application ♦ capeandcowl ♦ complete
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Annwyd
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: annwyd
IM: Annwyd Hates You (AIM)
E-MAIL: annwyd [AT] gmail [DOT] com
RETURNING: Yes. No characters currently.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Keith Anyan
FANDOM: Toward the Terra [Terra e...]
CHRONOLOGY: The beginning of episode 22, after Sam has died but before Matsuka has.
CLASS: In his own canon, Keith straddles the line between antagonist and co-protagonist. He's more an anti-villain than anything: although he opposes and attempts to destroy "the good guys," he has both selfish and selfless motivations for doing so. Whenever he commits a cruel act, the heroes are likely to respond by matching him for it. He's also very lawful (more on this in his personality) and is unlikely to act often as a villain in this game, since that would involve going against the system and he's supremely bad at that. For similar reasons, he'll be keeping his dogtags. In general, he'll act within the system to seek out information about the 'Porter so that he can determine definitively whether it's somehow a part of his world's computer system (and therefore to be obeyed and protected) or truly rogue (and therefore to be destroyed). He may act in an apparently heroic fashion if other imPorts cause chaos in order to stop them, or he may act in an apparently villainous way if other imPorts disturb order in more innocent ways. His main motive isn't to act in his or other people's interests but to preserve the system.
SUPERHERO NAME: N/A
ALTER EGO: Keith Anyan, overzealous police officer.
BACKGROUND:
Keith comes from a pretty standard science fiction world, the basics of which should be familiar to any sci-fi buff: humanity ruined Earth and so migrated to the stars, and now their lives are all controlled by computers in a system known as Superior Domination. Toss in another sci-fi standard: occasionally the system by which new humans are created (not born; that's the old-fashioned way) throws up a psychic mutant called a Mu, and they have to be persecuted and eliminated to preserve the system. Except some of them escape and form a society of their own. Three hundred years after the first Mu appeared, his strength is almost gone, and he's ready to pick a new leader for his people, one who will free them from the tyranny of the computers and bring them to their homeland of Terra.
This doesn't concern Keith. Yet.
What does is this: for hundreds of years, the computer system that controls humanity has been experimenting on Station E-1077 with making its own child, the ideal human to represent the system of Superior Domination. Now it--no, she, because these computer systems are personified as mothers of humanity--finally succeeds, grows the child in a tube until he's fourteen, then decants him and proceeds to raise him the rest of the way.
That kid's name is Keith Anyan. The rest of this is the story of what happened after he woke up for the first time.
The first four years were pretty simple--but important. He excelled at all his classes at the training center and became its most elite student. No, not that (although it's true). And he became friends with Sam Houston and Suena Dalton--especially Sam, who approached him first, when he was new and had never had a human connection before (although he didn't realize it at the time, instead believing he'd grown up normally for fourteen years and then had his memory erased, just like everyone else...except it didn't normally work so thoroughly, but that didn't concern him). That. That was the important part.
When Keith was eighteen, fourteen-year-old Seki Ray Shiroe arrived at Station E-1077, and things got complicated. Shiroe set himself up as Keith's competition; he was determined to get a reaction out of and find out more about this cold, machine-like young man. He did get a reaction out of Keith, and he did find out more, but then he got caught snooping around, put through torture, and oh yeah, he was investigated for his "Mu factor," far away from any other Mu who could help him.
But not far enough. The new leader of the Mu, Jomy Marcus Shin, attempted to communicate with Station E-1077--and as the attempt first reverted all humans on it except Keith to a child-like state, then knocked them unconscious, it was naturally perceived as an attack. This was Keith's first experience with the Mu: the mere usage of their powers to contact humans utterly overpowered all those humans except him, leaving him the station's only line of defense.
Meanwhile, Shiroe awakened to his Mu powers. When he attempted to flee the station, Keith was sent to eliminate him. It was Mother's orders, so he did it, but--not understanding why--he cried for the first and only time. It didn't matter that he'd cried. He'd performed Mother's will, just as she had hoped the ideal human would. So when he graduated from the training center, he rose through the ranks and eventually became one of the Members Elite, a privileged group aware of some of the inner workings of the SD system who helped maintain it. And so he parted ways from the less elite Sam--but Sam remained his only friend, and the only one he willingly allowed into his heart, just as Shiroe remained the only one who'd managed to provoke a reaction from him.
