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[whydoyoushine]

OOC Information
Name/handle: Airdra
Discord contact: Airdra
Other contact: Airdra
Pronouns: she/her
Permissions link: Here
Other characters played: N/A
Do you have a reserve for this character?: Yes

IC Information
Canon: Ressha Sentai ToQGer
Character: Zed
Canon point: Episode 22, immediately after Gritta swallows him at the altar.
Canon intensity: It's a kids' show. It goes kind of hard for a kids' show at times, but it is ultimately about a team of rainbow-colored heroes using imagination-powered trains to save the world, defeating various ridiculous monsters week after week.

World information: ToQGer is set in modern day Tokyo, which would make Zed's world information all too simple to type out EXCEPT...Zed is a Shadow, and more importantly, he is their Emperor, and as such his concept of normal is anything but.

The central conceit of Ressha Sentai ToQGer is a conflict between two railway lines--the imagination-powered Rainbow Line and the darkness-powered Shadow Line. It is important to note that as far as humans are concerned, only children can see the Rainbow Line, as their imaginations are stronger. The Shadow Line can be perceived by adults to a degree; if a Shadow is running amok through town spreading darkness via some crazy monster-of-the-week scheme, they can both see the monster and be affected by whatever special power it's using. The trains of both lines run on rails, but those rails tend to appear and disappear as needed. They might appear concurrently with train lines in the normal human world! Or they might not. Zed is extremely familiar with trains and how they work...only not because normal trains have tracks that are always in the same spot and normal trains can't turn into giant robots for combat purposes.

Zed spends most of his time in the Shadow Line's Castle Terminal, where he lounges in his throne and looks bored with all the scheming and infighting going on around him. He will occasionally command a lesser Shadow to go out and be the monster of the week do something in service of his curiosity about the light, which would generally involve spreading more darkness because that's how Shadows do.


Character biofacts: Zed has no canon age and appears to be in his early 20s, is male, and is a Shadow, a creature of darkness.

About the character: Zed is the Shadow Line's Emperor of Darkness. Zed's early history is, perhaps fittingly, steeped in shadow. There's never any mention of anything like parents where he's concerned. It's not that Shadows don't have parents--Madame Noire is Gritta's mother, after all--it's just that Zed's parents never come into question. He was raised by Marchioness Mork, and with the way she discusses him, it sounds almost like the deepest, darkest darkness coalesced into Zed. Zed might not want to be the Emperor of Darkness, but he certainly has no problems being an Emperor. He's haughty, he's self-assured, and he always expects to get what he wants. He has a very poor track record of listening to anyone who disagrees with him, even when the disagreement has merit. For example, Mork's repeated insistence that he needs to abandon this fixation with the light is sound advice--Zed should stop weakening himself--but Zed doesn't care because it's not what he wants to do. Taking care of himself isn't fun, and it doesn't satisfy his curiosity. He has very little sense of self-preservation if he's doing something in the pursuit of fun or of satisfying his curiosity. Most of those activities are ill-fated attempts to understand the light or to draw it to himself. He's obsessed with things that shine, both in the figurative and literal sense. If a shiny thing is involved, Zed will focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. He gets bored easily when he just doesn't care about things, but if he cares? Good luck getting him to go do something else.

He can also be very childish. Zed has never been encouraged to think of anyone but himself. Concepts like "other people have feelings too," "you can't just take that without paying for it," and "you have to wait in line" are foreign to him. In some ways, he is what happens if you never tell your child "no." If he sees something he wants, he'll just take it. Zed's past was in a sense very sheltered--he knew darkness and only darkness. When he comes out into the light and the human world, it's an entirely new experience for him. This combined with the fact that he's used to getting what he wants when he wants it means that he's coming at a great deal of new things with a child's sense of open wonder and the royal expectation that everyone is going to put up with his behavior.

Zed's first canon appearance happens a few episodes into the series--up until that point, the Shadow Line has been busily gathering darkness in preparation to allow him to come into the human world. He immediately gets away from anyone who might be minding him and finds an amusement park, which is the greatest thing ever as far as he's concerned. He encounters Right, ToQ-1, the red ToQGer, there at the park, and Right is weirded out by what he thinks is just some weird dude out having a good time. What grown man gets all excited at sparkly balloons to the point of running off without paying for them or gets hype for a merry-go-round to the point of cutting in line and having a blast on said merry-go-round? This (ostensibly) grown man, that's who. It's not until Right and Zed have a bit of sustained eye contact--when Right gets to look into the void--that Right realizes there's something very wrong here, and the rest of the Shadow Line swoops in to take their wayward emperor, who has been out in the sun for far too long, home.

Zed generally comes off as being lazy and laid back. He often lounges in his throne, bored with everything going on around him. He brings no end of frustration to his courtiers, who want him to get on with the business of covering the world in darkness. He's supposed to focus all his time and energy on the Shadow Line's expansion, but that's boring to him, so he won't. The power's a bit of a burden in that regard; he'd rather not so he can go on with examining shiny things. Yet when he needs to show off his power, to show off why he's the Emperor of Darkness, he's quite willing to oblige. Even if he hates that power, it's still a tool he uses easily. Annoying courtier getting a little uppity? Best remind them who's in charge with a pulse of darkness energy. He's the strongest Shadow there, and no one should forget it. Though he isn't fond of his power, he's not ashamed of it--it's just a nuisance he's willing to make use of. He doesn't sit on the throne in a manner that suggests he values the position; he's sprawled on it like it's nothing special. To him, it isn't...yet he's not the sort to shy away from the benefits such a position might bring him. Having people fawn all over him is only right. Having his will supersede everyone else's is also right. Yet he needs his courtiers on some level, as they do a better job of taking care of him and keeping him on task than he's likely to do himself.

