Kayla Christling

"*Kayla is a girl of many talents. As a star performer, the class president and an extremely social and responsible student at ZPA, her passions shine through her dedication to education. While Kayla is often soft-spoken and patient, push her too far and you will be in for a rather unpleasant surprise. Zill is often reminded of this the hard way.*"
―Zoophobia characters page
**Kayla Christling** is an anthropomorphic kangaroo and a main character in *Zoophobia*. A student attending the Zoo Phoenix Academy located in Safe Haven, she is one of the top students alongside Zill, and the two of them also have a reputation for being the school's power couple. During their long relationship that had lasted three years. She is very strong but can be very emotional over the ones she loves. She and Zill hang out with Jackson Wells, Vanexa, and Spam forming The Main Five but seems to get along with many other students outside her group of best friends.

## Appearance

Kayla is a tan kangaroo with blue eyes and patches of blonde fur mixed in. Her ears are fairly large and each have a lighter heart patch with black tips.

In her original design, she looks like a normal kangaroo, with tan fur. In the short *Bad Luck Jack*, she features dark brown stripes on her upper arms and above her toes which have become a darker shade of brown. Her ears have been inverted with the hearts being darker patches rather than lighter. The darker tips of her ears has expanded along with an extra stripe added to the back. She has light yellow almost gauntlet looking sections of fur around her paws and wrist with a single yellow stripe above them. She also now appears to wear a choker and has what may or may not be eyeliner on.

## Personality

Kayla is quite kind and friendly to everyone, easily making her one of the more popular students in school. She enjoys romantic things as seen when she thinks that Zill is planning something lovely for their anniversary. The only student in the school she intentionally avoids is Damian, whose demonic appearance and supernatural abilities terrify her. In the short, she does not show as much fear of him, but still appears uncomfortable in his presence.

When conflicts arise, she first tries to resolve them peacefully. This pacifist part of her nature was shown when she stopped Zill, who was at the moment angry because of Rusty's rude behavior, from fighting him. Her patience has limits however, as was seen when Rusty threatened to beat her up during the very same encounter. In response, she threw a powerful punch at Rusty, knocking him out with a single blow.

Kayla can be cold and unforgiving when angered. A single forgotten anniversary was all it took for her to start giving Zill the silent treatment and turn hostile towards him, all this despite his heartfelt apologies. Still, she is not merciless and even though angry, she acted without hesitation to save him from a duo of bloodthirsty vampires. This desire to protect extends to all her friends as in the short Bad Luck Jack, when Zill mentions something bad might happen to Jack she pulls out a switchblade and says they need to find him fast.

## Abilities

**Swordsmanship:** Kayla is a capable fencer and also rather strong, as shown when she hurled a blunted fencing foil with enough force to pin it in a wall.

**Unarmed combat:** Though she possesses no supernatural abilities, Kayla was able to hold her own against the monster along with the rest of the Main Five in *Bad Luck Jack*. She utilizes both her powerful hind legs and her prehensile tail to evade and attack the beast, even doing enough damage to bruise it.

## Relationships

### Zill

Zill is Kayla's boyfriend. The two formed a relationship based off their shared passion for musical theatre. Both are talented piano players and they both adore singing romantic songs together. Because of this Zill is the one Kayla talks to the most and enjoys walking with him both around the academy and the streets of Safe Haven. Should Zill get hurt, Kayla won't do anything else until she has finished bandaging his wound. Although Kayla can get easily frustrated when Zill forgets important events, she will always forgive him in the end.

### Vanexa

When Zill isn't around, Kayla tends to talk to Vanexa about either events in her past life or her theories on what Zill has got planned for their date nights. While Vanexa doesn't always understand what Kayla's saying, the two still hang out together with the rest of the Main Five.

### Jack

As Jack is her boyfriend's best friend, Kayla is particularly caring (almost motherly) towards Jack. She gets the most upset when seeing Jack hurt and is the most gentle when putting Jack back together should he fall apart. When hearing that Jack is in danger, Kayla becomes more aggressive, ready to fight those that will harm him. When Jack's upset, Kayla will gladly give him a big hug and remind him that she and the rest of the Main Five love him.

### Spam

Although Spam is the member of the Main Five who Kayla interacts with the least, she does enjoy his company and is more than happy to sing the songs that Spam writes for her and Zill.

## Trivia

* Along with Spam, Vanexa, Zillion, and Jackson, she is one of Vivienne's "Original Five" characters she created upon the early origins of Zoophobia's creation.

* She is around 4'11" tall due to the fact that most female red kangaroos stand to be between 4'9" and 5 feet tall in real life.

* Kayla's singing voice is provided by Cristina Vee, who has also provided the English voice for Sailor Mars on Sailor Moon, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng on Miraculous Ladybug.

* Kayla has an Australian accent, meaning there are characters with different Nationalities in Safe Haven.