Gravity-Manipulation Ability


 * This article is about Paul Verlaine's ability. For Chūya Nakahara's ability of the same nature, see Upon the Tainted Sorrow.

This gravitation-manipulation ability is the unnamed ability of Paul Verlaine.

Description
Similar with Chūya Nakahara's ability, Verlaine can manipulate the gravity vector and magnitude of anything and anyone he gets in contact with. He can enhance gravity to crush and incapacitate targets in place, which Chūya—a gravity-manipulation ability user himself—cannot break away from to a fault. Initially, Verlaine's ability proved quite superior to Chūya's own, giving the mafioso considerable difficulty fighting him. For instance, Verlaine's punches were once described to be cannonballs compared to Chūya's bullet-like punches. During their clashes, their gravitational forces would produce shock waves that ravaged anything in their proximity.

Verlaine can increase his own body's density to land dense attacks on his opponents with his punches and kicks. He can snap his opponents' necks with ease using gravity, which killed Murase and almost N. In one occasion, he pierced through the vehicle he was driving into the ground after colliding with a semitrailer and withstand the truck's impact. He also used his ability to emit a gravitational pulse like a radar to search for a photograph on Chūya's person. In addition, he can manipulate gravity to prevent himself from falling over and erase his own gravity to land upside down on a ceiling. He can also manipulate his own gravity to launch himself out into the sky to escape and even blast through an underground facility way aboveground.

Verlaine can utilize the gravity of several materials around him in combat. He once expelled rubble in his hands like bullets and shot concrete fragments on the wall by laterally manipulating gravity. He can also throw various objects at targets with relative ease but high strength, such as an entire car and a photograph like a projectile that pierced Adam Frankenstein after flicking it. Verlaine also partially buried Adam into a concrete wall, being pushed in by gravitational force after Verlaine set every piece of the rubble back in place.

Dubbed as the King of Assassins, Verlaine is quite adept in assassinations that he performed using his ability. He was once able to assassinate elite Order of the Clock Tower imperial guards, who possessed unparalleled abilities throughout the world, without leaving any signs of trauma. In truth, however, he fragmented their bones into 1,228 pieces almost simultaneously, which caused them to suffer respiratory failure until death. He was also capable of massacring in brutal fashion, such as the five Flags members whose corpses were highly dismembered; hence, they were describably more "broken" rather than "killed".

Despite his powerful ability, Verlaine can still be outclassed, most notably by Chūya in their later spars and his clone's skeleton that was being controlled by N, one of the few beings who penetrated his gravity-manipulated guard. Moreover, a horde of gifted individuals ambushing him with their abilities one after another proved to be a challenge to Verlaine even with his ability, forcing him to activate Brutalization as a last resort.

Brutalization
Similar to Chūya's Corruption, Brutalization (獣性,) is the state when Verlaine's persona model is stripped off its seal by opening his Gate and succumbs to the powers of the singularity, Demonic Beast Guivre. Verlaine loses consciousness in this state and is granted destructive, gravity-based capacities that could annihilate squadrons and disrupt landscapes. It can be activated by chanting the control incantation: "Your hate, your set torpors, your weaknesses, your spite, All the brutalities you suffered long ago, You return to us, all without evil, O Night, In an excess of blood that every month will flow.''"