vivarium application

[wetdownthere]

player
NAME: Beato
DW USERNAME: morphogenetic
TIMEZONE: CST

character
NAME: Akane Kurashiki
SERIES: Zero Escape: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors
WIKI LINK: Just your average wiki page.

PERSONALITY:

Upon initial inspection, Akane Kurashiki resembles an ordinary young woman. That is, she certainly acts like one in polite company: beautiful, cheerful, altruistic... she's the type of girl you might want to bring home to your parents. In the second nonary game, she was the first to break down at the sight of harm coming to another person, and the last to stand by Ace's side when everyone had agreed to leave him behind. She even volunteered to divulge her true name to the group after accidentally revealing Junpei's identity, out of compassion for him. Indeed, June makes the impression of being selfless to a fault, often becoming the "damsel in distress" figure in many of the alternate endings. During the puzzle-solving portion of the game, she derails the group's conversation with flights of fancy and conspiracy theories, leaving the protagonist wondering about what strange things occur in her mind. June torments Junpei quite frequently throughout the game, actually, by making "unintentional" innuendo and cracking odd jokes. In this way, Akane has a bit of a funny bone, getting a kick out of making Junpei blush and stammer when she says that his "chunk of meat is rock-solid" (referring to a frozen piece of chicken collected in the kitchen) or that she might get "soaking wet" (referring to the flooding in the lower floors). It almost seems like she's unaware of just how sexual her comments sound, which might lead the player to believe that she is naïve.

In truth, however, June's innocent exterior belies a cold, calculating demeanor. At the true end of 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, we learn that she had been acting as Zero, the puppet master behind the second nonary game. While the kind-hearted, warm Akane certainly still exists inside her, it is buried underneath something far more sinister: her "Zero" persona, which is vengeful and cruel. Her hatred for the men who tortured her and her brother as children allowed her to effortlessly calculate their murders while simultaneously leaving her hands clean. Through the combined use of her strategic mind and ability to see potential timelines, she was able to predict that Gentarou Hongou (referred to as "Ace" for the majority of the game) would kill off each of his colleagues, ensuring that her revenge would come to completion. She is not merely a heartless killer, though. Despite orchestrating the murders of the Cradle Pharmaceutical executives, June did not plant bombs in the other nonary game participants, not intending to put them in any real danger. Still, June is well aware of each bad ending, and fully believes in an "ends justifies the means" approach to enacting her plans. In fact, she will do almost anything to ensure a happy ending for as many people as possible, including putting her own life on the line. There are several "bad endings" in which she and many of the other nonary game participants are killed; from her perspective, these "bad end" deaths are merely a necessary evil on the path to a desired future.

Her motivations behind the second nonary game are twofold: the first was to exact revenge against the 4 executives of Cradle Pharmaceuticals who orchestrated the first nonary game, and the second was to ensure that Junpei would pursue the correct "path" in the future and rescue her 12-year-old self from the incinerator. Akane was able to guide Junpei to make the right decisions that would eventually lead to her rescue due to her unique ability to access morphogenetic fields.

June was able to unlock the true potential of this ability during the events of the first nonary game, when she was grabbed by Gentarou Hongou and thrown into the incinerator room. His instructions were simple: she would either solve the Sudoku puzzle provided for her, or die horrifically from being burned alive. In most timelines, she does not succeed and leaves her brother Aoi alone to mourn her death. However, in the true timeline, Junpei is able to save her, which inspires her to continue on to recreate the events of the second nonary game, effectively preventing a time paradox. Those who are able to access the morphogenetic field (called ESPers in VLR) can generally transmit information (send one's thoughts or knowledge to another person) and receive information (receive thoughts or knowledge from another person) if they have morphogenetic resonance with their partner (which is usually bought about by a strong bond between two people, hence why the Cradle Pharmaceutical executives chose sibling pairs for their experiment). While ESPers have some degree of skill in both transmitting and receiving, they typically "specialize" in only one or the other. June, however, is a special case; her ability is powerful enough that not only can she both transmit and receive information, but she can also communicate through time, which is how she was able to contact Junpei from 9 years in the past. She later is also revealed to have the ability to transport her consciousness through time; because of this power, Akane has seen endless different timelines and possibilities for the future. In a sense, her consciousness has experienced thousands more years than an average human lifespan.

