[GENERAL APPEARANCE:]
Stands 5'5" tall; not very muscular, a bit of a bishounen. He has very slim fingers-- lockpicker's fingers. His hair is rather long and usually pulled back into a very tight ponytail... tight enough that, from the front, it looks like he has short hair slicked back instead. Nearly all of the time he wears roundish dark sunglasses (to hide his eyes) but periodically he might peer over them at somebody for one reason or another.  In that case, he has very piercing green eyes. The color isn't anything phenomenal, they just ... well, pierce. It's a trait you don't find often outside of female characters.

[GENERAL CLOTHING:]
He tends to wear a black suit and white shirt with the jacket unbuttoned and the tie hanging somewhat loose (like a drunkard :).  He also wears black cloth gloves with the fingers cut out, and a beret-like, floppy black velvet cap, as well as the aforementioned sunglasses.

[ATTITUDE:]

{GENERAL PERSONALITY:}
As far as Velvet is concerned, his purpose in life is to steal. It's what he's good at, and unlike a lot of jobs, there's almost always a great deal of opportunity and quite a few challenges. He's proud of the work he does, and this pride is not necessarily a good thing for his wallet in that it often leads him to steal things that are too well-known to turn around and sell to a fencer.  He has trouble making ends meet, but that never changes his behavior.  He's stubborn that way-- he values himself greatly, particularly his cleverness and his skill in thievery.  This is also why he's a mercenary: he isn't likely to turn down an appealing challenge.  However, he doesn't take it so far as to be arrogant, and he _will_ acknowledge anyone who happens to be better than him-- if they can prove it first. And when he does respect someone, he doesn't make a very big deal out of it... as opposed to someone he doesn't respect, in which case, he shows them no verbal mercy...

{INTERACTIONS:}
Velvet only has a social philosophy in regards to people he doesn't know very well, and it is: "Treat every woman as if you were madly in love with her, and every man as if he was the most boring person you ever met." The more often he runs into somebody, the less he falls back onto this philosophy. (How useful it is, nobody knows. But some girls lacking in gray matter find it very flattering ...)

{REACTIONS TO HOSTILITY:}
A hostile attitude will get one of two reactions from Velvet, depending on the hostile person's gender: if it's a man, he'll act indifferent.  He pretend that he's not the slightest bit frightened, angered, or bothered, regardless of what the reality be.  He could be staring down the barrel of a Remington shotgun-- he'll _still_ be trying to pretend that he's bored.

With women, he'll act completely innocent and sweet (particularly if the hostility is the result of something _he_ did-- "Who, me?").  If he knows the female in question well, this may even take on a slight tone of mockery.

{ROMANCE:}
When Velvet falls in love, he _falls_.  He's seriously a dupe for whoever may be the object of his affections, and willing to do _anything_ for her/him/it/whatever.  It's almost akin to insanity.

   That having been said, he'll flirt with practically anyone of any gender.

  He considers it a game; however, since it's a game to him, he never goes any farther than that.  To get him to go any farther would take either A) making him fall in love, or B) some other method of persuasion.  Be forewarned, however, that unwanted and overly persistant types are prone to getting the crap kicked out of them.

{RELATIONSHIPS:}
No relationships at this time.

{DAILY LIFE:}
During the day, he either sleeps, plans a heist, fences off his wares, or wanders the streets.  During the night, he's either stealing stuff or hanging out at some kind of a bar (despite the fact that he can't drink).

{QUOTES:}
No quotes at this time.

[WEAPONS & POWERS:]

{WEAPONRY:}
A tonfa-- a stick with a perpendicular handle, essentially. Well, two sticks, actually, but they count as one weapon. Despite its appearance, the tonfa is actually a fairly effective weapon for defending against swords, staffs, and varied weapons of the sort. (Guns, on the other hand, are very much a trump card against it, for obvious reasons.)

