Arky

Arky is a friendly, inflatable animated raptor pool toy who just wants to play. He is a Freak. He has a very simple view on life, and doesn't want anything more than to play all day and meet people who want to play. He is largely popular and seen as being a lovely friend to have, because of his positive attitude and the fact that he's interested in other people, and especially interested in finding ways to tickle other people's fancies. Although he has Japanese origins, he is obsessed with Western culture and talks in an Americanized english.

Arky's Freak out is extremely dangerous, as when he is at an emotional breaking point due to enough humiliation, shame and offense, he will begin to inflate, turn red and make a whole scene. This silly mix between being furious and being inflated often makes things worse as people usually find this extra funny, causing a vicious cycle of anger and laughter. Eventually, Arky explodes in the literal sense, with instantly fatal effects to everyone around him as well as himself. Arky has the ability to eventually reform by dragging his scattered rubber parts to each other. Due to his Freak out in Soft Core, the whole village and its population was instantly annihilated, leaving Katie with a huge mess to clean up. Katie used the Pillar of Life to revive all the members of the Soft Core, and after Arky's repeated refusal to apologize for the disaster, Katie immediately banished him directly to the third layer of The Underground.

Currently, Arky lives with the Manaddicts, who encourage him to stop caring about Katie and what he's done and to just get high in the Cool Blue Mana Pool to forget about all his problems. Despite giving in to the temptations rarely, he still carries an extreme guilt and wishes to return to the surface.

Appearance
Arky has the appearance of a cute, blue raptor with cartoonishly big green eyes. His body is shiny and rubbery, and although he his able to stand and function normally, he has no bones and is able to be stretched or inflated to extreme proportions. His body is relatively short compared to an adult, being 4ft 6" tall. He has a animal-like figure, but with a cartoonish influence on his body. He is apparently gender-ambiguous. He also constantly smells like perfume and occasionally sweats a blue substance that is a detergent. Going close to Arky with a Geiger counter will result in a noticeably high, but non-harmful reading.

Personality
Arky is outgoing and playful when he is around friends or strangers, and is not shy at all. However, Arky suddenly becomes quiet, avoidant and emotionally repressed when he is around people who he identifies as bullies or people he considers "bad".

Arky is nice and playful when he feels comfortable with one person, and when he trusts someone enough, he will confess his strange desires and open up to them - such as his telling them of his desire to be inflated and treated like an inanimate balloon.

Arky is endlessly interested in cartoons, even to the point of learning foreign languages just to understand what's going on in a cartoon, and he spends a large amount of time learning new languages and practicing.

He hides a lot about himself and his feelings. It is often difficult to know what Arky is really feeling, because he bottles up opinions, all negative feelings and sometimes positive emotions. Because of this, he is often mistaken for being boring and having nothing to say, when in reality he has a lot of things to say and is just too afraid to say them. In addition, this makes it difficult for any friends to realize if they had accidentally offended Arky and often causes needless drama.

A particularly notable trait about Arky is non-combative nature. While Arky thrives in friendly environments, he is unable to cope with colder or hostile environments, especially when bullying is involved. Unlike Binary, he does not know how to make any comebacks to anyone who makes fun of him. Arky refuses to fight back both because he doesn't like escalation and doesn't know how to stand up for himself anyway. However, this potentially has the disastrous consequence of leading to his Explosive Temper to surface.

Arky shares similarities with but also has differences from Whimpers. While they both react to extreme offense badly and can Freak out with enough bullying, Whimpers is quick to show her feelings while Arky remains silent until he erupts with anger.

Arky has an extreme phobia of needles and sharp objects, even though when deflated, his rubbery self is thick enough to be able to poked with several needles without damage.

