02
By far one of the grandest villains the universe has ever seen, 02 represents a threat so insurmountable that it is tied to the fundamental fabric of reality itself. Dark Matter isn't going anywhere, and life across all of space is just going to have to deal with that.
Divine Domains
Darkness and all things evil and bad. Gravity.
Divine Symbols & Sigils
The sole staring eye. This symbol is often adorned with triangles or lines for stylised eyelashes, but these shapes actually represent the slashes Zero would open across himself to attack with.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Looks like a wreck. His body type is lean with a long torso, wide shoulders and a narrow waist. His hips are wider than normal to accommodate his large digitigrade legs and long tail. He doesn't look physically unfit, but definitely looks ill. His skin is sallow, and he's got sunken cheeks and eye bags for days. 02 looks like a man risen from the dead, which he is.
Body Features
Has a roughly humanoid figure from the waist up. From the waist down, his skin becomes green and takes on the texture of an old vine. He has muscular digitigrade legs which end in large, monstrous clawed feet. His legs are covered in thorn-like spikes, the same as his tail. This same rough green skin extends most of the way up his spine, ending shortly below the nape of his neck. The spikes run up this line as well, though they are far smaller than the spikes on his tail and legs.
He has six gigantic seraph wings, the feathers of which are white and red. The red feathers fade from deep scarlet to black at the tips.
Notably only has one eye, his right - his other eye is entirely missing, leaving a gory, permanently-bleeding empty socket. He covers this variously with crossed band-aids or a blindfold depending on how bad his self-hatred is at the time.
Has a disk-like golden halo.
In several places on his body, he has odd blue magical scars, left over from the Crystal Gun. The largest is on his chest.
Facial Features
02 has a long face with sharp, pointed features. He has an aquiline nose and a strong brow, thanks to his habit of constantly frowning. He has high cheekbones which are accentuated by his general hollow look. His ears are the longest of any creature with the elf-type ears, and he wears two glass studs in his left ear that are stylised eyes.
Identifying Characteristics
Everything, really. Dark Matter are very identifiable things. Definitely his eye and huge wings.
Physical quirks
02 chooses to float everywhere rather than walk. This is not just because he can, or out of laziness - it's so that he doesn't have to use his legs. He finds them repulsive and does everything he can to forget they exist, so he floats. In addition, he keeps his tail wrapped around his legs to keep it out of sight as well. As a result, the lower half of his body barely moves at all unless he has to sit down, so he can appear strangely motionless while in flight.
He stands very still in general; he tends to either lets his arms hang by his sides or fold his hands into his sleeves.
Doesn't have to blink and often forgets to.
Despite his enormous size and having extra features like a tail and six wings, 02 appears pathetically light at barely five kilograms. This is actually a conscious choice on his part - being the most concentrated lump of Dark Matter in the universe, his actual weight is so high that he would be a walking singularity. He happens to like being able to... you know... interact with things, so he uses his gravity powers to limit his impact on everything around him.
Special abilities
See here.
Apparel & Accessories
The two glass studs in his left ear; his steely armbands; the clasp and jewellery in his hair; strictly speaking his cloak is an accessory but it's actually just his wings shapeshifted.
Specialized Equipment
Has no physical tools that he uses himself, but one of his classic weapons in close combat is a set of blades made out of his own blood.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
02's history started when he mysteriously revived some years after his death during the events of KDL3. At the time, both he and pretty much everyone else had no idea why and how he came back, but it was later learned that it is genuinely impossible to kill him. He's a feature of reality, and at the end of the day his body is essentially just a figurative representation of himself. He - and all darkness by extension - still exists even when "killed". He just takes some time to reform into a recognisable, conscious shape.
02 spent an unknown amount of time paralysed by grief after he first woke up. At this point he was practically still Zero, in personality and power, but now had to deal with the soul-crushing realisation that the one tiny thing he had going for him as Zero was gone - he could no longer feel positive emotions. This ruined him for a very long time, and though he doesn't generally tell anyone about it, he made multiple suicide attempts during this period. None of them worked.
