Michael Krane

Michael Krane is a student at Hope's Peak Academy, and a participant of the Disneyland Killing Game of DV2. His title is the Ultimate Animal Rehabilitator.

(FAKE) Background
A thin and wiry young man that tends to act without thinking. He seems to care more about animals than people…

In fact, he cares about them SO MUCH that he once took down Arizona’s biggest rare-animal-fighting ring (Snagem) and their animal-poaching parent company Cipher!

He was scouted by HPA for successfully reintegrating XD001 and her three children back into the wild of the Andes mountains. XD001 and her children were Andean Condors (this world’s largest birds of prey). Michael freed them from the grasp of Greevil, Cipher’s CEO.

(REAL) Background
A thin and wiry man that almost always acts after thinking through things 3 steps ahead. If only he were better at predicting the actions of other people... He seems to care more about everyone else in the whole world over himself...

In fact, he views himself SO LOWLY that in his ideal world hierarchy, he's below dirt. Under the guidance and care of his found extended family - from his blackmailing uncle Gonzap to his M.I.A. parents Wes and Rui - he was deployed over the course of 3 years from 13 to 16 around Orre and used as a primary reconnaissance agent. Through the use of serious empathy, stun guns, and some Pokemon friends, Michael went through a past hostage situation where 6 people died in front of him. Eventually he took down Cipher because he empathized with an old rich man right after his son Ardos almost kicked Michael into an active volcano.

The first 9 years of his life were in an updated bomb shelter with his parents - Wes and Rui - and his little sister. They were left on the doorstop of the Pokemon HQ Coordination Lab on July 4th, the date their parents tried to have them both born on. Jovi never forgave her parents for abandoning them, and Michael never forgave himself for making them leave Michael and Jovi. He never made efforts to connect with his foster parents, treating them as work managers and co-workers and never as family or friends. He eventually started to come out of his shell around the age of 11, when he finished his GED, and started working for the lab full-time. He was never happier than when he first started taking care of Vivi and Arrow.

The day Professor Krane got kidnapped was the day Michael became the Michael seen in-canon.

After Lovrina's arrest - and subsequent release due to Cipher's abundance of spending money - Michael became interested in the properties of the Snag Machine. He began to wonder if it could be applied to other living beings, besides Pokemon toons. With the reluctant help of his sister Jovi one fateful summer afternoon, only a month after Professor Krane's return, he was successful. He's never been quite the same since then... in a couple of ways.

He was scouted by HPA for the dissertation he began research on at 13, appropriately titled "The Properties Of Inter-dimensional Storage Of Humans And Humanoid Entities Through The POtential KinEtic BAseLine Leeway System And Its Effects On Genetic Make-Up Of Said Entities - A Means For Becoming Eternal Through Data Or A Necessary Find To Further Exclude From All Forthcoming Models". He is the only test subject for this study, and also the only one who has managed to crack the code to allow the results to be repeated. Whether or not HPA is interested in this technology remains to be seen.

He lies constantly about his own limits and will stop at nothing to convince people to leave him alone. He's convinced he's the worst thing to exist, and is only good if he's being ordered around like a robot. He won't listen to anyone unless they're authoritative with him, and doesn't believe himself worthy of kindness. He's willing to kill himself if someone asked, but would never hurt anyone unless they hurt his most important people (Jovi, Yogi and his alter Yori).

(FAKE) Pre-Vacation
Michael did not want to go to Hope’s Peak at first. He’d rather spend the rest of his life working with his little sister at the HQ Coordination Lab in Orre County. But… Jovi’s biggest wish in the whole wide world is for Wes and Rui to come back into their lives, and Gonzap said they’d would come running if Michael was a good enough student at Hope’s Peak. … And Michael would do anything for Jovi, no matter how upsetting or otherwise unwilling he might be. He’d burn the world to the ground, if it would make her happy. She's the only real family he considers himself to have.

Michael’s been home-schooled his whole life, and isn’t quite used to classrooms or “normal school”. As such, the steering committee decided when enrolling Michael that he have a mandatory free period at the start of the day to “learn what’s expected of a true Ultimate”. He likes gym and athletic courses. Honestly, he’s only average in smarts, and his grades mimic that… Good thing HPA focuses more on talent than traditional studies!

School-going Michael is focused on studies and nothing else. He doesn’t actually have a family name to clear or anything, but he's never actually been to real school before, and as such wasn't there for anything other than studies during his first semester. He went to every class he physically could, only skipping when job requests overtook his duties.

