Clearly I don't deserve to be trusted

Kyle Klim of Zero escape; affiliated with Citta

[zero5um-blog1]

Incredibly grateful.

Sure. Right.

There was a part of him that had been hoping Akane had changed – believed it, when they’d pulled each other close and exchanged rings – but it was drowned out by the alarm bells going off in his mind. And why shouldn’t they; this was par for the course, right? She’d string him along, she’d make him feel good about herself, and then, just like that –

She’d pull something like this again.

Junpei’s spine went rigid and he met Akane’s request with silence. He looked like a man who couldn’t decide between spouting righteous anger, or turning tail and running the other way.

In any event, he chose to stand his ground.

‘Okay. Sure. You want to meet Akane,’ he spat back. He took an aggressive step forward that was not a threat, but an emphasis on his point. (His point: he was not happy.) ‘And you need to see her right away, or some junk like that. Sure. Fine.’ Another step, and the stranger’s robes were a little more visible in the darkness. ‘So if you aren’t Akane – which you are – who do you expect me to take you as?

‘Zero?’

And so Junpei laughed. It was a painful noise, like the spindly roll of piano wire.

‘Sorry, but I’m not gonna fall for that twice.’

[unknownvariablek]

When Junpei took a step forward, Kyle took a step back. When he raised his voice to Kyle, Kyle’s first instinct was to raise his hand up, as if an act of defense. He had felt fear and confusion before, but this was different. It had taken him off guard.

It was an anger he didn’t understand, something that he was unable to rationalize or understand the cause for, directed pointedly at him without his ability to understand why. He was being shamed and accused of something, but he could not apologize or justify it. He could only vaguely understand that the man was frustrated with Akane, not himself, but in the stranger’s mind, the two people were the same. Rather, “Kyle” may not even exist for him. 

It wasn’t just the accusations, but Kyle’s inability to refute them. No matter how he tried to reason that he did not inhabit the body of Akane-who was he, really? The answer was  a variable that was intentionally missing. Any conventional ways of finding out were lost on him.

He placed both his hands on his chest-it was a gesture that was eerily reminiscent of Akane, though Kyle did not even realize it.

“I suppose, in a sense...”

He looked away, as if admitting murder.

“I could be Zero.

“But I am not the ‘Zero’ you know. I’m sorry; there’s no real answers I have for you.”

[roleplayerpositivity-blog]

Send me a ツ to see a tweet my muse would post/make about yours

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[zero5um-blog1]

It’s not really loitering if you’re never caught.

That seems to be how the law works around here. That’s certainly not a statute you’d find on the books in Japan or the United States, but this place is special. This place is special, and that’s why he’s chosen to linger outside a building he only has some business with.

It’s not really loitering if you’re never caught, especially if the guy who owns the property is never in.

‘You–’ here for the doctor, is the snide quip he’s planning to throw out, but the dude who turns the corner raises all of his hackles in an instant. Junpei stares down the mask like it personally offends him, and it does. He crosses his arms unhappily, he edges a bit away, not running but looking almost certainly like that’s what he means to do.

‘– Akane,’ he says through gritted teeth.

‘This isn’t funny.’

@unknownvariablek​

[unknownvariablek]

“Akane?” Kyle paused. There was a slight breeze, and his robe fluttered softly against the cement alleyway. 

“Akane Kurashiki? Do you know her?”

There was an obvious tension. K’s moves were slow, deliberate. It could have been because he was still getting used to his new body, in this new environment, calculating exactly how to proceed. It could have been he was sizing up the stranger, like a predator about to attack. 

The orange eyes of the gas mask burned in the dark like two suns. His body seemed to lose what little form it had against the shadows of the alleyway, and it was difficult to tell just where the robes ended and cement began.

“Can you take me to Akane?”  the voice crackled out of the mask with inhuman distortion.

It was clear, to him at least, that something was strange. It had to have been set up. What other explanation was there, to hear that name here? Why would this stranger be waiting for him outside his clinic?

He considered asking why the stranger was waiting, his connection with the doctor, what his intentions were, but the thought left him uneasy. Even acknowledging the doctor and letting his chance to meet Akane face to face slip from his fingers left him frightened. Kyle swallowed the name “Klim,” shoving it down into the pit of his stomach. 

As much as the stranger’s presence unnerved him, he needed to see Akane. That was his first priority.

“Please. If you could help me find Akane, I would be incredibly grateful.” 

[unknownvariablek]

@quantumimmortalities​

He had been avoiding it for days. When he first heard about the clinic, he had thought the odds were stacked against the owner being who he thought it was-that it was all too coincidental for him, of all people, to be in this city, to be so close to him. He knew that was a lie. When he first saw the clinic, Kyle tried to deny it, to keep the safety of speeding traffic between him and the building. For what he knew, Klim was not an uncommon name-it was, in fact, not unusual that a doctor named Klim be stationed in the city that had no relation to Kyle at all. That was the lie he kept trying to tell himself.

The odds didn’t matter when your father controlled your reality.