Voice, Speaking habits & Examples
Example phrases (friends) Example phrases (bullies and fears)
 * Arky has a cute sounding voice that does not sound particularly male nor female. He is especially vocally talented and is easy to understand.
 * When around friends, he tends to speak with a lot of enthusiasm and energy.
 * When around people who he does not like or trust, he uses extremely short responses or not talk at all.
 * He is one of the most multilingual Freaks, since he is not only fluent in both English and Japanese, but also has a working knowledge of Italian, French, German, Spanish and Russian.
 * Despite his Japanese origins, his English accent is standard American, and he does not have any Japanese-English stereotypes in his speech. However, he understands the stereotype well, and sometimes jokingly puts on a "pretend Japanese-English" accent, such as ending hard-ending "t" or "d" words with the letter "o" or "u", or turning "r" to "L".
 * He often speaks in short, simple sentences.
 * His favourite words are "play", "pump", and "toy", and they tend to recur in his speech.
 * 1) (enthusiastically) "Squeak, squeak - it's me, Arky!"
 * 2) (friendly) "Wanna play?"
 * 3) (eager) "I LOVE cartoons! One day, I'm going to be in a cartoon, I know it."
 * 4) (jokingly) "Don't mind me, I'm just a toy dinosaur. Nothing to see here."
 * 5) "I like balloons.. and inflated toys.. and pool toys.. and bouncy castles.. and.. did I mention I like balloons?"
 * 6) "Don't be so silly! I'm not American, I'm Japanese!" (sudden Japanese-English accent) "They don't-u all speak rrike this, you know~"
 * 7) (excited) "Pump me up, and play with me like a toy!"
 * 1) (avoidant) "Ok.."
 * 2) (avoidant) "I don't know.."
 * 3) (annoyed whine) "Nooo! Stop iiiit.."
 * 4) (irritated) "I'm NOT a girl!! I'm a BOY!!"
 * 5) (irritated yell) "Shut!! UP!! You're..... a mean person, I hate you!"
 * 6) (scared whimper) "Noooo..! Get that needle away from me, please!"

Motives
Arky just wants to play, and wants to have fun with others and wants to be treated like a rubbery play toy. In short, he only wants to have fun - and not to be made fun of.

Arky's biggest dream is to feature in a cartoon, even as a voice actor.

Deep down, Arky is lost and does not know what he wants to do with his life. He feels like he must make something out of himself other than just having fun, but whenever he thinks about this, it causes so much distress that he prefers to silence that thought and continue having fun to forget about it. However, if he found a greater purpose.. things might just change for him.

Exploring
Arky can regularly be seen roaming about, looking for objects of interest and taking an unusual interest in them. If there's something he hasn't seen before, chances are that he'd go around and poke it. He can be seen in strange places, such as on roofs, climbing on top of poles, or hiding under sofas. Due to this behaviour, some Freaks mistake him for an actual animal until they find out he can talk.

Playing with inanimate objects
Arky can often be seen hugging inanimate objects. He tends to love curling around rounded objects, such as beachballs, basketballs and especially colourful exercise balls. Sometimes, he also plays with poles, running around them in circles or doing silly things with them. He occasionally puts balls in his mouth and shakes his head. His bed is regularly full of inflatable balls that he hides under his bed sheets.

Inflation
Arky is unusually obsessed with inflation. He often looks for pumps to stick into things to see if they inflate. He likes inflating beachballs, and then deflating them over and over. He absolutely enjoys holding balloons, especially if they're in the form of different animals with bright colours.

Because of the rubbery nature of his body, he is also able to inflate himself. He does this in private, such as under the sheets of his own bed, or in secret, less known areas that he knows nobody visits. He especially is interested in being treated like a balloon, and wants someone to treat him like an inanimate balloon.

Privately socializing
Arky actively seeks people who seem are alone and talking to them. When someone isn't accompanied by a group, he is very likely to start a conversation with them and learn more about them.

Online friends
Arky uses a laptop to access the internet, and socializes with Humans and other Freaks online to look for anyone who shares his obsession with inflation. He is somewhat of an internet phenomenon, and is the source of an incredible amount of cringe worthy internet drama. He has several pages that are dedicated to him with multitudes of fan art and fan fictions, as well as several websites and account dedicated to shaming him and keeping record of all the embarrassing things he has done, and cringe worthy phrases he had said. He is most known for his online video log, where he films himself and gives status updates on his life, and sometimes gives "response" messages to how angry trolls are making him that often end up fueling the fire of internet drama and laughter.

Watching Western cartoons
Despite Arky's Japanese origins, he is extremely interested in western animation. He loves to watch a variety of cartoons. Whenever inflation happens in a cartoon, he obsessively tries to record it and add it to his collection of moments where characters got inflated in cartoons for whatever reason. He also does not stop at language barriers, and learns a language to be able to understand more obscure cartoons.

Swimming in the Cool Blue Mana Pool
Due to the influence of the Manaddicts, Arky occasionally fails to give into temptation and swims in the Cool Blue Mana Pool, which causes him to feel wonderful and increases his magical abilities. He has become addicted, and tends to become increasingly irritable if he goes for a few days without a swim in the pool.

