Airi

"Welcome back, Mistress. It was three people today, that I led to the Netherworld."

Unlimited: "Fear makes for the best seasoning. Now then, allow me to help myself to your essence."

Airi (アイリ) is a wraith summoned by The Swamp Witch, to kill her enemies in the Queen's Blade Tournament. Airi is totally devoted to her mistress, the Swamp Witch, much more so than Menace or Melona. She can suck away the life energy of her enemies simply by touching them.

Appearance
Airi is an extremely attractive young woman, who has long, red hair in twintails and blue-green eyes. She is always seen wearing a French maid outfit and wielding a large scythe as her weapon of choice.

Unlimited
Airi's outfit remains largely the same, but now she sports a long chain and collar, her hair is much longer, and her back bow is bigger. Her scythe now has a star-like design on the blade, and a wing at the end.

Personality
Airi is a calm and reserved person, who is generally kind but will attack people if need be. Her kindness, however, can get in the way sometimes, as a wraith, she must feed on others' life force. She is also very dedicated to the duties given to her by The Swamp Witch, even willing to suffer three days of tickle "torture" to prove to Melona how loyal she really is.

Abilities
Airi is a powerful combatant, able to wield her scythe with great accuracy. Airi can summon "lesser spirits" to entrap enemies, summoning a multitude of ghost-like beings to hold down a foe. Despite her toughness, she is highly ticklish, as Melona's tickle hands easily sent her into hysterics. Although she is capable of flight, Airi usually prefers close range combat, so she can consume her opponent's life force. When Airi drains life force, she needs to be near enemies- the life energy flows from the opponents' mouth into Airi's mouth, and Airi usually accomplishes this through a kiss. If she sucks too much from the victim, they die. To escape a losing battle, Airi will become incorporeal, although it can take a few seconds to accomplish. When Airi assumes incorporeality, her maid costume disappears, leaving a white set of undergarments, and then her clothes disappear, and then she herself disappears as well. Airi also possesses rapid regeneration abilities (Although not like Melona's regeneration, which is due to her amorphous nature). Her injuries heal quickly after attacks. Her outfit is also tied to her health status and concentration, and will vanish if she is relaxed or low on energy. An example of this is while Melona was tickle torturing her, her maid costume eventually vanished. She once totally disappeared after heavy injury, yet the Scythe remained, with some help, she absorbed life force and was back and fine again.

Parameters
Attack: 3

Defense: 4

Potential: 3

Technique: 1

Reach: 2

Agility: 5

Prior to QB
(From the Queen's Blade site)

Airi serves the Swamp Witch, she who controls the undead and apparitions from the Netherworld and plans to rule over the Continent. She's a spirit summoned from the Netherworld and was enchanted with an obedience spell by the witch. Even if she's being forced to work under her, Airi performs her duties admirably and with no complaints.

Although she's a spirit, Airi's body has substance. Her clothes don't, and they're just an image projected by her, that seem real in the eyes of normal people. Without sucking energy from living beings, Airi can't stay in the earthly plane. She manages to suck energy by touching directly the bodies of her victims, and she seems to enjoy it more when the victim is frightened.

To rule over the Continent as soon as possible, the witch sends an elite troop to enter Queen's Blade. Airi, liking to suck energy from beautiful women, goes to serve her master all too willingly.

Prologue
(From her backcover)

An intense desire burns in Airi’s chest. I’m dying of desire for the energy of this one in front of me.

Fear and anxiety serve as seasoning, and despair becomes the best sauce. Surrounding them with the disgusting beings I summoned from the Netherworld, once I take away their freedom, their life energy reaches the perfection of delicacy. Just imagining the taste... gulp. Airi’s likely to forget her work.

Oh my, this person isn’t even trying to run away, she’s not trembling in fear. There are such spirited warriors in this world as well. She seems to be tough.

But since Airi will win by all means, please spare me of just that punishment, Mistress.

Sure enough, can Airi escape the punishment from her Mistress?

They won’t know that unless they fight.

Trivia

 * She is voiced by Kanae Ito (Japanese) and Michele Knotz (English).
 * She is one of the more popular characters in the series, in part thanks to the anime.
 * Airi shows a great deal of kindness to Rana in the anime. However, this kindness is never displayed to anyone (besides the Swamp Witch) in any other work of the Queen's Blade universe, where she is more often portrayed as being between absolutely neutral to others to merciless.
 * Airi's full Japanese title is a pun, 冥土へ誘うもの アイリ is pronounced “Meido e sasou mono Airi“ or 'Netherworld's Temptress, Airi', the word Netherworld can be heard as 'Meido' when spoken aloud, which obviously sounds similar to the Japanese pronunciation of the word 'Maid'.
 * Airi's concept was born from a desire to create the ultimate maid character according to Hans in the Perfect Visual Book and Masters of QB Excellent book.
 * According to the Beautiful Fighter's FAQ, Airi was originally supposed to change her clothing from page to page in her combat book. However, it was decided that it would blur her theme as a maid too much and thus, the concept was scrapped for her and later recycled for Melona.
 * Airi is very ticklish, as revealed in the third episode of Queen's Blade: Beautiful Fighters, Melancholy: Airi's Double Cross.
 * Unlimited lists her dislike as "dogs". This might be a typo, since it coincides with the dislike Elina has had since classic QB.

Gallery
For this character's gallery, visit: Airi/Gallery

Videos