Delmon Gates

Delmon is an incredibly tall and muscular middle-aged man in his mid-forties — standing head and shoulders above most other Cleaners with a frame that author Kei Urana has noted gets larger every time she draws him. He is bald with brown eyes, long wavy black tattoos in the place of eyebrows, a long nose, strong cheekbones, and a patterned dark brown soul patch on his chin. He is almost always depicted mid-shout with his mouth wide open.

His most distinctive accessory is a weathered straw hat with a navy blue stripe around the brim, held down by a long white rope secured with a silver ring-shaped clasp — the hat is enormous, giving him an even larger silhouette than his actual height warrants. His Cleaner uniform is personalised: a double-button-up shirt with a clothing pin, a thick belt with his Cleaner bag behind his back, sleeves rolled all the way to the shoulders with salmon pink bracelets tied around both arms, cyan blue pants kept with a black belt with a silver clasp, and black boots. He carries Thirst Quencher — his hose and nozzle system — with both hands.

Delmon is loud, immediately emotional, protective to the point of strategic liability, and deeply well-spoken despite all of the above. He processes the world through the lens of passion — whether someone has it, how strongly they have it, and what they are willing to do for the things they care about. This is not a quirk. It is a value system, and it shapes every decision he makes including the ones that go badly.

Passion as Philosophy

He holds a deep respect for anyone who exhibits strong feelings or drive. Upon hearing Rudo's backstory in their first meeting, he wept hysterically and attempted to immediately recruit Rudo into Team Eager — not because it was tactically reasonable, but because the story demonstrated the exact quality he considers the prerequisite for worth. He shouts about passion the way other characters might cite strategy or power: as the primary criterion for assessment.

Protectiveness and Its Costs

When someone he cares about is in danger, Delmon becomes an unstoppable force. This quality is what makes him a valued combat ally and what made him such an effective unwilling antagonist during the Penta arc: Amo's manipulation caused him to see her as his late wife, and his protectiveness of his wife was the most deeply felt emotion in his psychology. He did not attack his teammates out of malice. He attacked them because the thing he would destroy anything to protect was — as far as his manipulated perception was concerned — in danger.

The Grief Beneath the Volume

His farm was attacked by Raiders before he joined the Cleaners. His wife had a dream — to see a flower bloom, even on the Ground, where flowers do not survive easily. He worked as a farmer until he managed to cultivate one and showed it to her. He had made it his goal to fill the house with flowers. The Raiders destroyed that. The connection between his gardening-origin Vital Instrument, his wife's dream, and the fury that drives him in combat is one of the most emotionally coherent character arcs in the supporting cast.

Delmon worked as a farmer before joining the Cleaners. His wife had a dream she had carried across the Ground's hostile environment: to see a flower bloom. Flowers are not easy things to grow on the Ground, where the terrain is polluted and the conditions are harsh. Delmon worked tirelessly on his farm — and eventually succeeded. He cultivated a flower and showed it to her. She was joyous. He made it his goal to fill the house with flowers.

His Vital Instrument, Thirst Quencher, came from this: the sincere, sustained desire to make plants grow big and strong. The hose he used for watering accumulated Anima through the depth of that care, and his instrument is the direct physical expression of the same sincerity that Gachiakuta's power system rewards everywhere else. He did not fight to awaken his power. He farmed.

One day, Raiders attacked his farm. The Fandom wiki records this as leaving "a deep mental scar." The specifics of what the attack cost him have not been depicted in full, but the consequence was that he joined the Cleaners — deploying the gardening equipment that once grew flowers as a combat instrument in a war against the organisation whose Front Line had destroyed what he was building. The original goal was a house full of flowers for his wife. What he has now is Thirst Quencher and a team.

Introduction — Meeting Rudo

Delmon's introduction at the South Branch headquarters was immediately characteristic. He heard Rudo's tragic backstory, wept hysterically at the passion it represented, and attempted to recruit him into Team Eager on the spot — declaring that anyone who would hurt their own kind deserved no forgiveness. Tamsy reminded him that Rudo was already Enjin's. He accepted the correction. He did not stop crying.

The Penta Arc — Manipulation and Rampage

When the Cleaners entered Amo's domain in Penta, her Anima-infused scent powers did not simply make Delmon feel protective of a stranger. The manipulation caused him to experience an illusion in which he saw Amo as his late wife — triggering the full weight of his grief, his love, and his absolute conviction that he would protect her from anything. He took out Enjin. He attacked Riyo. He declared no forgiveness for anyone who hurt her.

The team was forced to coordinate specifically to subdue him — not to injure him, because he was not responsible for the attack, but to neutralise the danger he presented while fully operational and misdirected. Once the effects were countered, the rampage ended. The psychological mechanism that was exploited — his protectiveness of his wife — was not something that could be corrected for. It was simply the most sensitive wound available to target, and Amo's power hit it directly.

