Arsène Lupin

Arsène Lupin (アルセーヌ・ルパン ー Arusēnu Rupan), also known as "Assassin of Thievery" or "Crimson Assassin", is an Assassin-class Servant in Fate/Scherzo. He is the Servant of Rei Fukushima in the Greater Holy Grail War of Fate/Scherzo."'Unfortunately for you that I, Arsène Lupin, am not an honest man!' ∼ Arsène Lupin to Rei"

Identity
The notorious gentleman thief and master of disguise created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in early 20th century. The character was first introduced in a short story published in 15 July 1905 titled "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin". Lupin was featured in a total of 24 books by Leblanc and has appeared in numerous books by other writers as well as film, stage plays, television series, and comic book adaptations. All of whom tells the exploits of the Gentleman Cambrioleur in his search for invaluable treasures.

Lupin is considered a literary descendant of Rocambole, another fictional character created by Pierre Alexis, and an inversion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, with the latter occasionally appeared on a number of works as Lupin's nemesis. Lupin is best described as "a force for good while operating on the wrong side of the law" due to his approach in seeking fortunes.

In 1936, Leblanc had worked on a script for a new Lupin story, but couldn't properly finish it due to his stroke. The work was left unfinished until his death in 1941 and the script was lost to time. Decades later, some pages of the original script somehow found its way in the hands of the heiress of Fukushima family. The script was later used as a catalyst for summoning Assassin of Thievery.

Personality
Arsène Lupin was known for his audacious and sophisticated style in committing his crimes. Despite being on the other side of the law, Lupin displays a chivalrous streak that compels him to never harm the innocent and poor. As a servant, he's shown to be a rather easygoing, fun-loving man who is more interested on living in the present time rather than getting indulged in the grail war, and he's still prideful and witty as ever. Lupin can be snarky at times, often labels friends and foes alike with silly nicknames. He is also quite mischievous, keen on teasing Rei about virtually everything and even goes as far as disguising as her using Myriade Masquerade just to mess around.

Just like in the books, Lupin is a womanizer. He's prone to flirt and always have his way with almost every woman he met. Some female servants were also fluctuated by him at some point. Even Rei comments that Lupin "has everything the girls' idealized".

In battle, however, he is a force to be reckoned with. His surface demeanor actually overcoats his brilliance, of which he use to fool enemies into thinking that he's not a true danger to be concerned. He's able to devise even the silliest idea into an effective countermeasure strategy against his enemies. He excels in close quarter combat and quite adept in using ranged weapons. His flexible build, coupled with his skills as a servant, made him a deadly fighter with immense speed and persistence. Even in the face of great danger, he still quips in the face of the enemy, taunting them with jokes and tricks. He relies on tricks and deception to gain the upper hand.

Lupin prefers for Rei to call him Arsène or Lupin whenever they're in private because his "Assassin of Thievery" and "Crimson Assassin" guise doesn't sits too well with him; mainly because Assassin is a class specialized in silent killing, and Lupin is very against killing in nature. This reflected on his habit of, despite being an Assassin, avoiding direct kill on enemy master by either defeating their servant by any means or letting other contenders take the kill. The former are justified by him since servants are "technically no longer a living being".

Apparently, Lupin didn't aware that he's a fictional character from a novel. He's quite dumbfounded when Rei brought that up with the script she used to summon him, whom she mistakenly thought as a poem of a forgotten hero. Later on, he tried collecting any works related to him out of curiosity. He also developed an interest in modern Japanese literature such as manga and light novels.

Normally, he has no wish to the grail as he doesn't have any ambitions. But if he were to choose, he said that he's curious about the "ending" of his story because he can't remember how he died or how he became a servant in the first place. This is because the story of Arsène Lupin was never ended in the world of Fate/Scherzo. Being a servant without a wish whatsoever, he takes part in the Greater Holy Grail War solely just for the thrill of it, the very reason he became a thief.

Appearance
Lupin appears to be a man in his twenties with a slender build and a rather charming facial feature. He has brownish black hair and yellow eyes. His attire consists of a crimson-red jacket with few gold accents, white top coupled with a black vest, black trousers, and a crimson cape with black interior matching his overall attire. He also wears his iconic top hat and monocle, where the latter is placed on top of the hat's brim as an accessory.

Interested in modern world, he also wears casual attire to assimilate himself with modern society. He wears a red shirt, black silk vest, black trousers, and a black tie. Though he has the ability to dematerialize into a spirit, he prefers wearing his modern outfit to wander around.

Class Skills

 * Espionage (A rank): The ability capable of infiltrating enemy's circle and discern one's hostility. As long as the user's identity kept hidden, one can fabricate informations and incidents with ease.


 * Presence Concealment (D rank): Hides one's presence as a Servant. Suitable for covert activities. Although he's an Assassin-class Servant, assassination is not in Lupin's dictionary. This weakness, however, is compensated by Phantom Thief.

Personal Skills

 * Sight of Wonders (A+ rank): A good thief must be able to differentiate which's true and which's false. Years of adventures had made him meticulous in perceiving things. He can tell whether something or someone is real or not by simply touching or staring at them for a moment. Such ability is required for a seasoned burglar like him.


 * Phantom Thief (A rank): An ability that enable himself to erase any trace of his presence and act faster in silence. So much for the one who invoked the legend of Phantom Thief.


 * Independent Action (A rank): Arsène Lupin is free of ambition, for he felt that life's already fulfilling enough. When even dreams cannot hold him anymore, let alone the will of a Master.

L'épreuve du Fantôme
Noble Phantasms are myths and legends of all Heroic Spirit crystallized into an ultimate armament, a symbol of their glory, therefore, a servant's precious treasure. And Lupin is a connoisseur of precious treasures. L'épreuve du Fantôme is the sublimation of his heists as a concept that made him able to steal other servant's Noble Phantasm. However, there are certain conditions limiting the use of this ability, which Lupin described as the following:

This seemingly powerful ability came not without an adverse consequences, however. Lupin will take the negative effects of the stolen Noble Phantasms upon activation if there's any. Long term usage of a stolen Phantasm also has a potential to corrode Lupin's own saint graph.
 * Rendering the guards out of commission is a must. Servant's identity serves as the "security" guarding the "treasure", their Noble Phantasm. Even though he knew where the treasure is being kept, he still had to bypass the security protecting it. This means that Lupin had to reveal the servant's true name first in order to successfully steal their Noble Phantasm.
 * You can only take the small stuff. Lupin can steal any Noble Phantasms so long it could be perceived by the thought of man. That being said, he can't steal Noble Phantasms of Divine origin.
 * Even the most prized treasure can be useless if you don't understand its real worth. He can use the stolen Noble Phantasms only if he understood the very concept and nature of them. The power of the the stolen Noble Phantasms also depends on how he perceives them.

Illusion Scintillante
While L'épreuve du Fantôme is the sublimation of Lupin's heists, Illusion Scintillante is the sublimation of his penchant for trickery. He will flash a false memory upon the enemy in a matter of seconds. For instance, This ability deceives anyone exposed to it into thinking that they've been doing something for what could felt like minutes or hours, up until they suddenly flicked back to where they started. In reality, they had done nothing for the past few seconds, and the things they've been through was never actually taken place since all of it was just a false memory, a "delusion" Lupin casted on them. Whether Lupin can prolong or shorten the duration of the false memory as he wish is still unknown.