Xio Derecha

Xio Derecha is a Backlund bounty hunter, MI9 operative, and the Tarot Club's Judgment. She begins by enforcing order in poor districts while trying to clear her executed father's name. Advancement gives her increasingly literal authority over rules, yet her life among informants and state institutions teaches her that lawful command and justice are not identical.

Biography

Bounty hunter in Backlund

Xio enters the story in a temporary prison after using excessive force to make a criminal submit. Fors Wall seeks help from Audrey and Glaint because Xio's Arbiter abilities can enter a cell but cannot simply carry another prisoner through walls. The incident captures both her strength and her early limitation: she is courageous, direct, and genuinely protective, but she sometimes treats a just end as permission to escalate. Once free, she resumes work among bounty hunters, informants, and underground gatherings, using small commissions to support herself and her family. (Chapters 107–131)

Her deeper goal comes from her father, Mason Derecha, a former senior MI9 officer executed for alleged treason. Xio believes the case was fabricated and wants enough rank and access to discover why. The Arbiter pathway is tightly controlled by royal families and the military, leaving an unaffiliated Beyonder with few formulas and expensive ingredients. She saves for the Sheriff formula, accepts Audrey's investigative work, and joins the Qilangos hunt because each job offers money, contacts, and a chance to act on the order she believes the state has betrayed. (Chapters 131, 221–298, and 381–442)

Xio's partnership with Fors supplies what neither has alone. Fors brings mobility, mysticism, and literary-society access; Xio brings street contacts, target recognition, and the willingness to confront criminals directly. They live together, share income and dangers, and repeatedly investigate threats for Audrey without knowing her Tarot Club identity. Their assistance during the Great Smog and later Backlund cases does not make them formal heroes, but it shows Xio's order operating from below: she helps people whom institutions overlook while gathering evidence about the institutions themselves. (Chapters 221–298, 442–483, and 781–892)

MI9 and the Tarot Club

Advancing from Arbiter to Sheriff and Interrogator makes Xio increasingly useful to MI9. Sheriff gives her an extraordinary memory for faces and a tracking sense that can retain a target from a picture or personal encounter, while Interrogator improves coercive presence and truth-seeking. Those abilities win recruitment and access, but they also place her inside the organization that condemned her father. Xio accepts the contradiction because external investigation has reached its limit; she needs files, officials, and firsthand knowledge even when cooperation risks turning her into the state's instrument. (Chapters 381–442, 542, and 892–960)

Audrey brings Xio into the Tarot Club as Judgment, giving her an independent channel for information and advancement. Xio quickly proves that institutional membership has not purchased her loyalty: she frankly reports MI9's conclusions about Gehrman Sparrow, helps the Club investigate Viscount Stratford, and works with Fors against targets connected to royal conspiracies. Her position becomes useful precisely because she can understand official procedure without assuming it is morally final. (Chapters 953–1048)

Stratford's death and the George III investigation expose the connection between the royal family, human trafficking, war, and the Black Emperor ritual. Xio's father's fate is no isolated injustice; it belongs to a system protecting apotheosis. She pursues the truth despite the danger to her MI9 career and family, then participates in the coordinated efforts that prevent George III's advancement. The result clears the moral meaning of her father's resistance even when it cannot restore his life. It also changes Xio's ambition: advancement is no longer only a way to obtain one file but preparation to restrain powers capable of writing their crimes into law. (Chapters 1017–1146)

Xio progresses through Judge and Discipline Paladin while contributing to Tarot Club operations. Judge lets her impose prohibitions and punish violations, while Discipline Paladin strengthens the battlefield presence that makes others obey. She helps Fors prepare the hunt for Botis and supports broader war-era investigations, but the pathway's royal monopoly blocks demigodhood through ordinary MI9 channels. The Fool eventually provides the Imperative Mage formula and characteristic, and Fors constructs a controlled scenario in which Xio can complete the ritual by defeating someone attempting the same advancement. Their solution makes her Sequence 4 status a product of chosen trust rather than royal bestowment. (Chapters 1037–1103, 1178–1216, and 1278–1391)