Michael's panromantic demisexual, with a heavy leaning towards boys. Since it's not relevant to his work or school however, he's not liable to act on anything.

(REAL) Pre-Vacation
Michael did not want to go to Hope’s Peak at first. It was the place that poisoned his father into working for Snagem. It was the place that helped bring Snagem and Cipher into the world. It was the place that ruined his life before he was ever born. He’d rather spend the rest of his life working with his little sister at the HQ Coordination Lab in Orre County. He'd sooner be forced to kill than willingly spend time with the same kind of people that ruined his father. He'd sooner shoot every Cipher operative with a real gun than spend time with the type of people so talented and affluent that they had never known suffering. He depises everything Hope's Peak stands for. He depises how it promotes classism and devalues it's occupants. He hates that the people who go through there never have normal lives ever again. But… his deepest wish in the whole wide world is for Wes and Rui to come back into their lives, and Gonzap said they’d would come running if Michael was a good enough student at Hope’s Peak. ...And Michael would do anything to try and make a whole family for Jovi, even if it left him out of the equation. She's the only real family he considers himself to have.

Michael’s been home-schooled his whole life, and isn’t quite used to classrooms or “normal school”. His writing and information synthesizing abilities are well above doctorate standards. He can do long division and multiplication in his head with complete accuracy up to .10 decimal places. He purposefully under-performs in class to dupe his classmates. He does his best to poke at their insecurities so they'll push him away, because it's all he knows to do. Whenever he said something that made someone leave, you can bet it was planned. To make connections would be to drag them down to his level. Gonzap's been grooming him to take over Snagem secretly from the moment he found out Wes and Rui were expecting. Gonzap's suggestions - money - and influence - threats - made the steering committee give Michael a free period at the start of the day to focus on his latest assignments. He's been coasting by with only Ds because of Gonzap and Hope's Peaks already messed-up system. He shows up to class and does all his homework, even turns it in. But the moment a teacher leaves the room or tries to grade it, he destroys any physical trace. He'll turn in tests that are completely correct to throw them away or rip them in two before turning them in. He'll handwrite essays - all formatted correctly, with proper citations - on notecards and turn them in. He'll turn in mandatory projects in deliberately a week after the due date. The only time he ever turns anything in is when it's a group assignment, in which he'll do most of the work on purpose. He's a licensed vet back home and has no personal need for anything Hope's Peak could offer, connections or otherwise, but Gonzap sent him there as a test without a way out. Gonzap wiretapped him for the longest time, and the moment he tried to change something on his own, Gonzap started trying twice as hard. Michael had planned to leave Hope's Peak for good on a delivery trip for Gonzap, and then moved the destination day forward because he knew his classmates saying goodbye would break his resolve. He stayed behind because Yogi stopped him.

Jovi holds this against Yogi, and will until she meets him in-person. Yogi's the reason Michael went back to Hope's Peak after he was pulled and moved to the Under following the staff killing game. Yogi's the reason Michael left Jovi for the third time, and she'll never forgive him for it. To Jovi, Yogi is the biggest reason her life went to hell. She's 16 and been through a lot, and while she's never forgiven any of the adults in her life either, she's the angriest at Yogi. During Pre-DV2 she trusts him to be the only person she can trust to look after her brother, but the moment canon started up, that trust morphed into helpless hatred. If Michael dies and Yogi survives, she'll personally track him down and kill him herself.

School-going Michael overworks himself to exhaustion on principle, because if he's tutoring someone or taking notes for the student council or being used as a punching bag by some of the more resentful reserve course students or being used to fulfill a goal or staying late to clean up then he has time enough to forget how he's never been anything more than a common criminal. He'll forget that he's nothing more than a multi-tool to be roughed up and discarded and shuffled around from hand to hand until someone finally disposes of him. He's at Hope's Peak to find out why his father got kicked out, why Gonzap started Snagem, why he's only good at being hurt and helping animals get better from the same type of people who hurt him, why Jovi looks at him with pity, why his act is so well-received by everyone around him, why his actions will never be enough, and most importantly why he hasn't offed himself yet.

Michael and Jovi's relationship is ready to topple. They just decided that they could be honest with eachother, but still haven't talked much past that.

