Kaolinite () [Kaori Kuromine ()]

History: The past of the young woman known as Kaolinite remains shrouded in mystery. Aside from the facts that her real name appears to have been Kaori Kuromine and that she is in her late twenties, no details have ever been revealed about her private life, neither who she really is nor where she really comes from, not even how she came to be associated with the evil organization known as the Death Busters or what her motives were for joining them in ther sinister quest to achieve world domination by summoning Master Pharaoh 90 and purging the Earth of all life by triggering the apocalyptic cataclysm known as the Silence. Cruel, cold-hearted, and unscrupulous by nature, she is believed to have been hired by Professor Souichi Tomoe as his personal secretary and lab assistant at some point following the incident at the Genetic Engineering Laboratory which resulted in his possession by the Daimon Germatoid and his daughter Hotaru by the alien entity Mistress 9, though this is uncertain. While she apparently never did learn the exact details of what transpired during the aformentioned accident, Kaolinite did prove to be an invaluable asset to the Death Busters, not only because of the vast extent of her magical powers - whose origins have also never been explained - but, more importantly, due to her development of a pink liquid of unspecified composition which was used to raise Daimon oocytes and was responsible for the development of their supernatural abilities upon fusion of their Daimon Eggs with materials of terrestrial origin. Far less impressive, however, was her performance in caring of and serving as a substitute mother figure for Hotaru. Her complete inability, among other things, to demonstrate even the slightest hints of human compassion, empathy, or understanding during such traumatic moments as the death of the young girl's beloved goldfish - killed by Mistress 9 when she assumed temporary control of the body they shared - drove an immense wedge between the of them, and, in time, Hotaru grew to despise her, though Kaolinite, as one might have expected from someone so utterly devoid of emotion, hardly seemed to care at all.
                 When Professor Tomoe decided that the time had finally arrived to locate and retrieve the three mystical objects collectively known as the Talismans from the Heart Crystals of human beings - which, upon being brought together, would cause the immensely powerful magical artifact known as the Holy Grail to reveal itself and allow the Death Busters to fulfill their sinister ambition - Kaolinite was faced with the rather daunting and arduous task of finding the three pure hearted individuals in question. Following the release of a Daimon Egg, the first of many, from Professor Tomoe's secret underground laboratory, she guided it to the Hikawa Shrine - the home of her first victim Rei Hino - where it fused with one of the trees on the temple grounds. Kaolinite then waited patiently for her selected target's appearance to awaken the Daimon Mikuuji to life and only remained long enough to make certain that the young girl was unable to escape from the monster's clutches as it extracted her Heart Crystal before departing to locate her next victim. Unfortunately, the sorceress' choice turned out to be a poor one on several levels, for not only did the Outer Soldiers Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune make an appearance following her departure and destroy Mikuuji, but Rei Hino, whose pure heart did not contain a Talisman, was secretly the Inner Soldier known as Sailor Mars, and her being targeted by the Death Busters brought the organization's existence and activities to the attention of the Sailor Soldiers and Tuxedo Mask much more rapidly than it otherwise might have been.            
                 Undaunted by the failure of her first mission, Kaolinite adhered to the same basic strategy while targeting young good samaritan Miharu, mechanic Mr. Kameda, violinist Takuzo Igarashi, and part-time waitress Unazuki Furuhata by sending the Daimons Nekon'neru, Steering, Octave, and Ousouji, respectively, after them and waiting for the monsters to return with the Heart Crystals they had claimed from their human victims, something which the creatures invariably never did since they all ended up being destroyed by the Sailor Moon's "Moon Spiral Heart Attack". Her frequent lack of success soon caused Professor Tomoe to become incensed due to all the Daimon Eggs that were being wasted and the interference of the Sailor Soldiers, though she cooly reassured him that things would be different next time because she would ready herself and assume a more active role. True to her word, she guided the actions of the Daimon Dieheart when it went after Gurio Umino's pure heart and almost succeeded in ridding herself of the Inner Soldiers in the process but was foiled in her attempt by the Outer Soldiers, though she did take the time to demonstrate her magical abilities and engage in some smug braggadocio before leaving Dieheart to her own devices and departing the scene, thus virtually guaranteeing the monster's destruction. Thereafter, Kaolinite devoted far more time and effort to the selection of her victims, often making certain that the attacks on them occured in relatively isolated areas and advising Daimons on how to proceed whenever complications arose, though this increased attention did little to improve her performance, as evidenced not only by the loss of the monsters of Scar and Doburin in her campaigns against Makoto Kino and Ami Mizuno, respectively, but also by her failure to discover a Talisman.
