Vicious

A cormorant riding his shoulder and a sheathed blade in his grip form the silhouette most viewers picture when Vicious comes to mind. He carries a lean, towering build that clears six feet, and a mane of pale grey hair falls across his head in a wild, uncombed sweep. Though only in his late twenties, his sunken eyes, shadowed sockets, and worn features read far older, a premature aging often tied to the horrors he endured on Titan or to a suspected Red Eye habit. His mouth almost always sets into a scowl, broken only by the occasional cruel smile. The overall look consciously echoes Goemon Ishikawa of Lupin III, mirroring how Spike nods to Lupin himself and Jet to Jigen.

Cold, ruthless, and hungry for power, Vicious keeps his own company and trusts no one. His superiors in the Van fear him precisely because his ambition knows no ceiling and no code restrains it, and he will commit any atrocity to climb higher, spending his own men like currency and plotting against the very people he has sworn loyalty to. Many read him as the shadow cast by Spike, sharing that same detachment toward the world but twisted into something colder and more predatory, along with a bleak cynicism about life and morality. He holds the syndicate's honor doctrine in open contempt, dismissing the Van as senile relics clinging to a dead past, and sets out to tear their traditions down. Warmth surfaces only in fragments, in his brief bonds with Spike, Julia, and Gren, every one of which curdled after his betrayals. His slippery, venomous manner earned him the nickname the snake, used by both the Van and the shaman Laughing Bull, and the condition of his eyes lends credence to the belief that he too uses Red Eye.

Born in 2044, Vicious spent his early years out of record, surfacing by 2068 as a rising enforcer in the Red Dragon syndicate. Under the guidance of Mao Yenrai, he and Spike Spiegel climbed the ranks together, and he grew close to Julia during those days. When Spike walked away from the organization and tried to take Julia with him, a lasting grudge took root, a rift possibly tied to Vicious enlisting in the Titan War. In the war's wake he handed Julia's music box to Gren, then branded him a spy and testified against him.

His patience with Mao ran out once the old boss brokered peace with Carlos of the White Tiger syndicate. Vicious sabotaged Carlos's ship, sent gunmen to wipe out Mao's people, and struck down the boss himself, unmoved even as Mao remarked that he would never have dared such a thing while Spike remained. Anticipating that Spike would come hunting, he lured Faye Valentine with Mao's bounty and lay in wait inside a cathedral. Spike cut through his men and reached him on the upper floor, where the two traded wounds until Vicious hurled his rival through a window, only narrowly outrunning a grenade Spike had left behind.

A later request to move Red Eye on Callisto, supposedly from Julia, drew him to the moon with Lin at his side. Lin shielded him from Spike's gunfire there, and again later took a bullet meant for him when the buyer proved to be Gren. Vicious answered Gren's question about the old betrayal with flat nihilism, insisting there was nothing worth believing in, then abandoned the wounded Lin and fled with the drug. When he finally moved against the Van directly, they had been forewarned and jailed him, but his loyal followers turned on the leadership and freed him. He cut down Wang Long, claimed the syndicate for himself, and warned Julia to kill Spike or watch them both die, pressing his rise even as the pair slipped from his reach.