While he never recovered from this blow - and he never really will - eventually he managed to channel a fraction of that energy into raw hatred instead. This was when he started to test out his powers again and explore what he was capable of. It's unclear why - perhaps the change in personality, perhaps the simple fact of him now having been conscious - but resurrecting as 02 came with a total knowledge and grasp of his powers. Compared to his older self, Zero's strength was drastically lower.
Thus began 02's roaring rampage of revenge. He took some time to plan, though not much. This time he was sure to research possible weak points ahead of time, and came to his target: the Power Crystal of Ripple Star. This item hadn't featured in his previous dealings, as he was confined to Pop Star only, but now at his full strength it presented both an irresistible opportunity and an unacceptable liability. His first true move to instigate the events of Kirby 64 was to send a force of drones to Ripple Star to secure the crystal. Even though it was so potently dangerous to him, 02 intended to take the crystal whole and research it, to see if it was possible to nullify or even subvert such objects.
Two waves of Dark Matter were sent to Ripple Star: one to swarm the planet and cover it in darkness en masse, and another to take the crystal. He succeeded with no resistance in possessing the planet, but the fairies' foresight in evacuating the crystal caused him his first error.
While pursuing Ribbon, the crystal was shattered. 02 immediately sent drones far and wide to retrieve or otherwise guard as many of the shards as possible, but this was unsurprisingly a huge setback and forced him to widen his focus across the entire planetary system.
Ripple Star was already totally claimed shortly after Ribbon's escape, but 02 didn't manage the same for the other planets. They were all crawling with Dark Matter and beset by havoc, but he chose not to fully take or destroy any other planets until he had the crystal - and indeed, any other threats - safely in his grasp.
This resulted in Ripple Star being a stronghold for Dark Matter to fall back to as, to nobody's surprise, Kirby rose to the heroic task of ousting darkness once more. 02 himself stayed completely behind the scenes for the entirety of the quest, having created the hidden Dark Star some time prior. There he remained until his final guard was defeated, and the fight finally came to him.
He lost.
But this time, instead of resurrecting into a different form once again, 02 simply... stayed down for a while. He has no control over the revival process, but after his first death, he came back so powerful that his second loss just set him back temporarily. It took some time - months, years - but 02 regenerated, with no permanent damage done.
His intentions had not changed. His rage at the universe still blazed, but over the years, he would find softness as well.
Gender Identity
Genderless just like all Dark Matter. The only reason he uses he/him pronouns is because they're a carry-over from his time as Zero - and even as Zero he didn't choose those himself. He genuinely does not care and has extremely little investment in his presentation and the way people perceive him. His tendency towards masculine presentation is much more a matter of laziness than personal identity.
He can and does take on other appearances and can make himself look perceptibly feminine, androgynous, et cetera. As long as it's clear you're talking to him, he'll answer to any pronoun. Once again, he does not care.
Sexuality
02 has an atrociously hard time with sexuality to begin with, and in reality, there is no true label for his experience, as he can't feel attraction. He can feel lust, as lust is a value-neutral emotion: it is simply a very strong desire for something. For argument's sake, 02 has no preference in sex or gender, and little in the way of physical/body type preferences either. Sexuality is a topic that is almost excruciatingly alien to him.
Education
No formal education. Operates on personal experience and all the knowledge gathered by his Dark Matter network.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Possessed the entire solar system during Crystal Shards - six planets - and fully took over Ripple Star, possessing the Fairy Queen and shattering the Power Crystal.
Non-villanous-motives-wise, he would count his unlikely friendships with Kracko and the Lor crew.
Failures & Embarrassments
Being defeated by Kirby again (at least this time didn't kill him).
Later, any slip-up in his rare positive relationships is generally perceived as a drastic failure on his part. All the times he hurt Magolor and family before he got his shit together.
Gooey.
Mental Trauma
WHERE THE HELL DO YOU EVEN BEGIN WITH 02 LIKE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For real he's got the lot. PTSD from Fucking Dying, absurd anger and violence issues, crippling depression, rock-bottom self image and self-esteem and Oh Yeah Did We Mention The Whole No Positive Emotions Thing
02 is unable to feel positive emotions - his emotional range consists of "negative" and "flat neutral". This is responsible for the vast majority of his mental health issues - going through the world unable to experience any of its pleasures has a massively deleterious effect on a person's mood, as you might imagine. Because of this he is a violent, aggressive wreck with a practically non-existent temper. Beneath all of that, however, he is crushingly sad. Most of the time his anger is a self-imposed attempt to keep the grief at bay, and if you catch him when he's not being actively furious about something, or - gasp - get on his good side, you'll quickly see just how depressed he is.
