Helaine Gatness

Entrusted with the role of an intermediary that lent money to the Big Three underworld organizations of Flanders, she was later demoted for overstepping her bounds, instigating unrest between the Big Three, and unintentionally exposing her affiliation in an attempt to gain a foothold within them, receiving comeuppance from her superior for her failures.

Appearance

Helaine is a small woman with narrow eyes and twin pigtails in her dark green hair that, depending on the light, can look black. Her right eye is covered by a diagonal fringe. She wears a well-made black suit, a black tie, black gloves, as well as black socks and shoes, qualities that make her appear to be an authentic professional. Perhaps most strikingly, Helaine can often seen with a forced, pasted-on smile that conceals her true thoughts and intentions.

Personality

Helaine has a condescending and audacious demeanor, a lack of humanity and remorse, an unyielding nature, and a stoic exterior that masks her true intentions and emotions from others. She is willing to investigate people's backgrounds or thoroughly research a particular skill in order to excel at it. For example, Helaine thoroughly analyzed all of the games in Flanders' gambling quarter, with her sheer gambling prowess being why nobody from the Big Three could outmaneuver her in bets. Although highly capable, she views her talents with vain, this being what led her to instigate the unrest in Flanders in an attempt to gain a foothold in the Big Three, failing because she gauged herself as more in control of the situation and mistakenly underestimating the shrewdness of her opposition.

She exhibits a strong loyalty and captivation for Russell to the point that she would end her own life if he ordered her to. Rather than strictly adhere to his orders exactly as presented to her, however, Helaine had the inclination to disobey her assignment, believing he would be pleased if she achieved success. When an associate of hers is put at risk, she will not hesitate to let them be if it is advantageous for her interest, recommending against saving Belmont when he was faced with the threat of murder and assessing his life as a tool to ward off the exposure of her side's involvement. Helaine also feels hostile towards Lugunica's knights, considering them inefficient compared to the Six Tongues.

History

First Mission

Having been the youngest individual among the ranks of the Six Tongues five years before the start of the Royal Selection, Helaine worked alongside Bikram Edditz and Julius Juukulius to topple Reiner Wahrheit's organization, which dealt in several illicit activities, most notably the sale of the illegal drug Hexcel. Under the pseudonym Helena, she introduced Julius to Blau, a member of the organization, providing the man a false story about the rookie knight's identity. When they reconvened after Julius's first day infiltrating the group, he spoke of how he pretended to slay Blau and sought to have him healed, only for Bikram to deny his request. Helaine provided a sample of the Hexcel drug they found, with Bikram saying it was her task to identify their source. When Belmont, a spy in the organization and her colleague in the Six Tongues was detained by Reiner's people on suspicion of leaking information, Helaine was against rescuing him. Julius attempted to convince Helaine and Bikram otherwise, and though she resisted, after she confirmed his view that Belmont would be more beneficial to keep than Blau, they hatched a plan to save him. Using the injured Blau, she drugged him with Hexcel of potent quality, sending him on a rampage, ending with his life being cut short by Reiner's hand. With her mission complete, she prepared herself to move to her next task, briefly conversing with Belmont after his reunion with Marcos Gildark.

Riot in Flanders

Several years later, Helaine was assigned with the task of managing the Flanders branch of the Golden Beetle, a moneylending loan shark organization with strong links to the underworld. Around the start of the Royal Selection, Mozolite, the second-in-command of The Balance, allied himself with Helaine in an attempt to snatch the position of his boss, Manfred Madison, orchestrating attacks on the Big Three with assassins and leveraging his position in his group to do so. Helaine, perceiving Mozolite's ambition and detecting that he could be easily exploited, supported his goal, believing it would be in the interest of the Six Tongues. Two months later, during a meeting with the representatives of the Big Three concerning the attacks that had been taking place, she proposed the one responsible was Felt, the Royal Selection Candidate being housed by the Sword Saint of Hakuchuri, having received reports that she contacted Doltero Amule and the Black Silver Coin before. As a result, the leaders of The Balance and the Flower Prison Garden, Manfred and Toto, went on to seek courtesy visits from her as a means to verify her intentions, with Doltero sending his former confidant Safis to inform her of their wishes.

On a night following Felt's courtesy visits with Toto and Doltero, a subordinate of Mozolite's with an Excess Mana Circulation Constitution attacked Mimosa, a student of Ezzo Cadner who worked for the Flower Prison Garden, setting the brothel she was in on fire. Although Ezzo rushed to the scene, he was rendered unconscious and framed for the arson. With the Big Three after him, he escaped from his predicament with Camberley's help and sought Helaine for his safety, offering unpublished magic theories he had created to her in exchange for an abandoned mansion to use as a safe house. Felt, Reinhard, Flam Remendis, and Rachins Hoffman visited the Golden Beetle to inquire his whereabouts. Hoping to establish a professional relationship with Felt, she willingly divulged Ezzo's location. Acting as a representative of Ezzo, Rachins, accompanied by Flam, paid a visit to the gambling quarter to directly confront Helaine, who revealed she was aware of his origins as the son of the Royal Instructor, Rickert Hoffman. Initially making a bet with the unreasonable request that the name or power of the Sword Saint be lent to her, she changed her condition to something more relaxed and what was her true goal: to send a single letter to the Hoffman family with the contents of her choosing. Rachins accepted her bet and selected Shatranj as their game of choice.

During the game of Shatranj, Helaine easily outmaneuvered Rachins. However, Manfred arrived in the middle of it, calling Helaine by the same derisive Golden Pest nickname that he used to refer to her and what Rachins had said just earlier, making Helaine quickly realizing that her opponent had greeted the Tattoo Face prior to the game, with Ezzo removing the cognitive disruption mask that concealed his identity to verify that his status as a fugitive among the Big Three had been put on hold. Furthermore, she misunderstood that Rachins's condition should he win the game had been to arrange for Ezzo's escape, when in reality he never provided her with any condition. He then made six clicks of his tongue, indicating his awareness of Helaine's allegiance while simultaneously exposing it to Manfred, declaring "Shatzbort" to signal his victory in an off-board game. With her loyalty to the Six Tongues revealed, her only option was to minimize her side's losses and take accountability for her own failure. As compensation for her loss, she provided Ezzo with the location of her collaborator, Mozolite, so he could avenge his fallen student, Mimosa.

Once everything was said and done, the Golden Beetle's influence and reputation in Flanders plummeted, with its place being succeeded by Felt, the Balance took Helaine into custody, and in exchange for a large compensation, the Six Tongues managed to retrieve her, with her being taken in and imprisoned underground at an unknown location, likely in a building at the Royal Capital. She personally reported the whole situation to Russell and was subjected to torture from her curse mark in response to her insubordination, vowing to herself that she would overcome the intense pain dealt to her in order to serve him again.

Abilities

Curse (呪い, Noroi): Helaine is afflicted by a pain-inflicting curse that works in tandem with a curse mark that has been engraved onto her. When her curse mark is touched by a palm, the curse activates, bringing about an intense pain that causes her to scream in anguish. This curse was utilized by Russell Fellow as punishment for Helaine's failures in Flanders.

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