Charden Flamberg

Charden Flamberg (シャルデン フラムブルグ Sharuden Furamuburugu) was a member of the Apostles of the Stars, and Kyoko Kirisaki's partner.

Appearance
[[File:Charden without his glasses.png|thumb|220x220px|Charden without his glasses.
 * left]]

Charden is a tall man with long, flowing golden locks and bright blue eyes. Normally, Charden wears a top hat and sunglasses, a black trench coat and black boots. Noted by Kyoko, his partner, he is very handsome when he takes off his glasses. Charden has pretty good vision as he has 20/13 vision in both eyes.

Personality
He wishes to take down Chronos, though he does not agree with Creed's methods, leading him to defect from the group with Kyoko while their castle is being attacked by Cerberus. Out of all of the Apostles, he is the only one that spoke up about Durham's murder at the hands of Creed. Though, he acts stern with her, Charden cares about Kyoko, often watching over her after they left the Apostles. He's calm in almost every situation that he's in, and seems to have some gentleman-like traits to him. He has also been noted to take an interest in horror fiction.

History
Charden's life before the Apostles along with his reason behind his hatred for Chronos is still a mystery. At some point, he was approached by Creed and given the spirit drink that gave him his Tao powers.

Lunafort Arc
Charden joins his fellow comrades, Maro and Kyoko, during the confrontation between Creed and his former partner,Train Heartnet, an extremely powerful gunfighter known and feared worldwide as the "Black Cat." Charden has taken part in the Apostles' many assassinations and terrorist actions during the previous months and seems to be a field agent, often tasked to recruit new followers.

Gyanza Arc
Charden later goes with Kyoko to Rubeck City, a town where a deranged assassin named Gyanza Rujike uses the power of Tao that the Apostles revealed to terrorize the population. Charden and Kyoko are tasked to recruit Gyanza as he promised in exchange for revealing his power, but Gyanza's power turned him into a barbaric homicidal maniac. If he recognizes the two Apostles of the Star and agrees to listen to them, he refuses to follow them and orders them to get out. Unimpressed, Charden departs stating to an aggravated Kyoko that a madman like him would only be an hindrance for the Apostles of the Star. Charden and Kyoko are ordered by Shiki to remain in town, and Charden later senses Gyanza's ki increasing, as he is fighting against Train and his team. The two Apostles witness the end of the fight, and Gyanza's death, before introducing themselves to Train's team.

In the following night, as they are waiting in a graveyard for the Apostles' airplane, they meet Belze Rochefort, the Number II of the Chrono Numbers, Chronos' elite brigade, who came to dispose of them. Kyoko and Charden engage a fight against Belze, who is too powerful for them one-on-one, but is in serious danger against the two of them. Shiki then interrupts the fight and departs with them.

Revolution Arc
Charden later answers Creed's general call and reunites with the other Apostles on Clarken Island, before the Apostles' large-scale terrorist attack on the World Conference.

The Mad Gunman Arc
When Durham is killed by Creed, Charden is the only Apostle who voices an objection. Upon hearing Creed's explanation, he realizes that the demented swordsman only regards his followers as mere tools, and is deeply disturbed by this. He confesses his doubts to Kyoko, who shares his opinion but is more interested in seeing his face without his sunglasses. (Which he removed in his reflection.)

Cerberus Arc
When the Apostles are based in the ancient castle near Stoke Town, Charden participates in killing the numerous bounty hunters who came after Creed and his 3 billions yen bounty. Maro remarks that Charden seems upset, which Charden dismisses despite Maro being right, as he is still bothered by Durham's case. When the Chrono Numbers V, VII and XI storm into the castle, Maro, Charden and Leon engage a short battle against them, but the Numbers manage to flee.

Upon learning that Creed hid his experiences on nanomachines to most of his followers, Charden has enough and takes profit of the chaos caused by the battle against the Chrono Numbers to defect from the Apostles of the Star, followed by Kyoko.

Lucifer Arc
Back in Stoke Town, they meet Train and his friends and confess that they defected. Charden also cryptically states that he hasn't much time left and that he still wants to destroy Chronos. Later, Charden is attacked by assassins from Chronos, who stand no chance against him and are quickly killed. Charden spares one of them until he tells him where he can find Chronos' supreme elder, whom he intends to kill. The soon-to-be-dead assassin tells him that only a few superiors know about the supreme elder, including the Chrono Number I, Sephiria Arks. Shortly after, Charden asks Train to ensure that Chronos would no longer target Kyoko, and departs to pursue his fight.

