Characters / Punishing: Gray Raven - Squads

Punishing: Gray Raven Main Character Index
People of Babylonia
Squads (Gray Ravens)
Command & Other Humans
Factions on Earth
Human Factions
Non-Human Factions

Some of Babylon's Forces ^Clockwise Gray Ravens, Cerberus, Strike Hawks, the Art Association, the Purifying Force, and the Engineering Force

Babylonia enlists and commands several squads or forces that either individually or collectively fulfill a certain purpose. Most fall under the umbrella of task force, squads sent for missions onto Earth and can handle anything from surveillance to combat. Some of the more specialized forces, for example, include the Support Force in charge of logistics and proving support to operations. Some with their own Commandant.

Playable characters have their names in bold.

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Warning: Punishing's Chinese servers were active before others, and thus have released more story and gameplay elements compared to international regions. As such, there will be spoilers aplenty, marked and unmarked. New players are advised to read at their own discretion, or avoid these pages entirely.

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Cerberus

Murray

A secret agenda

Lee's younger brother. Having grown up, he now works as an intelligence officer under Nikola.

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• Arc Number: 421. In Lee's interlude, aptly named 421, the little robot he gives to Murray has the binary code for 421 on it, and that's stated to be Murray's birthday (4/21). It's also the name the dialogue boxes use when Murray's talking through his robot, which has the number 421 painted on it.
• Big Brother Worship: Murray used to think the world of his older brother. As an adult, he's not so openly adoring, but his wish to protect Lee now says enough.
• Future Badass: The future version of Murray that Nanami meets in Her Last Bow has taken up the position of Gray Raven's Commandant in the wake of Hassen and Nikola's deaths forcing the protagonist to become the leader of humanity, and he's not any less active on the field than they were.
• Mr. Exposition: In Her Last Bow, he's the one who explains just how dire the "Forever War" timeline is for humanity to Nanami, telling her how most of the main cast died.
• One Degree of Separation: The hidden node of Changyu's interlude implies that Murray (or at least, his robot) picked up Huainan's distress signals years after they were sent from the Nighter.
  [Huainan] had sent out countless distress signals with information on the Nighter, messages that had remained on radio frequency unanswered- intel that will one day be intercepted by "421."
• The Chessmaster: He has a long-term conspiracy going, in collaboration with at least one unknown member, and a plan that currently includes killing Luna. As of Fake Ascension, he has blackmailed Lamia into his service, has cut a deal with Qu to report on Luna's movements and best opportunity of attack, in exchange for having Huaxu subdue Gestalt, and is reporting the movements of the Ascendants to an unknown party.
• Tragically Misguided Favor: His adoration of his brother prompted him to work part-time jobs — aggravating his heart condition — to buy the hardware necessary to complete Lee's robot — one he was going to gift to Murray to begin with. As far as Murray was concerned, a working robot would make a better companion than a sickly brother.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Once an ordinary and loving sibling who wanted to support his older brother in any way he could. However, as shown by The Chessmaster, he hasn't exactly grown up into a sweetheart.

Vera (BPN-13)

Voiced by: Jiang Yue (Chinese) Marina Inoue (Japanese), Dawn M. Bennett (English)

Cerberus squad Support-type construct

^{Click here to see Garnet}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 17
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: October 31
• Service Time: 2 Years
• Weight: 44kg
• Height: 164cm

"You're just too dumb."

The captain of Cerberus squad, and a member of the experimental long-range memory connection project. She is controversial for her "pain is proof of life" mentality and method, and her harsh, elusive attitude... not that she cares. She is skilled at close-quarters combat, where she can put herself closer to pain and danger.

Vera's frame variations are Rozen and Garnet.

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• Battleaxe Nurse: In the past, she used to battlefield medic, her reputation as a jinx and her various frustrations made her a poor fit for the job, and she eventually joined the frontline as a combatant. This past of hers is referenced in her Rozen kit: despite being a Support class, she seems to be doing everything in her power to function like an Attacker with healing skills.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Her spear weapon of her Garnet variation splits in two into a short spear and a sword for certain attacks.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Similar to Bianca's Veritas suit, Vera's Garnet variation was her first and more powerful body. It also has a dark reputation of being built specifically to destroy other Constructs.
• Charged Attack: Her passive gives her a Collect type, where a separate meter fills and can be expended with what is likely her strongest set of attacks.
• Combat Medic: Another who can attack while having skills focused on healing herself and teammates; in fact, Vera's priorities are so skewed she is more "combat" than "medic".
• Combat Sadomasochist: Vera's personal philosophy is that pain is proof of existence, but in combat she dials this up by quite a bit by constantly gushing about both inflicting and receiving pain, especially in her Rozen frame.
  Rozen (Signature): Feed me... more pain!
  Rozen (low HP): This is my favorite feeling...
  Garnet (Battle 3): I'm gonna enjoy crushing every one of you to pieces!
• Curtains Match the Window: A Fiery Redhead with Red Eyes, Take Warning to create a striking character.
• A Day in the Limelight: While a recurring presence throughout the story, she becomes one of the focal characters of The Last Spark. She later returns as a major character in Left Unsaid, accompanying Bambinata and Vanessa in their mission.
• Dual Wielding: She begins with a stance in which she has a Reverse Grip on her left hand.
• Dub Name Change: Her official English Name in CN is "Flare", but Global changes it to "Garnet".
• Dominatrix: She loves giving as much as she gets, and that includes teasing people, including the Commandant, with a sadistic bent beneath her words. Then, there's all the stepping and kicking and blade-brandishing. Safe to say, Vera was designed with this in mind.
• Double Weapon: Player equipped katana will be mounted under the hilt of her flipped left-handed sword during certain moves.
• Exact Words: Vera plays loose with the spirit of Lee's favor when he asks her to pull back from the hunt for Kamui. When Nikola orders her back onto the field, she insists her hands are tied. She also "promises" to honor Lee's favor personally, but also says she can't say the same for the rest of Cerberus squad.
• Fiery Redhead: Her bright red hair and matching eyes do well highlighting how much of a vicious, sharp-tongued Combat Sadomasochist she is.
• Finishing Stomp: In an event, Vera gets to stomp on and kick Corrupted off a boat.
  Vera: [with a smiling portrait] Idiots and Constructs aren't allowed.
• Gradual Regeneration: Vera's healing skills won't return big chunks of health like Liv and Sophia, but playing her correctly will let them keep proccing almost nonstop.
• Hair Flip: Her initial portrait has her running a hand through her tresses, which sets up how much of a sassy, sardonic person she is.
• High-Heel Power: While many female Constructs have Combat Stilettos, particular emphasis is drawn to Vera's. After the Gray Ravens foil her attempt at "hunting" Kamui in the early chapters, the sharp echoes of hers is emphasized as she exits in a slight huff. At the start of a fight, her Garnet frame drops feet-first and an event she stars in sees her stomping on enemies to get them off a boat. It's really meant to highlight her Dominatrix-esque personality.
• Improbable Weapon User: Played With. Garnet's official weapon is a flag a la Jeanne d'Arc, but in practice, it's a spear through-and-through. Granted, her QTE lets her plant it like an actual flag for support benefits.
• Leaning on the Furniture: Her idle animation for her Garnet variation has her stab her spear in the ground in order to lean against it, highlighting her maverick nature.
• Noble Demon: She's a bitch to a lot of people, but she's not heartless. When No.21 was put in her care, she became the former's Stern Teacher, teaching her to become more independent and probably was one of the few people at that point of No.21's life who valued her as an individual. It is indicated that her questionable behaviors are not out of mere malice, but are either not serious, justified or even has goodwill behind them, and she becomes bitter partly because she never let goes of all the misfortunes she witnessed. As per the comment of her colleagues, she is just a pragmatist that cares more about goals than niceties. And since this is a Crapsack World, she considers that being harsh is indeed a responsible choice both for others (to make them have better grasp on reality) and herself (to vent out her sorrow). Still, it seems she has somewhat Becoming the Mask.
  • In the personal story of Rozen, she once used an illegal drug to amplify the pain of a dying construct, as this was the only way to keep the latter's will to live.
  • In the personal story of Garnet, she encouraged a dying girl to live while operating on her, albeit in a harsh tone. While she used Commandant as a bait to draw out the Corrupted, this was because she was confident that she could keep Commandant alive, and she immediately dropped it when she discovered stronger enemies.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Which underlines her sadistic tendencies.
• Shock and Awe: Her Garnet variation focuses on Lightning-type damage and debuffs, with her three-orb combos converting her physical damage into elemental damage.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: During Left Unsaid she gains one in the commandant Vanessa, whom she butts heads with throughout the mission, leading to an almost non-stop campaign of insults and snark from both people.
• Slasher Smile: Whips this out in her ultimate attacks.
• Square Race, Round Class: Rozen is supposed to be a Support character, but in reality her damage output means she's really an Attacker in practice (though in a full team, its best she's relegated to actually doing her class role).
• The Tease: Vera makes many suggestive comments toward the Commandant, especially if appointed as their assistant. Garnet's victory animation even has her bending over and putting her fingers on the Commandant's chin.
• Troll: Befitting her sadism, Vera often makes life difficult for the Commandant (and the player) to revel in their trouble.
  • During the Poisson D'Avril event, Vera interferes with the Commandant's command system, causing him to mix up all the characters' appearance.
  • In the Eden Festival event, any minigame that she presides over is always extra difficult: the "Transport" games have the fastest and most complicated obstacle movements, the "Evasion" games will include intermittent laser attacks atop the walls you're supposed to dodge, and the "Guard" games will include kamikaze Jitterbugs and enemies with Area of Effect attacks.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Vera takes her Blood Knight nature to the limit in Garnet's special, where you get a shot of her utterly manic smile and shrunken irises.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Vera's ultimate ability is an Area of Effect that continually deals dark elemental damage to any enemies within, while healing herself and any teammates at the same time.

No. 21 (BPH-22)

Voiced by: Qian Chen (Chinese) Inori Minase (Japanese), Sarah Anne Williams (English)

Cerberus squad Armor-type construct

^{Click here to see Feral Scent}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 22
• Vital Fluid Type: O
• Activation Date: January 21
• Service Time: 2 Years
• Weight: 42kg
• Height: 154cm

Originally an experimental subject of Daedalus Corp, No.21 is currently a member of Cerberus squad. She has a muddled perception of human emotion, and is gloomy and seemingly expressionless in appearance. However, she is exceptionally vicious and dangerous when at her extreme.

No.21's frames are XXI and Feral Scent.

