PERSONALITY

POSITIVE

LIKES

NEGATIVE

DISLIKES

HISTORY

Beeping monitors. Quiet breathing. Fragile heartbeat. These are the things Subject No.4170 can hear. The ceiling above her is smooth and white. Like snow, her mind supplies. Drowsiness overtakes her then, and slowly, she drifts off to sleep.

When she wakes, the ceiling is still white. Did she dream of snow? She can't remember, but she thinks she must have. What else is white? Paper. Milk. Clouds. Sugar. Marshmallows. Doves. Lab coats. Before she can think up more, she drifts off and dreams of white again.

At some point, she realizes that she can move her arms, and when the men in white come, they find her with her hand in the air, trying to touch the ceiling. She doesn't stop when they tell her to. Something pokes at her arm, and then she falls asleep again. Only then does her arm drop to her side again.

She doesn't know how long she's been here. Sitting in her white-colored room, she fiddles with the cloth wrapped around her leg. She doesn't know what it is, but she's not allowed to take it off by herself. The people in white ask her questions. What is your name? How old are you? What does the tattoo on your neck mean? She doesn't know what it is they want to hear. She only tells them what she knows.

She tells them her name is Subject No.4170. That she is eight years old. The tattoo means that she is Zero. It is not what they want to hear. They try to correct her, and call her Aria. Ar-ree-ah. But they do not know what Zero means. When they ask, she only tells them that it is the reason she exists.

Today, there is something different in the air. New faces. A man with eyes that sounded like glass breaking. A woman whose clenched hands sounded like rolling thunder. The questions are different today too, but she tries her best to answer them. Do you know these people? Do you feel anything when you look at them? Do you know why they're here? No. No. No. The woman screams at her in a voice colored magenta before she and the man are taken away.

When she finally finds someone who understands who and what she is, they try to take her away. She resists at first. Even though she doesn't feel anything for her surroundings, it's better knowing where she is than to be taken to the unknown. But when they show her their own tattoos, the "ZERO"es branded into their skins, she stops. These are her people. They take her to Blackwood.

She learns her story there. Though she had been created in a lab, she was adopted by the Gestalt family when she was five. The plan was to let her live a normal life and then check on the results when she was old enough. The experience was supposed to make her feel human, even if she was an artificial person. But one day, she suddenly disappeared, and when she was found again a few months later, her memories of the Gestalts were gone, and the memories of her time in the labs were back. So they had had to recall her. So she was brought back.

Her days at Blackwood from then on are peaceful. She learns a lot from the older kids who are tasked with watching her. Though her name is still "Aria Gestalt" in the school records, she only responds to her number. Aria is not her name. Someone says calling her 4170 is dehumanizing, so a kid dubs her Nanao instead. ("Nana. That's "seven" in Japanese. Nana-oh would be 7-0 then. Nanao. Na-now. How's that sound?") The nickname stays.

Now that she's old enough to attend school, she's moved into a dorm and treated like an ordinary student. That doesn't really change much for her though, so she doesn't quite care. The classes are a change of pace for her, but she learned most of the things they teach a little before she was forced to attend school (what else was there for a kid to do in an academy?), so it's not big deal for her.

OTHER

OUT OF CHARACTER