Here's where I point out that this means Keith went through about the next twelve years essentially unable to express himself and with no one around him to whom he'd consider opening his heart. This probably didn't put him in a very good state of mind for what was coming next. So what was coming next?
Well, he was sent to investigate the planet of Silvester Seven, where a number of strange accidents had occurred. It was not stated outright, but he knew he was looking for "M"--the Mu, who so threatened the system of Superior Domination and all the humans it protected. But before he went, there was something to be attended to. You see, one of the strange accidents that had occurred? It involved Sam Houston. Keith went to visit him...and found that his only friend didn't even remember him. He'd been essentially lobotomized by some mysterious force, reduced to a child-like state, and slowly but inevitably weakening.
Sam was still the only person Keith opened his heart to. But Sam barely existed anymore. Keith refused to show it, because that was the way he was, but it was a hell of a blow to him.
So he set off for the out-of-the-way Silvester Seven, determined to find the Mu and make them pay for what they'd done to Sam--no, simply to accomplish his mission, because he wasn't supposed to let emotions cloud his judgment. Along the way, something that seemed useful but largely unimportant happened: he ran into a Mu who had survived in the SD system simply by lying low, unaware of just what his abilities were, knowing only that he was weird, hoping only to be able to live a quiet life out in the astral boondocks. His name was Jonah Matsuka, and Keith adopted him. And by "adopted," I mean "systematically cultivated Stockholm syndrome in, by turns abusing and rewarding in order to create a sense of desperate loyalty and potential retaliation."
(Already, at this point, a small part of Keith was thinking that he didn't want to survive much longer, so it was good if he created something that would potentially kill him. But it wasn't a conscious thought yet, and only a very small part of him was thinking it.)
Sure enough, when Keith descended to the surface of Silvester Seven--now called "Nazca" by the Mu themselves--he found the Mu there. Unfortunately, he also got captured, and despite Matsuka's objections, his crew fled the system. He was at the Mu's tender mercy, and they only confirmed his beliefs about them by psionically torturing him in an attempt to get the location of Terra out of his mind. Oh, and then one of their children showed up and tried to kill him.
In the end, Matsuka returned alone and--with the help of Keith's own planning--rescued Keith, despite the Mu's attempts to greet him as one of their own. But the experience had left its mark on Keith. He was now quite positive that the Mu were the enemy, and he knew where they were. With the permission of the SD system, he broke out the device known as the Megiddo, a planet-destroyer that had once before been used to attack the Mu, and focused it on Nazca.
But thanks to the sacrifice of the Mu's former leader, Blue, although Nazca was destroyed, they escaped. They were now headed for the heart of the SD system--first the planet Artemesia, where humans were raised, and then Terra itself, still being regenerated. And they had every intention of destroying the SD system when they got there.
Keith couldn't have that. Now higher-ranking than ever thanks to his performance at the Silvester system, he prepared to face the Mu again. But he had a new self-destructiveness to him after his experiences near Nazca, and the computer in charge of the SD system--an entity known only as "Grandmother"--had a new mission for him. He was to destroy Station E-1077. But first, he wanted to find out what secrets about his own origins lay there.
And here is where he discovered what he really was: the ideal human, designed to represent the pinnacle of the Superior Domination system, the product of centuries of planning and legions of failed attempts. He had no problem destroying everything that was left of the experiment. They reminded him of him, after all, and he was getting more and more eager to destroy himself. So with his past destroyed, he returned to head for the future--whatever of it was left.
He was rising in popularity--becoming Chief Commander of the National Knights and nearly an idol in the eyes of the public--and to counter this, there were assassination attempts against him. Matsuka was always usefully there to prevent him--after all, Keith didn't want to die until after he'd made sure humanity was protected from the Mu. On top of that, he was able to use the politics behind the assassination attempts to steer himself into a position of power as the Head of State of all humanity, the one who would make all the decisions about how to protect humanity from the Mu advance.
Humanity needed him, he decided. To protect it from both the Mu and itself.
But, as he prepared to head for the Sol system to defend Terra from the Mu's last attack, something insignificant to humanity in general but very significant to Keith himself happened. Sam, who had been weakening rapidly over the past few months, died. And there went the last person to be allowed into Keith's heart. He was more determined than ever now to be as good as a machine and to destroy the Mu.
And that's where he is when the 'Porter takes him: in charge of humanity, but without a friend in the world, fueled by hatred and fatalism.
