Kars

Kars presents as a tall, heavily muscled man whose skin runs paler than that of the other Pillar Men. His long, dark, wavy hair is bound beneath a tight head-wrap that he removes only as a mark of honor or aggression, and he otherwise dresses sparely in high boots, forearm guards, and a flowing loincloth. In battle he extends long, glittering blades from his forearms, and while moving through Italy he throws on a fedora and longcoat to draw less notice.

Kars is brilliant, merciless, and utterly fixed on securing the Red Stone of Aja, a genius even among his own kind and the original architect of the Stone Mask. He begins as the most aloof and businesslike of the Pillar Men, often the one reminding the others of their true aim, and he will trample anyone by any dishonorable means, cheating Lisa Lisa, siccing his vampires on a weakened Joseph, and coldly executing children he expects to seek revenge.

Backed by immortality and resilience, he is patient and methodical, yet beneath the stern surface lies a sadistic streak that savors an enemy's despair and often has him licking his lips or blade before a kill. His hunger to sit at the very top defines him: enraged that his tribe would not seize the sun, he slaughtered his entire race, including his parents, while still claiming to care for Esidisi and Wamuu. He shows flickers of tenderness toward nature and animals, but every affection bows to his ambition, and he sneers at human machines as beneath him.

Kars was born roughly 102,000 years before Battle Tendency into an underground race that fed on other living things and feared the sun. Dissatisfied with a peaceful existence, he devised the Stone Masks and tested one on himself, gaining greater body control at the price of ravenous hunger. When his people turned on him in fear, he massacred them all, spared Esidisi as a fellow believer, and took the children who would become Santana and Wamuu. Learning about the Red Stone of Aja, the Pillar Man crossed to Europe, decimated a tribe of Ripple users, and hibernated beneath the Colosseum.

Awakening in the present as leader of the Pillar Men, Kars vows to kill Joseph after the human slays Esidisi. He cuts down the cyborg Stroheim, briefly seizes and then loses the Red Stone to Joseph, and tricks Lisa Lisa in their duel. When Nazi troops blast him with ultraviolet light, he dons a modified mask fitted with the Super Aja and rises as Earth's Ultimate Life Form, its body now carrying the genetic code of every creature that ever lived, capable of reactive evolution and a Ripple said to rival the sun itself.

Joseph lures him into a volcano, where Kars evolves porous armor to escape the magma and severs Joseph's arm, only for his own attack to be redirected and trigger an eruption that launches both into the sky. Struck by debris and Joseph's severed forearm, Kars is knocked out of Earth's orbit. As he tries to return, the air he ejects freezes, his body hardening in the void, and he drifts through space for eternity until he eventually stops thinking altogether.