Akane had taught him about lockpicking. Nothing fancy, just the basics. She liked to tell him about things that weren’t typically a part of his educational videos, things that she said “You never know when they might come in handy.” She rarely talked about the world-how it once was, how it would be, but she did talk about the inherent danger in strangers, the risk of trusting them versus the reward for being prepared. She believed greatly in being prepared for any situation. If there was not a way out, you have already lost.

The street was empty around him, and the moon had already risen high in the sky. The only sounds were that of the humming of the streetlamps, and the distant sound of dogs barking.

Kyle went through the door. Only a faint sliver of light was able to intrude from the outside. Even in the darkness, the sterile white walls and floor were familiar to Kyle. The impersonal and barren space of a man trying to escape the comforts of a regular life. Kyle did not know much more than the sterility of a room like this, separated by over two hundred thousand miles from the comfort of any other human contact. It did not discomfort him. It just brought up those old feelings of bitterness and nostalgia.

He kept the door opened and move towards the other end of the room, feeling around in the dark for the shape of a desk. He circled his way around it, finding a spot to sit down and then trying to map out where Klim would keep personal documentation. He felt for a drawer on the bottom right side, flipping through folders and papers, trying to make out any giveaways that it was what he was looking for. A letter, an address, a name... anything, anything...

It was when he got his hand on a particularly large stack of documents that the lights came on. He froze in place, and suddenly felt like a rabbit trying to escape a bear trap.

[berylune-blog1]

A lot that I don’t remember… Could he be a SHIFTer? Or maybe he had simply been injected with memory-erasing drugs and couldn’t SHIFT to regain his memories. Not that she could ask him about any of that. As strange as the situation was, she didn’t want to make it any stranger.

“I… Alright then. I mean, I was… addressing… you…”

Couldn’t he have chosen an easier letter? Q was strange, but at least it made sense in a conversation.

There was so much that seemed reminiscent of her time in the Decision Game, but at the same time, he didn’t seem to be connected to that. But she remembered how Sigma’s consciousness had shifted into his younger body. This could be similar, though in this case it was a completely different body? Was that possible?

She turned her gaze back to her coffee. Honestly, she had hoped he might have left after reading the mood of the situation, but it seemed he didn’t care at all. Well, he was trying to ease her slightly, wasn’t he? But when someone says stuff like that, it doesn’t really make you feel any calmer.

“But doesn’t that mean you’re unable to eat or drink? You won’t be able to survive for very long if that’s the case… I could take you to the clinic I work at, maybe we could figure something out- The doctor there, Dr. Klim, he’s not only skilled with medicine, but other things as well…”

There was that kindness of hers again. As much as she could hate people, she also couldn’t ignore their pain. While this person seemed rather calm, this was a very serious situation. Even if he made her greatly uncomfortable, she couldn’t watch him die.

“Yes, I suppose, but I really don’t think that’s what we should talking about right now!”

[unknownvariablek]

Behind the mask was a visible frown. He had not expected her to tell him about the doctor, but now a connection between the two was all but guaranteed. Whatever pleasantness was in the conversation seemed to vanish in an instant. He stood up, and started as if he was about to leave.

“No. I’m fine, really. If I could die from dehydration or starvation, I think it would have happened by now.” It was not a convincing way to phrase it, but his focused had long since shifted away from trying to convince her.

“As much as I appreciate the gesture, I have no interest in going to a clinic. It was nice speaking with you, Diana, but I’m afraid I have to go. Perhaps we can we meet again sometime.”

[berylune-blog1]

She didn’t go out often. First of all, she had no one to go out with, though she did try to drag Sigma along with her to various places. This meant that undoubtedly when she did go out, she’d be alone. And as much as she hated being around others, she still hated being alone.

But she had wanted a coffee. Various memories had begun to resurface, and in one, she longed for something as ordinary as a cup of coffee. In that history, it seemed like a luxury, considering she only had bland rations and alcohol. So, she was here. 

She ordered her mocha alone and sat at a table alone. Alone was fine, on its well, own. What scared her about loneliness is that it could easily become togetherness and that was something she had no say in. But she focused on her coffee, reading whatever was printed on the side of the paper cup. 

Still, she could feel someone staring at her. It was a feeling she had often, and while she was often right in her original history, she had no reason to be feeling that way now. Ignore it. It’s nothing. You’re imagining things. Diana looked around for just a moment and caught a glimpse of a strange figure who seemed to be looking at her as well. She looked away immediately. Coincidence. It was coincidence. They had both just happened to look the same way at the same time.  But soon enough, the figure sat across from her and she was no longer alone. She didn’t look up. She couldn’t. 

“It’s alright. I…”

Her left hand curled into a fist.

“Do you know someone named Luna? A few other people have told me the same thing. That I look like someone else, like her.”

Noticing that the other had shifted his focus, Diana glanced up to get a better look at him. He was wearing a gas mask, and it was likely that the voice she heard was being modified in some way. Why… why was this sort of person interested in her?

“You don’t have one? Is there something else I could call you then? My name is Diana. I haven’t been here very long, but I’m not exactly new. Or brand new… I’ve settled in and… and stuff.” 

