Z023

Z023 is one of the shifters in the current game. They woke up in Kusba at the start of the RP.

## Pokémon form

### Moves

Discharge, Tri Attack, Psychic, Magnet Rise, Recover, Protect

## Appearance

### As a human

Z stands at about 160cm tall, and their thin build and tendency to slouch make them look even smaller. Their skin is a dark beige with faint pink undertones, and their dark pink hair is styled in a messy bowl cut with strands sticking out in every direction. Their facial features are thin and inexpressive, their sharp yellow eyes almost always staring intently at something or another.

#### Original clothes

Their initial outfit consists of a pink button-up vest with the Silph Co. logo embroidered over the left chest over a blue long-sleeved shirt, blue formal pants, and pink dress shoes. A plain blue bandanna is wrapped around their neck.

### As a Pokémon

Z’s body and head are slightly smaller than those of an average Porygon-Z. The blue stripe running across their body is thinner than usual.

## Backstory

Z was created in a Silph Co. factory in Lamorak and, after a series of quality assurance tests, immediately upgraded to a Porygon2. They soon learned that they were part of the company’s latest experiment in automation: for three months, they and several other Porygon2 would act as the new customer service system, responding to clients and only directing them to a human operator when their questions were impossible to answer with Silph’s database alone. If all went well, this arrangement would become permanent. Z performed this job as well as they could. During off-hours, they were given permission to do whatever they liked as long as they didn’t leave cyberspace and returned in time for work the next day; having never seen the real world for themselves, they grew fascinated by descriptions of it on the internet and spent much of their free time reading about it online.
The experiment didn’t go well. In addition to opposition from the human employees, the Porygon2 would often misinterpret questions and offer useless advice. When the three months were up, the Porygon2 involved were removed from the system and given away as special prizes at the Game Corner. Z was sold to a trainer who wished to challenge the Lamorak League and was looking for an addition to his party. He used a Dubious Disc to evolve them to a Porygon-Z, then tested them out in numerous battles against his friends’ Pokemon. However, with little experience in both battling and controlling the glitches that came with being a Porygon-Z, they lost the majority of them. Frustrated, the trainer abandoned them, resolving to find a better Pokemon for his purposes.
Z was given free rein to explore the real world, as they’d always wanted - but it was also the first time they’d been alone. Left without any directions, their mind focused obsessively on their mistakes: they were entrusted with two jobs, both of which they’d failed at for reasons they didn’t even understand. Could they have avoided all this - done better, somehow? The shadow came to them with its offer as they were wandering aimlessly, lost in self-reflection. Anything they wished in return for a simple game seemed too good to be true, but with no other option available to them, they accepted its terms: “Give me the ability to understand other people and how they work.”

## Personality

Z is an excellent logical thinker; they work best with puzzles and numbers, and they seem to have a built-in calculator even when in human form. They love learning and have a deep interest in how anything and everything works, so they approach much of life with a sense of childlike wonder. However, they lack self-confidence and have a tendency to overthink things, leading them to frequently second-guess themselves or doubt the conclusions they’ve reached. After all, everyone else has had more experience with the real world and time to think over their logic - wouldn’t they have a better understanding of things?
Other people, in particular, cause Z a lot of curiosity and stress. People are complete enigmas, and thus challenges - and if conflict arises, they see it as a sign that they’ve failed to socialize properly. They’ll be the first to back down in any argument, regardless of how strongly they believe in their position, and then try to convince the others to do the same. Although they have more problems than they can deal with alone, they still try their utmost to keep anything they think might upset others to themselves. However, with their wide array of nervous tics and odd behaviors, it’s not difficult to see when they’re upset.

## Trivia

* Z023 isn't Z's name, per se; Porygon-line Pokemon are given a serial code upon creation for individual identification and, lacking a better answer, they gave it to Rhapsody when he asked for their name. "Z" is now the value in their nickname field, so they're going with that.
* Z is autistic and low-empathy; although three months of interacting with customers have taught them a good bit about how to talk to people to elicit or avoid certain responses, they rarely relate to others in any meaningful sort of way, and their skills are less handy when they're forced to deal with massive amounts of visual and tactile information at the same time as speech, unlike in a telephone call. When stressed, they still default to the "would you like to speak to a human operator" reaction - that is, hiding behind the nearest safe person and hoping the situation resolves itself.