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[antinomies]

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 999 AND SOME FOR THE SEQUEL, VIRTUE'S LAST REWARD, IN HERE. IF YOU PLAN TO PLAY THE GAME, I'D ADVISE AGAINST READING!

Player Information
Player name: Coco
Contact: mikan tsumiki @ aim; djose
Are you over 18: Yes!
Characters in The Box Already: n/a

Character Information
Character Name: Akane Kurashiki
Canon: Zero Escape: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
Canon Point: Post True End
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: This is a little technical and only makes sense within the context of the game, so I'll black it out for spoilers. Akane is sort of alive and dead at the same time. Because Zero Escape canonically has multiple 'canon' timelines (they all technically happened, just in tangent realities), she is both alive and dead. When she was 12 years old, she was kidnapped and thrown into an incinerator (it's a long story) and died, but 9 years in the future, Junpei managed to save her through tapping into the morphogenetic field, so in the present, she does exist, though she's technically a contradiction and shouldn't. In the second game, she even compares herself to Schrödinger's cat: is she alive, or is she dead? So short answer: alive, sort of.
History: 129450789.
Personality:

Akane is a young woman wrapped in many layers. There's Kanny, Junpei's childhood friend, whom he hasn't seen in 9 whole years, there's June, the naive 21 year old girl that ends up playing the Nonary Game against her will, and there's Akane Kurashiki, the genius who orchestrated the Nonary Game and whose very existence breaks the laws of space-time. All of these personae are aspects of Akane, and it's hard to tell how much is acting and how much is the real, true Akane. She's a pretty enigmatic girl.

We first meet Akane soon after Junpei meets the rest of the players of the Nonary Game. She appears to him coming down a staircase, and briefly entrances him; she looks so familiar, but she couldn't be Kanny, right? After a tremor, Junpei falls on top of her, to which she exclaims 'Jumpy?!', proving that she is indeed the girl he went to elementary school with. To Junpei, she hasn't seemed to have changed much. She's still the same innocent, naive girl he knew when they were children. He feels a strong compulsion to stay by her side and protect her from whoever has trapped them on the Gigantic.

Of the other players in the Nonary Game, Akane has the strongest immediate reaction. She has to sit down for a moment to calm her nerves after seeing the corpse of The 9th Man, her face planted firmly in her hands. This coupled later with her staunch refusal to leave anyone behind echo a very kind, if stubborn, girl. Akane, in contrast to the more level-headed Lotus and sassy Clover, takes the role of stock emotional female character, the heart of the group who tries to remind everyone of their humanity at every opportunity.

Akane isn't just a damsel with no personality, though. In fact, Akane is pretty darn weird, Junpei surmises. She knows a plethora of trivia not even a consecutive winner on Jeopardy would know, especially about conspiracy theories, thought experiments, and the occult. She gets visibly offended when Junpei says he doesn't believe in stuff like that.

She also has a habit of saying some suggestive things. When inspecting a bed, she blushes and whispers that it's 'much too soon for that', and there's an entire conversation surrounding an elevator and how she could 'get wet down there'. It's pretty unclear whether she knows she's making such suggestive comments, but later, it's pretty obvious that this was part of her facade. Perhaps she just likes watching Junpei squirm, as well. Either way, it's more than obvious that Akane has some sort of interest in Junpei, from the way she blushes at what he says to her talking about how she hasn't met 'Mr. Right' yet.

In the end, though, the Akane that Junpei knows is a pretty normal woman. She brushes her hair when she sees herself in a mirror, worries that she isn't attractive to guys, puts the concerns of others before herself, is endearingly ditzy, and trusts her childhood friend with her life.

However much of that is a lie, Junpei still doesn't know.

9 years before the beginning of 999, Akane was involved in the first Nonary Game, along with Snake, Clover, and her brother, Santa. Akane died then. Well, sort of. Given the nature of the Zero Escape series and the existence of multiple timelines, she dies sometimes, but other times, does not. When Seven regains his memory, he recalls that girl: a sweet, young girl who didn't deserve to die. She went back to get a doll, one a precious friend gave her, named June.

