A13: ILYA ARKADI

#1

Name: Ilya Arkadi
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Pokémon, video games, furry fandom, journalism, skateboarding, swimming, socialising

Appearance: In the real world, Ilya stands at 5’10” and weighs 156 lbs. He tends to appear shorter and lankier than he actually is due to the fact that he usually stands with a relaxed posture and that he has longer limbs. He has a round face with tanned skin and hooded eyes that are a dark blue colour. Underneath a grey deerstalker hat he always wears, Ilya has wavy chestnut coloured hair that is kept medium length. Most of his closet consists of short sleeved tees and if he wears anything long sleeved, he rolls up the sleeves. Ilya likes to wear fleece jackets for style, but he keeps them unzipped.

In Cyber Reality, Ilya takes on a drastically different appearance in terms of style and appearance. Whenever possible, his Avatar comes as close to his fursona as possible: a bipedal Vaporeon with a maroon bobble cap, winter goggles over it’s head, a black cropped cape with white fur at the edges of it, a puffy maroon and orange jacket, and brown pants. Usually his attempts to copy this appearance is either just matching the clothing, or taking up some of the body features in places where it’s permitted. Only in some servers can he completely match this appearance. His Avatar is two inches taller to get him up to 6’0” exactly.

At school, Ilya has a custom Vaporeon hoodie that he usually wears, matching the ridge on the back a Vaporeon has with a tail attached to the hoodie. The hood has eyes and fleece fins on the side, top, and on the neck. This is only taken off on request of teachers and staff. When the hoodie is off, he chooses to take after his fursona a different way by wearing the same bobble cap and cropped cape that his fursona wears, which is kept in his backpack. He has a pin that looks like a sad face emoji on his shirt, which he wears to be jokingly bitter when his hoodie is removed.

On the day of the attack, his Avatar wore a grey shirt with the aforementioned Vaporeon hoodie, brown pants and black winter boots. His backpack is a plain, dark blue colour.

Background: On December 21, Ilya was born to Abram and Nastia Arkadi as an only child in San Jose, California. Abram and Nastia were both doctors that met at work where they fell in love. Before Ilya was born, Nastia quit her job to take care of the child. Abram and Nastia were supportive parents, if a little too carefree. Ilya didn’t get into too much trouble whenever he did something wrong and he would get off without punishment quite a bit. Ilya has kept a good relationship with both of his parents, however he is noticeably closer to his father than his mother.

Ilya attended elementary and middle school in real life. He did well in elementary, but had a noticeable dip in grades in middle school due to bad time management and apathy on his part, his grades averaging a high C. This wasn’t ever enough of a problem for his parents to start getting worried since he was never failing classes for a long period of time, but they did always encourage Ilya to do his best.

Ilya was known to be stubborn and throw a fit when things didn’t go his way as a child. He grew out of this overbearing phase as he grew up, but the lack of much outside involvement meant he didn't change much. Ilya had switched from a louder friend group to one that was more calmer in middle school. While they first met because of similar interests, their behaviour slowly rubbed off on him and softened his attitude. Despite being called out for his controlling tendencies, he never got in real trouble because of it aside from some stern words from his peers, and therefore sought no reason to change that part of him. Instead of being bossy and a brat for others not doing what he wanted, it became apathy and trying to do his own thing anyway.

Both in an interest of teaching Ilya how to swim and also to spend time with his son, Abram would take Ilya over to a public pool as a child. Ilya caught on quickly and enjoyed the activity, spending more time at a public pool by himself as he got older. Ilya joined the middle school boys swimming team and continued to do swimming as a sport into high school.

His parents got him a Nintendo 3DS with Pokémon White for his birthday one year. Ilya was quickly hooked on the series and on video games in general. Ilya grew a collection of video games, but Pokemon continued to be the main franchise he was interested in and he would make an effort to get any new games whenever they came out.

Ilya had an interest in writing in middle school. This slowly morphed into an interest in journalism as he realised he liked doing interviews whenever they were required for assignments or projects. Additionally he liked write-ups more than anything else, preferring the more logical and fact based format to it over creative writing. Ilya contributed to a school newspaper which also boosted his interest. While he makes an effort to stay up to date on current events, he’s grown apathetic towards all the negative events he sees on the news and doesn’t get stressed out about it.

