Michael K.

Michael K.

In-GameSpriteProtoAlt-WorldEarly Sprite

Michael holding his belly, laughing. He's having a good time.

Proto Michael's shirtless, hairy chest.

Michael's sprite in the prototype.

Classification	Photographer Conspiracy Theorist
Screen Name	VerraFORMER
Voiced By	Clifford Chapin
Age	19 (Dubious)
Hair Color	Brown
Starting Karta

"The more time I spend with him the more THIS world feels like the real one... no matter how broken and fucked it is."

Michael K. is the co-founder of ONISM1999, with a fascination with the paranormal and conspiracies. While on the surface he may be a cheery guy who loves to crack jokes, when no one is looking he carries a disturbing interest in the ONISM Demon Auction, using it in order to find his lost love. He also has an interest in writing stories, photography, and computers.

Combat

Dark GameOld Battle Mode

If the rest of the party is either dead or blind, Michael draws a gun, making his basic attack stronger until the others are either replaced or no longer blind.

Skill	PP	Description	Cast Time	Recovery Time
Photoshoot	6	Do 1.2x damage to enemy party.	0	700
Soul Capture	10	Summon a copy of the targeted enemy.	500	500
Blinding Flash	3	Reduce enemy accuracy.	0	1000
Dazzle Party	5	Blind party and secretly draw gun.	0	400
Blackmail	1	Turn an enemy against its party.	0	780

Skill	PP	Description	Notes
Beat Down	2	"Beat down!"	This minigame is short and simple. A string of inputs must be hit when the line crosses them, adding to your combo. The amount of inputs depends on the weapon Michael has equipped.
Photoshoot	4	Take rapid photos to damage enemies with the blinding light of the camera flash!	While this doesn't deal a lot of damage, it can be good for taking out enemies at low HP and dealing a little bit of damage to others. Time Energy can be used to greatly increase your combo as well.
Glamour Shot	2	Attempt to take a good photo of a friend to boost their morale.	"GOOD" face - Raises Strength and Defense. "BAD" face - Deals small damage and inflicts enemy with Sick. "FLIRTY" face - Lowers Strength, but raises Defense. Obtained at level 5.
Mug Shot	3	Attempt to take a bad photo of a foe to hurt their self-image.	"GOOD" face - Raises Strength and Defense. "BAD" face - Deals small damage and inflicts enemy with Sick. "FLIRTY" face - Lowers Strength, but raises Defense. Obtained at level 7.

Personality

An old friend from high school. He's as smart as he looks!

Michael lives a double life. He presents himself as a carefree spirit, making quips and jokes during casual conversation. But even with his mostly lighthearted personality, he doesn't sugarcoat how he feels. A particular moment is when Alex humiliates Rory for "lying to him," Michael calls him out on how he's being a jerk. He also expresses great disappointment in how users of ONISM treated the Elevator Girl video.

He tends to value his youth very highly, and makes fun of Alex and Vella for being "ancient." He even has great nostalgia for games like Lufia 2, which came out only a few years before 1999.

His fascination with the supernatural and true crime stems all the way from childhood, where he would catch shows about missing people. His passion led him to create ONISM1999 so that he could share his interest with the world. Oftentimes he'll try to bring the Soul Survivors back into conversation, and encourages Alex to find Sammy.

But it's only when Michael is alone that an ugly side rears its head. Because of the disappearance of his girlfriend, Allison, he goes through esoteric means in order to try and see her again, notably rigging the ONISM Demon Auction in his favor to try and find pictures of her. While he may seem like good friends with Alex, his diaries reveal that he greatly resents Alex, and wishes to murder him.

Relationships

Alex

Michael and Alex used to be childhood best friends. He seems to want Alex to be a better person, as he pushes him to apologize towards Rory. He also supports Alex in his journey to find Sammy, willing to take pictures in abandoned buildings and follow him till the end. Despite their sometimes clashing personalities, Michael is able to bring out the best in Alex on multiple occasions.

As Proto-Michael, he decides to help Alex with saving reality, even though all of his other parallel lives always tell him no. He desperately tries to make Alex understand that something is wrong with the fabric of reality itself.

At some point, perhaps even since the very beginning, Michael began to secretly resent Alex, going as far as planning to kill him in order to stop the cycle which Alex has created. It's possible that he was never truly friends with Alex at all, but was only forced to be as he was romantically interested in Alex's sister, Allison.

Rory

Michael and Rory seem to have hit it off from the moment they met, and the conversations between them show the two have a surprising amount in common - both young adults with interests in the occult and uncertain futures in front of them. After the revelations within the Sewer Dungeon, Michael is the first to come to Rory's defense after Alex's outbursts, and is also the person to suggest to Alex that he should apologize to him.

Allison

Michael had a crush on Allison back when he first met her. An ONISM post by VERAformer (Michael) talks about a girl he's trying to get close with and her nerdy brother. Another post details a story he wrote with a love interest named Alexandra, and how he later met a person in real life named Alex. Eventually they both started dating each other, even if Alex proved to be a nuisance in their relationship. His for her was strong, so that when she eventually went missing, he couldn't find it in him to move on. According to The Camera, he created ONISM specifically so that other people like him could find Allison.

Story

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

When Michael was really young, he would sneak into his parent's room and watch shows about missing people. This is where he got his interest in more dark subjects, like the supernatural. In Christmas of 1996, Michael's father got a computer where he would do all his writing on. Michael grew a fascination with computers, and once Avril got internet for Frankton he would spend a lot of time on paranormal websites when his dad wasn't home. In Christmas of 1998, Michael would get his own computer. He eventually met a friend on an online chatroom and found that they both had a fascination with the supernatural. Together they decided to create ONISM1999.