Ever since then, Akane has two goals, and two goals only, and she has gone to great lengths to fulfill those two goals: ensuring her existence by recreating the Nonary Game, and revenge. In this way, we can see that Akane is a severely dedicated and determined person. She is what developmental psychologists would call 'resilient', able to bounce back from great trauma and come on top of it. In a way, though, she goes above and beyond resilience, to the point of bitterness. Akane's blood has been replaced with ice. Akane mercilessly kills the men who orchestrated the Nonary Game in extremely cruel ways. She typically favors putting bombs in their stomachs. And to Ace, Gentarou Hongou, the CEO of Cradle Pharmaceutical and the one who locked her in the incinerator, she gives a fate worse than death: that is, he ends up in a high security prison, presumably for the rest of his life.

Akane isn't wholly a heartless monster because of what happened to her, though. Akane did involve many innocent people in a high risk operation like the Nonary Game for very selfish reasons, but she does show remorse for having to involve them. At the end of the game, when Junpei and the others sans Santa and herself escape, they discover that there had never been any bombs put in their stomachs like 'Zero' had claimed. They were technically in no danger the whole time, other than the fact that they were locked up with an insane man like Ace. Akane merely thinks in an 'end justifies the means' mentality. Ruthless, yes, but Akane is efficient and precise in her goals.

In fact, Akane does deeply care for two people. She isn't one who lacks empathy completely, like Ace, which is what sets the two apart. She loves her brother, Aoi, known to the players for most of the game as Santa. Santa basically raised Akane; their parents died in a car crash when they were very young, so, as Santa puts it, he had to basically be Akane's father surrogate. At one point in the game, Santa laments about how he would give the world for his sister, because he only wanted her to be happy, even if it was at the cost of his own happiness. Every year, he would tell Akane to write a letter to Santa asking for presents, and using the money he'd amassed that year, he'd go out and buy these things for her, under the guise of Santa.

One year, however, Akane didn't ask for anything in her letter. She simply said she wanted "things to stay the way they are now". Akane was truly happy with Santa. They were lacking many things because of their situation, but to Akane, her life was perfect because she had her older brother there for her no matter what.

The other person she truly cares about is, of course, Junpei. Junpei has been a constant force in Akane's life, whether Junpei realizes it or not; when they were children in elementary school, they both took care of the rabbits that were the class pets. Mysteriously, one day, the rabbits were killed. Akane was devestated, and Junpei, being the chivalrous boy he is, helped discover the culprits, and ended up getting beaten up by them while saving a cat from them. It was then that Junpei gave Akane a present, since they would be going to separate middle schools: a doll. Unbeknownst to Junpei, it was a voodoo doll, so instead of naming it Junpei, it was dubbed June, since that was the last month they would have to spend together.

That doll is the reason Akane died shortly later in the Nonary game. Akane so desperately clung to it that she went back to get it when she should have been focused on escaping.

Akane has true, romantic feelings for Junpei; in the sequel, one of the characters notes that Akane had once told him that there was a man she truly loved, but she knew that they couldn't ever be together. An AI she creates then is also in the shape of a rabbit, and a password of hers the main character finds is affectionately 'jumpydoll'. The sequel takes 56 years after 999, so even half a century later, Junpei is always on her mind. It's apparent that Akane loves Junpei in a really strong way, and is perhaps the reaon she is so resilient.

Akane is a complex young woman who is far jaded beyond the average 21 year old. Due to her access to the morphogenetic field and high sensitivity to it, she has seen herself die and shapes her life around the trauma she experienced. Though she is technically a villain, she is certainly a tragic one, and the player can't help but feel a sense of sympathy for Akane. After all, her life was robbed of her at the mere age of 12, whether this be in a literal context in certain timelines or a more metaphorical one, considering the aftermath of the first Nonary Game. Either way, Akane Kurashiki has both her flaws and virtues, those of which she is extremely aware and conscious of, and chooses to continue with her life despite everything. Akane is a truly courageous, if extreme, woman.

Abilities/Strengths and Weaknesses:

Akane is an esper. What this means is that she is able to tap into the Morphogenetic Field. The morphogenetic field is a metaphysical plane that exists separately from the human world, where thoughts and information is stored. It is thought that the morphogenetic field is the reason many things happen; trends arise in humans, group thinking, etc.

What makes Akane truly unique, though, is that she excels at both sending and receiving messages, whereas most espers are only especially good at one. It's similar to the movie Inception, where she implants things into other people's minds.

