Charden Flamberg

Sharden Flamberg is an antagonist in the manga Black Cat and its anime adaptation. He is one of the first members of the Apostles of the Star to be introduced in the story. Sharden wants to destroy Chronos, the secret organization to which Creed Diskenth belonged, as he considers it to be an evil organization which hinders the construction of a better world. Sharden is a very polite and courteous man, who isn't really villainous, in spite of being a cold-blooded murderer. He fights for a cause he believes right and he ultimately defects from the Apostles of the Star, upon realizing Creed's lack of interest for his own followers. The reason why he holds a grudge against Chronos is never fully explained.

Sharden is someone extremely polite and courteous, who speaks formally to friends, colleagues and foes alike. He respects the others Apostles, (especially his friend and partner Kyoko Kirisaki and also Maro and Leon) and he regards them as his comrades.

Sharden is an antagonist but by no means a villain, in spite of being part of the Apostles of the Star and his only villainous trait (aside from the cold blooded murders) is his participation in the Apostles's actions. Though he does so because he is convicned that the goal they pursue is noble. To that extend, he can be considered as an adept of the "End justifies the means" policy. Even if he has no qualm about killing people, he almost always warns them that they would better run away. Sharden's most defining trait is his hatred for the secret society Chronos, as he believes it to be corrupt and malevolent, and that taking it down would help to purifiy the world. No one really knows if he has a personal vendetta against the organization or if he acts out of conviction, but the former seems more likely, as he dedicates his entire life to destroy it.

Sharden'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 limbs and he can shape and manipulate it as he pleases. He uses it to create blood sculptures (for lack of a better term) usually shaped like skeletons, skulls or Grim Reaper-like figures, 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. Sharden can turn his blood into acid, which he does when performing his "Bloody Rain" technique. (countless drops of acidic blood which he hurls in all direction and is very hard to dodge, even for a Chrono 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.

Sharden is an 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, Sharden cannot use his blood when it is not likned to his body. To compensate this, Sharden is able to absorb his victim's blood through his own, which means that anytime he strikes his enemy, they are as good as dead. Also, ecause of all the blood he has assimilated, Sharden as an amount of blood way over the usual quantity at his disposal, making his "ammunitions" close to limitless, and rendering him very hard to kill through blood loss. Because of this, it is very likely that wounding Sharden 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 destroys them with a single bullet.

Finally, Sharden appears to be the most able (or at least the most trained) to feel other peoples' ki, enabling him to locate anyone in a defined perimeter.