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• Animal Motifs: Wolves. She focuses heavily on identifying people by scent, is intensely loyal to those in her "pack" (to the point that thinking that Vera was destroyed triggered a berserk rampage), and to top it off, one of her skins has her dressed up as Red Riding Hood. Her Feral Scent variation pushes even further into this, as she gains bionic lupine features and Wolverine Claws.
• Be Yourself: Her main inner conflict during Chaos Unsnarled is her desire to be more human, and to be accepted by people, something she feels she's incapable of with her unstable and animalistic M.I.N.D. While the Hetero-Creature Fenrir tempts her to join its Mind Hive, the Commandant tells No.21 that all humans are different, while Vera tells her that rather than acting like an obedient dog to gain the approval of others, No.21 should make people accept her for who she is. Ultimately, No.21 accepts her "inhumanity", but also that she is a member of Cerberus.
• The Beastmaster: Her weapon class are drones, which can attack independently, and are also the source of some of her skills. Because of that, some awareness of their positioning is required. Notably, one of the drones is always present on the field if she's in the squad, letting it assist other team members.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: She develops a very strong bond with the other members of Cerberus because, in their own way, they were far nicer to her than most humans and treated her with their own rough form of respect. She develops a similar bond with the Commandant when they ended up linked together, as the Commandant shows concern and respect toward her. No. 21 doesn't completely get the emotions she feels around them, but if the Commandant, Vera, or Noctis are hurt (or she thinks they're hurt) she gets upset.
• Button Mashing: Her Limit Break has the unique twist where the majority of the damage has to be inputted directly by the player in a limited time, so naturally one has to mash buttons to make sure as many pillars drop onto the enemy during that time.
• Cast From HP: In her Feral Scent frame, her 3-pings take health, but also replaces it with shields. Luckily her passive also grants her a self-heal, allowing her to recover any lost vitality.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Because of her isolated upbringing, she doesn't have a many examples to compare knowledge with. In her birthday video, she decides showing her affection to the Commandant means eating them, since that's what she saw a pack of wolves do in a video she watched the day before. Moreover, the "eating" suggestion was first made by Vera as an obvious Double Entendre, but it wound up confusing No. 21, who took it literally.
• Cute Oversized Sleeves: Her arms are completely enveloped in a pair of sleeves. It not only emphasizes her childish nature but is also reminiscent of the loose sleeves of a straitjacket, alluding to her past as a test subject.
• Creepy Good: She may be on your side, but she has a deathly pallor, a creepy laugh and a Nightmare Face she pulls when she uses her Limit Break.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: During her Interlude, she eventually meets a researcher who claims to be her father, and argues that he gave her up to Daedalus because she was born with illness, and that the experiments and eventual construct conversion were intended to improve her health. No.21, however, rejects the man who basically admits to being a passive accomplice to her suffering.
• A Day in the Limelight: No.21 is a major POV character for Inscription of Labyrinth, and is the focal character of Chaos Unsnarled, where she deals with her personal issues while fighting the Hetero-Creatures around the Purified Zone.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Birthday: According to her Secrets, her real activation date is unknown, and the one in her profile was assigned by someone else.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She has a portraitless presence during Kowloong Metropolis, long before her playable appearance in Inscription of Labyrinth.
• Life Drain: In her Feral Scent variation, after filling her passive gauge, No.21 can use a Spam Attack that will heal her while she hits her enemy. This is what allows her to recover from the innate health drain of her 3-pin attacks.
• Long-Range Fighter: Her normal attack strings release projectiles, her passive refunds dodge meter when used correctly, she has drones for back up, and one of her skills traps her enemies in place. All in all, her kit expects her to stay on the move while keeping enemies locked down so she can blast them.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • The nature of her Haywire ability means that No. 21 benefits from periodically getting hit, as it lets her counterattack and generate shields off of those hits if she dodges immediately afterward. She also uses dodge charges immediately when pinging three red orbs to inflict extra damage.
  • Her entire kit is area-of effect and crowd-control abilities, and she works best in terms of raw damage when she can group entire packs of enemies close together, which makes her an effective hybrid Attack and Tank construct who is focused on killing waves of lesser enemies but is less effective against single strong enemies.
  • She's best deployed in the red or yellow squad positions, as her signature generates and triggers blue orbs. This lets her deploy the team member in the blue squad position alongside 21's signature to do extra damage or healing.
• Mood-Swinger: Because of the unstable nature of her M.I.N.D. when she was taken from Daedalus, No.21 can swing between a uncontrollable berserk fighting machine, and a curious, obedient child in an instant.
• Morality Pet: To Vera, who is much more lenient and willing to entertain her.
  Garnet's Secret 4:No. 21 seems to think of Vera's banner spear as some sort of "magic prop" that can create a banner out of nowhere. She often asks Vera to show it to her.
• No Social Skills: Having been raised in complete isolation in a lab with minimal contact with other humans beyond having to participate in painful experiments, No. 21 has zero experience to draw on when it comes to actually interacting with other people in a social setting. However, she's slowly learning how to be social thanks to the Commandant and Vera's efforts.
• Older Than They Look: Her big, baggy clothes makes her look child-like, but she's actually older than Vera, Cerberus's squad leader.
• One Degree of Separation: No.21 used to belong to Daedalus; "used to" because it got destroyed by Bianca in the past, after she discovered their human-trafficking operation while working for them. In fact she Escaped from the Lab precisely because Bianca's rampage was happening at the same time.
• Raised by Wolves: A sci-fi version played for drama. No.21's unstable M.I.N.D translates to actual dysphoria-like conditions where the more human-like her frame is, the more liable she is to go berserk. In Chaos Unsnarled, she hallucinates being a white wolf, that wishes to join the "furless wolves", even it if means tearing her claws off. By that point her Feral Scent frame was also being used to restrain her M.I.N.D, even if it warped her personality and made her more timid, and the story follows her learning to accept herself.
• Robot Buddy: Her "Collaborative Unit". It was a medical droid that tried to keep alive after she tried to escape in the middle of her construct conversion surgery, got an M.I.N.D. interface built into it to help stabilise her, as well as weapons, and now acts like an extension of her.
• Shaped Like Itself: Her frame's name is just her own in Roman numerals, highlighting her dehumanisation.
• Shock and Awe: Feral Scent has 100% Lightning damage.
• Tastes Like Purple: She has a tendency to associate things with scents, which she then further describes as colors or temperature.
• Tested on Humans: She was a test subject before she got recruited into Cerberus squad.
• Trap Master: Her passive lets her drop energy pylons that refund her dodge meter and later explode.
• The Unsmile: She has no idea how to smile in a way that isn't unsettling, and during Inscription of Labyrinth she's unhappy that the memories of Luna and Lucia's childhood made her unconsciously smile. At the end of Chaos Unsnarled, the Commandant amusedly wonders how long it will take for No.21 to realise she's smiling normally now.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Her XXI Interlude's hidden node establishes that when Cerberus was formed, she and Vera had already known each other for some time, but neither knew Noctis.
• Wolverine Claws: Feral Scent's weapon class.
• You Are Number 6: She's only known by the number 21. Her first interlude suggests she was raised in Daedalus's lab all her life, meaning she never even got a real name.
• You're Not My Father: When she meets a researcher who claims to be her father, she rejects the relation. Just as well, her "father" only admitted it when his life was endangered by Vera and he begged for mercy. When he even claims No.21's real name is "Aurora", Vera quickly realizes he's just using the name of a nearby toy, showing how little his "daughter" really means to her.

Noctis (BPO-03)

Voiced by: Zicheng Shaozu (Chinese) Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese) Bill Butts (English)

Cerberus squad Attack-type Construct

Profile

• Psychological Age: 24
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: March 25
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 80kg
• Height: 183cm

Once a member of the Purifying Force, Noctis was forced to resign as a result of a treacherous conspiracy. Now, he is a member of Cerberus Squad, where he serves as the fangs of Nikola's three-headed hunting hound.

Noctis's frame is Indomitus.

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• Bare-Fisted Monk: Noctis fights entirely bare-handed. Unlike Changyu, he doesn't even wear gauntlets: his weapon class is his mechanical arm.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: When the dodge button is tapped, instead of dancing out of the way, Noctis will sit there and block the attack. It functions essentially the same, with a perfectly-timed block even triggering Bullet Time, just like a dodge.
• But Now I Must Go: At the end of Sands of Wrath, Noctis is invited to stay at New Auclair, having helped protect it from Nigel's attacks. While Vera says the choice is up to him, Noctis decides to honor the Commandant's promise and return to Babylonia.
• Covered with Scars: He's got quite a few to show, and that's just on his face and upper arms.
• A Day in the Limelight: Sands of Wrath follows Noctis as he chases down Nigel, an enemy from his past, even if it means getting caught up in a Fugitive Arc.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Noctis' first appearance was actually all the way back in Eternal Engine, where he serves as Bianca's Kurono contact. He wasn't even established as a Cerberus member until Kowloong Metropolis.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: As noted above, Noctis is the first character whose dodge meter is used for blocking instead, allowing him to remain close to his enemies to pummel them.
• Power Fist: His weapon class is his entire mechanical left arm. Fittingly, his Limit Break also takes the form of a very exaggerate (and very explosive) Megaton Punch.
• Promoted to Playable: While he made several story appearances beforehand, Noctis wasn't playable until Sands of Wrath.
• Revenge: Nigel's murder of Noctis's beloved mentor Ballard is what also got him booted out of the Purifying Force, and for years he's been waiting for a chance to settle the score. That chance comes in Sands of Wrath, and Noctis wastes no time chasing the lead on Nigel.
• The One Guy: In Cerberus.
• Shock and Awe: Indomitus is 100% Lightning damage.
• Taking the Heat: At the beginning of Sands of Wrath, Noctis takes the blame from Vera for the release of No.21's restraints druing Chaos Unsnarled, saying it was done with malicious intent. This protects Vera and No.21, and gives him a chance to rejoin the Purifying Force and a chance for revenge.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: He carries a supply of grenades on him, and his Super Mode visually begins with him tossing one at enemies. It's actually a plot point in Sands of Wrath, as bombs that use the same formula as Noctis's are used to attack him and the Commandant, making him realize he's being framed, and that his nemesis Nigel — the one person who also knows the formula — is involved.

Strike Hawk

Chrome (BPE-07)

Voiced by: Da Bai(Chinese) Daisuke Hirakawa (Japanese), Brett Calo (English)

Strike Hawk squad Armor-type construct

^{Click here to see Glory}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 19
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: July 31
• Service Time: 2 Years
• Weight: 60kg
• Height: 178cm

Chrome is the captain of Strike Hawk squad. As such, he considers his subordinates a great responsibility. However, it is still his personal code of conduct to finish any mission given to him perfectly and down to the last objective.

Chrome's frame variations are Arclight and Glory.

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• Abusive Parents: His adoptive father, John Smith, who demanded blind loyalty and "perfection" in exchange for privilege of being his son. Part of that "perfection" included John's micromanaging Chrome's childhood, deleting text he didn't approve of, and expecting perfect scores all the time.
• Be Yourself: At the end of Chrome's Interlude, he decides to abandon his old human identity and fulfil his own desires, rather than just do what his father expected of him.
• Broken Ace: As a human, Chrome was admired, but never befriended since his intelligence intimidated other students. Meanwhile his father pushed unrealistic expectations onto him, and Chrome overworked himself due to perfectionist tendencies he developed. His Interlude even implies he engaged in self-harm to stay awake, and he persisted in dangerous Commandant simulations because it was unthinkable for him to fail.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Any enemy hit by his blue skill will get marked for several seconds, causing them to receive additional damage per hit, while Chrome will take less from their attacks.
• A Day in the Limelight: Imprisoned Sight puts the focus on Chrome, as he spearheads a mission that has him confront the newest group of Ascendants.
• Deflector Shields: Any blue skill that follows a three-orb combo will temporarily grant him some shield health. If it expires, or gets refreshed, the shield will explode and deal Lightning damage to enemies around Chrome.
• A Father to His Men: Chrome cares much about any squad he leads, and never takes any sacrifice lightly. All of his squad members respect him as a result.
• Fission Mailed: During Imprisoned Sight Chrome has to escape the Red Tide flowing in. While the sequence implies that it is possible to escape, the relentless enemy attacks and growing infection-based debuffs make Chrome's defeat inevitable, which the mission still counts as a success.
• An Ice Person: His Glory frame variation gives him Ice damage.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: At the end of Chapter 11's Hidden Story, Huaxu attempts to trap Chrome in a fantasy world where he is the human Commandant of Strike Hawk Squad, has his father's unconditional love, and humanity is on the verge of reclaiming Earth. Thankfully, he shakes off the illusion.
• Multiform Balance: Glory gives him this by making the player juggle a Mana Shield: Chrome is normally granted a continually regenerating shield, making him incredibly durable. But when he triggers his powerful AOE skills, which grants him a freezing aura, it drains his shields, making him truly vulnerable.
• Reverse Grip: Glory has him wield his sword with the tip pointed backwards.
• Sinister Scythe: Arclight frame variation weapon.
• Shock and Awe: Arclight frame variation focuses on Lightning damage.
• Sword and Gun: His weapon type, unique to the Glory frame, is a high-tech sword that has a pistol holstered in its pommel, which he draws to use for certain attacks in a manner not unlike an Iaijutsu Practitioner.
• Team Dad: Functions as the Straight Man in Strike Hawk. But this manner of his has instead become a running joke among fans calling him "Mama Chrome", and later acknowledged in the official spin-off comic Overlord Celica where he's seen wearing an apron.
• That Man Is Dead: As a human, he used to be known as Langston Smith, but after becoming a construct, he fully identifies as Chrome, abandoning all expectations he had before.