+:
▲ extremely intelligent ➸ Akane has proven on many occasions to be highly intelligent. It would take a genius to figure out how to recreate the Nonary Game so perfectly, and to orchestrate and manipulate other people's actions and events to get the outcome she desired. Akane truly thinks on a higher plane than most people do.
▲ great actress ➸ Akane is very adept at taking on other personae whenever it's necessary. Despite being a very cold and calculating person in actuality, she's able to fake emotional reactions and act just as she did when she was younger around Junpei.
▲ knows a sea of trivia ➸ If anyone could beat the record for number of consecutive wins on Jeopardy, it'd be Akane. She knows many minute details from psychological experiments, to biology, to astrophysics, to Egyptian history.
▲ loyal ➸ Akane never forgets kindness or her loved ones. She sticks by her brother, Aoi, through thick and thin and trusts him implicitly with her life. She also is extremely loyal to Junpei, though she shows it in very unique ways. Though she is manipulative of him and his feelings for her, she never wishes him any true harm, and it's very obvious that she deeply cares for him, though she knows they could never have the same relationship they formerly did.
-:

▲ physically weak ➸ Despite everything she is adept at, she still is in a normal 21 year old girl's body. She's not muscly by any means and just about anyone could overpower her unless they were a small child. Physical altercations are not her forte.
▲ fevers ➸ If something is upsetting a timeline, Akane experiences very high fevers, in which she's basically unable to move at all. They happen a number of times during the second nonary game, and usually signify an upset in the Morphogenetic Field due to how sensitive Akane is to it. Basically, if one happens, it means something bad is going to happen.
▲ vengeful/cruel ➸ Akane is not one for mercy. She goes out of her way to kill three of the researchers who were involved with the first Nonary Game, and gives Ace a punishment worse than death; imprisonment. She comes up with very creative and karmic 'punishments' for the ones who killed her.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:

( video )

[ the video begins with a strange, pixelated image of something brown. It's pretty unclear what it is at first, until a loud 'Oh!' is heard, followed by it panning out a bit to reveal a girl. Presumably, the brown image was her hair. ]

So it does work! I guess I lucked out, getting one of the phones here. It seems like everyone is salvaging them, so I figured it'd be a good idea to get one or myself.. Still, it's a pretty old model, so it might take some getting used to. [ In actuality, Akane is just from the near future. They're already at iPhone 15! ] Maybe someone could show me how to work it? I'm not really an expert on antiques.

It looks like this model came out around the time Apple's CEO passed, though. A lot of people say that's when Apple started to go downhill, but I was really young when it happened, so I don't really remember it much. You know, there's a conspiracy still going around that he's still alive..

[ Akane's face turns grim for a moment, but then she smiles. ] But that's probably a story for another day. Anyway, I don't think many people are in the right mind to listen to conspiracy theories right now!

My name is Akane. [ There was no reason to keep up with the codenames here; after all, they were only adopted so Ace, Snake, and Clover wouldn't recognize her or Aoi's names. ] I'll try my best not to get in the way.

Prose Log Sample:

To others, Akane probably appeared unnaturally composed given the circumstances. Chipper, even, some might say. Really, she'd probably been getting on some of the others' nerves in the short time they'd been trapped with her effervescent positivity.

To tell the truth, she probably wanted out of here more than anyone else.

Along with that, though, she wanted to know why she was here. Why all of them were here. Color her curious; she'd had her tussle with psychological experiments, so she couldn't help but jump to that first. Maybe it was karmic, to end up involved in something like this. A true dash of irony. Thinking that her capture had any direct correlation to the Nonary Game was arrogant to think, though. A coincidence. That's what she'd rationalized, but a mere theory wouldn't satiate her.

At the very least, Akane was able to gather her bearings by working out what she had learned so far. All she had to do was breathe. In through her nose, out through her mouth; it needed to be regulated. Breathe, and act the damsel. Men, with their overinflated sense of chivalry, would help her hunt for food if need be. Food would be rationed for a while, Akane was certain of that, to maintain a sense of stability and security and to normalize their situation, but when food began to run scarce, people would take on more underhanded methods of acquiring nourishment. They'd have to turn to wildlife eventually, and hunting was not something she'd done before. Before she figured out what was going on, food would be a priority. Breathe, act the damsel, and uncover this place's secrets. Those were her prerogatives, and nothing else mattered.

This wasn't a horror movie, so only rational thinking should be considered here. Still, what their captors had in store for them sent a chill up her spine. Akane knew very well that true terrors were what other people were capable of. The lengths people would go to in order to fulfill their selfish desires.

She only hoped Aoi and Jumpy were okay.