Maria Heartocean

Maria Heartocean (マリア＝ハートオーシャン Maria = Hātoōshan) is a summoner of Government.

Appearance
Maria has long and fluffy chestnut-brown hair and thin-framed glasses. She wears a tight skirt, the kind of white blouse and bolo tie that goes with a suit and a lab coat.

Personality
Maria is described as being beyond calm as if she has left the flow of time behind. She maintains this attitude even in tense situations, as she calmly asked Kyousuke's opinion on what Illegal would do to her as their convoy was being attacked by enemy planes. She has a gentle voice and an aura similar to a school doctor's. Despite her apparent gentle nature she used a stiff and formal writing style on her email to Aika, though Kyousuke is unsure if the difference is between work and private or between online and real life.

Despite having been the top researcher of the Anthill Project, Maria had never intended for it to advance beyond the theoretical stage, but she underestimated the greed of Government's leaders. She displayed regret over the vessels who had suffered as part of the project like Isabelle, wondering how she could apologize to them.

Background
At some point in the past Maria got stuck on her research, as its unprofitable nature made difficult to gather funds. Thus she dragged tons of money from Government's high officials by demonstrating some effective applied research that’s so simple even an idiot can understand its value, artificially implanting people with spirit medium talent to mass-produce vessels, leading to the creation of Government's Anthills.

Light Novel Volume 03
Maria was being carried by a Government air convoy 5000 meters above the Pacific Ocean when the convoy was ambushed by Illegal's forces. Fortunately Maria had hired Kyousuke Shiroyama as her bodyguard, who defeated all the attackers after making a contract with Isabelle, a Government vessel Maria had prepared for Kyousuke in advance. She was later asked by Aika to analyze Girl's Backdoor and she emailed the preliminary results to her, which were read by Kyousuke after the fight with Lu Niang-Lan, who had been controlled by the same device.

Sometime later Maria, who was at A Block's airport, was visited by Gouta Miyama, who had ordered the evacuation of the Anthill they were in. Gouta apologized for the inconveniences, and Maria revealed to him a boy had wandered in earlier and stabbed a knife into the sofa across from her. Gouta's shock at someone breaking through his security was cut short by Kyousuke's entering the room. Maria saluted Kyousuke, asking him how Isabelle was doing. After a short discussion Gouta got angry when Maria sided with Kyousuke in pointing his incompetence, so he was knocked out by Kyousuke. Maria asked Kyousuke what she should do next, and he explained his proposal of a plan to set an ambush for Biondetta using Maria as a bait. Despite Kyousuke's worries, Maria agreed with his risky plan, as she didn't care who was in charge of the evacuation as long as it was someone adequate. However, Maria also pointed out that Kyousuke was also invested in the situation because of Biondetta, revealing she was aware of Biondetta being one of the Shiroyama siblings.

Unbeknownst to Kyousuke, Gouta changed the plans for the evacuation after being tricked by Biondetta, thinking he was ensuring his own safety. Their Stingray was attacked by Biondetta, who cornered Maria and Gouta before they could flee in a Seagull. Fortunately, Kyousuke arrived before Biondetta could kill Maria. After Kyousuke defeated Biondetta he informed Maria that he had also destroyed the classified info by throwing the Anthill server into the ocean. Maria told him that he understood the difference in principles between them, and revealed she had never cared about the Anthill Project besides as a mean of gathering funds for her research, and that she had only intended it to be a theoretical possibility, though she had underestimated her superior's greed. As she noticed Isabelle nearby she wondered out loud how she could apologize to the children that had been turned into vessels, but Kyousuke told her she could spend the rest of her life with that question. Maria then decided to tell Kyousuke about the other side of Anthills: they were also an experiment to tune the compatibility of someone's soul with a specific Unexplored-class, allowing one to hold a one-on-one conversation with her. She then waved Kyousuke goodbye and left, though not before giving him a smartphone to use that system to consult the Red Lady about the White Queen before the server was completely lost.

Abilities
Maria Heartocean is a summoner with 109 Awards known as Academia (無戦連勝（アカデミア）Mu-sen Renshō (Akademia) lit. "No-battle Winning Streak"). As her nickname indicates, she's a summoner who has surpassed 100 Awards without fighting even once, participating in the Summoning Ceremony industry as a pure researcher. In a way, she's an oddity on the same level as Lu Niang-Lan. She specializes in spiritual damage research, the study of troubles that get stuck to someone's soul. While people still haven’t found a definition for the soul itself, some researchers are trying to use this type of damage to work back to that truth, like how people can’t observe a black hole itself, but they can search out its identity using the space-time distortions around it.