Why take him there? Well, because after that, things change. One of the Mu sneaks aboard his ship and attempts to kill him; Matsuka takes the blow instead and dies for his sake. This shatters Keith's bleak perception of humanity as something unable to stand up on its own without the Superior Domination system and forces him to reevaluate his entire worldview. In the end, he turns on Grandmother with the help of his former enemy Jomy Marcus Shin, leader of the Mu, and they free humanity from the yoke of the SD system and its prejudice against the Mu, dying together and passing command onto the next generation at the end.
But that's yet to come. Right now, he hates the Mu, and he hates humanity but feels the driving need to protect it. And he sure as hell hasn't let Matsuka--or anyone other than the now-dead Sam--into his heart.
PERSONALITY:
Keith is a little bit perfect and a lot broken. What else is there to say about the personality of someone who disturbs other people by appearing to have no personality? Well, quite a lot, actually, especially when considered in the context of his world and how he relates to it.
The Mother Computer considered Keith to be the ideal human, but she had a rather skewed perception of "ideal." It included intelligence, determination, composure, obedience...but not kindness. Not the ability to express one's feelings. Not agency and free will. So Keith comes off to most people as, well, someone who might as well be a machine. Nothing seems to faze him, and nothing makes him flinch. He plans and he follows his plans through, regardless of what it takes. Yes, this makes him kind of creepy--it can very easily seem like he has no concerns in life aside from completing his missions and obeying directives from above. And that is in fact the kind of person Keith has tried all his life to be.
He hasn't always succeeded. The fact is, although he wasn't made to be kind or to feel things, the potential is there in him all the same. He really did care about Sam Houston, and he cried when he killed Seki Ray Shiroe. At this point, with Sam dead and his own actions bringing about the deaths of many others, he's hurting on the inside pretty much all the time, and more than he realizes he lets that hurt drive him. But he refuses to admit it or express it. As far as he's concerned, emotions and the expression thereof just bring people more misery--a worldview he's only become more and more convinced of since his experience with the Mu.
With beliefs like that, it shouldn't be surprising to hear that Keith is something of a misanthrope. He doesn't think highly of humanity's ability to control itself, either. Humanity destroyed their home once, and given greater powers in the form of the Mu, he's convinced they've only gotten more dangerous. Here's where it really shows that he's essentially the son of a computer. He believes people act as their emotions and their circumstances program them to. They have a script, and it's an ugly script, and they stick to it. Given free will, they'll only make things worse.
Keith isn't fighting the Mu because he gets a kick out of persecuting them. He's doing it because he can tell that they are a threat to the Superior Domination system, and he honestly believes that humanity needs that system to keep it under control. But he doesn't think this is a good thing. He hates it, and he hates himself for being a product of it; the idea that he is the pinnacle of humanity only makes him loathe himself and humanity both even more.
He wants to protect the system that props up his world, because that's what he was made for, but he doesn't want to live in it. He definitely doesn't want to live with himself, knowing what he's capable of and what he's not capable of. So he seeks out opportunities to die defending the system. He's put himself in numerous deadly situations in the past, the most obvious probably being his attempt to gun down Blue in the firing chamber of a planet-destroying weapon, with no backup, as it was firing. His current relationship with Jonah Matsuka neatly encapsulates both his self-destructive desires and his beliefs about people. He treats Matsuka with alternating kindness and cruelty, invoking a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Thus he expects Matsuka to play by a script born of combined loyalty, fear, and anger: protect Keith for as long as the war with the Mu is going on. Then, should Keith happen to survive the war with the Mu despite all his efforts to die accomplishing it, he's promised Matsuka that the poor kid will be "disposed of" afterwards. He'd never admit it if you pressed him, never ever ever, but he's hoping this will inspire Matsuka to retaliate and strike him down in self-defense. Mission accomplished, because humans and Mu alike are weak to their emotions, easily manipulated, and largely incapable of accomplishing positive things or going against their programming.
What a lovely goal.
So, pluck him from the context of his world, and what exactly do you get? You get a near-superhuman young man who never properly learned how to comprehend or express his feelings, who acts more like a machine than a person but who hurts like a person all the same, who hates humanity and its situation but hates himself more, who's a veritable well of self-destructiveness in a frighteningly calculating way. Of course, most people won't see any of this, because he doesn't show it. He simply acts distantly polite and distant in general. But it slips through, now and then (along with the occasional poetic turn of phrase, because he is basically a shoujo antagonist), in flashes of fatalism and grim judgment. And he follows the system, whatever it is, because the system is always the only thing keeping humanity's dark nature under control.