It is during the second nonary game that the player gains insight into Akane's past. In the shower room behind door number 3, she waxes poetic about a memory she has from childhood in which she and Junpei discover that their class pets, a hutch full of rabbits, have been massacred by a mystery assailant. The pair team up to guard the rest of the school's animals from that point on, hoping to catch the perpetrator in the act. After weeks of staking out without much success, Junpei finally discovers the attackers (revealed to be a group of older boys) attempting to murder a kitten. When he confronts them, he takes a serious beating, leaving June to care for him in the aftermath. This is their last time to see each other before Akane moves away, and as a momento of their time together, Junpei offers her a present-- not realizing that it's a voodoo doll. Touched by the gift, she decides to name it June after the last month they had together. In actuality, this kind, empathetic young girl of the past is June's true self, and her Zero persona is a mask that she wears to not only ensure the future of mankind, but also to protect herself from the pain and suffering that she has experienced over the course of her life. Despite her duplicity, Akane truly does love Junpei; unfortunately, because of her sense of obligation to pursue a better future for humanity and the sins she has committed, she knows she will never be able to truly be with him.

Aside from Junpei, there is one other indispensable person in Akane's life: her brother, Aoi Kurashiki. Early on in their lives, their parents died in a car accident, leaving the Kurashiki siblings alone to depend on each other. Aoi naturally became his sister's caretaker, even going so far as to play the role of Santa Claus for her. Every year, she would send a letter to Santa using an address somewhere in Europe given to her by her brother, and every year it would come back marked "RETURN TO SENDER". Aoi would intercept the returned letters before she could get to them, and used them to buy Christmas gifts with what little money he had saved over the year. He was kidnapped with her during the events of the first nonary game and placed in the Gigantic, insinuating that he, too, is gifted with the ability to access the morphogenetic field. He was the first person to witness her body after she was killed in the incinerator, and from that point was willing to work together with his sister to rewrite history. He entered the second nonary game as well with the number [3] bracelet, acting as June's accomplice in recreating the various timelines necessary to save her. His loyalty has been an irreplaceable asset to Akane and her goals, but she could never view him as a mere puppet. He is her brother, her only family, and the most important person in her life aside from Junpei. After the second nonary game was completed, they escaped together across the deserts of Nevada to begin their plans for the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition.

In spite of her tragic past and uncertain future, Akane's personality isn't all doom and gloom. Her quick wit and intelligence pervades every part of her life, and has led her to be the self-proclaimed "Queen of Random Knowledge". She always has some piece of trivia to provide related to the task at hand, particularly in puzzle sections. This knowledge is often related somehow to the occult or conspiracies, as she is unusually preoccupied with conspiracy theories and spiritual oddities. Her sense of humor is very strange as well, and, as mentioned above, can sometimes be dirty or sexual in nature. In an interview with the creators of the Zero Escape series, it is revealed that each 999 character is based on one of the 9 enneagram personality types. June is the embodiment of type number 9, the peacemaker, and this is evident in the way that she interacts with the other characters. No matter the situation, she is always seeking the best possible outcome for as many people as she can, and is often shown trying to mediate tense situations between the nonary game participants. She is willing to do anything, even kill, to obtain her goals, but her priority is always to ensure that all innocent parties walk free (if the "good end" is achieved). She is also a very precise and methodical person; in order to ascertain her survival, she was forced to replicate the events of the second nonary game precisely and accurately from what she saw through Junpei's eyes. She approaches everything with this type of perfectionism, understanding based on her ability to jump timelines that every single planned detail is important to the success of the larger goal.

Her intelligence isn't just logical or analytical, however. June has an immense understanding of human emotions. When the nonary game participants discover the 9th man's body behind door number 5, she has a complete break down, despite already knowing that he would die. She understands how people react to terror, heartbreak, anxiety, embarrassment, and uses this knowledge to her advantage when manipulating others into fulfilling their roles in her schemes. She is the last person anyone could have expected to be Zero, which speaks to her ability to play the role of the "innocent girl". Because of the manipulation, scheming, lying, murder, and other unspeakable acts she has committed in the pursuit of a positive future, she sees herself as undeserving of the normal life she desires.