                 While discussing the nature of the interference of the Sailor Soldiers and Tuxedo Mask in the Death Busters' operations with Professor Tomoe, Kaolinite suggested the possibility that Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune - who were after the Talismans like they were - might be anticipating their actions. In light of his suggestion that they use this knowledge to their advantage, the sorceress set a cunning trap for the two Outer Soldiers in which she attacked motocross racer Katsutoshi Yamada while he was out in the wilderness. As expected, Sailor Neptune appeared to thwart her scheme as per usual, but Kaolinite quickly turned the tables on her adversary with some help from the Daimon Taiyaan, who split into two identical monsters, tied the Outer Soldier to a tree and attacked Sailor Uranus when she showed up to try and rescue her partner. Holding Neptune at knifepoint, Kaolinite threatened to kill her if Uranus offered any further resistance, but her would-be hostage was freed when she was freed from her bonds by Sailor Moon's "Moon Tiara Action". In the altercation that ensued, the sorceress noticed the Uranus and Moon did not get along well together and attempted to exploit this weakness by having Taiyaan magically handcuff the two together. This strategy was initially quite successful as the incompatibility of her adversaries forced them to retreat after being forced to helplessly watch as she attempt to dispose of at least one of her opponents permanently by grabbing Neptune with her prehensile hair and hurling her off a nearby waterfall to her seeming watery death far below. In the end, however, even this apparent victory somehow managed to slip through her fingers, for Sailor Neptune not only miraculously survived but Sailor Uranus and Sailor Moon managed to reconcile their mutual differences long enough to trick the twin Daimons into freeing them and subsequently destroyed them both, thus leaving Kaolinite with little choice but to retreat for the time being. 
                 Though she managed to temporarily quell Professor Tomoe's insane anger at the loss of Daimon Eggs they were sustaining before setting her next plan into motion - in which she purposely fused it with a streetcar to check the passengers getting on and off for pure hearts, a scheme which culminated in an attack on Yuuichirou Kumada by the Daimon Todeen - she was very much humbled when he expressed his doubts about the inherant effectiveness of the manner in which her searches for pure hearted individuals were conducted, though he mentioned this with misgivings and almost immediately apologized for the harshness of his words. Even so, Kaolinite probably did derive some small degree of satisfaction from the fact that she was blameless in her unsuccessful subsequent attempt on volleyball player Tsutomu Asai and the failure of the Daimon Highkyuun to eliminate him, Sailor Venus, or the other Sailor Soldiers, as the target had been suggested by the professor himself.                   When Kaolinite next appeared before Professor Tomoe, she told him that she had found a potential victim of such pureness of heart that she was positive that the individual in question was one of the three Talisman holders the Death Busters had been searching for. Armed with the most powerful Daimon Egg thus far created and an unshakable confidence in her latest choice, she spent a considerable amount of time tracking the movements of her latest candidate - Usagi Tsukino - even going so far as to masquerade as a saleswoman at Crystal Glass Sasaki Art in order to make certain that the egg would be fused with one of a pair of green glass slippers that Mamoru Chiba was going to buy Usagi for her birthday. However, when Kaolinite appeared to check on the resulting Daimon Cenicienta's progress shortly after the creature had awakened, she discovered that the monster's assigned target has escaped due to the unexpected intervention of Tuxedo Mask.