Obviously, this isn't a stable situation. Either he's going to get himself killed just like he wants, or something is going to challenge his misanthropic ways and force him to reevaluate humanity's potential.
It's the latter. Not that long after the point in canon I'm taking him from, Matsuka goes against his script in a way that Keith never expected: he sacrifices himself to save Keith's life, and then his spirit draws Keith back from the brink of death. Seeing Matsuka violate the way Keith programmed him in such a heroic way completely shakes Keith's dark faith in humanity's inability to stand on its own and opens up for him the possibility that humans and Mu can coexist someday without destroying each other and the world. He's forced to question his belief in people's lack of agency and need for a guiding system, and in the end, uncertain but determined, he breaks free of the system...
...but that hasn't happened yet. Right now, he's still all about the fatalistic self-destructiveness and the idea that people are doomed by their own desires.
POWER:
Canon is somewhat vague about just what being the "ideal human" entails for Keith's abilities. So I've selected two likely candidates for abilities based on what he does in the series itself.
PHYSICAL SUPERIORITY: Keith is just over the top of normal human capabilities in such things as strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. He won't make anybody go, "Holy shit, that's Superman!" but he sure will mess a normal human being up in a fight, due to both his inherent abilities and his combat training.
MENTAL BARRIER: Try to get into somewhere in Keith's mind he doesn't want you going. Go ahead, try it. You'll hit a wall. He has incredibly strong psychic shields. However, this applies only to protecting specific information. Empathy can still pick up his emotions, and flashes of memories can still be gleaned from him when he's careless.
And one more, expanded from what he has in canon, mainly to mess with his mind by giving him one slightly Mu-like ability:
TERRIFYING AURA: In canon, psychics tend to pick up on a frightening aura from Keith--Matsuka and Blue both comment on it to themselves. When bringing him into this world, the 'Porter expanded on that particular ability. Keith now has a specific form of projective empathy. When he triggers it, he can evoke cold terror in nearby people, psychic or otherwise, leaving them inclined to freeze up, run away, obey him, or some combination of the three.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[here]
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
[here]
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
/strangles self
NAME: Annwyd
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: annwyd
IM: Annwyd Hates You (AIM)
E-MAIL: annwyd [AT] gmail [DOT] com
RETURNING: Yes. No characters currently.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Keith Anyan
FANDOM: Toward the Terra [Terra e...]
CHRONOLOGY: The beginning of episode 22, after Sam has died but before Matsuka has.
CLASS: In his own canon, Keith straddles the line between antagonist and co-protagonist. He's more an anti-villain than anything: although he opposes and attempts to destroy "the good guys," he has both selfish and selfless motivations for doing so. Whenever he commits a cruel act, the heroes are likely to respond by matching him for it. He's also very lawful (more on this in his personality) and is unlikely to act often as a villain in this game, since that would involve going against the system and he's supremely bad at that. For similar reasons, he'll be keeping his dogtags. In general, he'll act within the system to seek out information about the 'Porter so that he can determine definitively whether it's somehow a part of his world's computer system (and therefore to be obeyed and protected) or truly rogue (and therefore to be destroyed). He may act in an apparently heroic fashion if other imPorts cause chaos in order to stop them, or he may act in an apparently villainous way if other imPorts disturb order in more innocent ways. His main motive isn't to act in his or other people's interests but to preserve the system.
SUPERHERO NAME: N/A
ALTER EGO: Keith Anyan, overzealous police officer.
BACKGROUND:
Keith comes from a pretty standard science fiction world, the basics of which should be familiar to any sci-fi buff: humanity ruined Earth and so migrated to the stars, and now their lives are all controlled by computers in a system known as Superior Domination. Toss in another sci-fi standard: occasionally the system by which new humans are created (not born; that's the old-fashioned way) throws up a psychic mutant called a Mu, and they have to be persecuted and eliminated to preserve the system. Except some of them escape and form a society of their own. Three hundred years after the first Mu appeared, his strength is almost gone, and he's ready to pick a new leader for his people, one who will free them from the tyranny of the computers and bring them to their homeland of Terra.
This doesn't concern Keith. Yet.
