Carlos Hernandez

Introduction
Carlos is what happens when you take a golden retriever and make him a human. He's a ray of sunshine in a dark apocalyptic world and deals with way more shit than a single person should have to.

Carlos is one of the three protagonists-- and implied to be the main protagonist-- of Zero Time Dilemma, objectively the worst game in the Zero Escape trilogy. He's literally the most redeeming aspect of this game. He's from the apocalypse ending that connects to the future events of Virtue's Last Reward.

Appearance
Carlos is tall, muscular, and lean, with broad, "rippling" shoulders and strong arms. As a former firefighter, he has an impressive physique, and tries to maintain it even during the apocalypse. He has shortish blonde hair that he normally styles with gel, but he has to make do without it, causing it to appear slightly fluffier. He has pale green eyes, light skin, and an angular face with a narrow chin and sharp nose. Carlos tends to wear clothing based entirely off of comfort and practicality-- he likes T-shirts, jackets, baggy jeans, sweatpants, tank tops, boots, and sneakers, usually in light, grey, white, or pastel-ish colors. Carlos has a lot of scars on his body, primarily from firefighting, but has never had major injuries. He's transgender and has had keyhole top surgery with near unnoticeable scarring and "passes" as cis without fail. He doesn't pack and typically wears looser pants to draw attention away from the fact.

Personality
Carlos is kind, considerate, and honest. He has a strong sense of justice and, as a former firefighter, prioritizes saving people above nearly all else; in fact, he blames himself for literally anybody he isn’t able to save, even if it isn’t his fault. He relies on his gut instinct-- developed as a result of his shifting abilities-- to guide him, making quick, sometimes rash decisions and following them through to their end. He’s capable of self-reliance and independence, sometimes acting as a bit of a wallflower, but is still an extrovert and prefers having company. Carlos tends to put the feelings of others before his own and enjoys acting as a caretaker, but will prioritize group harmony over any one person’s emotions. He enjoys giving advice, emotional support, and affection, even casually with friends.

Carlos is nonjudgmental and tends to get to know people before forming opinions about them, often giving second chances unless proven to be completely hopeless. He tends to avoid resorting to violence as much as possible, but is willing to break up fights physically if necessary. He can be teasing and intuitive, catching onto the emotions of others, but will often instead end up oblivious when these emotions are directed at him. In general, he tends to disregard his own importance-- he doesn’t recognize when others are emotionally reliant on him and downplays his own accomplishments. Carlos defines himself almost entirely in the context of other people; he’s humble and doesn’t talk about himself at length outside of a few topics. He’s selfless, adaptable, leaderly, and a staunch and loyal friend and ally.

Mental Illness
Carlos’s struggles with mental illness are fairly subdued. While he does exhibit symptoms of these when under stress, he is generally able to manage them well enough for them to likely not be considered a full blown disorder. Nonetheless, they remain relevant every once in a while.

(Complex) Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
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Depression
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Anxiety
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Dissociation
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Abilities
Carlos is a strong esper with both resonant and shifting capabilities. Specifically, he is a paired receiving unpaired receiving esper and shifter.

Carlos's paired resonant partner is his younger sister, Maria. He and Maria have had the ability to share thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc. with each other since Maria was young. As a receiver, Carlos is very slightly more inclined towards receiving information from Maria, but the two are nearly balanced in their specialties. It was this ability that allowed Carlos to hear, locate, and save Maria during the house fire. Since the house fire, Carlos has not received very strong resonant events from Maria due to her coma, but in times of crisis she is still able to resonate and speak with him while unconscious. Carlos can sense that Maria is alive and sometimes what is happening to her, and occasionally will receive information from her daydreams in the morphogenetic field.

