Power Collectors

Rather than a tight-knit cell, the collectors functioned like an outsourcing scheme. Every agent was signed up on their own by the orchestrator and left ignorant of who the others were, an arrangement Kinta noted was cheaper and harder to trace. Red Baron picked each recruit by exploiting a personal weak point he had dug up, a wish to provide for a loved one or a craving for revenge, then dangled a custom wish to reel them in. Hase needed no such bait, since toppling Okarun was reward enough; Murakami's exact motive stayed murky, fitting his self-serving streak. Because anyone shielded by an ID Cosmos could only be robbed through someone close to them, Red Baron also sought agents willing to strike at a target's loved ones. Recruitment ran indirectly, by nudging a person near the mark into dialing an unknown number or through telepathic contact, with the agent's memory of the go-between later wiped, a trick tied to Saint-Germain.

On joining, each agent was handed kozuka knives forged from the legendary blade Asura: a white-handled one to grant a power and black-handled ones to drain a power from assigned victims. Red Baron texted active agents the identity and location of each target, which sometimes sent several toward the same person, as when Adachi and another operative both converged on Seiko. Agents could also delegate, recruiting proxies of their own, as Murakami did by blackmailing Koki into chasing Momo. Straying from assigned targets counted as a breach of contract, triggering instant disqualification from the promised wish and the forced surrender of both knife and power to one of Red Baron's representatives.

As the driving villains of the Kozuka Knives Arc and a central antagonist faction of the Ultimate Yokai Saga, the collectors went after three principal marks, each attempt ending in failure. Momo was hunted by Takeshi Murakami through his blackmailed proxy Koki Yukishiro; once Koki's pursuit collapsed she was cornered by the History and Culture Research Club, confessed what she could, and helped bring Murakami down, though her blackmailer's identity had been scrubbed from her mind. Seiko was set upon at Nikujiru Gyoza by both Mika Adachi and the Kettetsu Power User acting separately, but the salaryman's defeat and arrest, plus backup from Kashimoto and Payase, sank the effort and sent Adachi retreating to Kami High. Okarun was confronted at night by Hase, armed with his Jumping Crone ability and briefly allied with one of Saint-Germain's operatives, only to be beaten by Okarun and Kinta and hospitalized.

The campaign began when Red Baron joined Saint-Germain, who had gained the Fairy-Tale Card's power, and proposed enlisting Kamigoe City locals armed with Asura-forged knives. Among the takers were the teacher Murakami, a salaryman hoping to heal his wife, and fellow teacher Adachi, who wanted to keep funding her sick mother's care. Adachi eventually turned on Murakami, using a swarm she falsely claimed as her own to bluff him into yielding his Severed Head Dribblers power. That same off-script theft got her disqualified by Red Baron at a riverside pickup, where his intermediary attacked her until Officer Vega intervened, proving immune to the Fairy-Tale Card before the man manipulated Adachi into covering his escape. Afterward Murakami was arrested once Koki exposed his crimes, and Hase was carried off to the hospital.

Takeshi Murakami, a Kami High teacher, wielded the Severed Head Dribblers power and worked through the blackmailed student Koki Yukishiro before losing his ability to Mika Adachi. Adachi, another Kami High teacher driven by her mother's medical bills, commanded jiangshi and later collected Murakami's power. The Kettetsu Power User, a salaryman seeking a cure for his wife, could assume a Kettetsu form strong enough to overpower Seiko. Hase, motivated purely by his grudge against Okarun, fought using the Jumping Crone power. Red Baron orchestrated the whole network for Saint-Germain, dispatching an Orchestrator's Intermediary to reclaim knives and powers from disqualified agents.