Kamui (BPE-72)

Voiced by: DK (Chinese) Jun Fukuyama (Japanese) Patrick Gruia (English)

Strike Hawk squad Armor-type construct

^{Click here to see Tenebrion}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 19
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: October 23
• Service Time: 3 Years
• Weight: 72kg
• Height: 180cm

Kamui is a member of the Strike Hawk squad, each of whom operate alone. Whether in daily life or in combat, he remains optimistic, though his "screw-loose" personality has caused him equal amounts of trouble. For all his kindness and forbearance, he often pays a great price for it.

Kamui's frame variations are Bastion and Tenebrion.

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• BFS: His weapon of choice. It's large enough to double as an impromptu shield, befitting his Armor class.
• The Ditz: Par excellence. He's cheerful, friendly, and has absolutely no common sense.
• Establishing Character Moment: His very first appearance story-wise has him throw his greatsword at an enemy attacking the Gray Ravens, then cheerfully introduce himself only to be caught off-guard by the enemy, which had survived his attack. Lee lampshades this to himself, noting that he can already tell the two of them aren't going to get along.
• Horned Humanoid: He has a metal spike protruding from his head to indicate his nature as a construct.
• Manchild: Excitable and naive, and his favorite gift is a handheld console.
• Mighty Glacier: Out of the playable cast, Bastion fits this archetype the best: he's one of, if not the slowest playable character in the game, but he hits hard, can block and parry attacks, and can give himself shields up to around half his max HP.
• Sixth Ranger: Despite being part of Strike Hawk squad, the events of the initial chapters has him tag along with Gray Raven squad for an extended period.
• Split Personality: He has one in the form of his Enemy Within, Camu. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say he's Camu's second personality.
• Stepford Smiler: While it was already implied by his bio, it's all but confirmed in Imprisoned Sight that Kamui hides a lot of his problems behind his upbeat persona, as he's heard muttering Koya's name after waking up from Vonnegut's hacking, only to state that he was shown a video game level he was stuck on^note keep in mind that during this scene, Chrome saw the part in his first Interlude where he failed to complete the Commandant tests, an event that radically altered his life.
• Super Mode: His aptly named "Dark Mode" for his Tenebrion variation, which boosts Dark damage output and changes all his moves into ones with stun resistance.
• The Heart: Bastion's bio mentions that since Strike Hawk isn't exactly a close-knit team, Kamui often plays the messenger to bring the others together, essentially making him this.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Kamui is not the original owner of his body. He is fact an artificial personality Camu requested be made to suppress his when getting converted into a construct.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: During Nona Ouroboros Kamui disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate the Nighter's more secretive "trade fair". As it turns out, he manages to pull off the look, so long as he stays quiet.

Wanshi (BPE-47)

Voiced by: Sun Peng (Chinese) Akira Ishida (Japanese), Corey Wilder (English)

Strike Hawk squad Support-type construct

Profile

• Psychological Age: 20
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: May 21
• Service Time: 1 Year
• Weight: 64kg
• Height: 178cm

*Yawn* "... Time to start work."

This member of Strike Hawk squad constantly looks sleep deprived. But after spending some time with him, one will realize he is a reliable presence to have in dangerous circumstances. In missions where Wanshi is involved, squads are noted to take 80% less damage than in normal situations.

Wanshi's frame is Hypnos.

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• Awesomeness by Analysis: Befitting his role as a scout, Wanshi's excellent at making deductions, even when he isn't cleared to know every detail. In Echo Aria he makes a few reasonable assumptions based on the Red Tide's prior movements as well as its relationship with the Hetero-Core fragments, and realises that Babylonia's plan for a wide-scale bombardment is unlikely to work.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: Wanshi's name was changed to Banji in the Japanese dub solely because his name (万事) is pronounced differently in Japanese compared to Chinese.
• Cold Sniper: Unintentional pun aside, Wanshi's sleepy demeanour also gives him a cold and detached look that combines his sniping skills. Calmness even informs his gameplay, with his Stance System encouraging continued fire until the last second, and his Ultimate needing awareness of enemy positioning to maximize damage. In story, he's also a very pragmatic and goal-minded operative.
• Combat Medic: As a Support character, he can heal teammates with his skills while also putting out effective damage.
• A Day in the Limelight: Wanshi figures heavily in Echo Aria, where he helps the Commandant scout out the Red Tide-drowned tributary, correctly reasoning that Babylonia needs to pinpoint its source, rather than fruitlessly bombard the area.
• Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: That, along with Exhausted Eye Bags and crinkled eyelids, allude to his tired persona.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Wanshi makes his first visible appearance in Fake Ascension, though he's seen as far back as the Hidden story of Nona Ouroboros, when Chrome sees a version of him while he's trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Wanshi wears a black visor on his forehead, and only there. Of course, given his personality, it might also jokingly resemble a sleep mask.
• The Gunslinger: Similar to Lee and Sophia, Wanshi fights primarily with a handgun and a sniper rifle, though he compliments it with hand-to-hand strikes and grenades.
• Healing Shiv: While Support units' heals tend to just happen to also do damage to enemies, Wanshi's blue skill outright has him lob a grenade that somehow also heals teammates if it explodes near them.
• An Ice Person: Wanshi's element is ice, and his blue skill has him use a grenade that leaves a freezing Area of Effect that slows down enemies.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is a cold and calculating scout, but read between the lines, and you can see he's willing to do the right thing along the way. In Echo Aria, a boy from a settlement goes missing. While Wanshi remains focused on his own goal, he doesn't bother disputing the Commandant over looking for the boy, either, and simply starts searching.
• Long-Range Fighter: His fighting style encourages standing his ground to sustain fire. He has a skill to slow enemy movement, three-orb combos grant him temporary super armor, and his Tactical Shooting Stance always exits in a dodge and counter attack, giving him breathing room.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He might act like he's perpetually lazy, but he frequently shows flashes of a cold, calculating mind underneath. When he and the Commandant find the source of the Red Tide in Echo Aria, he completely drops any pretense of lethargy for his true, intense profesionalism.
• One-Hit Polykill: Attacks from his sniper rifle, whether from his Bloom Shot passive or his Zero Bloom Limit Break, go in a straight line through enemies, so it is preferable to have enemies in a column, rather than grouped horizontally.
• Sleepyhead: He's constantly yawning, stretching, and generally looking like he'd rather sleep than get into a fight.
• Stance System: After a three-orb combo, holding the attack button will put Wanshi into a Tactical Shooting Stance, where he will fire nonstop. Exiting the stance gives him a stamina-free dodge that can still trigger Bullet Time, as well as extended invulnerability, encouraging the player to not exit prematurely.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Being as pragmatic and curt as Lee, the two tend to have the same thoughts, to the point Lee can begin a sentence, before Wanshi cuts him short, already knowing what he'll say.

Camu (EXN-03)

Voiced by: DK (Chinese) Jun Fukuyama (Japanese), Patrick Gruia (English)

Strike Hawk squad Vanguard-type Transcendant

Profile

• Psychological Age: 19
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: October 23
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 72kg
• Height: 180cm

"Everything I hate should be destroyed."

Originally a successful "lab rat" from Babylonia's top secret project, he is now a special executor for them, in charge of missions specifically involving the Dead Zone. A very expressive person, who strongly displays his emotions and believes in his instincts above all else. His custom-tuned body allows him to move freely within the Dead Zone.

Camu's frame is Crocotta (Uniframe).

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• Animal Motif: Wild dogs. One of Camu's generic costumes includes a muzzle, his attack animations are aggressive and animalistic, with his Super Mode outright having him claw and tear at enemies, and his frame's name, "Crocotta", refer to a mythological dog-wolf the size of a horse.
• BFS: Wields one, just like Kamui.
• Broken Pedestal: Camu used to look up to Mao Zhen, a man who took him off the streets, trained him, and encouraged him to join Kurono. When he realizes Mao Zhen betrayed him and the rest of his squad on Kurono's orders, Camu chases him down and kills him in revenge.
• Do Not Go Gentle: When he and his squad discover they've been intentionally infected with the Punishing Virus and will likely die from it sooner or later, Camu rallies his men to take revenge on Kurono rather than run and hide. They succeed in destroying a local headquarters in their rampage.
• Enemy Within: He used to serve as one to Kamui, at one point even trying to retake control their body after believing Kamui was too weak to survive.
• He Who Fights Monsters: He once tried to fight the Corrupted as a human, but when he realized he had been intentionally infected, he willingly went on an almost animalistic rampage to take revenge on Kurono, and Mao Zhen notes how much Camu is acting like a Corrupted.
• Horned Humanoid: Like Kamui, Camu also has a small metal horn.
• Irony: His backstory is full of it: His mentor always advised him to keep calm, yet Camu's true strength is tapping into his Unstoppable Rage; he expected to die for revenge before succumbing to the virus, but instead became the sole survivor that exhibited unusual resilience; and, of course, his operations against the Corrupted eventually made him something close to one himself.
• Literal Split Personality: Originally the true personality inhabiting Kamui's body, Asimov eventually transferred Camu's consciousness over into a new body, separating the two.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: His top is unzipped down to his navel.
• Promoted to Playable: He was originally one of Punishing's bosses, known as Dark or Berserk Kamui, but has has since been turned into a fully realized character.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In his final fight against Mao Zhen, the latter insists that everything Kurono did with its experiments into Constructs and the Punishing Virus were just ways to save humanity. Camu then tells him off, saying that Mao Zhen and Kurono are the sort of people who would use people for their own ends, virus or no virus.
• Super Mode: Similar to Kamui, his Ultimate is a "Berserk Mode" that temporarily replaces all his attacks with quick and vicious dark element moves.
• Unwitting Test Subject: In the past, he was selected to join Kurono as a human foot soldier, but the serum that supposedly would make him immune to the Punishing Virus was actually mixed with the virus itself to see if the body could withstand it. When Kurono tries to wipe out his squad due to being a failure, it just inspires him to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.

Egret

Vanessa

"Even the most beautiful of toys is worthless if it refuses to listen."

The commandant of Egret squad. As a recurring figure, her true colors as an abusive and petty leader quickly shows when one meets her.

