Link Joker

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Hostile Species
Full Name	Link Joker
Alias	The mysterious invaders
Origin	Cardfight!! Vanguard
Homeworld	Void/Cray
Abilities	Reverse, Lock, Delete
Members	Star-vaders, Deletors, Starhulks and Messiahs
Hobby	No information
Goals	Takeover Planet Cray and Earth. Resuscitate through the "seed" implanted into Aichi Sendou(Both failed).
Crimes	No information
Type of Hostile Species	Parasitic Aliens

“	The forces which have taken over Star Gate should not exist on this planet, this galaxy, or even this dimension.	„
	~ Strike Star-vader, Krypton.

“	We have locked the laws of the world. We shall become the new law.	„
	~ Star-vader, Nebula Lord Dragon.

The Link Joker are a major antagonistic faction in the Cardfight!! Vanguard anime. It is the embodiment of Void, an evil entity that consumes planets and drains them of their life force. The invading force sent by Void are known as Star-vaders. Prior to the beginning of the series, the Star-vaders had destroyed at least three planets. Star-vader units are recognized by their prominent black rings with red auras.

After the defeat of Void and the destruction of Link Joker's Seed, the protector god of Cray, Harmonics Messiah purified Link Joker as benevolent beings who now wish to atone for their sins, these pure Link Jokers are known as Messiahs.

There are two other factions within Link Joker, which have only appeared in the manga and its adaptations, namely the 2018 reboot and the movie, Neon Messiah. These factions are: Deletors, which are an invading force sent from the wandering planet Brandt, and Starhulks, which are the creatures native to planet Brandt.

Link Joker is most notable for their "Lock" ability, both in their Vanguard card forms and in their invader forms.

History

Original Series

Link Joker was created by an evil entity known as "Void" to be its main army to invade and consume planets. The inhabitants of Planet Brandt the "Deletors" were also made into part of the Link Joker organization. Whenever Void would begin consuming a Planet Link Joker would then invade the planet directly, during the invasions they capture and posses the inhabitants of those planets, who would then become Void's slaves, a process known as "Reverse". Beings infected by the "Reverse" phenomenom become more powerful but quickly lose their free will and eventually become part of Link Joker. At least three planets had fallen to the Link Joker.

Void's next target was a Planet Cray, which is inhabited by powerful creatures and civilizations, who initially attempted to fend off the invading darkness but Void would consume approximately 50% of the planet's surface. However, due to Planet Cray's psychic connection with Earth through the game "Cardfight!! Vanguard", the god Harmonics Messiah was able to intervene via a being named Takuto Tatsunagi, who gave selected humans the power PSY-Qualia, which allows them to control the events of Cray reflected by their actions when playing the game Vanguard. This allowed humans to assist Cray's population to fight off Void and force it to retreat at least for the time being.

Infuriated by its initial defeat, Void decided to take a more direct approach and sent Link Joker to invade the planet once more, converting many units into "Reverse" slaves. Void also exploited Cray and Earth's connection to invade Earth by having Link Joker appear in the form of Vanguard cards and begin Reversing humans as well. Whenever a Cardfighter would lose a fight against a Reverse cardfighter, the loser also becomes a Reverse, this was also reflected by several Vanguard cards becoming Reverse cards, which Reverse units. Whenever there's a large concentration of Reverse fighters, Link Joker's Black Rings would also appear. Link Joker also possessed Takuto Tatsunagi to increase its control over Earth and accelerate the process of taking over Earth when the black Link Joker rings became large enough to cover the entire planet.

Link Joker's invasion was stopped when the non-Reverse cardfighters around the world banded together to fight against the many Reverse fighters, while the Cardfighters with PSY-Qualia faced against the possessed Takuto. Eventually Takuto and Link Joker were defeated by Aichi Sendou, forcing the invading army to leave Earth, but not before implanting a "seed" into Aichi's body which would consume his soul over time and make him into the new host of Link Joker. Similarly, the Link Joker invaders in Cray were defeated ending their invasion, however a small group of Link Joker survivors went into hiding scheming their return.

Aichi, fully aware that he was doomed to become the next Link Joker invader, decided that the only way to prevent Link Joker's return was to seal himself away forever alongside Link Joker and erase everyone's memories of his existence so that no one could ever unseal him and unintentionally reawaken Link Joker. Aichi recruited the four best Cardfighters around the world to form the Quattre Knights which would guard his seal and stop anyone who would attempt to find him. Uknown to Aichi, one of the Quattre Knights, Raul Serra, was secretly planning to backstab Aichi and steal Link Joker for himself.

Aichi's closest friend Kai Toshiki was the only one who didn't lose his memories of Aichi, and began recruiting other close friends of Aichi to help him find Aichi by also reactivating their locked memories. The Quattre Knights soon became aware of Kai's motivations which began a conflict between the two groups. Serra manipulated the event to culminate with most of Kai's group being defeated but also have the Quattre Knights defeated as well to have Aichi's seal broken while also eliminating any opposition who could stop him from taking Link Joker for himself. Serra somehow obtained a Link Joker deck for himself to use once he revealed himself to be a traitor.

Serra's schemes were stopped when Kai and the other Quattre Knights joined forces to stop him, which also erased all of Serra's memories of Link Joker. Despite Serra being defeated however, Aichi was now fully awakened and Link Joker was just about to consume his body. Aichi and Kai had one final cardfight, after Aichi was defeated the seed of Link Joker was preparing to infect Kai as its new host but Aichi's key unit Blaster Blade intervened and slashed the Link Joker seed multiple times over, after which the fragments attached themselves to all the people in the area while others traveled to Earth. Blaster Blade explained that the Seed cannot be permanently destroyed, but by having it be severed over and over Link Joker's will to be invaders under Void's control would also be weakened, eventually Link Joker will be just another clan in planet Cray.

The last remainders of Link Joker were taken under Harmonics Messiah's watch, who then proceeded to recreate the clan with himself as the new leader to be the guardians of Planet Cray.

The Star-vaders' commander, Chaos Breaker Dragon managed to escape from planet Cray and went to Earth, using a method known as Diffriding, he took over the body of a human on Earth, and proceded to assist in the plan to revive the Dragon Deity of Destruction, Gyze, as one of his apostles.

2018 Reboot

Link Joker is once again present as a major antagonist in the 2018 reboot of the anime, however because Void and the Star-Vaders are absent, Link Joker's orgin is different. In the Reboot Link Joker's main faction is the Deletors, the native inhabitants of Planet Brandt. The Deletors made their way to Planet Earth by presenting themselves as a Vanguard deck to Kouji Ibuki, a man who held a strong grudge agains the game. The Deletors convinced Ibuki to use the Link Joker deck to "Delete" other Vanguard fighters by defeating them in Cardfights which in turn severes their connection to Planet Cray. The leader of the Deletors, Waving Deletor Greidhol also took control of Takuto Tatsunagi and began an outbreak of "PSY-Qualia Zombies" to facilitate Brandt's invasion of Earth as well as Cray.

Planet Brandt's invasion against both Cray and Earth was stopped when Harmonics Messiah merged himself with Blaster Blade in order to create "Messianic Lord Blaster" who proceeded to defeat the invaders. Link Joker was once again purified by Harmonics Messiah after the god took Planet Brandt under its care giving it a proper home. Messiah then gave Ibuki a new Link Joker deck, albeit based around the Messiah archetype. This new Messiah Link Joker deck had the power to undo the Deletion that Ibuki had inflicted on other Cardfighters, Ibuki used this deck to atone for his previous wrong doings.