   Yes, it's made out of wood.  A sword can cut through it.  However, the techniques Velvet uses emphasize deflection as a manner of blocking-- he doesn't just block, he deflects the blow past him as well.  This _usually_ means that his opponent retains their forward momentum just long enough for him to counter with a nasty thwack to the ribs, or upside the temple.  So, watch out when he's blocking. ;)

{POWERS/SKILLS:}
VERY AGILE: Weaving in and out of laser alarm-triggers is not an activity for the clumsy and stiff, to say the very least. And considering how even more ingenious security systems have been getting, if he wasn't, he wouldn't last very long as a thief ...

CAPABLE OF BREAKING INTO VARIOUS PLACES: Again, if he couldn't, he wouldn't be that long-lived a thief. Heck, he wouldn't be a thief in the first place, would he? Anyway ... he's fairly well-balanced, in that he can do most things in-between picking a house lock and hacking a museum's security system, but his curiosity draws him to newer, more challenging "locks" that he's not as likely to break. Which is, of course, the point, but it gets him into trouble...

A GOOD EAR: Need I really explain why thieves that are hard of hearing do highly badly?

CLEVER: Particularly in the verbal arena, but not phenomenal, not fabulous, not too great. After all... he's a thief, not a diplomat.

ACTUALLY CAN USE THAT TONFA: If this seems like the sort of thing that need not be mentioned, then you probably don't know how difficult a tonfa is to fight with.

{WEAKNESSES:}
"OLD DEMON ALCOHOL": Easily his worst weakness... alcohol is extremely poisonous to him. One thimble of cheap beer would be enough to put him in a coma for months. This would not be such a bad thing if he'd been born this way, but unfortunately, life isn't like that. In fact, Velvet used to be quite the daily drunkard-- err, connoisseur, and as such, he has an extreme knowledge and liking of all things alcoholic. Very extreme, mind you. Girl-crazy men drool over women; Velvet drools over a vintage whiskey. But now that he can't have any, the best he can do is pine and wax romantic on the virtues of ethyl alcohol. If you're a cruel person that's particularly desperate to get his attention, yank out a bottle and start drinking it in front of him... SLOWLY...

NOT VERY STRONG: He's not muscular, he can't lift things that are too heavy, etc. Besides, he hasn't much respect for brutish types, and as such he's not eager to become one himself.

CLEVER: It pisses off the wrong people sometimes, but hey, that's life.

PERPETUALLY CURIOUS: Curiosity killed the cat. Need I say more?

RELUCTANCE TO KILL: He considers it rather crude to kill someone in the course of a burglary, to say the very least. Almost anyone can "stab, grab, and run" like a thug; it takes some skill to break into a place, steal whatever, and then get out again without anyone getting hurt. Kill someone while you're on a job, and you might as well be out on the streets breaking in some lady's kneecaps in exchange for a pocketbook full of chapstick and lint.

   That's his official reason, anyway. The more personal reason is that he holds life in high esteem. He hates to see dumb idiots waste a life for a stupid reason. Defense and self-defense are the only conditions under which he'll condone killing, for the most part, and that's if the killer isn't HIM. He, on the other hand, will usually go to almost absurd lengths to disable and/or escape an opponent rather than kill. And if he had to choose between either somebody dying or him losing a prized new acquisition, he'd drop the thingywhatsit he stole. (Mind you, he would be mighty pissed off afterwards.)

   ...the one exception to this is when he's in love.  Anything for his darling, even if it's killing.  And that leads to the last weakness-- COMPLETELY WHIPPED WHEN IN LOVE: Velvet in love is a sad, sad sight to behold.

[BACKGROUND:]
None, zippo, nada. He's a blank-slate mystery, with no record accept for the police dept.'s records of the "Mephistopheles Thief". However, it is theorized that he's probably from somewhere else in Japan-- Okinawa is a popular guess --and may have actually studied at a police academy under a different name.  Or not.  Rumors have a nasty way of being dead wrong.

[ANIME INFLUENCES:]
A pinch of everything, really. Appearance and many things inspired by Reno of FFVII, a little bit of Saint Tail (very little), an itsybitsy snippet of Lina Inverse from Slayers, some microscopic Kenshin, remotely possibly some nanoscopic Vash (Trigun), and varied other origins.