What does is this: for hundreds of years, the computer system that controls humanity has been experimenting on Station E-1077 with making its own child, the ideal human to represent the system of Superior Domination. Now it--no, she, because these computer systems are personified as mothers of humanity--finally succeeds, grows the child in a tube until he's fourteen, then decants him and proceeds to raise him the rest of the way.
That kid's name is Keith Anyan. The rest of this is the story of what happened after he woke up for the first time.
The first four years were pretty simple--but important. He excelled at all his classes at the training center and became its most elite student. No, not that (although it's true). And he became friends with Sam Houston and Suena Dalton--especially Sam, who approached him first, when he was new and had never had a human connection before (although he didn't realize it at the time, instead believing he'd grown up normally for fourteen years and then had his memory erased, just like everyone else...except it didn't normally work so thoroughly, but that didn't concern him). That. That was the important part.
When Keith was eighteen, fourteen-year-old Seki Ray Shiroe arrived at Station E-1077, and things got complicated. Shiroe set himself up as Keith's competition; he was determined to get a reaction out of and find out more about this cold, machine-like young man. He did get a reaction out of Keith, and he did find out more, but then he got caught snooping around, put through torture, and oh yeah, he was investigated for his "Mu factor," far away from any other Mu who could help him.
But not far enough. The new leader of the Mu, Jomy Marcus Shin, attempted to communicate with Station E-1077--and as the attempt first reverted all humans on it except Keith to a child-like state, then knocked them unconscious, it was naturally perceived as an attack. This was Keith's first experience with the Mu: the mere usage of their powers to contact humans utterly overpowered all those humans except him, leaving him the station's only line of defense.
Meanwhile, Shiroe awakened to his Mu powers. When he attempted to flee the station, Keith was sent to eliminate him. It was Mother's orders, so he did it, but--not understanding why--he cried for the first and only time. It didn't matter that he'd cried. He'd performed Mother's will, just as she had hoped the ideal human would. So when he graduated from the training center, he rose through the ranks and eventually became one of the Members Elite, a privileged group aware of some of the inner workings of the SD system who helped maintain it. And so he parted ways from the less elite Sam--but Sam remained his only friend, and the only one he willingly allowed into his heart, just as Shiroe remained the only one who'd managed to provoke a reaction from him.
Here's where I point out that this means Keith went through about the next twelve years essentially unable to express himself and with no one around him to whom he'd consider opening his heart. This probably didn't put him in a very good state of mind for what was coming next. So what was coming next?
Well, he was sent to investigate the planet of Silvester Seven, where a number of strange accidents had occurred. It was not stated outright, but he knew he was looking for "M"--the Mu, who so threatened the system of Superior Domination and all the humans it protected. But before he went, there was something to be attended to. You see, one of the strange accidents that had occurred? It involved Sam Houston. Keith went to visit him...and found that his only friend didn't even remember him. He'd been essentially lobotomized by some mysterious force, reduced to a child-like state, and slowly but inevitably weakening.
Sam was still the only person Keith opened his heart to. But Sam barely existed anymore. Keith refused to show it, because that was the way he was, but it was a hell of a blow to him.
So he set off for the out-of-the-way Silvester Seven, determined to find the Mu and make them pay for what they'd done to Sam--no, simply to accomplish his mission, because he wasn't supposed to let emotions cloud his judgment. Along the way, something that seemed useful but largely unimportant happened: he ran into a Mu who had survived in the SD system simply by lying low, unaware of just what his abilities were, knowing only that he was weird, hoping only to be able to live a quiet life out in the astral boondocks. His name was Jonah Matsuka, and Keith adopted him. And by "adopted," I mean "systematically cultivated Stockholm syndrome in, by turns abusing and rewarding in order to create a sense of desperate loyalty and potential retaliation."
(Already, at this point, a small part of Keith was thinking that he didn't want to survive much longer, so it was good if he created something that would potentially kill him. But it wasn't a conscious thought yet, and only a very small part of him was thinking it.)
Sure enough, when Keith descended to the surface of Silvester Seven--now called "Nazca" by the Mu themselves--he found the Mu there. Unfortunately, he also got captured, and despite Matsuka's objections, his crew fled the system. He was at the Mu's tender mercy, and they only confirmed his beliefs about them by psionically torturing him in an attempt to get the location of Terra out of his mind. Oh, and then one of their children showed up and tried to kill him.