Judgment in the new era

As an Imperative Mage, Xio accepts The Fool's long-term task of tracing the Red Priest Uniqueness, three Sequence 1 characteristics, and the Primordial Demoness's condition. The mission suits her official access but could expose her to corruption from entities far above her. She responds with neither refusal nor empty bravado: because direct seizure is impossible, she plans to gather information indirectly through official factions, records, and subordinate cases. The decision shows how far she has moved from the bounty hunter who solved resistance with force. (Chapters 1389–1391)

Years later, Madam Judgment supervises Minor Arcana holders and acts as a legal and intelligence authority for the Tarot Club. Franca's infiltration of the Demoness Sect operates under Xio's protection and constraints; Xio allows initiative but does not authorize mass plague or arbitrary harm merely because an operation would advance the Club. She also coordinates with Fors in Project Vortex, provides positions for angelic transport, and supports the dream-city rescue. Her mature role is not to issue every command personally, but to establish boundaries within which agents can adapt without losing sight of whom the rules protect. (Chapters 2009, 2160–2179, 2304, and 2451–2458)

The disorder surrounding evil-god cults and the approaching apocalypse rapidly digests Xio's Sequence 3 Chaos Hunter potion. This stage makes her a specialist in locating and suppressing rule-breaking, systemic disorder, and distortions of authority. The world provides almost too much material: laws are overridden by divine symbols, cults build private orders, and high-level beings turn exceptions into weapons. Xio prepares to advance to Sequence 2, considers switching to the neighboring Black Emperor pathway if necessary, but prefers to remain on Justiciar. Her reason is ethical rather than conservative: she wants to create orders suited to the morality of their time and revise them through real feedback, because rigid order inevitably produces a shadow. (Chapters 2505 and 2575)

By the final gathering, Xio has survived the apocalypse and remains Madam Judgment. The corpus establishes her exchange of a Grade 0 artifact in preparation for Sequence 2 but does not explicitly narrate consumption of a Balancer potion, so her latest named attained rank remains Chaos Hunter. Her postwar activity continues beside Audrey's legislative work and Fors's interplanetary operations, placing judgment not above society but within a rebuilding process that must keep changing as people and conditions change. (Chapters 2575, 2610–2611)

Appearance and personality

Xio is a petite young woman, about 1.5 meters tall, with rough yellow hair, delicate features, and a youthful appearance that often causes strangers to underestimate her. Her practical bounty-hunter clothing and commanding posture contrast with her size; when disguised as a servant or official operative, she uses that underestimation to observe before asserting authority. High-Sequence advancement later gives her the forceful presence of the Justiciar pathway without erasing the familiar appearance recognized by Fors and the Tarot Club. (Chapters 112–131, 269, and 960–1048)

She is stern, loyal, courageous, and action-oriented. Xio dislikes injustice enough to confront it before she has every advantage, which makes her a reliable friend and an occasionally reckless enforcer. Experience adds patience and political judgment. She learns to conceal information, work inside compromised institutions, and distinguish a rule that preserves public safety from one that merely protects those who wrote it. Her preference for revisable moral order at Sequence 3 is the mature form of the impulse that first made her police Backlund's poorer streets. (Chapters 107–131, 953–1048, 1389–1391, and 2575)

Pathways and abilities

Xio follows the Justiciar pathway from Arbiter through Sheriff, Interrogator, Judge, Discipline Paladin, and Imperative Mage to Sequence 3 Chaos Hunter. The pathway turns personal authority into supernatural rules: it improves investigation and memory, pressures targets toward truth, prohibits actions, punishes violations, and at high Sequence identifies or suppresses disorder itself. Its commands are not omnipotent. They depend on range, wording, relative status, the user's authority, and whether a stronger rule or distortion overrides them. (Chapters 131, 381–442, 542, 892–960, 1037–1103, 1216, and 2505)