                After angrily ordering Cenicienta to search for the young girl, Kaolinite chanced upon the Cosmic Heart Compact, which had been knocked out of Usagi's hand during her initial struggle with the Daimon and that she had been unable to recover before being rescued, lying in the sidewalk. Almost immediately, the sorceress recognized it as Sailor Moon's transformation brooch and quite correctly suspected that the Sailor Soldier and her intended victim were one and the same. She soon spotted Usagi and Tuxedo Mask attempting to escape across some nearby rooftops, whereupon she and the monster gave chase and finally cornered the two of them in an undeground parking garage where Kaolinite the young girl's wrist communicator to prevent her from calling for help - though the latter succeeded in doing so in spite of her efforts - and Cenicienta managed to immobilize Tuxedo Mask by encasing him within a solid chunk of glass. The sorceress then attempted to put her theory about Sailor Moon's true identity to the test by threatening to destroy the Cosmic Heart Compact if the young girl did not relinquish her Heart Crystal, but quickly relented following the arrival of the other Inner Soldiers and instead decided to take Tuxedo Mask hostage, whereupon she challenged her adversaries to a confrontation at Tokyo Tower if they wished to rescue their comrade, making no secret of the fact that she every intention of killing them if and when they showed up.         
               When Usagi arrived at the Tokyo Tower alone a short time later, Kaolinite welcomed her and had her take the elevator to the observation deck, where the two once again met face to face and the young girl allowed her pure heart to be extracted by Cenicienta rather than see Tuxedo Mask killed by having his fragile prison shattered. Once the Heart Crystal was finally removed, however, it was quickly seized by Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune and both they and Kaolinite were shocked to learn that its brilliance was apparently a measure of its inherant purity and not at all indicative as to whether or not it contained a Talisman. Despite the fact that the pure heart was promptly returned to its owner in light of this revelation, the sorceress was still adamant on taking Usagi Tsukino's life - surprising even the Outer Soldiers with her claim that the young girl was Sailor Moon as they were not aware of this at the time - but before she make good on her threat, the remaining Inner Soldiers arrived to challenge her, with Sailor Venus posing as Sailor Moon courtesy of Luna's transformation pen. Even though Kaolinite suspected something was amiss with the "Sailor Moon" standing before her, they managed to convince both her and the Outer Soldiers that her belief was mistaken and that the brooch was a fake by mercilessly belittling Usagi and playing on her numerous faults to make the entire notion seem laughable. Seeing no reason to remain any further, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune attempted to leave, but the sorceress, intent on eliminating her adversaries once and for all, set off several large explosions all over the observation deck to try to prevent their departure and keep them there and subsequently set off in pursuit of them when they made a run for it, but not before instructing Cenicienta to deal with the Inner Soldiers and disgustedly tossing aside what she believed to be a worthless replica of the Cosmic Heart Compact.
                 Following a fierce battle with Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune amidst the iron framework of the Tokyo Tower during which the former was injured on her left shoulder, Kaolinite suddenly found herself confronted by a full complement of Inner Soldiers as well as Tuxedo Mask, the latter having been freed from his imprisonment following the Daimon's demise.When Sailor Moon, who had convinced her teammates to come to the aid of the Outer Soldiers, asked if she was going to try and flee as usual, the sorceress, having anticipated this situation from the start, produced the partner to the glass slipper from which Cenicienta had been created and emptied a small vial of the fluid she had developed for raising Daimons into it, thereby producing a green crystalline sword that capable of emitting a hail of shards when swung that would encase whatever they touched in a coat of solid glass. Creating a magical barrier around the entire area to prevent her adversaries from escaping - thus rendering the Inner Soldiers' offer to keep her occupied while allowing Sailor Neptune and the injured Sailor Uranus to escape useless - she withstood direct hits from both Sailor Mars' "Burning Mandala" and Sailor Jupiter's "Supreme Thunder" thanks to a magical force field she had erected around herself, but was prevented from finishing them all off by Tuxedo Mask, who distracted her with a duel long enough for the Inner Soldiers to charge up their "Sailor Planet Attack" and blast her with it full force moments before the sorceress was to land a mortal blow on her adversary.