On top of and because of all that, he is incredibly apathetic. Attempting to spur 02's interest in anything is a mountainous task and it takes him even longer to care about individual people.
Once he does attach to someone, however... he attaches hard. When 02 finally gets it through his nonexistent skull that someone is his friend, he becomes almost desperately protective of them. Love is the sole thing that he desires most - though you'll never get him to admit it - so he can become downright possessive of any friends he actually manages to make. This can strip away a great heap of the anger but tends to kick his anxiety into overdrive; more than once he's been known to (quite literally) shadow Magolor for days, worried that something bad will happen to the wizard.
Intellectual Characteristics
A strangely analytical and logical personality regarding every subject that isn't himself. This results in him being unexpectedly honest and straightforward in most things - he generally doesn't even fight dirty (though he's powerful enough that he never needs to). Known to pretty much never lie.
Morality & Philosophy
Definitely appears to be the epitome of Always Chaotic Evil from the outside, and he is by necessity on the "evil" spectrum for sure, but it's more complicated than that. His base personality and views of the world are simply deeply, deeply embittered and this impacts how he behaves and treats people. He is plenty capable of change, and while he will always by the mere fact of his existence be compelled to do bad things, it is possible to reach him personally. 02's general philosophy is to care about himself and himself only, but once again it's not impossible to befriend him.
Taboos
Love. Sex. Affection and friendship in general. Holy weapons. Kirby. Gooey. The man has a lot of berserk buttons.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
02's motivations and goals are an extension of what they were as Zero, but turned up to eleven now thanks to the scope of his power. He intends to subvert and/or destroy the entirety of reality as cosmic revenge for his pain.
That's the plan, at least, but he is an incredibly apathetic person to the point where it's difficult to motivate him towards his own goals. He is deeply, deeply tired. And, to his good fortune, he's managed to obtain a stable support network of friends who genuinely love and value him. This is where his hidden true goals surface: the man just wants to be loved. Finally having people who do has calmed him down immensely. Nothing will ever remove his rage and grief entirely, and by his own admission he still plans to end it all some day... but maybe he'll wait for his friends to die of natural causes first. He'll outlive them all anyway. It's fine.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Weirdly good at maths - this is a joke about him being the astronomical concept of Dark Matter, which is definitely one of The Most Physics Things Of All Time.
As for ineptitudes, socialising as expanded upon further down.
Virtues & Personality perks
Honesty. For whatever reason, he doesn't lie, basically ever. He doesn't even go for lies of omission; the only time he's been known to conceal things from people is when he's feeling particularly ashamed about something regarding himself and he doesn't want to burden his friends with it.
Reliable. Related to the above, if 02 likes you and you ask him to do something, he will.
Protective. When he finally accepts people into his life and realises that he values them, 02 changes gears entirely into an impassable guardian figure. He doesn't let any ill come to his friends. If he really bonds with someone, this can even extend to him offering emotional support, despite knowing that he's godawful at it. He's a great listener and can give some pretty canny advice when he wants to.
Vices & Personality flaws
everything else about him lmao
Extremely emotionally volatile. Quick to anger. Even quicker to despair. Immensely distrustful - even after being friends with someone for months, years, of them treating him positively and loving him, he still unconsciously can't bring himself to trust fully. This is a trauma response and he can move past it, it just requires a lot of patience.
Doesn't talk about his problems. Self-isolates to the point of almost never leaving the Dark Star, even when he has people he could be spending time with.
Hygiene
Poor. His bad eye is constantly bleeding and instead of trying to clean it or properly staunch the flow, he wipes the blood away from his face with his hair. This is where the red stains in it come from. His good eye also bleeds frequently and according to his emotions, so that adds to it.
