Alexis Ness

Ness is a tall young man with pale skin and violet eyes. His light brown hair shades into purple toward the tips, and a relaxed, easy smile almost never leaves his face. By the events of the Neo Egoist League he is nineteen.

On the surface Ness comes across as courteous and pleasant, keeping his smile even when anger simmers beneath it. Underneath lies a ferocious loyalty to his club, and above all to Michael Kaiser, a devotion that tips into obsession. His single aim is to prop Kaiser up on the path to becoming the world's top striker, and he will pick fights with teammates he judges disloyal to that cause. As the league wears on, he comes to resent Yoichi Isagi for capturing Kaiser's attention.

As a boy, Ness was spellbound by magic precisely because it defied explanation. Born into a family of scientists, he was mocked by parents and siblings for his flights of imagination, ridicule delivered straight to his face. Discovering the wonder soccer could conjure, he tried out for Bastard München's youth side to prove his family wrong, and it was there he crossed paths with Kaiser. What began as humble mutual respect curdled into a bond resembling master and servant.

Through the Neo Egoist League that bond frays, as Isagi keeps disrupting their plans and Kaiser fixates on the one rival who can truly challenge him. The obsession, along with Kaiser's steady stream of insults, leaves Ness anguished and convinced he is losing his partner. Matters snap after the clash with Paris X Gen, when Kaiser abandons him mid-match to strike a bitter pact with Isagi. The gamble fails, leaving Kaiser isolated and self-loathing, while Ness, awakened in the dying seconds of the game, chooses to see the wreckage in a new light and swears to help Kaiser even as he is pushed away.

Ness plays as a dribbler, the ball-carrying archetype that slices through defenses with quick shifts of direction and pace. As the heartbeat of Bastard München's midfield, his dribbling and distribution are the foundation of every Kaiser strike and, by extension, the whole team's attack. His dribbling marries cold, rational technique to unusually flexible ankles, letting him feint and change direction with no wasted motion, glide past taller defenders, and even pluck balls out of the air.

Passing is his true craft. As his side's key distributor he delivers accurate, efficient balls built to tee up finishers, especially setting Kaiser into the ideal spot for the Kaiser Impact. His repertoire includes the Skyborn Daisy Cutter, a clean pass that threads between two defenders while hugging the turf before drifting upward; the Illusion Cross, in which a swarm of decoy runners overlap passing lanes so Ness can pick the deadliest one, usually finding Kaiser lurking in a blind spot; the Shield Flick, where he screens the ball with his body, keeps it beyond a defender's reach with his supple ankles, then heels it into the air for Kaiser to chase; and the Drive Pass, a shot-like ball hammered over the defense with heavy topspin. That last delivery, meant for Kaiser, instead reached Isagi after Ness mistook the two, producing the goal that ended the Bastard versus Paris X Gen match.