In the end, Matsuka returned alone and--with the help of Keith's own planning--rescued Keith, despite the Mu's attempts to greet him as one of their own. But the experience had left its mark on Keith. He was now quite positive that the Mu were the enemy, and he knew where they were. With the permission of the SD system, he broke out the device known as the Megiddo, a planet-destroyer that had once before been used to attack the Mu, and focused it on Nazca.
But thanks to the sacrifice of the Mu's former leader, Blue, although Nazca was destroyed, they escaped. They were now headed for the heart of the SD system--first the planet Artemesia, where humans were raised, and then Terra itself, still being regenerated. And they had every intention of destroying the SD system when they got there.
Keith couldn't have that. Now higher-ranking than ever thanks to his performance at the Silvester system, he prepared to face the Mu again. But he had a new self-destructiveness to him after his experiences near Nazca, and the computer in charge of the SD system--an entity known only as "Grandmother"--had a new mission for him. He was to destroy Station E-1077. But first, he wanted to find out what secrets about his own origins lay there.
And here is where he discovered what he really was: the ideal human, designed to represent the pinnacle of the Superior Domination system, the product of centuries of planning and legions of failed attempts. He had no problem destroying everything that was left of the experiment. They reminded him of him, after all, and he was getting more and more eager to destroy himself. So with his past destroyed, he returned to head for the future--whatever of it was left.
He was rising in popularity--becoming Chief Commander of the National Knights and nearly an idol in the eyes of the public--and to counter this, there were assassination attempts against him. Matsuka was always usefully there to prevent him--after all, Keith didn't want to die until after he'd made sure humanity was protected from the Mu. On top of that, he was able to use the politics behind the assassination attempts to steer himself into a position of power as the Head of State of all humanity, the one who would make all the decisions about how to protect humanity from the Mu advance.
Humanity needed him, he decided. To protect it from both the Mu and itself.
But, as he prepared to head for the Sol system to defend Terra from the Mu's last attack, something insignificant to humanity in general but very significant to Keith himself happened. Sam, who had been weakening rapidly over the past few months, died. And there went the last person to be allowed into Keith's heart. He was more determined than ever now to be as good as a machine and to destroy the Mu.
And that's where he is when the 'Porter takes him: in charge of humanity, but without a friend in the world, fueled by hatred and fatalism.
Why take him there? Well, because after that, things change. One of the Mu sneaks aboard his ship and attempts to kill him; Matsuka takes the blow instead and dies for his sake. This shatters Keith's bleak perception of humanity as something unable to stand up on its own without the Superior Domination system and forces him to reevaluate his entire worldview. In the end, he turns on Grandmother with the help of his former enemy Jomy Marcus Shin, leader of the Mu, and they free humanity from the yoke of the SD system and its prejudice against the Mu, dying together and passing command onto the next generation at the end.
But that's yet to come. Right now, he hates the Mu, and he hates humanity but feels the driving need to protect it. And he sure as hell hasn't let Matsuka--or anyone other than the now-dead Sam--into his heart.
PERSONALITY:
Keith is a little bit perfect and a lot broken. What else is there to say about the personality of someone who disturbs other people by appearing to have no personality? Well, quite a lot, actually, especially when considered in the context of his world and how he relates to it.
The Mother Computer considered Keith to be the ideal human, but she had a rather skewed perception of "ideal." It included intelligence, determination, composure, obedience...but not kindness. Not the ability to express one's feelings. Not agency and free will. So Keith comes off to most people as, well, someone who might as well be a machine. Nothing seems to faze him, and nothing makes him flinch. He plans and he follows his plans through, regardless of what it takes. Yes, this makes him kind of creepy--it can very easily seem like he has no concerns in life aside from completing his missions and obeying directives from above. And that is in fact the kind of person Keith has tried all his life to be.
He hasn't always succeeded. The fact is, although he wasn't made to be kind or to feel things, the potential is there in him all the same. He really did care about Sam Houston, and he cried when he killed Seki Ray Shiroe. At this point, with Sam dead and his own actions bringing about the deaths of many others, he's hurting on the inside pretty much all the time, and more than he realizes he lets that hurt drive him. But he refuses to admit it or express it. As far as he's concerned, emotions and the expression thereof just bring people more misery--a worldview he's only become more and more convinced of since his experience with the Mu.
With beliefs like that, it shouldn't be surprising to hear that Keith is something of a misanthrope. He doesn't think highly of humanity's ability to control itself, either. Humanity destroyed their home once, and given greater powers in the form of the Mu, he's convinced they've only gotten more dangerous. Here's where it really shows that he's essentially the son of a computer. He believes people act as their emotions and their circumstances program them to. They have a script, and it's an ugly script, and they stick to it. Given free will, they'll only make things worse.