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• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite everything, Bambinata will always be Vanessa's doll and sister. When Vanessa returned home from the academy it was only to take Bambinata with her via a requisition order. But when she saw Bambinata trying to remember Vanessa with her drawings, that was when Vanessa decided to take her with her, no matter what condition she was in. The events of Left Unsaid also shows that Vanessa deeply cares about Bambinata, to Vera's amusement.
• Bad Boss: She's cruel to her Constructs, whom she sees as "dolls" who are only useful so long as they obey her. In a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, she's extremely unpopular with troops as a result, who all have left her squad in one way or another, eventually leaving only her most loyal sycophant, Bambinata.
• Class Reunion: The end of Across the Ruined Sea has the Commandant, Simon, and Harley Jo all visit her in the hospital.
• Control Freak: She keeps all of the Constructs on a very tight leash, usually by using Egret's high mission success rate to pressure them into staying with the unit, or just straight up psychologically abusing them into compliance like she did with Liv. This stems from Bambinata choosing to stay with her parents rather than follow her to the FOS Military Academy, a choice that has always confounded and enraged Vanessa and instilled a fear of any potential betrayal.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Vanessa had a stressful childhood, constantly browbeat by her two Education Mama parents. It didn't get better when they decided to adopt Bambinata, who she had a complicated familial love-hate relationship with, which created her need to control people.
• A Day in the Limelight: Left Unsaid finally delves into her backstory, which is tied with Bambinata's.
• The Fake Cutie: Her treatment of Constructs like they're actual toys to play with only highlights an unamusing bigotry of them.
• Foil: A pretty clear one to the Commandant, who mocks the latter's empathy and care for their squad as a weakness, compared to her own insistence on blind loyalty from Egret squad.
• Handicapped Badass: During The Survival Lucem Vanessa gets seriously injured, and has to spend Left Unsaid with an eyepatch over her wounded face. The damage to her left eye is permanent.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In The Survival Lucem, her and Lucia are driving two overloaded ambulances with 40+ refugees and the comatose Commandant to escape the incoming wave of hetero-creatures. Calculating that their current speed is too slow, Vanessa gets out and says to reduce to 15 refugees per vehicle or they will all die, in effect abandoning 10+ people. Lucia, Liv, and Lee cannot abide by this and propose a different plan, Gray Raven squad acts as decoys, and buy time for everyone to retreat. The answer infuriates Vanessa, who views it as utter arrogance and suicide that Gray Raven believes they can win while tired and their Commandant out of action. She then argues that the reason the Commandant is comatose is because he overestimated himself saving his team (and Vanessa), to which Lee retorts none of them would be there without his idiocy. Finally she asks if they would squander their own lives that the Commandant saved for worthless refugees, to which Liv answers no life is worthless. "We will stand united, overcome all obstacles, and never retreat out of fear nor hardship!" Having recently lost Teasell, Vanessa realizes that the unconscious Commandant commands more authority than she ever has, even if they are actions she disagrees with. Whether out of pride or pettiness, Vanessa decides she has something to prove, and orders Gray Raven to drive onwards with the refugees while she and Bambanita stay behind to deal with the hetero-creatures their own way.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: It's heavily implied that she acts like this towards Bambinata and Sica. Bambinata is her adoptive sister, and while she claims that most of her "mentoring" of Sica in the FOS Military Academy was simply just bullying her, the fact that she kept all of Sica's battle reports suggests that she was just showing Tough Love to her in an attempt to prepare for the realities of the battlefield.
• One Degree of Separation: She was one of the Commandant's classmates in the FOS Military Academy, and Liv served in Egret Squad for a while, though the latter didn't have a good experience seving under her command.
• Redemption Quest: After being missing for months since her Heroic Sacrifice in The Survival Lucem, shows up heavily injured at the temporary HQ on the coast during Across the Ruined Sea; goes briefly comatose due to infection of her eye, and promptly returns to the final battle with Bambinata as soon as she regains consciousness. Then gets her own event in Left Unsaid.
• Repressive, but Efficient: Egret squad actually has an extremely low casualty rate, and in turn attracted like-minded life-clinging death-fearing constructs in the past. The problem is Vanessa's methods still prompt defections, regardless of how much she tries to discipline her puppets. The fact that the Commandant can still enforce his will on Gray Raven while unconscious makes her realize there is a large gap.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: During Left Unsaid Vanessa finally meets her match with Vera, who refuses to take any shit from her, leaving the two to spend the entire story bickering.
• We Have Reserves: During the mission depicted in Echo Aria's Hidden story, she fired artillery to flatten a Corrupted factory, even though Gray Raven was in the blast radius. Afterwards, she accused them of wasting her precious resources to cover for their supposed shortcomings. Given a flashback to Liv's time with Egret, this isn't the first time she's fired on her own troops or destroyed infrastructure in the process; as far as she's concerned, it protects more troops down the line and the Engineering Force can handle reconstruction, so she doesn't have to care about it. She also considers Constructs to be completely disposable assets and doesn't bat an eye at sacrificing them if it achieves her objective.
• Womanchild: She actually considers her constructs to be dolls and toys for her to play with, and even dresses them up. Even the command center she ran in Echo Aria's hidden story had flowers planted around it.

Bambinata (BPM-11)

Voiced by: Xuefei Lanlan (Chinese) Rina Hidaka (Japanese) Lexi Fontaine (English)

Egret squad Attack-type construct

Profile

• Psychological Age: 9
• Vital Fluid Type: AB
• Activation Date: December 5
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 29kg
• Height: 135.5cm

"By master's order, Bambinata is here to help you. Bambinata will be under your command when in mission, Commandant."

This construct's body has undergone a series of optimizations based on Kurono's early construct experiments, and currently serves as a member of Egret squad.

Bambinata's frame is Vitrum.

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• Abusive Parents: She was adopted by Vanessa's parents, and while it appeared they put all their attention on her at Vanessa's expense, in reality they were not good parents to either of them: Bambinata was just another experimental subject who they cared for while researching her memory problems, and saw her as "just" a construct, not even expecting her to have dinner with them since constructs don't need to eat. In the end, it was Vanessa who wound up bonding with her, despite their rocky start.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Her weapon class are "Mantis Blades", which spring out from her forearms for certain orb attacks as well as her Limit Break.
• Body Horror: Playing into her doll/marionette motif, Bambinata has one of the most dramatic displays of mechanisation next to Rosetta, with her torso being hollowed out with a visible gap in the front and back to reveal her machinery in the center.
• Conflicting Loyalty: In her childhood, she had difficulty parsing her own desires, which made things difficult because she wasn't sure whether to obey her adoptive parents or follow Vanessa, who tries to care for her. In the end, Left Unsaid proves that her love for her sister is stronger.
• Criss-Cross Attack: Her Limit Break has her dash back and forth while slashing an enemy. If it's fully powered up by her passive, it has a unique animation to finish it off.
• Dance Battler: Her moves are inspired by ballet, with her leaping, kicking and pirouetting like a ballerina with knives. In the past, it was Vanessa who inspired Bambinata to practice ballet, and it seemed to be something she was talented in and genuinely liked.
• A Day in the Limelight: Bambinata, along with her commandant Vanessa, are the central figures of Left Unsaid, which explores their shared past while embarking on a vital mission for Babylonia.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Bambinata makes her first visible appearance in Across the Ruined Sea, though her first speaking role is while accompanying Vanessa during Echo Aria's Hidden story.
• Expy: Not Bambinata herself, but her Mantis Blades are pretty clearly inspired by the weapons of the same name and make that appear in Cyberpunk 2077
• Forgetful Jones: Bambinata suffers from serious memory issues, and regularly forgets people. This actually translates to her in-game mechanic, where doing a 3-ping skill from her Thread Pull state causes her to "forget" that orb, leaving the orb queue to fill with the remaining ones. If she can completely forget all her orb skills before doing her Limit Break, it will do more damage. Some of her animations also show her momentarily blanking out mid-attack, before rousing herself as if just waking up.
• An Ice Person: Her damage type is Ice, which her skills convert to if they're a 3-ping.
• Knows the Ropes: Following her doll/marionette motif, some of Bambinata's attacks have a string theme, most notably her passive skills, where she pulls herself through the air on a set of strings, as if a puppet master is dragging her around. Another attack from exiting Thread Pull lets her pull in enemies attached to her via a string.
• Marionette Motion: She has a doll motif, which translates to various animations depicting her being puppeted around on strings. Rather than looking unnaturally jerky, though, she instead shows a smooothness and grace that seems inhuman.
• Meaningful Name: "Bambinata" is Italian for "a childish action", which is appropriate for the youngest playable character in the game.
• Nice Guy: Bambinata is a naturally kind girl. In the past, despite Vanessa's initial hatred of her, Bambinata wholeheartedly believed that becoming her "younger sister" meant supporting Vanessa, no matter what. Today, she's become more like an Extreme Doormat, loyally obeying her "master" Vanessa, despite the latter's coldness to her.
• Not Quite Flight: Her "Thread Pull" state of her passive, where she is pulled into the air on a set of strings, which becomes the starting point for a variety of attacks.
• Sole Survivor: Unlike Gray Raven squad, the Egret squad has an unfortunate habit of losing members. By the time Left Unsaid starts, Bambinata is literally the only left soldier in it.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The CN version of the game renders her name as "Bombinata".
• Undying Loyalty: She has steadfastly remained at Vanessa's side. At the climax of Left Unsaid Bambinata finally realizes that she truly wishes to be with Vanessa and support her as an equal.
• Wistful Amnesia: Despite her memory issues, many still linger in her subconscious. At the end of Left Unsaid, after Madeira tries to hack her, Bambinata finally dreams of her childhood memories with Vanessa.

Teasell

some caption text

A Construct formerly of Egret squad.

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• Face–Heel Turn: Is implied to have gone over to the Ascendant side as of Cinder Burns, specifically The Merciful One
• One Last Field Trip: Shows up for the final battle of Across the Ruined Sea to save Vanessa and Bombinata one last time before leaving for good.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One of the main reasons that he abandons Egret is due to how poorly Vanessa treats the Constructs under her command. Once he finds an opportunity to leave, he takes it.

Purifying Force

Bianca (BPO-87)

Voiced by: Yun He Zhui (Chinese) Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese), Skyler Davenport (English)

Purifying Force Attack-type construct

^{Click here to see Veritas}

^{Click here to see Stigmata}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 25
• Vital Fluid Type: A
• Activation Date: November 21
• Service Time: 6 Years
• Weight: 57kg
• Height: 172cm

The chief of the Purifying Force. This elegant and rigorous construct is not only certified to kill the Corrupted, but also any construct infected by the Punishing virus, even if it is on Babylonia's side. Because of her special status, few people know who she really is, though rumours swirl of her past as a nun.

