[GENERAL APPEARANCE:]
Kii has the body type of most 15-year-old boys -- long, spindly, stick-like limbs, very skinny. Doesn't look anything like your average anime superhero. ^_^ He's about average height, although he looks kind of short without any comparison. Weighs very little. Has short, static-y ash-brown hair and kind of grayish-bluish-greenish eyes (believe me, it's been done in anime before ^_-). Important detail -- you know how some people have this dead, zombie-like gloss to their eyes? Kii has exactly the opposite look. I'd call it the "perpetual twinkle", except that I'm afraid people would get hentai ideas from that phrase. ^^

[GENERAL CLOTHING:]
Varies depending on occasion, but one thing is for certain -- hardly anything fits Kii right. Probably the only thing that wouldn't sag on him is an EVA plugsuit. At the moment, I think he's still wearing the standard Academy boy's uniform -- black pants, dull gray shirt (long sleeved). It's _really_ ugly.

[WEAPONRY:]
Nani? Are you kidding? He's absolutely inept in the use of weapons. Sure, if his life was in immediate danger, he *might* conk somebody over the head with a nearby monkey wrench or something, but otherwise...

[POWERS/SKILLS:]
1.Mild mechanical ability. Kii's no genius, but he could take apart a carburetor and reassemble it in less than 5 minutes. He'd need to complete his education in order to be any better at it.
2.Good listener. No kidding ... he really listens to what other people say, even if they aren't.
3.Thinks things through. Ability not possessed by many anime characters (or, shall I say, many people in general).

[WEAKNESSES:]
1.Virtually worthless in a fight, at least when it comes to fighting. He'd probably try to talk an enemy out of fighting him, probably with very mixed results.
2.A tendency to be misunderstood. Sometimes this is because he phrases something incorrectly. Sometimes it's because someone just doesn't want to hear his idea. Whatever it is, the first time he suggests one of his thoughts to anybody, most people will think it's stupid. If it's a really important idea, he'll try to get someone else who kind of gets the gist of what he means to explain it in "plain talk".

[ATTITUDE:]
Actually, it's kind of cheery. ^_^ He's somewhat outgoing, but not in the usual, somewhat arrogant, almost hyper way. It's more of a relaxed ease with people. Kii also has a good, albeit weird, sense of humor. As for his general attitude toward life ... well, that's a bit too complicated to explain here. Let's just say that he's the kind of boy you can just *tell* is going to grow up to become a great wise man of some sort. (However ... just because he's a good listener doesn't mean he can't have his incredibly silly moments. ^_-)

[REACTIONS TO:]

{A GREETING:} "Oh, hello!" "Konnichi wa!" (or something along those lines)

{A CHALLENGE:} "Why? I'm not much of a threat ..."

{AN ATTACK:} Depends on the situation. Usually, he'll try to defend himself as long as possible before running away. But he tends to fight fair ... no crotch kicking. ^^;

{A PASS:} Oddly enough, Kii isn't really interested in "that kind of stuff". If somebody makes a pass at him, he'll try to wiggle his way out of it as gracefully as possible. (Of course, exceptions to this rule can occur ... this is just a general guide to his behavior.)

[BACKGROUND:]
Ok, I'll try make this short. Kii's parents died when he was really young, so he never knew them. He was adopted by an kindly old mechanic named Scott C. Previa (Kii likes to call him "Prev-san"). At the age of 7, Kii entered The Academy, a kind of elite, Government-sponsored boarding school that Prev-san worked at. There he became fast friends with a very talented young magic user called Chatty. Mr. Previa died of old age/kidney failure when Kii was about 13, but he has already come to terms with it and is actually somewhat glad that "Prev-san" died of natural causes instead of some disaster. Disaster? Oh ho ho ho ... indeed ...

---

[CHARACTER'S NAME:] Actual name unknown
[ALIASES:] Black Velvet, "The Mephistopheles Thief" (by the press)
[AGE:] mid-20s
[STATUS:] Thief, Mercenary, Wiseass

[GENERAL APPEARANCE:]
Stands 5'5" tall. He has very slim fingers. Definitely piano player's fingers ... lockpicker's fingers, more accurately. He has rather long dark-brown hair pulled back into a very tight ponytail ... so tight that, from the front, it would almost appear that has short hair slicked back instead. Nearly all of the time he wears dark sunglasses, so his eyes are usually hidden and unreadable, but periodically he might peer over them at somebody for one reason or another, and 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. In fact, you could say he's a bit of a bishounen. (He's definitely not a Schwartzeneggar.)

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

[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.)

[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.
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, Black 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; Black 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. However, old habits die hard; he's instinctually drawn to bars and local watering-holes, and if you're particularly desperate to get his attention, yank out a bottle and start drinking ... SLOWLY ...
NOT VERY STRONG: Like I said, he's no Schwarzeneggar. 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.
CURIOSITY: 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.)

[ATTITUDE:]
As far as Black 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. It might appear that he's a wee bit of an egoist at first, and that's pretty much correct. He values himself greatly, particularly his cleverness and his skill in thievery. However, he isn't arrogant, and he will acknowledge anyone who happens to be better than him. It's just that when he respects 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 ... He 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:]

{A GREETING:}
(on the job) He'll freeze in place and blink awhile, being that he doesn't expect to be seen at all ...
(anywhere else) Nods, says hi, as well as whatever else pops into his head at the time.
(from somebody with a drink) Stares at the drink and attempts to say a greeting at the same time, with mixed results.

{A CHALLENGE:}
(for to fight) Takes a fighting stance and waits for an attack.
(for to steal something) A devilish smirk. (There is indeed a reason why he's also a mercenary, and that's because he isn't likely to turn down an appealing challenge.)

{AN ATTACK:}
(alone) Either dodges the blow or blocks it. If it's gunshots or magic, he'll run like heck.
(with somebody else) Counter-attacks as quickly as possible.

{A PASS:}
(from a girl) Smiles, slides his sunglasses forward so he can look over them, and leans onto the nearest non-organic leanable surface. Let the verbal contest begin. (And that's all it ever is. He'll flirt shamelessly, but never go any farther than that. Probably just proving his cleverness to his ego, or some such ...)
(from a guy) Same as (from a girl), actually.
(from a persistant fellow) Enter the tonfa.
(from some sort of beast) Blinks a while, then decides he heard/saw/felt that wrong ...
(from anyone with an alcoholic drink) The 'better' the drink, the more uncomfortable he will be. Most people interpret this as him being shy, when it's really him focusing on the drink and the fact that _he_can't_have_it_ ...

[BACKGROUND:]
None, zippo, nada. He's a blank-slate mystery, with no record accept for the police dept.'s records of the "Mephistopheles Thief" ... though the question of why and how such a fond drinker became unable to drink alcohol on pain of death is an interesting question. It might have happened naturally, or it might be a curse that happened accidentally, or perhaps some magic-using acquaintance got desperate to wean him off of the infernal substance. Really, who knows?

[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, and varied other origins.