The Doll Festival Arc — Frontline Defence

During Mymo's takeover of the South Ward, Team Eager was deployed to the frontline — holding back the swarm of citizens Mymo had turned into mindless soldiers while August Stilza and the Supporter units performed the methodical work of removing chokers and breaking the Rule's hold. Delmon served as the vanguard, using Thirst Quencher for crowd control and area denial against an opponent type that required physical management rather than precision targeting. The city was eventually liberated. He required medical oversight after the engagement.

Vital Instrument — Thirst Quencher

Delmon's Jinki is Thirst Quencher — a large industrial hose and nozzle system that he carries and wields with both hands. It originated as a farming tool, accumulated Anima through years of sincere care for plants, and now functions as a high-pressure combat instrument. The name communicates its original purpose: the instrument that quenched plants' thirst. What it does to opponents is a different kind of quenching.

Technique — Ookiku Naare (Grow Big)

Delmon's primary technique is "Ookiku Naare" (Grow Big) — the command he used when watering plants, now deployed to spray a high-velocity, high-volume water stream that pummels opponents and controls the battlefield. Wikipedia describes the ability as being able to "control the water contents to attack opponents that absorb water" — with the larger the absorption, the more explosive the result (targets swell and pop). The original purpose of the technique was encouraging growth. The combat application is considerably less nurturing.

Area Denial

The volume of Thirst Quencher's discharge allows Delmon to "water" entire sections of the battlefield, making it nearly impossible for multiple opponents to dodge simultaneously if caught in the blast radius. This is its most effective crowd-control application: he does not need to target precisely. He needs to aim generally and hold down.

Raw Physical Capability

His physical size and strength make him difficult to subdue in close quarters — and his protectiveness, when activated, removes his self-preservation instinct as a meaningful limit on his output. He is treated by the Cleaners as a benchmark for raw physical power. The specific tactical challenge he presents to opponents is not his technique's sophistication but his combination of instrument output and physical mass, both applied without hesitation.

Delmon vs. Team Akuta — The Penta Rampage

Amo's scent manipulation did not make Delmon feel generic protectiveness toward a stranger. It caused him to experience her as his late wife — the specific person his entire emotional architecture was built around protecting. He took out Enjin. He attacked Riyo and other teammates. He deployed Ookiku Naare with full conviction. The team was forced to coordinate a specific strategy to subdue someone significantly stronger than any of them wanted to fight, while preventing permanent injury to someone who was not at fault for what he was doing. The outcome required more teamwork and effort than most combat encounters in the series, against an opponent who was on their side.

Delmon and Team Eager vs. Mymo's Puppet Army

Team Eager deployed as the vanguard during the Doll Festival crisis, managing the frontline against the crowd of citizens Mymo had enslaved through his Rule power. Delmon used Thirst Quencher for crowd control — the high-pressure area discharge keeping civilians at bay while the Supporters performed the methodical work of removing chokers and breaking the Rule's hold. The engagement was sustained and exhausting: Mymo's army was not composed of elite fighters but of large numbers of ordinary people whose safety had to be prioritised as the team fought through them. Delmon required medical oversight following the battle. The city was eventually freed.

• In the anime adaptation (Studio Bones, 2025), Delmon is voiced by Masami Iwasaki (Japanese) and Brent Mukai (English). Iwasaki is known for Ryuji Goda in the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series, Raoh in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, and Dick Gumshoe in the Ace Attorney anime. In the 2026 stage play, Delmon is played by Shō Arai.
• Author Kei Urana has stated that Delmon gets bigger every time she draws him — an admission that his physical scale has drifted upward across the series without a deliberate decision to scale him up. He is now simply larger than he was initially, by authorial accident and without correction.
• His Vital Instrument's official name is Thirst Quencher — confirmed by Wikipedia's series entry. The document's description of "the hose" and "Ookiku Naare" is accurate for the technique's name, but Thirst Quencher is the instrument's name.
• His likes, per the Fandom wiki, include passionate people, his wife, flowers, and liquor. The specific inclusion of his wife in the official profile — listed as a preference alongside flowers — confirms that she remains a central emotional reference even in his official character description.
• The Amo manipulation in Penta did not simply make Delmon feel protective toward a stranger. Per the Heroes Wiki, it caused him to see Amo as his late wife in an illusion — targeting the most personally devastating psychological wound available. The scent ability's precision in identifying and deploying his specific grief explains why the manipulation was so complete and why subduing him required genuine team coordination.
• His Vital Instrument's origin is entirely peaceful: a farming hose used to water plants, accumulated Anima through sincere care, and awakened through the desire to make things grow. The gap between that origin and his combat applications — flooding battlefields, pinning down enemies, turning the entire area into a high-pressure zone — is the most dramatic single example in the series of the Gachiakuta power system's core principle: sincere care for an object produces Anima, regardless of whether the resulting power has any obvious combat application.
• He is the only character in the series shown to have been manipulated into attacking his own team leader — Enjin — directly. He took Enjin out with Thirst Quencher during the Penta rampage. Under the manipulation, he was not conflicted about it. He was entirely certain he was doing the right thing.