User Profile

Name: Souma Kurohane.
AKA: The Inquisitor.
Sex: Male.
Age: ???
Race: ???
Height: ???
Weight: ???
Hair: Black.
Eyes: ???

Phenotype Unreleased: Homo sapien. Has a giant tribal mark burned into his back. Wears a thin black band over his eyes -- no one in Yurei and no one in Sphere under a hundred years old has ever seen them. He hides them because instead of typical animalistic slits, they have number 1's printed in them, marking him as the first Sphere supernatural project.

Phenotype Released: Partial-to-full demon. Hands and feet become claws; teeth elongate and become fangs. Has a spiked tail. Black leathery wings tear (literally -- it's bloody and painful) out of the tribal mark across his back.

Genotype: Codename: A S T A R O T H. The first and one of only two supernatural beings ever created by the Sphere. Demon-possessed.

There isn't much known about the personality of the Inquisitor. The only thing that everyone knows for sure is that he is feared by all in Project Yurei and rightly so. He is the Project's Justice, the divine spear of the Dark Saint's rule, the bolt of unholy lightning streaking down to smite those who dare to flee. Betray the Project, whisper the whispers, and you'll have the Inquisitor to deal with.

But ssh. Don't say his name out loud. He might hear. You might summon him. And summoning him would be a bad idea.

There are rumors, you know, that he once almost destroyed the Project single-handedly before the Dark Saint stopped him. There are further rumors that the Dark Saint is the only person alive who can, once the Inquisitor's enraged. And there are rumors that those aren't rumors at all -- go check the Project files, go ask some of the old ones, the survivors. They have the scars to prove it, claws and teeth and black magic burns -- they'll tell you, they were there.

Or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just look at you like you're crazy for asking. And maybe you are. They'll say, stop asking questions, boy. And pray to God -- or the Saint, if you don't believe -- that you never find your answers.

After all, even fellow demons fear the Devil.

⌈ Unreleased ⌋ Strong and fast (human limit), and fast-healing. Can see in the dark. Some dark magic, in the form of moving, solid shadows -- utility (i.e. picking up small objects, darkening rooms, et cetera), nothing more. His usual state.

⌈ 1st Release ⌋ Stronger and faster (beyond human limits). More dark magic -- actual attack spells. His eyes glow red through the band over his eyes. His usual battle state.

⌈ 2nd Release ⌋ Stronger and faster than the average enhanced soldier; enhanced senses. Teeth and nails elongate and harden, turn into fangs and claws; a spiked tail tears out of his back. He'll be operating under a severe adrenaline high/battle rage and won't be easily calmed even by his allies.

⌈ 3rd Release ⌋ Even stronger and even faster; one on one in an unarmed battle, he could take out Sphere's best. Can utilize dark magic to it's full potential. And although he's sane enough not to kill his allies on purpose, he'll quit caring about any collateral damage he's causing -- and it might take him a few seconds and lots of his allies yelling at him to STOP STOP STOP to realize that he's hurting them.

⌈ Final Release ⌋ As strong and as fast as ANYTHING gets. Maybe God could put up a challenge, but Kurohane's got all the physical power of the Devil behind him. Wings tear out of his back; at this point, he can fly. But Kurohane will drop all weapons (yes, even if he's holding a machine gun) and start using just his teeth/claws/magic to fight. Stealth is NOT an option any more -- he'll be screaming and cursing and shouting. Goes on an insane killing spree until the demon decides to stop, Kurohane somehow forces it back under control, or he/Shirohane dies. It's rumored that Shirohane has a way to stop him, but even then -- you do NOT want to be in his way.

⌈ Other ⌋ No matter what form he's in, everyone is perfectly capable of harming Kurohane as they would anybody else. He feels pain, he gets hurt, all that normal stuff: it's just a question of getting things to actually hit and not getting killed in the process. Kurohane will become more frenzied and more uncontrolled as he releases more and more of the demon; also, the demon's voice in his head will grow louder and louder (it's quiet unreleased). Also, Kurohane's soul is permanently linked to Shirohane's: if Kurohane dies, so will Shirohane; if Shirohane dies, so will he. There's no getting out of this by any means. They're also emotionally linked: not exactly psychic and not able to read each other's thoughts, but able to feel what the other is feeling.