Bianca's frame variations are Zero, Veritas and Stigmata.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: The "Adaptation Fitting — Toniris" short story reveals Bianca was often treated with suspicion because of her job in the Purifying Force. Any friendly greeting or courtesy to remember others by name was always misinterpreted as Bianca "keeping tabs" on suspects or "warning them" not to befall the same fate.
• Badass Fingersnap: Some of Bianca's skills are prefaced by an audible snapping of her fingers. For Veritas, it signals her blue "Magnetic Thunder" skill, a self-buff that can also trigger her Sniper Mode, while for Stigmata, it signals the activation of her Luminous Space passive. Either way, they both are cues that Bianca is about to lay down sudden bursts of damage.
• Badass Preacher: In her past life before becoming a Construct, she was a nun.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: In an inversion to the Mid-Season Upgrade most of the characters have, her Veritas frame is actually her first body in-universe, and she switched to a less powerful Babylonia body when she cut ties with Daedalus Corp. She reluctantly returns to it in Eternal Engine, needing more power to deal with the threats of that arc.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Her Stigmata frame looks like it belongs to a full-blown villain, with a jagged black sword, ghoulish purple effects, and her pale appearance, but while Bianca comes close to Sanity Slippage during Across the Ruined Sea, she remains steadfastly focused on destroying the Hetero-Creatures in that storyline.
• Defector from Decadence: She used to work for Daedalus Corp, believing she was working as a peacekeeper, until she found out she was actually an Unwitting Pawn to the company's secret human-trafficking business where they were forcibly converting victims into constructs. Afterwards she proceeded to destroy the organisation, up to killing the CEO who hired her in the first place.
• The Dreaded: As the leader of the Purifying Force, Bianca is often met with wariness at best and sheer terror at worst by other Constructs whenever she appears on the field.
• Dual Boss: She and Karenina are fought together as the boss of Chapter 6.
• Evil Makeover: Her Stigmata frame metaphorically has her embrace her identity as a "witch", and her appearance comes with a deathly pallour and Excessive Evil Eyeshadow. While her Stigmata frame had her look more normal, by the end, getting swept up by the Red Tide in Across the Ruined Sea changed her appearance.
• Expy: Having Ayako Kawasumi voice a dignified blonde woman was always a nod towards Saber from the Fate Series, but her Stigmata frame makes the reference even more blatant, with Bianca wielding a sword like Saber, and her Limit Break being a Sword Beam with a red and purple tint, making it strongly resemble Saber Alter's Excalibur Morgan.
• Flawed Prototype: The Stigmata frame is built with a function to read past data embedded in the Punishing Virus to learn more about it, but given Bianca is taking it on its first test run, the results are mixed, as she's hammered with hallucinations in the process. While she survives the mission, she ditches the frame so it can be further stabilized.
• Glass Cannon: Her Veritas frame in particular is an absolute monster in lightning damage, but her meager health means that she can actually get killed in a single blow if the player isn't careful keeping her out of trouble.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Despite easily being able to defeat her and Karenina, the story of Chapter 6 treats it as if it were Bianca and Karen who handily defeated Gray Raven squad.
• Heroic Vow: "Qianzi, if it were you...you would definitely make the same choice. Wait for me,, I'll be there soon." said by Bianca before Qianzi's boss fight. The sad twist is that in the Gestalt simulation where Bianca becomes the witch and humanity loses, Qianzi is unable to raise a hand against Bianca at the battle along the coast and lets herself be killed.
• Lady of War: She has the most lady-like aura of all the characters, and uses a lot of balletic flips and spins as she fights. Her Veritas Interlude even has a moment where her former boss, Wen, insists she learn etiquette despite being a combat cyborg.
  Wen: You have been bestowed power, but etiquette forms habit and restraint. It is a self-reminder, one that reminds you of your identity and your duty.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Stigmata has a caveat that it doesn't go into Matrix on a dodge, and rather needs to be manually enter "Luminous Space", which itself comes with one second of completely freezing the enemy.
• Of Corsets Sexy: She wears one that highlights her ample bustline in all of her frame variations.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In Chapter 7, she has all the authority needed to hunt down Kamui due to his growing infection. After listening to the arguments of Gray Raven squad and Chrome, she compromises, allowing Gray Raven to follow along to see if they can cure him first, within the limits of her mission parameters.
• Shock and Awe: Her Veritas variation focuses on Lightning-type damage, with her Limit Break involving an arrow shot upwards that rains down a series of thunderbolts.
• Shoot the Dog: The Purifying Force is all about this. Bianca herself on two different occasions had to Mercy Kill people who showed her nothing but kindness after they got infected by the Punishing virus and went on a rampage.'
• Stance System:
  • Veritas can enter "Sniper Mode", where Bianca's basic attack is replaced by a long range, extremely powerful series of shots.
  • Stigmata can enter "Sword Mode", where Bianca loses her orbs, but gains immensely powerful basic combos as well as a series of Sword Beams, as well as her Limit Break.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: Zero and Veritas both use bows, despite the prevalence of firearms in the setting.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Bianca's Interlude "Faith on the Snow" and Watanabe's, "Fostered by Blade" wind up both taking place at the same incident at Snow Plain Church, the events of which profoundly impacted them.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the hidden node of her Veritas Interlude, Bianca meets Hassen, who thanks her for destroying Daedalus. She bitterly insists she's nothing more than a killer, but Hassen shows her data proving that all the targets she had killed ultimately saved more lives down the line, potentially preventing entire cities from collapsing.

Chiko

some caption text

Deputy captain of the Purifying Force.

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• The Confidant: When Chiko heard about Bianca's past, she wished she could have been as heartless as her, as she believed closing your heart was the correct way to deal with connections that could constantly hurt you. The fact Bianca had not closed her heart and constantly opens and reopens it after having to kill friends is amazing to her, and she tells her as much. To Chiko, Bianca is incorruptible, and the most enviable existence for someone who has fallen into indifference. They end up talking a lot during their breaks, discussing philosophy and watching movies together.
• Critical Hesitation Blunder: Hesitated killing her younger sister after she had turned into a Corrupted, causing a lot more casualties. In the Gestalt future where Bianca becomes a witch, Chiko is unable to raise a hand against her and let's herself be killed.
• Foil: To Bianca. In the Purifying Force, where dealing with Corrupted constructs is the bulk of their work, outward displays of emotions and sentiment are discouraged, and Bianca, despite her reputation as a 'witch' and tragic past, is viewed as too soft. Contrast this with Chiko, who is extremely stoic and has suppressed her emotions. It's no wonder there were complaints that she should be made the chief over Bianca.
• The Stoic: Her normal behavior during battle and with the rest of the Purifying Force. Only drops this when alone with Bianca.

World Government’s Association of Arts

Ayla (BPF-22)

Voiced by: Dafan Gong (Chinese) Shizuka Itō (Japanese), Kelsey Jaffer (English)

Arts Association Armor-type construct

^{Click here to see Kaleido}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 18
• Vital Fluid Type: O
• Activation Date: December 15
• Service Time: 1 Year
• Weight: 64kg
• Height: 167cm

The World Government Association of Arts is one of Babylonia's youngest organisations. One of its members, the self-confident Ayla, expresses her passion for art by being part of its archaeological team, which unearths and preserves remnants of human culture from before the Punishing virus.

Ayla's frame variations are Brilliance and Kaleido.

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• Area of Effect: Her burst puts down a large field of paint that buffs and heals her teammates and can inflict damage on demand, though it's better to fill her gauge before that.
• Art Attacker: Her artistic attributes are emphasized in her Kaleido frame, which gives her attacks that splatter paint across the battlefield, while her Limit Break even lets her essentially mark her handiwork with her signature.
• Artsy Beret: She's an avid artist as a member of the Association of Art. Befittingly, her Brilliance frame sports a stylish beret.
• Charged Attack: Her passive ability allows her to use one after fully-powered special attacks, complete with added durability to power through any damage taken in that time.
• Cheery Pink: Her pink hair and pink eyes reflect her upbeat, cheery, aristic, and determined personality.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Downplayed. While Ayla still has a narrow waist, compared to a lot of the slim, waifish, or hourglass-figured playable female characters, her overall figure is fuller than theirs. This is especially noticeable in her base Brilliance frame, or its alternate Coating "Lost Butterfly," which shows off her thicker... well, frame.
• Bowdlerise: See the main picture of Ayla up there? That's the censored Chinese version. The original, which is still available in international versions, showed a lot more cleavage.
• A Day in the Limelight: Ayla is one of the main characters for Fallen Star, with its Hidden Chapters following her search for Selena. Much later, she returns as a leading protagonist in Renaissance du Fantastique, which specifically concerns the Arts Association and its members.
• Gilded Cage: Her Interlude examines life aboard the Babylonia as a human civilian — despite excelling as artists, Ayla and Selena both come to realize that they will never grow as people so long as they remain naive and unaware of the harsh reality outside the space station, motivating them to eventually sign up for military service as Constructs.
• An Ice Person: Kaleido has 100% Ice damage.
• I Will Find You: She will stop at nothing to bring Selena back home. In Renaissance du Fantastique she actually manages to reunite with Selena for a moment, and though she begs her to stay, Selena chooses to depart to deal with her own unfinished business, satisfied that she now knows she has a home waiting for her.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: The weapon of her Kaleido frame is a combination of a spear, paint gun, brush and even a Flying Broomstick.
• Ms. Fanservice: Ayla in general is a full-figured, extraverted beauty who tends to wear clothing that flaunt her curvaceousness and sports one of the largest busts among the cast. Her Kaleido frame in particular is easily the most eye-catching, as she is basically wearing a leotard with a Showgirl Skirt, which shows off her much of her bare skin
• Nice Girl: Thanks to her charm and personality, Ayla is "welcomed like a superstar" whenever she goes. She apparently goes on interviews a lot and has a sizeable fan club on Babylonia.
• Non-Idle Rich: She's a Construct and thus an active combatant despite being a Rich Genius who could wile away on Babylonia and live a much safer, more content life. She become a Construct exactly because she couldn't turn a blind eye to the war on Earth.
• The Klutz: She's not exactly the most coordinated. Her idle animation goes so far as to show her drop her scythe by accident.
• Proud Beauty: Ayla designs her own Coatings. Hers tend to flaunt or emphasize her figure. You do the math.
• Rich Genius: Her paintings are so good that people pay a fortune for them. She designs Coatings for Babylonia Constructs, and she's booked to the teeth. Simply put, her finances blew up because she's good at what she does. It's a good thing because, In-Universe, her frames tend to be more expensive on average, but at least she'll foot the whole bill.
  Ayla releases her stress by painting. She once painted 37 oil paintings, 86 sketches, and 3 120-page manga in one month—the record still stands to this day.
• Sinister Scythe: Her Brilliance frame has the same weapon class as Chrome and Haicma, although she's a pure melee fighter who does Phyiscal damage chiefly.
• True Companions: She and Selena are extremely close, with Ayla crediting Selena as being an inspiration for her artistic pursuits, and later decision to become a Construct. When she discovers Selena may still be alive, she drops everything to go on a solo mission to the corrupted International Space Station, while it is in the middle of a massive battle with Babylonia.

Selena (BPF-06)

Voiced by: Liu Zhixiao (Chinese) Satomi Sato (Japanese) Judy Alice Lee (English)

Unknown Vanguard-type Transcendant

^{Click here to see Capriccio} "Thank you for enjoying the flamboyant music."

^{Click here to see her human/NPC design}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 20
• Vital Fluid Type: O
• Activation Date: September 27
• Service Time: 3 Years
• Weight: 41kg
• Height: 163cm

"I hear it ... the signals deep within the storm."

Kind and resilient in nature, Selena was born on Babylonia and received a privileged education. She possesses a wonderful singing voice and outstanding musical and artistic talent that made her one of the Arts Association's most promising members. Formerly part of its archeology team, she has also performed as an opera singer, artist, and now is a Transcendant.

Selena has two frame variations: Tempest (Uniframe) and Capriccio, a spare omniframe body built at the urging of an artist from the Arts Association. As the latter's name name implies, it is a fantasy sonata, but the emotions contained therein are by no means false.

