Azalea

Azalea

Names
Corresponding card	Sky Striker Ace - Azalea
Japanese Japanese アザレア Rōmaji Azarea
Personal
Age	0
Gender	Female
Relatives
Camellia (twin sister, deceased) Roze (genetic progenitor)
Career
Organization	Spectra Union
Appearances
Manga debut	Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories Sky Striker Ace arc chapter 7: "Encounter"
Appears in Manga Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories
Azalea

Azalea (アザレア Azarea) is a character appearing in the Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories manga, and the main antagonist of the second half of the "Sky Striker" story.

Azalea is a clone of Roze, having been made alongside Camellia when her creator, Zard, felt Roze was becoming insubordinate. Unknown to Zard, however, Azalea desired to rule the world herself and plotted to usurp Zard by killing him including those of Karma along with Raye. She and her sister are ultimately defeated by the end of the series and perish together with Camellia after their loss.

Design

Appearance

Azalea in her uniform and suit.

Azalea resembles an older Roze (about the same age of Raye, who's 15), although her eyes are orange-yellow rather than red, and her long hair, which she ties up into a curly ponytail instead of straight twintails, is a lighter shade of gray (fading to purple on the sides of her face) and covers her left eye. Additionally, while she appears fair-skinned in the manga, she is depicted with a dark complexion in the TCG/OCG.

Her normal attire consists of a coat resembling a military uniform, gloves, tights, boots, a brooch pinned to the collar, and a small purse hanging from the coat's belt. The overall outfit is black with light trims. It is almost identical to Roze's outfit, with the exception of lacking the scarf and peaked cap, and the addition of a small cape draped over her left arm.

When using the Sky Striker technology, she instantly changes into a black full-body bodysuit with silver and purple trims (some parts of which appears to be padded or armored) and high-heeled shoes. This suit also resembles Roze's but to a much lesser extent than the uniform, as its design is somewhat less elaborate and lacking a helmet. In addition, a purple sword with glowing stripes appears in her hands. This sword is significantly larger and broader than Roze's own, which is more rapier-like, something that Azalea poked fun at during their first duel.

Etymology

The azalea is a red flower propagated by cutting, making them copies of the same individual. This likely references how she is a clone of Roze.

Personality

In contrast to Roze's original nearly-emotionless personality and single-minded drive to kill Raye, Azalea is prideful and ambitious. When Roze first attempts to duel her, to prove she didn't need a clone to replace her, Azalea argues that she is superior to her original and taunts her during the fight, such as mocking the size difference between their swords. She is also rebellious towards Zard, despite initially working under him due to the painful nanites he put in her body. Even before her 'birth', Azalea ponders together with Camellia on why humans should be subordinate to machines, through the mind link between while they are being incubated. This leads them to come up with a scheme that would make them rulers of the world, in place of Zard and the other AIs.

Determined to be at the top, she goes as far as risking her life by electrocuting herself to destroy the nanites within her. She also displays brutal cunning as she then challenges Zard and pretends to still be hurt when he attempts to activate the nanites, before striking him down while gleefully declaring that humans are superior to machines because they can lie with a straight face, then setting up a trap to kill Solferina as well. Azalea's lust for power eventually becomes so great that she decides to betray her own sister and use her own nanities to control her, so that she doesn't have to share power. As Azalea achieves her goal in ruling Spectra, revealing her cruel and heinous personality, Zard's severed head comments that she's no better than the humans who went to war against each other and destroyed the planet, worse than animals, and that they should have educated her. Azalea appears to acknowledging this as she believes humans must fight as they enjoy conflict like herself.

Beneath this arrogance however is also a resentment towards Roze and Raye for being "real humans" while she is a clone, as she feels that this makes them inherently better in at least one aspect, for which reason she wants to kill them so that she rule a world of her own, inferior clones. This causes her to act increasingly irrational and unhinged, dominated by her desire to kill the two despite Raye trying to assurd her that she is her own person. At that point, even Roze finds Azalea behavior disgusting as the latter utilizes Zard's and Solferina's remains to craft herself an armor, while Raye cannot comprehend it at all.

The fight between them eventually leads Azalea to becoming sadistic and cruel that she forces Camellia to pilot S.P.E.C.T.R.A together with her, despite the fact that the machine's neural control has a risk of causing brain damage, for the sake of murdering them, and even after it is destroyed and both clones lay down dying, she still doesn't give up and activates an intact microwave satellite to destroy them.

With even that failing, Azalea finally understands love, which she had derided earlier as pointless, when Camellia tries to comfort her with her last breath, with both 'sisters' passing away in tears.

Abilities

Azalea is a clone of Roze (who herself was genetically engineered) modified to be an even greater Sky Striker, having further-enhanced strength, speed, durability, and intellect. The first duel between the two proves this as Azalea's sheer power and dexterity catches Roze off-guard and quickly overwhelms her. Her physical strenght is such that she's capable of cleaving a crane in half with one strike, and shattering a meter-wide pillar with a handful.

Like Roze, Azalea also appears to have innate combat mastery, leisurely criticizing her original for hitting weakly and moving around unnecessarily in the middle of their fight.

Azalea's endurance is so great that she survives receiving an electric shock directly from a power station's generator, and her intelligence allows her to build her own battle armor out of broken android parts and her figure out how to operate different machines and mechas by herself.