Michael's currently dating Yogi, but is convinced the whole relationship is built on pity. He'll never admit this to anyone except his therapist Megg, and maybe friend Espella, and is just doing his best to remember the time they spend together. He's convinced it won't last, so he's doing his best to be good for Yogi. He liked Yogi since the day school started, and fell in infatuation with him nearly 3 months after the schoolyear started. He never planned to say anything, other than leaving little hints here and there, but Jovi hacked his account with a virus to get him to confess. Michael doesn't worship the ground Yogi walks on, and acknowledges that he's not perfect - because no one is - but is thoroughly over the moon for the mascot. He'd actually do anything for Yogi. Including hurt Jovi.

Michael would do anything for his classmates if they so much as asked him to. Anything short of outright murder. (Unless it involved one of his family members... He's too loyal for his own good.) For example, following the murder of Tsukiya, Michael confessed to wiping the security cameras of the crime scene, despite not having done so. The official investigation wrote him up for derailment and evidence tampering, but it's still unclear what his final sentence is.

He's trying to leave hints now about the topic of his big paper. He's not sure how they'll take it, but he assumes they'll only be accepting if he's gradual with it. (No need to out-and-out tell everyone you experimented potentially dangerous technology on yourself! Especially when they've already been too nice.)

Killing Game
During the Prologue, Michael's been mostly on his own. His first impressions of the class through a group chat is that everyone seems alright, but Caelum can be trusted the most and Phonon can be trusted the least. He has only seen a few of the other students in person, and as such, only has a few people registered to his Aura Reader (Alyssa, Hiroki's birds, no one else).

All throughout the prologue, Michael’s been hit with an off-feeling. First when he couldn’t find many wild park animals, and secondly when he couldn't find any park employees, and thirdly when he found a bunch of new entries from the Aura Reader. Both times, the other classmates and him decided it was nothing to be worried over. (For clarification, Michael should’ve had nearly 3,000 before entering Hope’s Peak, but he ended up having 6,153 total.)

Place holder text, hello! Hope you have a nice day!

Trivia

 * Michael has on him, the Aura Reader! It's a heart rate reading, bran wave scanning, file creating device! Primarily used to distinguish sleeping animals from those in stable and/or serious panic, it can also be a bomb! That's pretty cool! You can read more about it and how it works for this iteration here.
 * Or he did... He blew it up, along with a big Oswald statue right after Chapter 1.
 * Michael likes pastries! Especially those containing raspberries! Oddly enough, his favorite fruit is the blackberry.


 * Michael thinks boys are cute. His personal diary for his HPA days is just RIDDLED with his crush on Yogi... And so are his video logs from within the game itself too.
 * Michael has slight accelerated healing, and his pain tolerance is much higher than standard. He's been known to not realize he's broken an arm or dislocated a shoulder in the past due to this. As a physical therapist and survivor of several altercations, he's well-equipped at dressing his own wounds. Unfortunately, trying to set your right arm and nose by yourself isn't known to work well even under ideal circumstances...
 * He can go without food for over 5 weeks. He is also not legally permitted within the grounds of Phenac City.
 * He's ambidextrous but prefers his left hand and side of his body. If possible, he makes sure to collide into punches and kicks with the right side of his body.
 * He knows how to swim, and if necessary has the training to save a drowning person, but doing so will result in a serious panic attack.
 * The last time he told the complete truth to anyone at all was the morning before Professor Krane got kidnapped. Jovi asked him who he loved most in the world and he said "Jovi, of course!" She laughed at that.
 * He's ridden the Buzz Lightyear Atomic Blaster ride 10 times in a row to have an excuse to spend time next to the Buzz Lightyear animatronic. Oh, but he stopped once the park rides all came to life in Chapter 2... Nothing dampers hero worship like a little strangulation...
 * He can't stand the sound of anything louder than a vaccuum cleaner, which is something Cipher picked up early on, and made sure to abuse at every possible instance. 3 of the 7 bullets he's taken in his life could have been dodged if he hadn't been covering his ears. He personally removed each of the 7 himself.
 * His least preferred method of dying would be drowning or being burned alive by lava. :)
 * He knows some LGBT+ slang. For example: Twink, Twunk, Hunk, Bear, Femme, Butch, Futch, Gay, Lesbian, uh,,,, the general stuff??? (No one in Orre is straight and everyone's pretty darn accepting of sexuality and race and gender and everything. It's a rough-and-tumble land where everyone has guns and knives and sentient capable-of-murder pokemon and they all hate capitalism.)
 * His instinctual flight-or-fight response varies upon person. For strangers, it's to run to them to help them out. For friends it's to run away, because he doesn't deserve friends. For peers, it's to run into danger and take on their problems himself. For his important people, it's to stand by them and assist. For enemies, it's to run up to them and try to negotiate.