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• All for Nothing: Selena at times felt this during her tribulations. All of her idealism achieved nothing, she could not save anyone, merely adding herself as another meaningless casualty in the meat grinder of war. Though, as pointed out by the dying captain she tended to on International Space Station, this is actually an Averted Trope, as she did brought hope for others, however fragile and fleeting it is. In the end, it is the same idealism that makes her stay on the righteous path and endures through all the ordeals to reach deliverance.
• Ascended Extra: She was introduced as a Damsel in Distress used to provide motivation for Ayla's entrance into the story. Now she's a playable character capable of pulling her weight in a fight.
• Author Avatar: In-Universe, Recitativo di Fantasia's story is from a play written by Selena. Ayla subsequently modified one of Selena's bodies so she could take part in her own production, so this "Selena" is a fictional character.
• But Now I Must Go: In Renaissance du Fantastique, Selena and Ayla momentarily reunite, and though the latter begs her to stay, Selena chooses to depart while Ayla is unconscious, knowing the time isn't right. Selena, however, is satisfied in knowing that she has a "home" that she can return to one day.
• Came Back Strong: She was barely alive when first seen. Now she's a Transcendant, a specialized type of construct.
• Combat Medic: As an Amplifier-class character, she's capable of healing and buffing her teammates when summoned via QTE.
• Cosmic Plaything: The world of this game is not known for being merciful, but poor Selena still stands out as being particularly cursed. A supposedly low-risk relic collection mission went wrong, killed everyone sans the crippled Selena. She then got abandoned by superior and ripped apart by Riot, suffered under the yoke of Punishing infection for several years. When rescue finally came, she was abducted by Gabriel before that could happen, causing her further torments at the hands of the Ascendants. The Hetero-Core fragment hidden in her body, the very trophy payed with the lives of her comrades, which she vowed to them that will be delivered to humanity's hand as vital intelligence on Punishing, ended up as fuel for Red Tide and turned her into Siren, forced to do Punishing's world-ending bidding. Though she got better as a Transcendant, she was still left with a hazy memory on earth.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her profile said her mind is often rampant with imagination, and she has a tendency to unknowingly say or do embarrassing things.
• Criss-Cross Attack: Her Limit Break allows players to manually do one, with a series of unique orbs that allows Selena to dash around, striking everyone along the way.
• Damsel in Distress: She's the objective of Ayla's rescue attempts. Unfortunately, she also happens to be Gabriel's objective, who retrieves her first.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Capriccio is classified as a Dark-type Construct, but Selena is the furthest thing from the usual connotations. Even Tempest, cloaked and colored in black, highlights only the melachnology aspects of her character and that's it.
• Doppelgänger Attack: Her passive lets her leave behind copies that repeat her last three-ping attack, allowing Selena to continue attack even in the pauses between her skills.
• Easy Amnesia: Her resurrection as a Transcendant has sadly left her with no clue of her identity, leaving her to go Wandering the Earth.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • Her sixth Affection Story shows that one day in the future, she will likely regain enough of her memories that she will finally contact and reunite with the Commandant, though the ambiguity of the story makes it impossible to work out the context, especially since no dialogue appears in it.
  • As far her Capriccio frame is concerned... at least in the world of the play. As the Commandant continues resisting Hamlet, new endings are unlocked where the Dragon is defeated without having to sacrifice the Piper. In those ones, the world heals, while the Piper reunites with the Witch, or travels the world together with the Champion.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Selena's character in the narration of the play is only known as the Piper, or the Princess.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Her design emphasizes that she only has one organic-looking leg, with the rest of her limbs being clearly mechanical.
• Fix Fic: Capriccio's Affection Stories are about this, where her mind re-runs the scenarios in which she and the Commandant do not meet and instead do so properly like they wanted. This happy dream goes for three chapters until she remembers that she never saw the Commandant's face in the fourth, breaking the illusion apart.
• Flower Motifs: Selena is associated with purple irises, which tend to appear in one form or another around her.
• Generation Xerox: Her father was a famous artist who joined the army and eventually sacrificed his life. A wild goose never laid a tame egg indeed.
  • The life of Selena's father, who himself was inspired by another artist that took up arms.
• Gilded Cage: Ayla's and her Interludes show how they were praised and respected artists who, nevertheless, had a naive ignorance of how harsh life was outside Babylonia. When Selena tried to create a play based on the war against the Punishing Virus, an audience member, a construct, criticizes her for glorifying battle. The event helps convince her to convert herself into a construct and join the fight.
  Commandant's perspective from Affection Story Chapter 2: She is an innocent little girl who has never experienced any setbacks in life. She does not have to worry about anything other than herself. Only a greenhouse free of any contaminants would be able to produce such innocence. A flower of Eden that knows nothing of the real world.
• The Hero Dies: In the unaltered storyline, the Piper realises the only way to defeat the dragon is to connect her life to it, and then die to take it with her.
• The Idealist: Selena is a born romantic that has a tendency to view things through rose-colored glasses. Despite the later realization of her naivety and the woes that befall her making her more mature and melancholic, this trait still shines through at times. Even when trapped in Red Tide or just before the orbital strike, she took the time to marvel at the beauty of the earth. In the profile of Tempest, it is stated that the pursuit of art is among the few things that Selena is still certain about after rebirth.
• And I Must Scream: Before she was rebuilt into a Transcendant, Selena was physically ripped apart by the International Space Station's Riot. After that, she spent an unknown amount of time trapped in an isolated compartment, rigged up to a terminal and barely able to do anything else but send out SOS signals embedded in the white noise of the space station. Ayla believes her strength of will was basically the only thing keeping her alive. Still, there was a worse fate awaiting her ahead…
  • She was thrown by Gabriel into the Red Tide to use the Hetero-core fragment inside her body as its fuel. She was perverted into Siren, being used as the helpless core of Red Tide, all the while being constantly disassembled and reformed, with Punishing corruption that never relented. The days on International Space Station looked halcyon in comparison.
• Instrument of Murder:
  • As a Transcendent, her weapon is a high-tech cello (and bow), which has a blade for an endpin. Some of her animations even has her play it like a normal instrument.
  • Keeps going as an Omniframe, which is actually a flute, albeit one that projects a blade from one end. Her Six-Star class weapons is even named "Sarastro".
• Irony: In the past, she was endlessly curious about what Earth's surface is like, and always wished to visit it. At the end of Echo Aria, she is free to explore Earth as she pleases, immune to the Punishing Virus, but only because she's become a Transcendant and an amnesiac with no recollection of her old fascination with the surface.
• King Incognito: In the story, the Princess spends so long wandering the world and trying to fight the Dragon that most people only know her as the Piper, unaware of her true identity.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In Selena's opera, soldiers that stayed behind to cover the retreat exchanged blessings with leaving comrades, and the cast had the leisure to mourn and sing a requiem for the fallen. Eventually, Selena learned the truth behind the veteran's criticism the hard way on International Space Station. Their retreat quickly degenerated into a rout, with no time to spare on the dead. Their superior abandoned them, presumed that they were beyond salvation due to the overwhelming enemy force and lost of contact. At that moment, Selena felt the same wrath and hatred of the veteran, his forsaken comrades, and civilians left behind during the Operation Arcadia (Evacuation of Earth). Eventually a Downplayed Trope, as Selena was merely ignorant, never malicious, and she could and did redeem herself in the end.
  • On the positive side of things, the current head of Art Association, Allen, was enlightened onto the path of art by Selena's father. After his mentor's martyrdom, his guidance on Selena's performance was arguably the key factor that helped the girl to successfully encourage her mother and steel herself in pursuit of art, creating a more uplifting legacy in the process.
  • Selena later ended up on the giving end of this trope. It is implied that an old soldier she saved after she became a Transcendant was in fact the very same artist that inspired her father.
• Living MacGuffin: Due to the fallout of her ill-fated mission aboard the International Space Station, she wound up with a fragment of the Hetero-Core lodged in her chest, which becomes useful to the Ascendants later on for their own research into the Red Tide. She's eventually freed from her status after the Merciful One rebuilds her body, shattering the fragment in the process.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: When trapped in the Red Tide, Selena's mind re-did several important points in her life to right what was wrong, like trying to meet Commandant in person and finding a way to save her comrades from the hellish battlefield of International Space Station. It is indicated that she willingly entered this state, for it was arduous to be awake and sane in Red Tide.
• Meaningful Name: "Capriccio" refers to an instrumental piece, but can also be defined as "fancy" or "whimsy", while the Chinese name for this frame outright translates to "phantom". In the same way, the Selena here is a character she is portraying in one of her plays.
• Musical Assassin: Her theme. Besides attacking with her instrument, which makes noise on its own, her Limit Break takes the form of waves of sound she releases around herself, while her gameplay loop of trying to maintain buffs and debuffs based on coloured notes is similar to a musician trying to hold a performance. Caprrico's attack animations including her playing her flute mid-combo.
• Nice Girl: One of her defining traits that is called out in her profile. She always thinks about others no matter what hardship she is under. It is said that even all the tragedies in her path to her current status as a Transcendant do little to change that, which is shown in her dialogues, as she shows concern to the well-being of Commandant, treats her teammates politely, and her Finish Battle quote is a lament about those falls in battle.
  Selena (Battle quote 3): "The quality of mercy is not strained."
  • When she was a child, despite feeling sad for her father's martyrdom on battlefield, she refused to indulge in sorrow, instead thinking about how to comfort her heartbroken mother and honor her late father's legacy.
  • She felt ashamed when a veteran construct called her out for glorifying the war in her opera. This constitutes one of her reasons to enlist and become a construct.
  • She lied to the dying captain about the reinforcement that would never come during the doomed International Space Station mission and sang a requiem to satisfy the man's last wish, to make sure he passed away peacefully. It should be noted that she herself was physically crippled by battle and mentally devastated by the very news of denied help at that point.
  • After being tortured by Punishing infection for several years with a crippled body in the International Space Station, she finally sees Ayla coming to rescue her, yet insists that Ayla help Commandant fight against Riot first. Even though her mind is not lucid enough to recognize who Commandant is, she did not want others to suffer the same tragic fate at the hand of Riot. Unbeknownst to her, sending Ayla away created the perfect chance for Gabriel to seize her. What an epitome of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Even then, Selena chose to save Commandant again in the hallucination she experienced in the Red Tide.
  • When she is trapped in the Red Tide as Siren, she happily calls down an orbital strike on herself in the brief moment of consciousness after being defeated, while pushing Commandant away to safety, content that her death will ensure humanity's safety.
  • After she becomes a Transcendant, she comes across two Punishing-infected humans, a soldier and a girl. She tries to help them, but stops because her approach seemed to exacerbate their symptoms (considering that Selena is a Transcendant, maybe the Punishing infection inside her body was hurting them). Still, she uses the soldier's communicator to call help for them.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Because the Piper keeps appearing wherever the Dragon rampages, people begin to assume she's somehow controlling the Dragon, when it's actually she's chasing after it while trying to find out how to kill it.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Selena was born with brown hair, which she retained when she became a construct. After she becomes a Transcendant, her hair became black. This was because Selena's mental state was severely degraded by all the trauma she suffered, with her old personality shattered and previous memory unstable. Thus she has a greatly changed body to reflect her new persona.
• Proper Lady: Selena is always polite, with underlying gentleness to back it up.
• Royal Rapier: The thin blade of her weapon makes it resemble a rapier, and her attacks present her as an elegant fighter.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She's actually the princess of the kingdom, but has spent her whole life trying to fight the dragon.
• Shock and Awe: As an Uniframe, her elemental damage type is electricity, with one of her skills being an outright lightning strike from above.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Selena's gentleness and naivety may be taken for weakness, which is not lost in Commandant's or her own eyes, but she repeatedly proved that she is made of sterner stuff than people imagined.
  • As a human, she became a Construct and braved the battlefield despite her privileged station.
  • On the International Space Station, she immediately offers to join the fight when seeing the overwhelming Corrupted presence, despite having no such obligation as a member of the archaeological unit. Even when she runs to safety and dispatches all the pursuing enemies, she returns to search for survivors after hearing her superior's abandonment of all forces onboard.
  • Selena stabs herself in the chest twice: the first time was to hide the Hetero-Core fragment from Riot, and the second time was to plant the orbital strike beacon to ensure her own demise as Siren.
• Ship Tease:
  • She and the Commandant are shown to have a close, almost intimate relationship over the long correspondence as pen pals, while the sixth affection story really ramps up the undertones when the two finally reunite, and celebrate by dancing together.
  • Like her real-life inspiration, the Piper's story teases strong relationships between Selena, Ayla and the Commandant, of whom the latter two are cast as the Witch and Champion. The Piper treasures the Witch as her closest friend, and travels the world with the Champion.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Sort of this to Commandant, Downplayed Trope for they are only pen pals. Still, in the two times they try to meet up, they miss each other for reasons beyond their control. The time they finally came face-to-face? It is when Commandant recognized the core of Siren as Selena, and Selena soon committed suicide by taking Commandant's orbital strike beacon to save humanity, with Commandant being pushed away and forced to leave with the guilt of contributing to Selena's demise.
  • It gets somewhat better, as Commandant is invited to Earth by Selena in the sixth Affection Story of Tempest. Still, with Selena's body reconstituted into a Transcendent and her original persona shattered, things will never be the same.
• Star Power: Her attacks has her produce constellations, galaxies and nebulas. Her ultimate skill outright transforms the ground into an image of the galaxy.
• Status Buff: A three-orb combo will give Selena a colored note corresponding to the combo. If the next skill orb matches the note, it will trigger a "Concerto" Damage-Increasing Debuff on the enemy, while a mismatch will trigger a "Solo" buff on Selena that improves her damage.
• Tareme Eyes: Selena has them during her existence as a human, indicating her sweet and innocent character. As she became a Construct and then a Transcendant, she shifted toward Tsurime Eyes as a sign of her maturation.
• Tempting Fate: When Selena writes a letter to Commandant just before her sortie to the International Space Station, one of her comrades jokingly says Selena is writing a death note and assures her that this is only a regular archaeological mission with little risk. Little did they know this was a one-way ticket to doom.
• The Not-Love Interest: To Ayla, whose main motivation throughout her appearances is to find Selena and bring her home. Their close nature and the lengths Ayla's willing to go to find her, especially in Recitativo di Fantasia where Ayla uses a spare body and old play of Selena's to try and get more information on her current location, reads like a typical Love Interest plotline, and yet, their dynamic doesn't seem to be explicitly romantic.
• True Companions: She had a very close friendship with Ayla, who later came to try and rescue her after she discovered she was still alive.
• Undying Loyalty: It was Selena's camaraderie with her comrades-at-arms that encouraged her to survive until she could deliver the intelligence they gathered to humanity, despite being abandoned with no reinforcements. Later, Selena stayed loyal to humanity despite the hellish experience of Punishing infection and tempting offer of the Ascendant Network. Still, it is her devotion to Commandant that is the most notable, viewing the latter as a guiding light in her life. Even one of her reasons to become a Construct is to protect Commandant.
• Video Game Dashing: Her passive is activated with a three-ping followed by a direction, which causes her to dash separately of her normal dodging attack.
• Walking the Earth:
  • After being rebuilt and revived by the Merciful One, Selena, stuck with amnesia and isolated from Babylonia, has no choice but to explore Earth's surface by her lonesome.
  • The Piper travels the land, doing good while tracking down the Dragon. In the Golden Ending, she goes back to travelling, now with the Champion as her companion.
• We Can Rebuild Her: At the end of Echo Aria, the Merciful One finds the remains of her body after Babylonia destroys Siren, which was built around her. The Merciful One uses the vestiges of the Red Tide around her to rebuild it into its current form, and then leaves.