Akane Kurashiki is, essentially, a walking contradiction between the sweet little girl of her past and the cold, merciless mastermind that is Zero. She exists in a strange limbo between these two distinct personalities in everything she does, often blurring the lines of "good" and "evil" in the pursuit of what she perceives to be the "ultimate good end". Because she has seen herself and her loved ones die countless times in countless different scenarios, she has a very twisted sense of morality, believing that the end result is worth any the tragedy suffered along the way. She knows that she will never get to truly be with the person that she loves, and appears to operate out of self-interest because of it; on the contrary, she would give anything to have her own happy ending, but has become a prisoner of her own destiny.

AU DETAILS:

In retrospect, Akane Kurashiki's early childhood was one of the happiest times in her life. Despite losing her parents tragically in a car accident, she gained a close friend in a classmate named Junpei Tenmyouji, and had the unconditional support of her brother, Aoi Kurashiki. At the age of 8, however, she was forced to move away from her good friend Junpei, but not without exchanging goodbyes. He even gave her a gift in the form of a voodoo doll, which they named June in memory of their last month together.

Things took a turn for the worst when she turned 12 years old. She and her brother were kidnapped by the executives of a powerful company called Cradle Pharmaceutical in the name of scientific testing. Because the two were orphans, their absence went unnoticed, leaving the pair at the mercy of their tormenters. For several months, they underwent physical and psychological testing related to the theory of morphic resonance, trapped in some sort of laboratory. During this time, they had no knowledge of where they had been taken, or when/if they would ever be released. They had little time to themselves apart from meals and after hours, when they would comfort each other and plot their escape. Akane and Aoi, both incredibly bright children, spent a great deal of time tracking the researchers' schedules, casing the various exits, and compiling materials that they would need. Eventually, their plan meticulously prepared, they made their move. Everything seemed to work out better than they could have expected. All of their intricate planning paid off as they made their way through the facility, eventually reaching the end that they so desperately sought. Unfortunately, before they could reach the door that would lead to their freedom, Akane suddenly realized that she had accidentally dropped June sometime during their escape. Unable to part with the doll, she raced back toward the heart of the facility, relieved to find it after a few moments of frantic searching.

She wasn't able to reunite with her brother, however, because it was at that moment that she was grabbed by Gentarou Hongou, the CEO of Cradle Pharmaceutical and orchestrator of the experiments she and her brother had been forced to undergo. When Aoi finally caught up to her, Akane was hauled into a nearby testing room and locked in with Hongou, who was holding her at gunpoint. His demands were simple: solve a puzzle using whatever means necessary, or die. Try as she might, Akane could neither solve the puzzle nor use morphic resonance to glean the answer. So, in plain view of her brother, Akane Kurashiki was shot in the chest, and presumably killed.

Or, at least, Hongou thought so, which was his biggest mistake. Confident that he had murdered the girl and had nothing to fear from her emotionally destroyed brother, he left the scene. Aoi didn't have long to mourn his sister before she stirred; despite the blood quickly seeping from the bullet wound in her chest, she was still alive. They didn't spare any words of relief before attempting their escape again, narrowly making it through the final door and out into the world beyond. Akane's wound was stitched up by Aoi himself, neither of them willing to risk a hospital visit, leaving the bullet permanently lodged in her body.

From that moment on, the Kurashiki siblings vowed to enact revenge against the Cradle Pharmaceutical executives and scientists who wronged them. With the help of Aoi's talent in stocks, they amassed a fortune. The money was put toward the creation of Crash Keys, an organization that acted as the front for the siblings' plans. Over the next 9 years, Akane lost herself completely to her plans, becoming more and more callous due to her obsession with bringing those responsible for their kidnapping and torture to justice.

AU/MEMORY LOSS EFFECTS:

Many of the important aspects of Akane's past that have shaped her personality are retained from canon to AU, including her relationship with Aoi and Junpei, her desire for vengeance, her analytical mind, and her goofy, superstitious demeanor. The major difference here is that she lacks her ability to access the morphogenetic field, which means that she has not suffered the many "bad endings" that she had in canon. This doesn't mean that she isn't goal-oriented and thirsty for justice, however; it simply means that her means of creating a better future takes on a new context.

Without her memory, her friendly, altruistic attitude will always be genuine, rather than an act. Still, that part of her that is goal-oriented and preoccupied with vengeance will remain, though it won't be as prominent until she begins to regain her memories.

SAMPLE THREAD: Test drive meme!

QUEUE: Yes!