Keith isn't fighting the Mu because he gets a kick out of persecuting them. He's doing it because he can tell that they are a threat to the Superior Domination system, and he honestly believes that humanity needs that system to keep it under control. But he doesn't think this is a good thing. He hates it, and he hates himself for being a product of it; the idea that he is the pinnacle of humanity only makes him loathe himself and humanity both even more.
He wants to protect the system that props up his world, because that's what he was made for, but he doesn't want to live in it. He definitely doesn't want to live with himself, knowing what he's capable of and what he's not capable of. So he seeks out opportunities to die defending the system. He's put himself in numerous deadly situations in the past, the most obvious probably being his attempt to gun down Blue in the firing chamber of a planet-destroying weapon, with no backup, as it was firing. His current relationship with Jonah Matsuka neatly encapsulates both his self-destructive desires and his beliefs about people. He treats Matsuka with alternating kindness and cruelty, invoking a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Thus he expects Matsuka to play by a script born of combined loyalty, fear, and anger: protect Keith for as long as the war with the Mu is going on. Then, should Keith happen to survive the war with the Mu despite all his efforts to die accomplishing it, he's promised Matsuka that the poor kid will be "disposed of" afterwards. He'd never admit it if you pressed him, never ever ever, but he's hoping this will inspire Matsuka to retaliate and strike him down in self-defense. Mission accomplished, because humans and Mu alike are weak to their emotions, easily manipulated, and largely incapable of accomplishing positive things or going against their programming.
What a lovely goal.
So, pluck him from the context of his world, and what exactly do you get? You get a near-superhuman young man who never properly learned how to comprehend or express his feelings, who acts more like a machine than a person but who hurts like a person all the same, who hates humanity and its situation but hates himself more, who's a veritable well of self-destructiveness in a frighteningly calculating way. Of course, most people won't see any of this, because he doesn't show it. He simply acts distantly polite and distant in general. But it slips through, now and then (along with the occasional poetic turn of phrase, because he is basically a shoujo antagonist), in flashes of fatalism and grim judgment. And he follows the system, whatever it is, because the system is always the only thing keeping humanity's dark nature under control.
Obviously, this isn't a stable situation. Either he's going to get himself killed just like he wants, or something is going to challenge his misanthropic ways and force him to reevaluate humanity's potential.
It's the latter. Not that long after the point in canon I'm taking him from, Matsuka goes against his script in a way that Keith never expected: he sacrifices himself to save Keith's life, and then his spirit draws Keith back from the brink of death. Seeing Matsuka violate the way Keith programmed him in such a heroic way completely shakes Keith's dark faith in humanity's inability to stand on its own and opens up for him the possibility that humans and Mu can coexist someday without destroying each other and the world. He's forced to question his belief in people's lack of agency and need for a guiding system, and in the end, uncertain but determined, he breaks free of the system...
...but that hasn't happened yet. Right now, he's still all about the fatalistic self-destructiveness and the idea that people are doomed by their own desires.
POWER:
Canon is somewhat vague about just what being the "ideal human" entails for Keith's abilities. So I've selected two likely candidates for abilities based on what he does in the series itself.
PHYSICAL SUPERIORITY: Keith is just over the top of normal human capabilities in such things as strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes. He won't make anybody go, "Holy shit, that's Superman!" but he sure will mess a normal human being up in a fight, due to both his inherent abilities and his combat training.
MENTAL BARRIER: Try to get into somewhere in Keith's mind he doesn't want you going. Go ahead, try it. You'll hit a wall. He has incredibly strong psychic shields. However, this applies only to protecting specific information. Empathy can still pick up his emotions, and flashes of memories can still be gleaned from him when he's careless.
And one more, expanded from what he has in canon, mainly to mess with his mind by giving him one slightly Mu-like ability:
TERRIFYING AURA: In canon, psychics tend to pick up on a frightening aura from Keith--Matsuka and Blue both comment on it to themselves. When bringing him into this world, the 'Porter expanded on that particular ability. Keith now has a specific form of projective empathy. When he triggers it, he can evoke cold terror in nearby people, psychic or otherwise, leaving them inclined to freeze up, run away, obey him, or some combination of the three.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[here]
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
[here]
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
/strangles self