Contrary to popular belief, Project Yurei wasn't the first to experiment with supernatural beings. And in a way, the Sphere is directly responsible for the creation of Yurei itself. It began over a hundred years ago with a man with no name -- but don't all these stories start that way? The difference in this one was that the man was already dead.

The Sphere named him Souma Kurohane, Codename: A S T A R O T H. He was the first one produced, a man fused with the demon of his codename; Shirohane, Codename: S A N D A L P H O N, was the second and last, a boy fused with an angel. Unfortunately, neither of them could fully control their powers, and finding them both unfit to be soldiers after having fused them with the most powerful beings they could find, the Sphere decided to scrap its supernatural experimentation entirely.

And scrapping supernatural research meant getting rid of any evidence that it existed, meaning eradicating Kurohane and Shirohane, who couldn't be used as soldiers and certainly couldn't be left alive to be potential threats. But by then, the two, who had bonded over their years together in the lab, had realized that this was going to happen eventually. When they caught whispers of the news, Kurohane knew there was no time to lose: he broke free from their laboratory, broke Shirohane out as well, and cut a bloody swath through the center of Sphere with Shirohane behind him.

Only to get past that last heavily guarded barrier out into the city, especially with the rest of Sphere closing in on them from the other side, Kurohane had to release the demon entirely to fight the Sphere soldiers or neither of them would have had a chance of making it out alive. Unfortunately, although Astaroth destroyed the Sphere forces as he was intended to, by the time Kurohane managed to get him back under control, Shirohane was dying, dying, dying -- torn by claws and teeth, not by Sphere's bullets. And in a half-mad, desperate attempt to save his life, Kurohane offered his own soul to Astaroth.

Astaroth accepted -- and burned the contract into Kurohane's skin.

And two days later found the two of them on the run from Sphere, both alive but bonded permanently through the sharing of just one soul -- two halves of the fusion of Kurohane and Astaroth. Shirohane's former-holy powers were tainted by the demonic taint in his borrowed spirit, turning them from their original purity to a light tinged with shadow; Kurohane had less control of his inner demon than ever before. But they were alive and eventually, they successfully escaped -- that was the important part, wasn't it?

But once they finally got somewhere safe and had time to think about it, they realized that Astaroth had tricked them both. Not only Astaroth taken Kurohane's soul but in a way, he had taken Shirohane's too: once Shirohane died, since he was living with the demon-soul, borrowed or not, he was hellbound as well. And bonded in the way that they were, if one of them died, the other would necessarily die with him.

And so the two got to thinking. What they thought was this: demons and angels exist, we know that much. HELL exists, because we're both eventually GOING there. Then, it would make sense that God exists too. Let's get an anti-Sphere group together and continue our own research into angels, demons, and other supernatural beings, and maybe one day, we can CREATE God or some sort of Messiah, BRING the so-called Second Coming, thereby maybe save our eternal souls. It was a long shot, but it was the only chance they had.

So they did it. Project Yurei was created with Shirohane as the nominal head, Kurohane as his nominal advisor and bodyguard, and "a soldier program to rival Sphere" as its nominal goal. As they drew sponsors and scientists and continued their research, they both learned to have more control their powers with time. And eventually, Shirohane became who/what everyone calls the Dark Saint, a man all of Yurei look up to as their glorious, somewhat benevolent leader, and Kurohane became who/what everyone calls the Inquisitor, the mysterious demon that everyone's fucking terrified of that deals out the punishments and keeps everyone in Yurei relatively in line.

Still, Project Yurei has a reputation for being far more chaotic and sadistic as an institution than the Sphere, and the reputation isn't unfounded. The "mercenary" aspect of Project Yurei is, after all, just a cover: both Kurohane and Shirohane are more concerned with creating their God than what their minions choose to do with their free time. Letting them run rampant keeps their creations happy, fends off Sphere, gives the Project more bodies to work with -- and the two of them are both certainly damned anyway, what could it hurt?

Once they have their God, none of it will matter.