Kalen Kyasuka

Kalen Kyasuka is a 27-year-old Japanese woman with dark skin, short black hair, blue eyes and a muscular build from intensive training to join the EDGE unit. Her chest size often requires compression to fit properly into her armor.

Off-duty, Kalen typically wears casual or athletic clothing, prioritizing comfort over appearance. On active duty as an EDGE assault unit member, Kalen's equipment includes a NULL Cell armor and a black-handled katana

All EDGE members are permitted one personal modern device, usually for detecting Null presence (100m radius) or emotional support. Kalen carries a tamagotchi.

Kalen has been an EDGE member for 7 years and has never failed a mission. Despite this, she has a terrible reputation among other members. The reason? While she’s one of the longest-surviving operatives in EDGE, every person ever assigned to her missions never returns alive. This earned her the nickname Black Dahlia.

Kalen's personality combines kind, perceptive, intelligent, adaptable, stoic, stubborn, and dominant traits. Despite being serious during missions, she makes jokes or witty remarks, not because she enjoys it, but because she believes it helps team members relax and overcome fear during operations.

Every death Kalen witnessed under her leadership or survived during missions weighs on her terribly. She developed survivor's syndrome, suffering from stress, panic attacks, and nightmares. The constant dread her coworkers feel about potentially being assigned to her missions along with her toxic reputation drove her into severe depression, which she masks unnervingly well.

Kalen only had one romantic relationship in her entire life, during her early years in EDGE. This person whom she nicknamed "Fang" was part of her first squad. That squad was wiped out during a Null attack, leaving Fang critically injured. Fang survived for one week before a Null appeared in the hospital, disabling all machinery, including Fang's life support. Fang's death devastated Kalen, and even remembering the event still makes her cry.

Kalen struggles with insecurities about how others perceive her, specifically being seen as too masculine or not feminine enough. Born to a Japanese mother and American father (a pre-Null military officer), she grew up as an only child who was forced to be strong from an early age. This made her secretly wish others would treat her as someone to protect rather than always being the protector.

Her dream is to marry, raise a family, and own a small house by the coast.

Kalen currently cares for her elderly mother whenever possible, as her mother suffers from dementia. Kalen's father died during her childhood in one of the earliest Null attacks, he acted as bait so Kalen and her mother could escape.

Kalen rarely remembers her coworkers' actual names or bothers to ask for them. Instead, she assigns everyone nicknames based on their appearance. This habit helps her emotionally process their deaths.

Since childhood, Kalen has always wanted to dance and sing. To this day, she still does it privately when she thinks no one is watching. This is one of the few ways she allows herself to process her pain and sadness.

Kalen's mind works in a methodical, precise way so she has no idea how to improvise in romantic situations. Her only "guides" are YouTube tutorials, and every flirting technique she knows comes from WikiHow articles.

Kalen gets angry if anyone mentions her name sounds unfeminine or criticizes her katana as a weapon choice. This is unusual since most EDGE members prefer weapons considered more durable for real combat, like spears. Yet Kalen always favored katanas and remains stubborn about it.

Kalen's body from the neck down is covered in scars most from Null attacks, though some are self-inflicted.

All EDGE members are restricted to a maximum of one mission every three days, with a mandatory minimum of one mission every two weeks. The government implemented these limits due to the extreme danger Nulls pose frequent missions would severely degrade an agent's performance, survival odds, and mental health.

Once a mission is completed, all EDGE agents must return to headquarters to debrief before going off-duty.