Arbiter, Sheriff, and Interrogator

Arbiter gives Xio an imposing presence that makes others instinctively attend and obey, along with combat and judgment suited to resolving disputes. She uses it in bounty work to halt fights and force criminals to submit, but the effect is persuasion backed by supernatural authority rather than unbreakable control. Strong emotion, preparation, higher Sequence, or distance can reduce compliance, which is why Xio still needs evidence, weapons, and allies. (Chapters 107–131 and 230)

Sheriff grants exceptional target recognition, memory for appearance, detection of abnormalities, and a mystical tracking sense. Once Xio has seen a person directly or through a sufficiently accurate image, she can hold the target's features and notice traces others miss. This makes her valuable in searches and counter-infiltration, though disguises, anti-divination, sealed spaces, and targets whose true identity differs from the observed body can mislead the sense. Interrogator deepens coercion and the ability to detect falsehood, helping her question suspects and resist being deceived without guaranteeing that every answer is complete. (Chapters 381–442, 542, and 892–960)

Judge and Discipline Paladin

Judge enables explicit supernatural verdicts such as prohibition, confinement, or punishment. A correctly issued rule can prevent an action or cause backlash when it is violated, making wording and timing central. Broad, vague, or impossible commands are easier to resist, and enemies can exploit literal gaps. Xio therefore becomes more precise as she advances, combining a Sheriff's target understanding with a Judge's language rather than announcing an order before she knows what behavior matters. (Chapters 1037–1103)

Discipline Paladin raises the scale and force of those judgments and strengthens Xio's body, weapons, and ability to fight those who violate imposed rules. It suits formation combat: she can restrict an enemy's preferred movement or power while allies exploit the opening. It is less effective when the opponent remains outside range, uses a substitute, conceals the true source of an action, or possesses authority able to distort the legal relation between act and actor. (Chapters 1216–1229)

Imperative Mage and Chaos Hunter

Sequence 4 Imperative Mage gives Xio demigod-level law and order powers. Spoken imperatives can establish temporary local rules, magnify prohibitions, and punish acts defined as unlawful; her incomplete Mythical Creature form and spirituality also make the authority dangerous to lower-Sequence observers. Imperatives require discipline from the user as well as the target. If Xio defines a rule badly, traps allies inside it, or confronts a superior authority, the battlefield can turn against the very order she meant to create. (Chapters 1389–1391)

Chaos Hunter specializes in detecting, pursuing, and correcting disorder. The years before the apocalypse let Xio digest it quickly because cults, distorted laws, and supernatural exceptions repeatedly create the conditions the potion demands. At this level, “chaos” includes more than street crime: it can be a mystical contradiction, an abused institutional rule, or a local order warped by an evil god. The corpus names Xio's rank and rapid digestion but does not give a complete catalogue of her personal demonstrations, so the article does not assign every known pathway effect to her without evidence. (Chapter 2505)

Power progression

Relationships

• Fors Wall: Xio's closest friend, housemate, and operational partner. Fors first seeks help to free her, finances later advancement, and designs the Imperative Mage ritual that bypasses royal control.
• Audrey Hall: Audrey hires Xio's early investigations and later brings her into the Tarot Club, converting a concealed patron relationship into partnership among Major Arcana holders.
• Klein Moretti: The Fool supplies the independent high-Sequence route Xio cannot obtain from MI9 and assigns her to investigate forces threatening the apocalypse.
• Franca Roland: As Franca's original Major Arcana sponsor, Xio authorizes and constrains her Demoness Sect infiltration, balancing necessary secrecy with limits on harm.
• George III: His apotheosis conspiracy reveals that the state which executed Xio's father has subordinated law to royal divinity, turning her personal investigation into opposition to systemic abuse.

Items

Xio uses official equipment, weapons, and high-level Sealed Artifacts in the course of her work, but none of the items selected for this wiki's finalized top-association inventory is assigned to her as a required recurring item. The Grade 0 artifact exchanged before her planned angel advancement is therefore described in the biography without inventing a separate item page or implying that preparation proves the potion was consumed. (Chapter 2575)