In addition to his paired resonance, Carlos exhibits unpaired resonance. This ability first noticeably showed itself after the house fire. Unlike most unpaired espers, Carlos doesn't tend to resonate with the field at large, but rather with miscellaneous specific people for brief periods of time. This is especially apparent in his job as a firefighter; he is able to detect other consciousnesses in states of crisis and connect with them in order to locate them during the fire. This ability is amplified when connecting with other espers. In everyday life, this occasionally gives Carlos the ability to catch onto other people's emotions, but it doesn't exhibit itself often and he's not aware that it's anything more than intuition.

Carlos is a very talented shifter. He has essentially been training his shifting ability throughout his entire life; as a firefighter, he always "sense[d] the path where Death awaits"; in other words, he could sense the actions of his alternate selves across other timelines and make his decisions based upon their outcomes. This gives him a strong intuition and instinct that he heavily relies on both in his job and in everyday life. This sort of shifting has a lower threshold for danger/stress necessary to activate it. Full on shifting, however, typically requires life-threatening danger. In this type of shifting, Carlos is able to fully switch consciousnesses with an alternate version of himself, retaining memory of doing so in the process (after having trained this ability in the Decision Game). He isn't able to use this ability as often. Carlos is entirely aware of his shifting capabilities and tends to use them when he can, but he is still figuring out his resonant abilities.

Childhood
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The fire
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Firefighting
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Zero Time Dilemma
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Apocalypse
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Atchison Shelter
Carlos becomes a part of the multiverse at the same time Junpei does. After Junpei flips out at everyone for not helping sooner, Carlos picks up the damage and properly organizes ways of receiving help.

Carlos then spends a lot of time reaching out to others both for apocalypse help and for help in handling Junpei's mental illness. He ends up coming out to people for the first time in years, but doesn't actively reach out to make friends, as he's not used to it. He spends a lot of time getting hit on by random boys from the multiverse, and at one point has to pull Junpei off of beating up Eddie. Eventually, he and Junpei establish plans with Stan and Aoi to get a bus to relocate a lot of the people in Atchison to a shelter in Fresno, California, and after some deliberation, he and Junpei decide to go in order to be closer to Maria.

Fresno Shelter
At the Fresno shelter, Carlos is assigned to room C73. After a job interview with Yuuki, he becomes a part of the emergency response team and medical staff, as well as a safety consultant, and intends to enter a leadership position at one point.

Maria Hernandez
The

Junpei Tenmyouji
Carlos has known Junpei since the Dcom experiment in December of 2028. During the Decision Game, he led C-team along with Akane and Junpei, and ended up promising to save them at one point. He travelled back in time 10 months in order to save Akane and Junpei from the Decision Game. After Junpei lost his memory, Carlos took him back to civilization, and they ended up surviving through the apocalypse together. They are very close; Carlos acts as a caretaker for Junpei at times, keeping him out of trouble with his mental health and looking after him. Although they bicker-- a show of their comfort with each other, as they don't really fight-- they work very well as a team. Although Carlos would like to be open and honest with Junpei, he has information that he keeps from him unwillingly-- for example, the fact that he knows Akane wiped Junpei’s memories. Carlos has privately expressed romantic feelings for Junpei that he’s had for multiple years but has chosen to not act on or reveal-- he rather devotes his energy towards being as good a friend to Junpei as he can.

Akane Kurashiki
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Ford Pines
trans buddies

Gab
<p style="font-weight:normal;">Carlos recovered Gab from the bomb shelter in Zero Time Dilemma after saving Junpei and Akane and has taken care of him ever since. When moving from the Atchison shelter to the Fresno shelter, Carlos used his shifting abilities during negotiations to keep Gab.

Trivia

 * Carlos once took his cat, Kitty, to prom.
 * Carlos has never dated anyone in his life.
 * His favorite colors are pink, orange, and yellow/gold.
 * Carlos takes his coffee with plenty of sugar and cream.
 * Carlos has a strict 11 PM to 6 AM sleep schedule.
 * Carlos is allergic to latex.
 * I have described Carlos as "the Kanaya of Zero Escape" and I stand by this.

Gallery
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