Dark Aries

Simon

some caption text

The commandant of the Dark Aries squad.

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• The Bus Came Back: After first appearing in Firn Night, Simon returns in Cinder Burns to become Noan's commandant.
• One Degree of Separation: He was one of the Commandant's classmates in the FOS Military Academy, and has a high opinion of the Commandant.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: His first squad fell apart because of Atiel, and his second squad seems to be not much better, with Living MacGuffinNoan, Blood Knight Palma, and cowardly little girl Lilian.
• Sickly Neurotic Geek: He has this sort of look, lets Atiel talk all over him, is not physically fit, and is prone to motion sickness.

Palma

some caption text

A construct originally part of the Red Robin squad before getting reorganized after two members of Red Robin died. She is now captain of the Dark Aries squad.

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• Blood Knight: Is implied to be this from her nickname and the way other people talk about her.
• For Your Own Good: Before Robin, was part of the Purifying Force. Bianca transferred her out because she was worried about her mental state. "She's pointing weapons at people who are still alive."
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The infamous "Butcher" Palma.
• Mysterious Past: She and Lilian have connections to Kurono.

Lilian

some caption text

A construct originally part of the Red Robin squad, was reorganized into the Dark Aries squad after two members of Robin died.

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• Defector from Decadence: She initially infiltrated into Dark Aries on orders from Kuruno, but decided not to work for Kurumo anymore.
• Fish out of Water: Cowardly and lacks leadership skills of any kind, one wonders how she is in a squad at all.
• Mysterious Past: Her and Palma have connections to Kurono and Lamia.

Noan (BPZ-01)

Voiced by: Sun Lulu (Chinese) Kaito Ishikawa (Japanese) Maximilian Reid (English)

Dark Aries Squad Vanguard-type Transcendant

Profile

• Psychological Age: 21
• Vital Fluid Type: A
• Activation Date: August 8
• Service Time: Less than a year
• Weight: 69kg
• Height: 182cm

"Hello, Commandant. Let me introduce myself again. My name is Noan, my real name... eh? Is another name more familiar to you?"

This frame was made by a mysterious figure to save Noan's life. It was built with many degraded components in order to reduce the user’s movement, and initially weighed only 41.3kg. Normal functionality was restored after Noan underwent Babylonia’s improvements.

Noan's frame is Arca.

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• All for Nothing: For a few years, he believed that the rebellion he took part in was this, as it killed a large portion of Asslam's population including a lot of his friends, his mentor Rachel tried to get him to pretend he was The Mole for the nobility who put an end to the rebellion and killed her (including forcing him to do the latter stage) with the intention of having him spearhead a future rebellion in her stead, and when he doesn't do so, he gets thrown off Asslam, believing he failed Rachel and nothing truly changed. When he later learns of the events of Eternal Engine, including Ashlar being overthrown, this gets subverted as he realizes something did come out of that rebellion.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Noan has power over the Punishing Virus that arguably exceeds Liv's Empyrea frame, especially if he's in the presence of an Ascendant. He already used his control to force Corrupted to commit suicide to save other soldiers, and Asimov believes Noan could help make safer Anti-Punishing weaponry.
• Button Mashing: Noan's main gimmick is that after any 3-ping, mashing the attack button charges up a follow-up attack. If consecutive charged attacks are charged more than the preceding one, their damage increases, incentivizing the player to mash as fast as they can.
• Dark and Troubled Past: PGR's setting is tough, but Noan's life has been a particular rollercoaster of hardship. He was a commoner who lived aboard Asslam, got caught up in political machinations that resulted in a violent rebellion that killed all his friends and family, got exiled, lived hand-to-mouth as a scavenger, eventually got infected by the Punishing Virus, and became a Transcendant and a personal plaything of an Ascendant. Even now, in Babylonia, he's still at the center of much intrigue regarding his power over the Punishing virus, but he's finally decided to not regret his past.
• A Day in the Limelight: Cinder Burns is about Noan, his life story, and how he figures into the war between Babylonia and the Ascendants.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Went through this for a while after he got thrown off Asslam, as he associates "Noan" with his Dark and Troubled Past, and preferred to go by Shrek instead. He gets better about it after deciding not to regret the past.
• Dual Wielding: While he has a main sword, he wields a second shorter sword in tandem for his attacks.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He first appeared several chapters back, in Fake Ascension, where a side story followed his troubles with the Red Tide when he was a scavenger going by the name of Shrek. He later makes a reappearance in The Surviving Lucem as a merchant moving between the various conservation areas.
• Expy: His fighting style and weapon take strong cues from Nero of Devil May Cry. Similar to Nero's Exceed system, Noan can build up three charges that he can expend to deliver a massive burst of Lightning damage on his next move, and his swords have a motorcycle-style throttle, like Nero's Red Queen. They even share a voice actor.
• Giver of Lame Names: According to the Weapon Story for his 5-star Rev Blade, "Progressive Knife", he got the name from a manga he read and was promptly asked to never name any weapon again.
• Heroic Sacrifice: During The Surviving Lucem, a critically injured "Shrek" is knocked out of the Asslam train as it is attacked by the Unidentified Twins. While Lee grabs hold, "Shrek" lets go, while holding onto a pouch containing a prototype Omega Weapon, and blows himself up with it, allowing the train to escape as the tunnel caves in. Unfortunately, that leaves him barely alive, and in the hands of the Ascendants, who now have their hands on a new "sample".
• Hero with Bad Publicity: He spends nearly all of Cinder Burns being one for different reasons. He's initially hated on Asslam for factors out of his control, hated after the riot because Ashlar framed him as The Mole amongst the lower-class rioters, and hated as a Transcendant because he's mistaken for a defector to the Ascendants (or an Ascendant who pretended to be a regular, amnesiac Construct) who intentionally got nearly everyone at Medical Center 09 killed by Lithos.
• Hidden Depths: He's got quite a lot of medical knowledge, one of his secrets states that he's quite good at most survival skills besides cooking, and one of his voicelines has him ask if in the future, people will be able to make a living off their art.
• I Have Many Names: Over the course of his story, he jumps between Noan, Shrek, and "A" as names, and even feeds into his conflict about accepting himself and his place in the world after all the hardships he's faced, with Bella at one point in his past telling him that adopting "Shrek" means he hasn't come to terms with being Noan.
• The Jinx: Describes himself as that, feeling that he brings bad luck to others, while coincidentally seeming to always have the good fortune to survive. Before he sacrifices himself to detonate the Omega Weapon, he bets that he'll somehow survive even that. He does, though it means falling into the hands of the Ascendants and turning into a Transcendent.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Noan starts Cinder Burns unaware of even his own name, and spend the time recollecting his past. As it turns out, he's been turned into a Transcendant by the Ascendant Lithos, who's also been regularly wiping his memories in the hopes Noan will eventually stay with him for good.
• Pocket Protector: After refusing to give Rachel's terminal to Ashlar, he gets shot and thrown off Asslam: he survived the former because he kept the mechanical firefly toy he got from his friend Field with him.
• Power Incontinence: He doesn't have much control over his ability to control the Punishing Virus when Lithos isn't around, subconsciously attacking Construct soldiers when he was trying to get their help while desperately telling them that he doesn't want to hurt them. It certainly doesn't help his Hero with Bad Publicity status. This turns out to be a lie, as Lithos was gaslighting him into staying with the Ascendants, in fact, Lithos installed connection technology that turns Noan into a vector. When left alone, Noan actually better resembles a generic Construct.
• Shock and Awe: His damage type is Lightning.
• Shout-Out: No, "Shrek" isn't just coincidental, he actually took his alias from the William Steig book that was adapted into the famous animated movie series. It doubles as a Meaningful Name, too: like the ogre, Noan is a virus-filled monster in search of a happy ending of his own.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Almost everyone on board Asslam's lower class cars hated Noan when he was a child for the fact that his late father was an aristocrat and his mother had worked with higher-up passengers. It wasn't until he stepped in to save a boy named Field from a fake guard that the Cargo Crew started to trust him more.

Engineering Force

Karenina (BPD-72)

Voiced by: Hua Ling ^*花玲 (Chinese) Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese), Heather Gonzalez (English)

Engineering Force Attack-type Construct

^{Click here to see Ember}

^{Click here to see Scire}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 16
• Vital Fluid Type: B
• Activation Date: March 2
• Service Time: 2 Years
• Weight: 42kg
• Height: 163cm

Karenina hails from the Engineering Force of the Cosmos Technician Union. The Engineering Force has long provided external assistance for the Purifying Force. Because Karenina is easy to tease, she is more wary of people she meets for the first time. And she seems to have a little quirk about explosions.

