had left, and wanted more than anything to develop new bonds with people - so when a strange letter offered her friends she could rely on more than anything, she took its offer in a heartbeat.

Black Powder's usual personality is probably the most normal among all the Crossbones, even compared to Malie, and she overall carries the vibe of not quite a good person, but not quite somebody outright evil either. One can easily get the idea that she would have turned out a nicer, more moral person had her parents not abandoned her to Scum City, but her experiences on the island have instead made it so that while she lacks a moral compass, she's not a fundamentally bad person either. Indeed, she even often regrets that she has to fight or attack certain communities she feels aren't quite deserving of what will happen - but also doesn't hesitate in the least, as she's come to see the Crossbones as her family, and will do anything for said family, no matter how dark - not aided by how most of the Crossbones treat her rather well, even if Absynth is rough towards her like usual and, at least early on, Akane is suspicious that she's not completely committed to the Crossbones' cause. She values the other Crossbones without exception however, even Absynth, as she admires Absynth's assertiveness and strength, and often spends a lot of time with Malie, owing to how they're both the only Crossbones useful for deception and how they're both young girls as well, to the point you'd almost wonder if there's something between them - and indeed, there may be, however it is rather unclear. Black Powder is homoromantic, though it's hard to tell what sexuality she is, though it overall leans closer to asexual, but this comes up only very rarely in the story itself, mostly with regards to Amber, who she had quite a crush on during her time infiltrating the village, and while that came and passed, it's clear she still cares about her to a degree, disliking facing her and wishing Amber would join the Crossbones so she wouldn't be forced to attack her - a source of rare hesitation Amber often exploits to deal with Black Powder, even if she too regrets how things ultimately ended up. Despite how Akane is suspicious of her early in the story, she does look up to her and sees her as a role model, wanting to be as strong, willful, and full of personality and presence as the leader.

Despite her occupation, Kona isn't what most would call greedy - back when she performed thieving in Scum City, she did it solely for the sake of survival, and back when she was a Seeker she instead did it for the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of securing another prize, rather than for any monetary value the objects she stole had. Now, as part of the Crossbones, she steals on Akane's orders and mostly to secure resources for the Crossbones themselves, though she also steals valuables and other such things whenever she can as a way of hunting for sport even now. She's immensely proud of her skill as a thief, despite the fact her thieving involves almost no stealth and much more loudly breaking and entering, and often boasts that she's the best at what she does, which, honestly, is more than likely true, given how very few thieves would ever engage in larceny the way she does. She is, however, disarmingly skilled when it comes to infiltration rather than thieving - her cute and rather normal seeming personality often throws people off from her real goals and particularly who she now serves in the Calling, and she easily makes fake friends with others - though as seen with the Protagonists and especially Amber, sometimes the mask becomes genuine and she makes actual friends with her marks, but this does not dissuade her from her mission at all. Despite her cute and fun personality, Black Powder actually has a potent, and somewhat short temper, and when sufficiently stressed, feeling betrayed, or just plain annoyed at other people, she will enter a pronounced rage state where her personality becomes much more crude and loud - down to regularly swearing at her enemies - as well as much less focused, leading her to often make mistakes she wouldn't make otherwise. This personality is disarming to both her enemies and her allies, as it's starkly contrasted with basically everything else about her, and can frankly even be a little scary at times. She is quite tomboyish and dislikes whenever an infiltration job requires her to wear a skirt or similar item.

Being from an action manga, Black Powder is extremely agile, durable, and heavy-hitting compared to the "average" human, though she can't compare to Absynth, Kreuz, or Akane in this regard, being more slightly superhuman rather than outright superhuman like some of her cohorts, and even then, among other characters from her world such as Suzaku, she is below average in most ways except speed. Her power lies entirely in her Delta Force, which allows her to burn the fuse extending from her head to manifest explosives in her hands, the fuse regrowing after a while at a not exactly slow, but not even close to fast rate. These explosives can be of almost any type, though complexity and explosive power costs more fuse the higher they go, though luckily she can extend her fuse to greater lengths if she chooses to enable explosives that would be too costly for its base length. If she makes explosives while her fuse is burnt out, it will instead create small explosions inside her body which predictably damage her instead. When in her rage state, she can create almost any explosive at no cost, but her fuse starts burning down all on its own, and cannot be stopped, when in this state - and her lack of focus means she cannot create more complicated explosives in this state, limiting her options greatly. Her Void Eye is imbued with the power of Worldliness, allowing her to use her Delta Force to create explosives which follow the rules of other worlds, if she can figure out how they're made. Her named rank among the crossbones is Rogue and her symbol is a cartoon bomb exploding into a massive mushroom cloud, which forms a skull in how it appears.

Kona's body is that of a somewhat short, boyish girl, with dark black-grey skin and prominent, lighter grey freckles on her face. Her hair is a lighter shade than her skin, but still an overall dark grey in coloration, and is in a boyish bob cut, and has a glowing orange coloration that lets off embers closer to the tips. The inside of her mouth is a pale grey and her teeth are white, while her remaining non-Void eye is yellow in coloration. A long white fuse that's lightly lit on the end runs from the back of her head like a ponytail. Her outfit's top consists of a black vest with prominent, bat wing-like lapels and four silver buttons in the shape of pointy crosses with little skulls at the center, and underneath it she wears a horizontally striped black and light grey long sleeved shirt. On her hands she wears simple white gloves with two black black cross-shaped holes on the top of each glove, though the gloves are lightly soot covered. On her waist and upper legs she wears cute white pumpkin pants, with each pant leg styled off a cut skull with black eyes, and she has a simple black belt with a silver skull buckle, and a box of matchsticks on her left side. Over her legs she wears vertically striped light grey and black leggings and simple, cute black boots with three straps ending in buttons themed off little silver skulls on each. Finally, she wears a black beret with a skull design on it (with a smaller skull in its right eye) in white, with a hole poked through the top for her fuse to run though. She has a short yellow cape over her shoulders, held in place by black, skull-like shoulder pads. Her incognito outfit consists of a black T shirt with a cartoon bomb on the front, with a horizontally striped black and white long-sleeved undershirt beneath it, plus a simple yellow backpack. On her waist and legs she wears somewhat loose jeans and black and yellow sneakers, while she has simple yellow fingerless bike gloves on her hands. She wears a similar beret on her head, but without a skull symbol on it. In addition, when incognito she wears a black eyepatch over her right eye to hide its nature as a Void Eye.

Her invitation read: "To the infamous Kona Kuroi, we hereby invite you to the Calling, the festival which crosses all worlds. Should you partake of our offer, you will discover new lands to experience and explore, new treasures to add to your hoard, new fortresses waiting to be penetrated, and most importantly, new friends which who you can safely rely on without fear. Sign your name below, and the door shall open for you."