Because he is often covered in wounds - and always has great gouges and cuts on his legs thanks to keeping his tail wrapped around them - he actually tries to avoid water. Jumping in while you're covered in injuries hurts, you know.
Aside from the gore-related stuff, because he's 100% inorganic, he's otherwise fine. He doesn't actually need to bathe, and because his shape is totally mutable, he can remove the blood from himself at any time. He just doesn't care to.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Affiliated with the entire crew of the Lor Starcutter via his deep friendship with Magolor. Not everyone aboard the starship is as fond of him as Magolor is (except maybe Star Dream), but by this point they all trust him and welcome his alliance.
Technically the head figure of all branches of the Dark Matter cult even though he finds them all intolerable. He does still occasionally engage with them.
In a romantic relationship with the guardian of Skyhigh's dream fountain, Kracko.
Family Ties
All Dark Matter are referred to as his family even though it's more accurate to call them facets of himself. This makes him the father of all Dark Matter, especially to the independents who actually have fully-realised relationships with him.
Definitely views Magolor as his terrible adopted cat son even though he probably wouldn't admit it.
Religious Views
02 himself is the object of religious worship from the Dark Matter cult, and with good reason, as undeniably the Kirbyverse's most powerful god. The man himself has no religious views, as all other deities are beneath him. He knows they exist. He largely doesn't care. The only other deity he has any particular opinion on was Nightmare, who was a very unique case. Strictly speaking, Nightmare fell under 02's domain as a being of evil, but wasn't Dark Matter. This meant that 02 was the greater deity to which Nightmare would answer, except Nightmare not being a Dark Matter meant that he was a completely free and independent being. He eventually got on 02's bad side by proxy of constantly hunting 02's friends, however, which lead to Nightmare's swift end.
In a very bizarre twist, when Nightmare's position as the god of bad dreams was usurped by Marx, this in turn technically made Marx 02's subordinate.
Social Aptitude
Pathetic. 02 is a black hole into which social skills fall and never return. He's pretty much never even in "social" situations and his roiling mess of a personality means he actively avoids them even so. He gets through most interpersonal interactions by being as terrifying and threatening as possible until the other person goes away or he has to kill them.
Once you get past all that, he's still terrible at socialising, but at least if you're his friend you can tell he means well. He often comes across as if he's reading from a script, because he basically is. He has no idea how to handle positive social interactions and so falls back heavily on rote actions and topics. Like anybody, though, he can learn, and once he genuinely starts becoming comfortable with someone he can be a surprisingly peaceful presence. He doesn't mind long stretches of quiet in conversations and is a great person to just chill with - if his friend is happy doing what they're doing, he'll be there with them and stay out of their way.
Mannerisms
As noted above, he tends to speak in threats and absolutes, because any bad thing he makes up, he can absolutely make happen. He's a frequent employer of any negative expression you can imagine - the lip curl, the ol' eye roll, narrowed eyes. His expression is pretty much always severe, but when calm or among friends he mostly just looks exhausted.
He speaks articulately but bluntly. He says what he means and doesn't waste time getting there. Flowery words and figures of speech are practically unknown in his manner of speaking. Until he is well and truly familiar with someone, he refers to practically everyone with epithets - "the wizard", "the comet", etc. This is a combination of him being intentionally rude and an indicator of how little he cares about people.
Speech
Has a very, very deep voice - I use Ghadius from the Klonoa series as a good estimate of how he sounds.
Sounds like death. On top of his voice being so deep, he always has a slight voice of the legion effect; he speaks in multiple voices at the same time, and they don't always all say the same thing. How audible this is depends on his emotional state; the more riled up he is, the more obvious the other voices get. If you were able to pick the voices apart enough to hear them all individually, they'd be a pretty clear window into his honest thoughts and feelings.
Speaks in the standard Dark Matter accent, though no average Kirbyverse citizen would be able to place it.