Karenina's frame variations are Blast, Ember and Scire.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: Despite being one of many street kids in her city, Karenina wound up being bullied by others.
• Attack Drone: Her Ember frame allows her to summon a trio of drones for additional attacks.
• A Day in the Limelight: She becomes a major character in A New Divide, when she is chosen to investigate the Zero-Point Reactor on the Moon and discovers what her adoptive grandfather was up to up there.
• Destructive Saviour: She's the one best known for providing blunt answers to tricky problems. In The New Divide, this actually leads to some hesitation on her part, as she realizes that destroying the Corrupted Zero Point Energy reactor might mean the end of humanity's hope for a better future. In the end though, her friends and Babylonia side with her, agreeing that saving the lives of the scientists who can recreate the reactor is more important than the reactor itself.
• Dual Boss: She and Bianca are fought together as the boss of Chapter 6.
• Girlish Pigtails: Combined with Ojou Ringlets for Ember frame.
• Gravity Master: The theme of her Scire frame, which in the setting has gravity manipulating equipment in order to operate in space. In game, this gives her the ability to pull off air combos or create damaging fields portrayed as Unrealistic Black Holes.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Despite easily being able to defeat her and Bianca, the story of Chapter 6 treats it as if it were Bianca and Karenina who handily defeated Gray Raven squad.
• Hidden Depths: In A New Divide, it's revealed that Karenina is one of the few leading authorities on Zero Point Energy, doubtlessly in no part thanks to being inspired by her grandfather's association with the technology.
• Hospital Hottie: Global server's first event gave Ember a coating based on this trope, named "Bloody Love". Complete with medicine vials fashioned as if daggers stored on her right thigh.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: One of the more foul-mouthed characters in the series, to the point the game itself censors some of her curses when in battle.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Scire is the first ever frame to have an honest-to-god air combo mechanic, complete with a Launcher Move. When in the air, Karenina can attack and air dash, and this itself fuels a gauge that increases the damage of her Limit Break. The fact the Launcher Move can cause more damage based on the number of potential 3-Pings in the orb queue means a player is almost encouraged to ignore the orb mechanic in favor of fighting in the air.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Her weapon class for her Scire variation is a massive hammer that doubles as a gravity manipulating cannon.
• Moon Rabbit: Her Scire frame references the legend: her weapon is a hammmer, her ideal support unit is a robot rabbit, and her story has her use this frame in order to go to the Moon.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Blast's Limit Break has her doing a twirl before a gun plant, then she closes her ears and stuff blows up.
• Playing with Fire: The elemental specialty of her Blast and Ember frames.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ember's "Bloody Love" coating tinted her eyes red, as opposed to her regular yellow eyes.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: She's certainly slight of frame, but she also has no trouble swinging one of the largest modeled weapons in the game around like it weighs nothing.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: She's essentially armed with an artillery piece, but its proper use only occurs during her Limit Break. Otherwise, it gets swung around as a bludgeon.
• Street Urchin: She grew up on the streets as one of many scrappy survivors.
• Took a Level in Kindness: For a while, anyways, when she was raised by her adoptive grandfather. She used to have a fearsome reputation as "Queen of the streets", but softened up under his care. Today her happy-medium is being a Tsundere.
• Tsundere: In the Panini anime, she mocked Lucia's inability of finishing a VR training. Later she was embarrassed and denies Bianca's idea congratulating her victory in said VR training.
• Unknown Rival: In the Panini anime, one of the running gags is that she wants to defeat Lucia. But much to her chagrin, Lucia never sees her as an actual opponent and constantly ignores her.
• What You Are in the Dark: In her Interlude, despite the other street kids bullying her and even killing her adoptive grandfather to rob him, Karenina ultimately decides to cover their escape, while she instead rampages against invading Corrupted.

Teddy

Voiced by: Hua Dan (Chinese) Sayaka Senbongi (Japanese) Erica Mendez (English)

Engineering Force Support-class Construct

Profile

• Psychological Age: 15
• Vital Fluid Type: AB
• Activation Date: November 1
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 40kg
• Height: 157cm

The deputy captain of the Engineering Force. She's good at procedural work, but that doesn't mean she lacks combat capabilities. She and Karenina often quarrel over work issues.

Teddy's frame is Decryptor.

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• Combat Medic: Teddy's damage isn't particularly high compared to fellow Dark-type supporter Vera (Rozen), but she's got more ways of healing teammates than Vera and is quite good at support.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Teddy's attacks have fairly low damage multipliers, with many being in the double digits even at the highest skill level, but she has a lot of attacks that she gets to throw out and is far faster than other low-damager healers like Liv (Eclipse) or Sophia.
• Foil: To Karenina. Karenina is loud, explosive (often literally), and forceful, while Teddy is more reserved, polite, and technical. Karenina was a street orphan, while Teddy is from the Norman family, who own a mining conglomerate and are explicitly quite well-off. However, Karenina still holds her late adoptive grandfather in high regard, while Teddy seems to be distant from her family.
• Hard Light: Most of Teddy's attacks are done by bear claws made of this.
• The Lancer: Again, to Karenina, as her second-in-command and foil. Despite their differences, they work quite well together.
• Long-Range Fighter: Few, if any, of Teddy's attacks are direct, with most being indirect assaults while Teddy herself stays back controlling it from afar.
• Musical Assassin: While she doesn't attack with an Instrument of Murder like Selena, many of her attacks are themed around music or resemble audio equalizer bars.
• Promoted to Playable: Teddy's first appearance was as a major NPC in A New Divide, which established her as a Foil to Karenina, until her playable debut in Source Beacon.
• Set Bonus: At higher ranks, she gains the ability to apply specific buffs to Karenina (Scire), encouraging them to be used together.

Support Force

Bridget

Voiced by: Qiao Su (Chinese) Ikumi Hasegawa (Japanese) Melissa Medina (English)

Support Force Tank-type Construct

^{Click here to see her NPC design}

Profile

• Psychological Age: 24
• Vital Fluid Type: A
• Activation Date: March 20
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 60kg
• Height: 172cm

The leader of the Support Force, whose power is comparable to Task Force soldiers. However, she feels more suited to the Support Force, where she can provide aid to others.

Bridget's frame is Ardeo.

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• Blocking Stops All Damage: Zig-zagged. Like Noctis, she has a block function. However, unlike him, it's not a complete substitute for regular dodges, and if she doesn't have enough Dodge Gauge, the damage is merely reduced rather than being completely nullified.
• Cool Big Sis: She's referred to as "Big Sister" by the other members of the Support Force, though not to her face. Celica apparently has to remind them to call Bridget by her proper title in missions.
• Cool Shades: She keeps them on her forehead most of the time, but when she actually wears them she looks effortlessly badass. One of her secrets reveals she collects them, but most people don't notice when she changes them out.
• Counter-Attack: Getting hit while her Red Orb skill is being charged triggers a counter-attack, consuming extra Red Orbs but being far stronger and recovering a significant amount of Limit Break energy.
• Damage Over Time: Bridget is capable of inflicting the "Combustion" status, while deals a fairly small amount of damage each second for 10 seconds in total. However, the more stacks of Combustion are present, the more damage they do in total, at max dealing around 600% of her Attack every second.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Like Roland, she doesn't play by the Match-Three Game rules, instead always having her Yellow Orb available (though only one at a time, and it can be comboed like Teddy's Red/Yellow orbs) and while she has a numbered stock of Red and Blue orbs, they're always on the screen. If she has enough Blue Orbs, they can become stronger if tapped and held, while Reds must be held and can only be consumed in bulk if she's hit during the charging animation.
• Playing with Fire: She's the first A-Rank Fire Tank character in the game.
• Promoted to Playable: First appeared in Fake Ascension, and fans had been clamoring for her to be added ever since. It wasn't until When Day Breaks, however, that their calls were finally answered.
• Shield Bash: Holding and releasing her Red Orb without being hit triggers one of these.

Other

Alisa (UPC-15)

Voiced by: Aya (Chinese), Chika Anzai (Japanese), Ashely Biski (English)

Unknown Amplifier-class Construct

Profile

• Psychological Age: 16
• Vital Fluid Type: AB
• Activation Date: March 22
• Service Time: Unknown
• Weight: 41kg
• Height: 159cm

"Justice... it shouldn't be like this... I need... I need to see it for myself!"

Accompanied by her "sister", a special "weapon armor" named Cecilie whose consciousness is connected to hers, Alisa now wanders the land so she can truly understand the concept of justice.

Alisa's frame is Echo.

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• Abusive Parents: She was adopted by a scientist named Pickman, who was actually Kurono Kurokawa, but in reality he merely singled her out for her potential for a M.I.N.D. fusion experiment, and developed her rigid sense of justice in preparation to sync her to hundreds of minds. Ultimately, Alisa gets her revenge and kills Pickman before he can repeat his crimes all over again.
• Assist Character: Cecilie attacks alongside Alisa, but isn't directly controlled.
• Charged Attack: Triggering several Mantra Orbs in a row allows Alisa to charge up her Penance Arrow attack: when fully charged, it triggers the next stage of her passive on top of doing more damage.
• Combat Medic: As an Amplifier, she buffs critical damage and provides healing for Physical teams.
• Cowboy Cop: Her Establishing Character Moment in Renaissance du Fantastique is hunting down Teasell, a defector to the Ascendants, before getting warned that she will join her next mission, or she will be the one who gets hunted down by the Purifying Force. Unsurprisingly, her strong values eventually makes her go rogue, anyways.
• Combination Attack: One of Alisa and Cecilie's specialties, and a crucial part of their moveset.
• A Day in the Limelight: Everglowing Justice stars her and Cecilie, as they team up with the Commandant to rescue their comrade Lena and stop the Kurono-aligned Utopia facility, which is engaged in horrific experiments she escaped from.
• Energy Bow: Shares her weapon class with Bianca.
• For Great Justice: She's driven by a strong, but rigid sense of justice instilled into her in her youth. Eventually, though, she undergoes character development, and she goes Walking the Earth in order to understand what she's fighting for.
• Fugitive Arc: As Alisa is on the run during Everglowing Justice, she has to avoid Babylonia, and is wary of the Commandant at first. She eventually exonerates herself, and gets the arrest warrant removed, thanks to Asimov.
• I Have Many Names: Alisa takes on a few different aliases over her story, first going by "Lena" in Renaissance du Fantastique, before calling herself "Echo" when she connects to Cecilie. The later she considers a Meaningful Rename, first identifying herself as an echo of the grudges and victims within the armor, before resolving to become an "echo of justice" in memory of her sister figure.
• Long-Range Fighter: All her attacks are projectile based, including those from Cecilie, and some of her skills move her around and create space, so she's never within arms reach of an enemy if she can help it.
• Mind Hive: Cecilie has the collective M.I.N.Ds of at least 246 constructs, including Alisa's sister figure, the original namesake, and Lena, Alisa's comrade. Because Alisa is connected to it, she's part of this group too. The fusion initially overwhelmed her, causing her to become the final boss of Renaissance du Fantastique, though by Everglowing Justice, she's regained enough sense of self to become independent again, even if she still hears the voices within. In fact, the fusion of M.I.N.Ds was part of the Cthylla Project, to create a M.I.N.D. capable of turning into an Ascendant, and indeed Teasell notes that Alisa can become a Transcendant.
• Promoted to Playable: Initially the boss of Renaissance du Fantastique, who was later added to the playable roster in Everglowing Justice.
• Puppet Fighter: Alisa's gimmick is that Cecilie has its own set of skill orbs. By holding down the attack button, these orbs become accessible, allowing the player to continue attacking in the interim while Alisa charges her own.
• Scales of Justice: One of Alisa's main motifs, alongside the gavel.
• Sword Beam: Cecilie will unleash these every time Alisa uses a Mantra Orb.
• Synchronization: Alisa and Cecilie are noted to have an interconnected consciousness, allowing them to better fight in tandem.

Harley Jo

"I deem the vibe in the camp extremely unhealthy. I shall remedy that."

The commandant of Woodcock squad.

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• One Degree of Separation: He was one of the Commandant's classmates in the FOS Military Academy.
• Sad Clown: When introduced in Evernight Beat, he presents himself as a laidback and friendly leader, though he immediately tells the Commandant that he's honestly terrified of fighting the Hetero-Sapiens. But despite his fears, he'd rather laugh in battle, than cower and hide.