                 While the power of the "Sailor Planet Attack" managed to shatter her mystical defenses as well as the barrier that had enclosed them, Kaolinite herself managed to survive the massive magical assault. Weakened yet still alive and knowing that the Inner Soldiers were in little better shape than she was, she made one final attempt to rid herself of them forever. However, Sailor Uranus turned the tables on her by managing to score a direct hit on the sorceress with her "World Shaking", somehow creating a feedback loop in the process which caused the hail of shards that had been released as she swung her weapon to double back and zero in on her instead, thus condemning her to the grisly fate she had intended for her adversaries. Kaolinite watched in sheer horror as she became encased in solid glass and barely had time to cry out Professor Tomoe's name before her transparent prison finished forming around around her. Then, the nearby girders and metal floor beneath her - already weakened and brittle due to their glassy coatings - started to buckle and finally collapsed under the strain of the additional weight, sending the still immobilized Kaolinite plummeting hundreds of feet from the observation deck of the Tokyo Tower to her death far below...or so everyone believed.        
                 Exactly what happened next has never been revealed, but Kaolinite somehow survived the ordeal, though how she managed this remains a complete mystery. Indirect comments from Viluy and Kaolinite herself would seem to suggest that she really did perish in the aforementioned fall but was subsequently raised from the dead by Professor Tomoe through some unknown means, though the evidence for this is far from conclusive as these offhand remarks may have been more exaggerated or metaphorical rather than literal in meaning. Regardless of the events that actually transpired during this undocumented period of time, she emerged virtually unscathed from her near death experience, maintaining her icy cool demeanor - as demonstrated by the fact that she did not even bat an eyelash when she came face to face with Usagi while the latter accompanied Chibi Usa to visit her new friend Hotaru - and her status as a continuous source of annoyance to Hotaru by attempting to discourage her blossoming friendship with Chibi Usa, supposedly because of the chronic illness the young girl suffered from, and mercilessly teasing her on one occasion about to an alleged love letter she had written to high jump champion Shun Hayase but lacked the courage to mail, for example. However, Kaolinite was not totally unaffected by what had happened and was seemingly forever changed in two significant respects. First, she appeared to be more firmly settled into both her civilian identity of Kaori and the rather mundane, menial occupation that went with it, using her vast magical powers with economic subtlety as in one instance when she teleported Hotaru from a local planetarium directly to her bed when the young girl fell unconscious after invoking her Sailor Saturn powers and narrowly escaped an attempt by the Outer Soldiers to slay her before she awakened as the Messiah of Silence. Second, her attitude towards Professor Tomoe change considerably, for she apparently fell in love with him - the source of this emotion owing at least in part to his having saved her life following the Tokyo Tower incident - and "was willing to do anything to help make him happy" from then on, though she never apparently gathered up enough nerve to tell him how she truly felt.
                 While giving Professor Tomoe a massage to ease his aching shoulders one day, Kaori was surprised to hear him say that he felt that her serving as his secretary was a shameful waste of her talents and subtly hinted at the fact that he wished her to reassume her old persona and position. At first completely stunned by the suggestion and seemingly hesitant to do so - perhaps due to what had happened the last time she had tried playing the role of the villainess - Kaori melted under the warmth of his encouragement and once again became Kaolinite as well as an active participant in the Death Busters' endeavors, her first major contribution to their cause having been to retrieve Hotaru when the young girl strayed too far from the Infinity Academy to visit Chibi Usa despite her alter ego Mistress 9's desperate need for massive quantities for pure hearts. Even so, her return to active duty was not altogether pleasant, for her previous failures had apparently reduced her to an object of derision and contempt for the surviving members of the Witches 5, such as Viluy, who mercilessly teased her about her visible affection for Professor Tomoe and treated her extremely rudely, though this particular witch did not live long enough to regret her malicious actions.      