Pre-freak History
Kiyoshi was a human who grew up to a middle-class upbringing with a brother and a sister. His upbringing was rigid and he learnt discipline at an early age. Kiyoshi was exposed to cartoons at an early age, much to his amusement. He spent a lot of his free time watching cartoons. Up till the age of 12, Kiyoshi seemed completely ordinary, other than that he mostly kept to himself. He showed signs of being quite intelligent and obedient, as his academic performance was roughly on par with the rest of the Amaya family, and he always obeyed his superiors without question.

However, at 11, it became quite clear that he was becoming withdrawn. Whereas previously he used to be energetic and had a few friends, he withdrew from all his existing friends very suddenly. The amount of time he spent alone on the computer increased. His computer used to be in an exposed place, and his family never understood what he was doing on the computer.

At the time, only Kiyoshi knew why. Nobody understood him and his fascination with cartoons - not his friends, and especially not his family. In addition, his reason for the sudden withdrawal of all social contact was because he told his friends about his first imaginary character, to which they responded with laughter and teasing, which he did not know how to handle, and left the friend group with hurt feelings and embarrassment.

Kiyoshi's first imaginary character is Arc Raptor, who he used to imagine being part of a cast of time-traveling dinosaur heroes, inspired by a western cartoon he saw in his earliest days. Wishing he could make a cartoon himself, he had been trying to draw his favorite cartoon characters since 6 years of age.

When he entered the online world, things changed for him. Online, he was able to meet several people who were equally as interested in cartoons as he was. This was pure bliss for Kiyoshi, as the amount of artwork, fanwork, cartoons and friends he could see online were diverse, on-demand and endless. Kiyoshi felt more comfortable on the computer than in real life. He began secretly scanning his artwork of Arc Raptor using his father's printer at 3AM.

One day, he was caught scanning artwork in the dead of the night. His father had reprimanded him severely for being awake so late at night, and wanted to know what he was scanning. Kiyoshi and his father had wrestled for the drawing, since Kiyoshi was to embarrassed to show it, but his father, managed to take it and saw it. At the time, his father was having trouble at work due to office politics, and was highly irritable. Out of anger for being woken up in the middle of the night for a triviality, he tore the drawing in front of him and yelled at him to go to his room, leading Kiyoshi to try to gather the pieces and go up to his room in tears.

Following that day, Kiyoshi socially withdrew further, stopping to talk to even his family - even his brother and sister, who believed that he should just obey his father and shouldn't be violating bed time restrictions. Strangely, his grades became even better. He worked a summer job in order to buy a computer and a graphics tablet, which he planted in his bedroom. When his parents discovered that he had bought a computer alone, they sat him down to try to negotiate, and to discuss what is going on between him and the computer. Kiyoshi was not interested in letting them know anything, and told them that the discussion is a waste of time, and that he would rather be away from everyone. This was the first time that he was being openly disobedient to his parents, and this enraged his father, who said that Kiyoshi was the only disappointment in the family. Kiyoshi walked away crying, and locked himself in his bedroom.

After a whole month of not seeing Kiyoshi ever step out of his bedroom, his parents became worried when it was clear that he was not going to go outside for the entire Summer, and especially when they found out that he was ordering food to keep himself fed and hydrated, and ordering deliveries from supermarkets to stock up on other supplies. He had cut himself off from them entirely, using his bedroom as a shield. During this month, Kiyoshi dug deeper into the internet, experiencing the joy of having people that can relate to him, and who are interested in the same cartoons he enjoyed so much. During this time, he also realized the drawings on his art account were getting some attention as well, and that he had received fanart of his Arc Raptor. Overjoyed, he socialized more, and began a group chat for dinosaur enthusiasts.

Kiyoshi began seeing stranger content on the internet, which led him to start having a fetish for inflated cartoon characters. It was not too long before he drew Arc Raptor being inflated, at which point his art account had a sudden influx of viewership. He felt joy from the feeling of being able to be comfortable with things that would normally be shameful, and began wondering himself if it was worth ever going outside ever again, if he could remain in what was to him a digital heaven.

Unfortunately for him, the Summer holidays had ended, and he had to go out to school again. At the same time, his concerned parents started brought a psychotherapist to Kiyoshi, which was an act that offended him deeply. His detachment from the real world led him to be very unpopular at college, which led other students to ostracize him for his excessively introverted behaviour. Nobody knew that he was only introverted when outside, and that in his bedroom, he was a complete extrovert, being silly while voice chatting with online friends and having fun voice acting and developing his talent.