Despite being introduced to Cyber Reality early on in middle school, Ilya held little interest in it initially. He was content with any activities taking place in the real world, preferring to play video games or hang out with his friends when not all of them had the same access to the technology at the time. One thing Ilya got out of his initial exposure to Cyber Reality was when he first entered 5K4T1NG P4R4D153. Ilya found being there fun and enjoyed skateboarding, but preferred the idea of engaging in the activity somewhere familiar instead of being in a random skatepark or city, so he practised in the real world as opposed to Cyber Reality. Ilya eventually grew to become more comfortable with it and spent more time using it up until he was enrolled into Sycamore High School.

Ilya’s introduction into the furry fandom started in freshman year of high school when he was mindlessly scrolling through social media one day. He was aware of it before but only decided to look further into it at this moment. Ilya found himself taking a liking to the art and found the designs that people would make appealing. He considered himself a furry for a while and followed a lot of art accounts, but only decided to make himself a sona in sophomore year. While thinking about the Avatar customization settings one day, he went to a disco centred on the furry fandom and was enthralled by the customization options. Ilya decided he liked being represented by his sona and over time got more comfortable trying to appear as such outside of any furry centric servers.

Ilya spent more time in Cyber Reality in high school and spent more time in discos. Servers allowed him to meet others with similar interests with less effort, which became the biggest upside to him. Ilya has made a lot more friends in Cyber Reality, but keeps a healthy balance between his friends in Meatspace and Cyberspace. Other than discos, Ilya doesn’t usually do anything else in Cyber Reality, the exceptions are when he’s playing games with friends.

His grades have improved in high school; classes that catch his interest average at an A-, his highest grade being an A in English and a culinary arts class. Otherwise, his grades in other classes still average a high C and he’s still missing assignments more than he should, but those grades rarely drop below a D with the threat of being barred from the swim team because of failing grades.

After graduation, Ilya doesn’t have too many plans for what he wants to do, content with dealing with problems as he goes along. He has gotten some ideas thrown to him by others, but none of them have struck a chord with him. At the moment, he’s thinking about pursuing a journalism degree and wanting to work for the news.

Personality: Despite no longer being as controlling compared to when he was younger, Ilya still has remnants of that side of him today. Ilya prefers things to go his way. Ilya will straight up ignore someone if there’s a conflict as to what to do and will start working towards his own path. This includes whenever he’s with friends, though he’ll try and put more of an effort to negotiate if he’s arguing with someone he likes. This also means that he’ll ignore complaints that might be given to him whether it be insults or genuine criticism. Ilya is chill and easygoing. Naturally he appears approachable with a smug air to him. Ilya is an open book, not just in his emotions being easy to read, but also with how he runs his mouth and isn’t afraid to say what he’s thinking. His thoughts lean less towards mean-spirited and tends to be more positive. In the real world, he’s a little nicer than he is in Cyber Reality.

Reputation: Ilya has his group of friends, but in spite of his positives, he ends up as mostly inoffensive to the class. He talks well with everyone and his chill demeanour might be enough to win some people over, but he makes his distaste for certain groups obvious. Namely, he finds those that spend too much time in Cyber Reality weird. His personality could easily rub someone the wrong way, which wouldn’t be helped if he doesn’t care to do anything about it. Ilya’s lack of compromise makes him someone that nobody wants to end up in a group project in, knowing he’s going to knowingly have awful communication on his end of the project. Those that don’t know much about him assume he’s rather spacey. Teachers are mostly fine with him, expecting him to land somewhere in the middle, but some find the lack of effort he puts in something a little infuriating.

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Designated Number: A13

Designated Weapon: W-10 — Hidden Blade
Designated Utility: U-2 — Additional Ammo

Evaluation: "Hey guys, did you know that, in terms of every student's likelihood of survival, A13 is a total goner? When your best path to survival is trying to act like your favorite Pokémon and be 'compatible' with someone, even I start to feel a little bad for you." — [GARFIELD], Server Operator