Maru

Maru (マル) is one of the main protagonists in the Heavenly Delusion series.

Character Profile
Maru is a boy who is aiming for "Heaven" and to find the other boy who looks like him. He has no memory of his origin and as such has no surname. According to Kiruko, he is "a beautiful boy who is hard to find". He has outstanding physical abilities and a special power to kill man-eaters, which he calls “Hiruko”. He was born only a few months before The Calamity and is 15 at the start of the series.

Appearance
Maru is a boy in his mid-adolescence. He has light gray eyes and light gray spiky hair. He sports a black hoodie jumpsuit, a yellow inside shirt and a black mid-top trainers with red soles. He also carries around a green army camping bag.

He has been described as handsome by Kiruko.

Origin
Maru was born shortly before The Calamity. His true identity currently remains unknown as his mother Tokio had one single child. Sakota cloned this infant and in the midst of the raid on Heaven, mixed the two children. In a panic and with no way to quickly determine who the true child was, Teruhiko marks a circle on the bottom of one of the boys' feet. This child with the mark later became Maru.

Maru had never known who his parents were. From very early in his life he had been in constant migration between groups of people. It wasn't until he was found by Mikura that she taught him self defense forms and the Maru-Touch.

Aware of being on the verge of death, Mikura decides to find someone to finish her goal of returning to Heaven with Maru and finds Kiruko, an odd-job handy girl who agrees to be his bodyguard. Upon closing the deal, Mikura collapses and soon after dies to her core.

Searching for Heaven
At this point Maru and Kiruko have been looking for this vague, "heaven" for little more than a month. On their way to sleep, Maru notices Kiruko holding a picture of Robin and asks if he is her boyfriend. Surprised, she elaborates on their identities and assures him that she'll take him to his destination. After a few days of walking and starving, the pair find an Inn and walk in to stay the night. They're greeted by the Inn keeper and are encouraged to take a bath. The keeper mistakes them as brother and sister and attempts to educate them on the consequences of incest. Flustered, Kiruko quickly clarifies that they are not related whatsoever. The two prepare for bed, and Maru, who mentioned sometime earlier that he has trouble sleeping, is sound unconscious. Kiruko finds herself unnaturally tired and falls asleep. She later awakes in a cold sweat from a nightmare of herself during her surgery and spots a Hiruko in the window. Kiruko wakes Maru and they make their way outside where they then confront the Hiruko. They manage to incapacitate its offensive prowess and upon Kiruko's last shot to remove the final whip, is shoved away by the inn keeper. She believes that it became her son and despite attempting to protect it, is quickly sliced to bits by the man-eater and ingested. With it heavily wounded by Kiruko, Maru swiftly moves in for the kill; where he then invades its body and finally crushes the core. Ending the monstrous bird.

Tomato Heaven
Using the information gathered by the bandits they had met days earlier, the pair build a raft and sail through the flooded remains of Tokyo. They come across a large plantation with a sign that warns the merciless punishments of trespassing. Maru shows Kiruko a cylinder, in it are two syringes with unknown contents. These syringes are to be injected into someone with the same face as Maru, presumably Tokio and Yamato.

They are then greeted by some of the farm's residents and welcomed in. Maru and Kiriko are talking about the scale of the plantation when an ex-viewer of the Asakusa racing league barges in and mistakes Kiruko for Kiriko. He's kicked out by Maru but before leaving flashes his light on the Takahara logo. Maru notices this and compares it to the A-MK3 in Kiruko's holster. The pair agree to board the ship set for Tokyo and enter the cabin.

Kiruko
He fell in love with her shortly after the two began working together. Although knowing their backstory, he still wants to be with her romantically, saying that he never found a girl that he got along with this well. Despite his crush, he most often refers to her as “sis”.

Takezuka
Upon first meeting Takezuka for the first time the two quickly got into a fight. It was the first time in the story that Maru lost a fight. The next day the two exchanged blows in a warehouse to the point they both collapsed in exhaustion. Both claimed that the other had won the fight, establishing a mutual respect between them. Maru took interest in Takezuka because of her use of the word “Hiruko” to describe the “man-eaters”.

Hiruko Child
Maru was born with a Hiruko core.


 * The Maru-Touch: Upon bare-hand contact with a Hiruko, Maru can invade the organism's body in search for its core. This in effect, allows him to almost instantly kill any man-eater if he so choose. However, when entering a Hiruko, Maru's consciousness is transferred into its body; putting him in a state of great vulnerability.


 * Deadly Combatant: Maru displays feats of strength well above any human. He can move faster than the eye can track, effortlessly put one unconscious in a single blow, and jump from heights that would paralyze or kill any normal person without so much as a scratch. He is dexterous in martial arts and even tied with Michika in hand to hand combat.
 * Hiru-Sense: Maru can sense any organism containing a Hiruko core.
 * Regenerative Properties: Maru has great proficiency in bodily repair. He recovered from a swollen, bleeding comatose state in three days.