[unknownvariablek]

So she knew of Luna? That was interesting, but by itself, told Kyle nothing more about the situation. With time not working in a proper, linear fashion, when she found out about Luna and who came first was impossible to differentiate.

“The name sounds familiar, yes.” Kyle’s voice drifted off as he adjusted the salt shaker, turning it around so it mirrored the pepper shaker on the other side.

“Admittedly, I can’t say much about it. There’s a lot I don’t remember,” a few memories passed by his mind at light speed, of Luna, her own synthetic face coming apart at the seams, but passed too quickly for Kyle to understand.

“I suppose you could call me... ‘I.’ That’s all there is, at least. Just me. Do you think it’s appropriate?”

He looked back at her to gauge her response. She seemed nervous.

“I apologize. My appearance must be unsettling... admittedly, it’s still hard getting used to myself. It might sound ridiculous, but I don’t believe this is my body.”

He pulled back at his hood, pointing to a series of latches and locks adjusted to the side of the gas mask. “You see... I cannot see my face, and I can’t take this off. There’s a series of mechanisms in place that keep it in place. I can assure you that I’m just as troubled by it.”

He reasoned that his explanation was easier to accept than a masked stranger who chose to hide their identity.

“It’s nice to meet you, Diana. I didn’t expect to see anyone in this coffee shop, but not being alone in this city... must be nice, don’t you think?”

[unknownvariablek]

@berylune

When he had first seen her face it was on someone else. Made of metal and synthetic skin, made to resemble as closely as it could to an actual human being. The two had discrepancies in their model-mostly small details, Luna’s face was more girlish, this woman’s looked more sorrowful. Under normal circumstances, it would have been more natural to assume the two could be sisters, but logic and emotion dictated otherwise. 

That was an instinct, at least, a small part of his brain had instructed him with “This is Luna, but it is not.” He couldn’t tell what it meant aside from that.

He had never talked about this woman directly-not in any timeline Kyle could remember, but there was clearly something there that drew the doctor back time and time again to construct the same face, to go back in time to the same test site, to repeat a future over and over again that he kept making the same mistakes; the same failures. That much he could at least assume-she could have came from any timeline for any reason, especially in this city that seemed to break down space-time as it pleased, but it was a list of coincidences that kept screaming at him that there was something more to her.

Kyle supposed this woman could also be a machine, a fake mother designed in an alternative timeline, essentially a different Luna. She could be the original human. She could have been a prototype. The hypothetical answers were literally endless, and by the time he had realized that he had been staring at her, standing in the middle of the coffee shop, and started to attract unwanted attention it had been too late to retreat.

So he sat down across from her. A large, hooded figure staring at her from behind a gas mask. He assumed she had never seen him before.

“It must seem strange that I took an interest in you. I apologize for staring. You reminded me of someone I know.”

Kyle folded his hands on the table, shifting uncertain. None of this had been planned; it had all just happened on the spur of the moment, but the list of coincidences seemed suspicious. If he learned anything it was that the smallest elements could have the most significant impacts. That’s what the doctor was all about, after all. Trying to manipulate the decisions that would lead to each event he wanted, masterminding everything in order to bend things to his will.

Could he have planned this too? Kyle shook off the thought; it was a new world and a new game. He needed to believe that his own life wasn’t completely out of his control.

“I’m new to this place. I haven’t met anyone I know.” Kyle tries to break eye contact with her, and busies himself with the sugars on the side of the table, tidying them up and organizing them. “My name is... well, I guess I don’t have one. Have you been here long?”

[unknownvariablek]

❤: Opinion on love

“... Love? You’re asking me that, of all things?

“Well, I suppose it exists-yes, I think I’ve felt something like it before. It’s a natural force that compels people to stick by one another, and something that can push someone to do great things... or, can immensely cloud their judgment, putting many lives in danger for a single person, or even the idea of a single person.

“... Is that a satisfactory answer? I’m afraid I’m not sure why you’d even ask me about this.”

[rp-starters-ask-box-fillers]

Send me symbol for my muse’s opinion:

☠ : Opinion on death ➶ : Opinion on killing ☮: Opinion on peace ☯: Do they believe in karma? ✤ : Do they believe in luck? ✟ : Religious beliefs ♂ : Sexuality ☿: Opinion on gender ❤: Opinion on love ❥ :Opinion on love from the first sight ♞: Favorite animal(s) ☕: Favorite food(s) ♛ : Opinion on outer beauty ☀ : Favorite season(s) ☽ : Favorite time of day ☂ : Favorite weather ◎ : Opinion on lying

[keycrash]

i can’t be the ONLY one wondering what kyle’s expressions looked like under his armor

in sigma clothes for convenience

[earlysun-deactivated20160923]

anon requested k.

[citta-alveare-deactivated201811]

Without prior reserve, I'd like to app Kyle Klim from Zero Escape, app is under /app

Welcome to the hive, Kyle!

You will be housed in district gamma.

You will retain the ability to access the morphogenetic field to jump up toone minute in the past, only once per day.

Enjoy your stay!

– mod 『 』