At 19 years old, despite his parents' best efforts and countless screaming matches, Kiyoshi refused to give up his computer, which he had bought with his own money, and threatened to leave if they touched it. Kiyoshi later caught his father sneaking into his computer, who claimed to be installing an antivirus on his system. When called out on lying, his father confronted him about his deviant online behaviour, and demanded that he had to delete the drawings of inflated Arc Raptor. Kiyoshi was caught off guard, embarrassed and angry, and entered another screaming match with his father. When his father lost control and began breaking furniture, Kiyoshi caved and deleted all of his artwork, in front of both his parents while in tears. Following that, his father said that this is for his own good, and not to disappoint him again. His mother took his laptop, and relocated it to a corridor where he can be monitored.

At that point, it is said that he was destined to become a freak. Rejection and emotional isolation is exactly what had led him here, and coming from his own parents, it was a more hurtful. That night, he cried in bed, knowing that things would never be the same. He felt so disconnected and disgusted by reality, that his retreat into imagination was complete.

Lying in bed, Kiyoshi began to transform into a rubbery, inflatable version of his very own beloved character, Arc Raptor. In the process, what little was left of Kiyoshi was lost, and he began to believe that he was not himself anymore. He was Arc Raptor, in a strange new world full of humans.

Post-freak History
Below are the documented records for Arky's post-transformation history:
 * ARK-1: Family Freak
 * Kiyoshi, overjoyed to have woken up as Arc Raptor, confronts his family and causes deep disturbance and panic. His younger sister is amused with his balloons and tries to squeeze them, much to his embarrassment. He is then confronted by his older brother, who tells him that he is making a fool of himself, which Arky responds to by saying that he is happy with who he is. Arky then leaves for school, leading to ARK-2.
 * ARK-2: School
 * Arky shows up to school and enters class, much to the amusement of his classmates. The teacher begrudgingly allows him to stay and continue the lesson as normal. Arky's antics and cartoonish behaviour outside of class causes him to get a lot of attention.
 * A girl named Mai Yamamoto who had a secret crush on Kiyoshi when he was a human came to confess her interest in him, and that the interest became a lot more intense now that he is openly being himself. Lovestruck, Arky happily begins to date this girl, keeping it a secret, because they knew she will be ridiculed if they knew she was dating a cartoon raptor.
 * Meanwhile, the school is having wildly varied opinions on Kiyoshi's new look. Some found it cute, while others felt it was ridiculous and that he should be put in his place. Arky starts getting bullied by classmates with several annoyances such as misplacing his pocket, or replacing all his pens with empty pens before a test. Arky did not know how to handle this, and instead tolerated it.
 * However, over time, the bullying only got worse, as they found out about his inflation art account and started talking about how he fetishizes cartoons that were meant for children. Arky gets the idea of denying that he was ever Kiyoshi in the first place, but this lie was quickly disarmed by others, and he was called weak for trying to not own up to the shame he should be feeling. Realizing that Arky isn't standing up for himself, Mai steps up and tells the bullies to leave Arky alone, which causes her to become the target of the bullying for the next weeks. When Arky found out, he confronted the bullies with all his bottled up anger, and sheepishly asked them to leave Mai alone. This only brought him more ridicule, as they implied that they were dating. Arky, not knowing that they didn't know and said this as a joke, let the cat out of the bag and asked how they knew they were dating. The amount of ridicule spiraled out of control, which led to Arky leaving in tears.
 * The situation got far worse when Arky found Mai crying in a corner, not wanting to talk to Arky for spilling their secret. Arky, filled with anger, went to confront the bullies again after school and yelled at them. The bullies realized that he was inflating and turning red because of his own anger, which was funny to them, considering that they knew about his inflation art. However, Arky was serious, and this further ridicule inflated him to the size of a room before it became clear he was about to explode. The students bullying him were only able to get a short distance away from the explosion, and while many of them were injured lightly, one of them was injured gravely because she tripped while trying to run away. Arky reformed soon after, realizing that he had just exploded and hurt someone. He ran to Mai, apologizing for the whole situation. He soon realized that all the students were now terrified of his ability to explode lethally and reform, and there was terror in the school grounds. The school was shut down, and Mai told Arky that he should go into hiding. However, as Arky was going to leave, Mai told Arky that she forgives him, and gives him two heart-shaped balloons she had been meaning to gift him.
 * ARK-3: IMF-RT Intervention
 * ARK-4: Serendipity Capture
 * ARK-5: AST Intervention
 * ARK-6: The Soft Core Incident
 * ARK-7: Descent to The Underground

Abilities
This section is currently being researched.