                 When Kaolinite heard Cyprine make a derogatory remark about her to Professor Tomoe - with full knowledge that she was secretly listening on their conversation - she became enraged and was determined to prove her worth by acquiring the purest heart she could think of for Mistress 9 to consume: that of Hotaru's friend Chibi Usa. To this end, she patiently waited for her target to show up at the now abandoned Tomoe Mansion in search of her friend and was pleasantly surprised when she accidentally discovered that her intended victim was actually Sailor Chibi Moon in the process. Despite the determined efforts of Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Pluto, Kaolinite succeeded in abducting Sailor Chibi Moon who was subsequently - in full view of both the two other Outer Soldiers and the Inner Soldiers - sacrificed to Mistress 9 after being laid out unconscious on a stone altar before her throne, her very Heart Crystal ripped from her body so that the Messiah of Silence could awaken.    
                 In their moment of triumph, Kaolinite suffered a sudden thrill of joy when Professor Tomoe thanked her for all her hard work. Perhaps given the courage she had hitherto been lacking in, she voiced her elation at his compliment and was evidently prepared to confess her true feelings to him. Unfortunately, before she had a chance to do so, Mistress 9 - having decided that the sorceress' usefulness was at an end and that she had thus suddenly become expendable - struck her with a massive bolt of lightning that sent the woman flying into the invisible energy field which had been used to keep the Sailor Soldiers from interfering with the awakening ceremony. Fatally electrocuted by the massive charge that had coarsed through her body during her prolonged contact with the barrier, Kaolinite's limp, smoldering form dropped to the ground, an expression of muted shock and confusion still frozen on her face as she finally succumbed to her injuries and expired, her body vanishing into nothingness as she died. In the end, it is tragically ironic that Kaolinite, who, for the longest time, seemed unable to express even the most minute trace of human emotion, should suffer such a horrendous and grisly death in the very moment she finally found it in her heart to do so.      

Height: Estimated at 5'6'' (167 cm); never accurately measured            
Weight: Estimated at 123 lbs. (56 kg); never accurately weighed           
Eyes: Grayish green               
Hair: Red              

Abilities: Aside from her superhuman strength, Kaolinite could cause her long red hair to increase in length as well as employ it in a prehensile manner as a weapon, allowing her to seize solid objects or even people in a surprisingly tight grasp and throw them great distances. She also possessed a wide variety of supernatural powers that were magical in origin, enabling her to fly, teleport either others or herself and at least two additional individuals across great distances, fire red energy bolts or force blasts from the palms of her open hands with enough power to send a small human being flying back several feet, phase through solid objects, manipulate and control solid objects from a far, project her voice from a distance, create a transparent protective bubble around herself, and cause a cloud of green electricity to appear in mid air and strike down at her adversaries in the form of a massive emerald lightning bolt. It is unknown whether the explosions she caused during her showdown with the Sailor Soldiers at the Tokyo Tower, the green barrier she created to seal off a small section of the Tokyo Tower, or the near impenetrable invisible she generated around herself - which an attack no less powerful than the "Sailor Planet Attack" was able to breach - were due to her own inherant abilities or bestowed upon her by the bracelet she wore around her wrist.    
Paraphernalia: In addition to a sharp gray crystal she employed like a knife, Kaolinite wore a golden bracelet around her left wrist which may have granted her several additional powers - as described above in greater detail - though whether these were inherant to the piece of jewelry itself or it was merely serving as a conduit for her own magical abilities remains unknown, though it had a hidden compartment containing a small vial of the fluid she had developed for raising Daimon. For a short time, Kaolinite also wielded a green crystalline sword - created by administering the aforementioned liquid to a glass slipper - which, when swung in a wide arc, would emit a hail of translucent shards that could encase whatever they made contact with within a layer of solid glass, turning people into statues or rendering inanimate objects quite brittle. The sword could also be used in its traditional sense as a hand-held weapon, one with which she was apparently quite conversant.

               
Kaolinite's Daimons (from left to right, top to bottom): Mikuuji, Nekonelle, Steering, Octave, Ousouji, Dieheart, Scar, Doburin, Todeen, Taiyaan, Highkyuun, Cenicienta  

Japanese Voice Actress: Noriko Uemura           
North American Voice Actress: None              

This entry first appeared on: June 10, 2000 
This entry was last modified on: December 10, 2000 

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