A Carefree Tomorrow
After the final battle, Charden is in an unknown location, coughing blood, implying an illness and following his previous statement about not having much time left.

Anime Plot
Charden joins the Apostles and he, along with Kyoko, serves as a field agent tasked to recruit new members. To do so, they visit several towns following a river and organize a massive break out from a jail, noticing the most promising criminals and offering them Spirit Water to reveal their power of Tao, (if they have one) in order to recruit them. Among these criminals figure Igor Planter and Gyanza Rujike.

Charden appears while Rinslet searches for the spirit water. Wearing his top-hat and traveling with Kyoko, Charden gives the drink to several criminals, resulting in most of them dying. The ones that lived were supposed to join them, and if they didn't, Charden would kill them.

Later, Train tracks them down and Charden casually mentions Creed. Train demands that Charden tell him where Creed is, and Charden tells him, as per Creed's request. However, when Train and Creed meet and fight, Charden and Echidna intervene, causing a squabble among the Apostles.

Durham, who had been acting on his own, was later killed by Creed, causing Charden to leave out of protest.

However, Charden didn't give up on the views of an Apostle and attempted to kill Sephiria in order to destroy Chronos. However, this failed and Train had to intervene in order to save him.

Charden reappears shortly before the battle against "Eden" and the Zero Numbers, alongside Kyoko. No one knows how he learned about the threat but he might have sensed the strong concentration of Tao or more simply have been warned by Kyoko. The two then join the heroes, the sweepers and the remaining Chronos Numbers.

Charden no longer wears his glasses or his silk top hat, and he confesses that he reflected about what would be his purpose in life after abandoning his goal of destroying Chronos, (which ironically has been destroyed by the Zero Numbers) and that his research lead him here. Charden takes part in the invasion of "Eden" and is later seen departing, finally in peace with himself.

Equipment and Abilities
Blood : Charden's power of Tao is called "Blood" and likely comes from his liking for horror fictions. He is able to control his own blood like a limb and he can shape and manipulate it as he pleases. He uses it to create blood figures, usually shaped like skeletons, skulls or Grim Reapers, which he uses to attack his enemies with claws or a scythe, depending on the form it takes. He can also creates blood replicas of himself, through which he is able to see and talk, or streams of blood with which he binds his enemies, often squeezing them to death. Charden can turn his blood into acid, which he does when performing his "Bloody Rain" technique. (Countless drops of acidic blood which he hurls in every direction and is very hard to dodge, even for a Chronos Number.) He can also make his blood figures go underground to form a network of bloody Grim Reapers that surrounds his enemies and attack them from every side.

Charden is a highly powerful warrior with a truly dreadful power, but using this power doesn't come in handy, as he needs to cut himself to activate it, and cannot use it as freely as the other Apostles. Moreover, Charden cannot use his blood when it is not linked to his body. To compensate this, Charden can absorb his victims' blood through his own, which means that when he strikes his enemies, they are already as good as dead. Also, because of all the blood he has assimilated, Charden has an amount of blood way over the usual quantity at his disposal, making his "ammunition" close to limitless, and rendering him very hard to kill through blood loss. Because of this, it is very likely that wounding Charden would only increase his access to his weapon. In the manga, shooting the blood figures with a gun is useless, while in the anime, Train Heartnet often destroys them with a single bullet.

Finally, Charden appears to be the most able (or at least the most trained) to feel other peoples' ki among the Apostles of the Star, enabling him to locate anyone in a defined perimeter and to sense whenever someone is using a power of Tao around.

Bloody Rain: Charden can manipulate blood to perform attacks. It normally takes the form of several skulls that can slice through objects upon impact, but are easily destroyed.

Kyoko Kirisaki
Kyoko was Charden's partner, during his time with the Apostles. They got along well despite Kyoko's childish personality. They trusted one another, and left the Apostles together. Charden cares for Kyoko's well-being, which is why he left her in Train's care, and asked him to tell Chronos to leave her alone.

Train Heartnet
Even though they were on opposite sides, Charden respected Train, and trusted him enough to leave Kyoko in his hands.

Creed Diskenth
Charden joined Creed's team, so that he could take down Chronos. While he did not always agree with Creed's methods, he still followed him. After Creed killed Durham, Charden realized how insane Creed was, and left the Apostles, no longer wanting to follow a leader who sees his teammates as disposable trash.

Trivia

 * In some English translations, his name is Sheldon.
 * It seems strange Charden is paired with Kyoko; her Heat would neutralize his Blood by basic physics i.e. heat dries blood.