Max Layard

Max Layard (マックス=レイヤード Makkusu = Reiyādo) is a summoner of Government.

Appearance
Max is a tall and muscular man of about 18 with black hair set on an impressive pompadour and wears a baggy T-shirt that reaches below his hips, shorts, and oddly expensive basketball shoes.

Personality
Max is willing to do anything to achieve his goals. He will accept any cowardly or cheap method because he cannot afford to lose. He's noted by Ellie Slide to have the tendency to run straight into fights without a hint of strategizing.

Despite coming from a normal family and only becoming a summoner to escape the boredom of his normal life, Max truly believed in the ideals of Government, that they were supposed to help people by creating, protecting, and spreading smiles. He was absolutely enraged with his teammates and Government when he found out their selfish interest on the "humanitarian" mission in the Green Spearhead Peninsula, to the point he turned against his former allies in disgust.

He has the habit of drinking out kid’s stomachache syrup when's he's stressed or scared, which he carries on a small bottle of whiskey. He drinks this instead of alcohol out of his self-respect as a Government summoner and his worries about what people around him might think.

Background
Max was born into a normal family. Finding those normal things to be boring, he took a step into the world of the Summoning Ceremony when he had heard about the hidden side of the world from his uncle in the military in order to break free of the boredom. He became known as Perfect Game by becoming an expert in the losing battles no one else wanted to deal with because he figured the competition would be relatively light when it came to preparing for withdrawals. He would take those unwinnable battles and turn them into a victory. He would find a way to lift up the entire unit. Even if they were deep in the red strategically, he would put them in the black locally to hide it in the paperwork. He would find a battle he could win or set one up that way. Quite a few vessels got fed up with his self-indulgent pace and left him.

Max Layard took part in a Government deployment on the Green Spearhead peninsula of the Pacific coast. Government forces in the area had the goal of protecting the facility of one of Government's large corporations built on the region. They were supposed to prevent the rising sea levels caused by global warming from flooding the land with a giant seawall. However, the work messed with the tides and a lot of damage was done to the fishing grounds, the coral, and the mangrove. The Green Spearhead’s traditional lifestyle had come to an end and they would clearly be reliant on international stores to get supplies. To avoid this the natives prayed to a famous sea dragon and Divine-class and asked it to raise the peninsula a few dozen centimeters so that the seawall would not be needed. However, there was an error with this blessing, and the beautiful peninsula full of natural resources and its ecosystem were wiped clean by a wave of sugar.

Max tried to help the natives, but he discovered that Government's humanitarian mission on the peninsula was just a front. In fact, the cave paintings the natives had followed had been fakes created by Government in order to trick them into self-destruction. Enraged, Max attacked his superiors. He was beaten and shot by his teammates, who blamed the alcohol getting to him and dumped him outside their tent, where he was found and rescued by Ellie Slide, who bound a contract with him and helped him defeat the other Government forces and the rampaging Divine-class Material.

He and Ellie Slide were contacted by Mika Himekawa, who asked for their help in destroying Pandemonium. The duo agreed to help Mika and infiltrated the mobile fortress as part of Government's security. After several failed attempts to destroy it, they decided to use Kyousuke Shiroyama.

Light Novel Volume 01
Max Layard was one of the four Government summoners deployed with a small group of Repliglass soldiers to hunt down Higan Meinokawa, though Azalea Magentarain considered him a sham that would not be of any use fighting Kyousuke Shiroyama. Indeed, Max was the first summoner defeated by Kyousuke, who batted away his Incense Grenade into the ocean at the start of the fight, causing Perfect Game and his vessel to be transported to the ocean by the grenade's effects.

Light Novel Volume 04
Max and his vessel fought Kyousuke Shiroyama and Mika Himekawa twice. They lost both fights, despite having the support of the Pandemonium and the help of two other summoners in the second encounter, due to the difference in skill with Kyousuke. Kyousuke discovered the truth of the Pandemonium, of Mika Himekawa and her association with Max and Ellie, who erased his short-term memories of the events to gain more time for their plan. While Kyousuke was knocked out Max and Ellie Slide attacked the head of the Deltaston family, taking over the Pandemonium and rewriting the system so that instead of summoning the Wicked Green Woman, it summoned the White Queen.

Max and Ellie tried to attack Kyousuke with the Pandemonium's Projection Summon Bombing a second time, but he was left baffled when the White Queen easily stopped the attack and made a large hole on the Pandemonium itself. He regained his senses, grabbed his vessel and ran away. He and Kyousuke faced off one last time as Kyousuke entered the Pandemonium for the second time. Despite his lack of a vessel, Kyousuke used his superior skills to prevent Max from summoning a Material, and when Max finally managed to knock a Petal into a Spot Kyousuke knocked Ellie out before her transformation was complete, defeating the duo.

Abilities
Max Layard a summoner with 501 Awards known as Perfect Game (完全勝利（パーフェクトゲーム） Kanzen Shōri (Pāfekuto Gēmu), lit. "Total Victory"). He had a perfect record of summoning battles prior to being defeated by Kyousuke Shiroyama, though Azalea Magentarain stated that he probably only had a perfect record because he only ever finished off the losers that another summoner let live. According to him and Ellie Slide, Perfect Game refers to his ability to ultimately rework any result into a victory for himself. He finds battles that he can win or ones that he can set up that way to avoid as much violence and bloodshed as possible.

As a Blood-Sign Max uses a long stick made from ski material/glass fiber with a swollen metallic part on the bottom end that seems to be a stabilizer for the center of gravity. Max holds his Blood-Sign by the upper end and uses the metallic stabilizer as a weight, spinning his body like a tornado so that the Blood-Sign bends like a fishing rod, building up power like a spring. He is also fond of using this weight as a club-like weapon.