Relationships
History
Rocky, to put it extremely lightly. 02 abused Dark Nebula practically since the day Nebula was created; mentally and physically. From the very moment Nebula was created, 02 made it crystal clear that Nebula was an experiment, and a disappointing one at that. Nebula never received any affection or pride from 02 and was constantly compared unfavourably to the other individual Dark Matter. Even though 02's supposed goal for Dark Nebula was to let him grow "organically" and develop a personality and powers without direct modeling from 02, this idea was shot down pretty much immediately by 02's own temperament. The man has difficulty treating people well at the best of times, but as far as he's concerned, all Dark Matter are fair game to take out his fury and self-loathing on - even the ones that have a mind of their own. So Dark Nebula was subjected to a constant stream of such "misdirected" self-loathing, which manifested as anything from verbal abuse to forcing Nebula to be magical target practice for himself and the other independents. In fact Nebula received a much heftier dose of this treatment than the other independents would have in the same situation; Nebula reminds 02 most strongly of his time as Zero, and that's not a memory that 02 is emotionally equipped to deal with. His default coping method for having to recall his previous life is to get extremely furious with whatever caused it - thus, Nebula was practically incapable of not spurring 02's wrath. All of this, as one might expect, shaped Dark Nebula's personality and worldview quite drastically. In response to the constant abuse, Nebula retaliated by growing an ego the size of the moon to cover his own not-insignificant self-hatred. This was quite a task, since from the get-go he inherited a vast amount of it from 02, only to have more artificially layered on top. Nebula loathes 02 with a passion but because of his very nature as a Dark Matter, is pretty much utterly resigned to this treatment. He knows that not only is it impossible for him to truly escape 02, he also knows that it's almost as impossible for 02 to change. Thus, his interactions with 02 often outwardly appear to be normal; Nebula may be quiet and reserved, but he doesn't mouth off or stand against his father. He takes whatever happens to him.
Relationship Reasoning
02 is referred to as the "father" of all Dark Matter, as this is the easiest term to describe his relationship to them. In actuality Dark Matter are simply extensions of himself, but the independents have minds of their own and are therefore able to form more fully-realised relationships with him.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
02 and Dark Nebula share a lot of typical Dark Matter "interests", but Nebula doesn't exactly have a choice in that, of course.
Shared Secrets
Nebula knows everything 02 knows, but in a rare streak of generosity, 02 tends to stay out of the independents' heads. He could access that knowledge in completeness at any time he liked but in general he will only know what an independent shares with him.
Shared Acquaintances
The Lor crew.
History
When they first met, the dark matter and 02 had an antagonistic relationship with Magolor and his family. 02 originally viewed them as a few of many potential weapons in his goal of universal ruin. This changed when 02 came to the family himself to ask for forgiveness... out of loneliness.
Nicknames & Petnames
Magolor has a tendency to give pet names to many people and 02 is no exception. A frequent one is "big guy," and most of the rest are compliment-based related to the conversation he's having.
Relationship Reasoning
02 provided Magolor's family a gift when appealing to their compassion, eliminating one of their other major attackers, Nightmare. This enabled Magolor's family to finally have a sense of peace they'd never had before, and Magolor did not forget this. Despite his initial fears of the man, Magolor softened to him and provided him a great deal of affection. Magolor loves the man dearly now.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
Most of their interactions involve casual conversation and hugs, as this is generally the way Magolor interacts with friends, they also both appear to have a skill for mathematics.
Shared Acquaintances
While they both know Magolor's family members, an individual outside of that system that they both appear to know is Kracko from Skyhigh.
History
When exactly Hyness located and began worshiping the Dark Matter collective isn't entirely known, as 02 has not been awake for all that long, but it could easily be said that Hyness has always been a pest whenever encountered.
Divine Classification
Elder God/Realitymaker
Current Location
Species
Age
As old as the universe.
Circumstances of Birth
Came into existence at the beginning of reality with every other fundamental force.
Circumstances of Death
Died as Zero at Kirby's hands.
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Pronouns
He/him/his.
Eyes
Red sclera with a black iris and white pupil.
Hair
Exceedingly long and dirty white. Wears it plaited towards the ends and it damn near reaches the floor, so un-plaited it probably exceeds seven feet easy. Its style is straight with a side part and a few curled bangs around his face.
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Chalk white.
Height
6'10".
Weight
~5 kilograms.
Ruled Locations
Character Prototype
Lord of evil/fallen angel type.
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