Later in 1999, Michael meets up with Alex for the first time in, apparently, years. Fresh from the SATs, they small-talk for a bit until the tone shifts when bringing up ONISM. Alex tells him that he knows about the site and is aware of the location of the Elevator Girl. After picking up a new camera to take some pictures, when they arrive at the Factory Hotel they come face to face with an entity. They manage to take a few pictures before running home, bewildered with what they just saw.

Michael uploads the photos to ONISM, realizing that the photos they took were somehow distorted. Interestingly, the photos are also set in a completely different location from where they actually found the entity.

Proto-Michael

While Alex was away in the Essentia's Mind Dungeon, Michael explored his own Mind Dungeon for 9 days to meet his parallel selves. He saw the pattern of his parallel lives and decided to try and diverge from it- becoming Proto-Michael, a new beginning for him.

As the time ticks down towards Y2K, Proto-Michael pleads for other people to try and realize that something is wrong with the way reality currently is. He explains a story about how he witnessed that in a parallel life, he was the friend he founded ONISM with, which means the chatroom somehow had the ability to connect to different realities. He also discusses how the Soul Survivors driving The Essentia 2000 around contradicts what they knew about them entirely.

Alex's Memory of Michael

On New Years Eve, Alex realizes that his memory of Michael contradicts with what he knew before. Michael moved away when he was 10 years old, and when Alex was 12 years old. He apparently had some sort of "falling out" with Alex, and told Alex to meet with him but Michael never showed up. It's likely that the lyrics of "Break Away" refer to this event.

The Golden Alpaca also refers to Michael as being "stitched into reality's fabric, for dramatic effect, playing the childhood mate." This means that the Michael who was with them throughout the entire story was not the Michael Alex actually knew. Instead, it is more likely that the voice on the phone is the "real Michael."

YIIK I.V

Michael spends time with a mysterious entity known as The Camera, in his Dark Room. When The Camera first met Michael, he accused him of an Original Sin, but never elaborated on what he was. Since then he acts as a spectator, watching over Michael until he witnesses him undoing his Original Sin. Michael participates in the ONISM Demon Auction, an online bidding service which can warp reality for whatever item is on auction. Michael has one item he desires: a photo of Allison, who went missing long ago. Michael chooses not to bid directly though, instead rigging the auction to choose what item is bid on, these being photos of missing people from ONISM, then convincing the winner to share it. Michael realizes that in order for these photos to exist, "something" out there has to take a photo of them to begin with, meaning they're still alive.

The photograph of Alex that Michael won.

One of the photos he wins is one of a chained up Alex, whose name he can't bring himself to say. He finds this frustrating, as he fears Alex's influence onto the room he is in. Michael turns out to have memories from the beginning, middle, and ending of the story in YIIK, and is aware of the cyclical nature of it.

Michael starts to have a moment of clarity- that the room he and The Camera are in isn't just his dark room, it is actually his Mind Dungeon. He comes to realize his different sets of memories are from other parallel versions of himself. Not only that, but he realizes that The Camera is not only a parallel version of him, but his proto form- a version of ONISM which connects him to his other parallel selves. With this new understanding, Michael now understand that his Original Sin was ONISM. While he had innocent intentions of wanting to have lonely people make connections with each other, he also allowed parallel lives to meet with each other, which Michael calls a "new type of despair."

Michael begins a plan to try and end the cycle. He gathers his parallel lives, Chondra, Krow, and Kisage X, and waits until the end of the cycle, after Alex and The Player have pulled the plug, to catch Alex off guard and kill him with his gun before reality can reset. However, by doing this, Michael creates the ONISM MAN. Michael shoots at it, but the bullet ricochets off and kills Michael.

Y2K II

Stub

Gallery

• 
  Michael's Portrait in the Old Battle Mode status menu. He's as smart as he looks!
• 
  Michael on New Year's.
• 
  Michael looking at a photograph in his Dark Room.
• 
  Michael, not knowing what to say while his friends banter.
• 
  Michael with his revolver.
• 
  Michael notices a picture of Carrie.
• 
  Michael before punching Alex in the face.
• 
  Michael taking a photo of Allison in the YIIK I.V Intro.
• 
  "Original Sin. Phft. And what exactly did I do that was so immoral?"
• 
  Michael and his parallel lives before executing Michael's plan.
• 
  Michael and Allison sitting under a tree. (K-I-S-S-I-N-G?)
• 
  Michael chilling on a rooftop from YIIK's first trailer.
• 
  About to shoot Alex in the Y2K II opening.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Trivia

• Michael was the 3rd character designed for YIIK.
• Michael was based on Andrew Allanson's cousin, Michael Kucinski.
  • While Michael shares both the first name and the first initial of the last name, Michael from YIIK's full name is just Michael K.
• The lyrics of Break Away "Michael's Theme" hint at the relationship between Michael and Allison.
• In the old Battle Mode, Michael has an unobtainable ability called Soul Capture. It costed 15 pp and would "...capture the soul of an enemy to use their powers against them!" It was later implemented in the new combat style for I.V.
• In the old Battle Mode, Michael has an unused ability called Scan. It costed 1 pp and would scan enemy stats.
• Early in Chapter 2, Michael brings up that he has a cousin with a six year old daughter.
• Before I.V, there was a bug with Michael's Beatdown in the old Battle Mode with the PS4 inputs where the X and O button prompts are inverse with each other.
  • If you are on PC, you can change your controller setting to Xbox instead, which will fix the issue.
• Before 1.05, photoshoot's flashes would make the entire screen white.
• The Glamour Shot skill was added in the 1.25 update.