Zed's baseline normal is far from the normal that other people work with. This is probably due to the fact that he's in charge of an empire of darkness monsters who want to spread darkness throughout the world using evil trains. Zed commands monsters-of-the-week like Chair Shadow, who makes people miserable by causing whatever they're sitting on to affix to their butts. Other Shadows cause fairy tale characters to escape their books and annoy everyone, and still others threaten to drain out their victims' life forces through the application of evil wigs. This is all serious and normal in Zed's canon, though it would be utterly bizarre to someone from another world.

Despite his desire for the light, he's never seemed to understand its true nature. He sees it, like anything else he wants in life, as something he can just take, regardless of the consequences. He can identify things like love, friendship, self-sacrifice, and generosity as the sort of shine he craves, but he's never been able to act on these impulses himself. He's seen it happening all around him both with the ToQGers and his own people in the Shadow Line. At his canon point, he's been consumed by Gritta--or at least, Gritta has attempted to consume him--but his darkness isn't the sort that can be contained. Zed sees a bit of light glimmering inside her, and he'd initially intended to allow himself to be consumed, so that he might turn around and counter-consume Gritta, taking that light for himself. It's just that right now, he's not quite sure how he screwed that up...but given his lack of understanding of the light, maybe that's why?

Abilities: His powers are kind of vaguely defined in canon, but he is essentially the embodiment of darkness itself. In this case, darkness is the polar opposite of imagination and light, and it is strengthened by negative emotions. He is a Shadow, and he is the Shadow who rules over all the others. It's frequently remarked upon that his personal darkness is deeper and darker than anyone else's by no small degree. In his human form, he is stronger, faster, and more durable than a normal human would be. He has a monster form that is stronger still, and he can transform between this and his human form at will. He's capable of attacking using bursts of darkness energy in either form. It's most often something he appears to channel into a crazy-looking sword that he can pull from nowhere in his monster form, but he's also been shown to use this power to, say, shake people off if they're trying to grab him from behind.

If the conditions are good (or bad, depending on your point of view) and Zed focuses enough, these bursts of darkness can be strong enough to swallow up a small town; other Shadows would have to put a lot of work into things to make that happen. (I don't plan on having him try to swallow up any territory; this isn't a thing Zed enjoys doing anyway.) Zed's darkness is strong enough that other Shadows will respond to it, and he's been shown to kick other Shadows' powers into out-of-control overdrive with a little nudge, no matter how badly the other Shadow in question didn't want to be involved. Gathering more darkness and increasing his power seems to be effortless in a sense; he's actually annoyed when he gets a late-series power-up. He doesn't want this darkness, but he can't help what it--and he--is.

Increasing his personal amount of darkness will cause his monster form to change and become better suited to fighting--his late-series power-up. This also makes him more prone to violently lashing out at things no matter the form he's in. He's taken from mid-series before the power-up, so this shouldn't really be an issue, but I'm throwing it in to be thorough.

Zed can passively unnerve humans (and likely animals, though that is never shown). He's got the most concentrated darkness out of anyone in the Shadow Line, and hanging around him for too long can give people the chills or just a really bad feeling about things. This only intensifies if the person in question makes eye contact with him for a prolonged period of time; they'll start to see the concentrated darkness inside--kind of like staring into a creepy void for too long. It's basically the exact opposite of hanging around someone who might be referred to as "a ray of sunshine." Even if he's being perfectly cheerful, there's still something off about him. It's not something he can turn off, but he can start radiating more darkness energy in order to increase the feelings of discomfort. (It's also entirely possible that this effect may only be felt in individuals with strong imaginations; in canon, it's really only seen in play when Zed is dealing with Right, who has the strongest imagination of all the ToQGers.)

Since he is a creature of darkness, Zed cannot handle being exposed to light for very long. There are points in canon in which he is stubbornly staying outside in bright sunlight for extended periods of time only to collapse because he should have at least tried to stick to the shade. When fatally defeated in battle, he will explode, but said explosion will resolve itself into a vicious, mindless cloud of darkness that may still try to strike out at whoever Zed was fighting. It is possible for him to reconstitute himself, though he will be very weak, and it helps if he has some other source of darkness to go back to or someone to swoop in on a magic train and rescue him at the last possible second. Without somewhere to recuperate quickly, the light would likely finish him off. He is more vulnerable against opponents who have strong imaginations; with enough ("enough" meaning "an entire sentai team selected for their exceptional imaginations' worth") imagination and courage, it is literally possible to visualize his defeat and bring it to fruition.

Noteworthy items: Nothing in particular--he gains a sword when he takes his Shadow form, but it's not exactly something he carries around with him.
Mixed gender room ok?: Yes
Player content notes/squicks: Needles
Anything else: There's no official translation of this canon and I'm using the Over-Time subs; the wiki does not.
Voice samples: One
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