app for lifeaftr

[fourgasm]

Player Information
Name: Javid
Age: 28
Contact: erlking @ plurk, javid#6941 @ discord
Current characters: Jester

Character Information
Name: Klaus Hargreeves. "Birth name" is Number Four. (Dad wasn't all that interested in naming the children he adopted.)
Series: The Umbrella Academy
Appearance: a mess
Age: 29
Canon Point: Post-Season 1 finale
Canon History:

Link, but it only summarizes up to the fourth episode, so I'll continue up until his canonpoint.

Klaus, upon using the briefcase, was transported back to 1968 and directly into the midst of the Vietnam War. He was presumed to have been a new recruit and conscripted suddenly in the confusion, and he ended up taking part and spent ten months in the military. He met a kind soldier in his brigade named Dave, whom he ended up falling in love with and starting a relationship. At the end of his ten months, while on the front lines, Klaus' brigade took heavy casualties, including Dave, who died in Klaus' arms.

Klaus returned to the present day and immediately had a breakdown, destroying the briefcase so that it could no longer be used. He returns to the Academy to wash Dave's (and his own, and others') blood off of him and recover but is discovered by Five, who immediately recognizes the symptoms of a recent trek through time despite Klaus' attempts to dodge the interrogation. Five discovers Klaus destroyed the briefcase and yells at him, at which point Klaus decides screw this I'm out and wanders off. Five decides to take advantage of the fact that Klaus had stolen the briefcase anyway, and claim to be holding it hostage to draw out the assassins for his own plans.

Meanwhile, Klaus tries to play it cool and act normal and forces Diego to give him a ride. Diego, however, notices quickly that something's off since Klaus is uncharacteristically silent. Klaus has him drop him off at a veterans only bar, where he starts to drink and finds a vintage picture of his (actually quite famous) brigade, with Dave and himself standing side by side. Diego decides to follow him in to confront him and see what the hell Klaus is doing, when they're interrupted by an old war vet who assumes that they shouldn't be there, and is offended that Klaus appears to be masquerading as a vet with his (sleeveless) military jacket and dog tags. Klaus, to Diego's surprise, claims that he is a veteran, but refuses to explain further or be civil in any respect, and lashes out and starts a bar brawl.

The two eventually are kicked out and return to the car. Diego tries to get more answers out of Klaus, and Klaus admits he lost "the only person he ever loved more than himself". Diego, having just recently lost someone as well, understands, but also slightly insensitively says Klaus is luckier than most, since he has the ability to see the dead and thus could interact with his dead loved ones again.

They then spot Hazel out on the street, and Klaus recognizes him as one of his torturers. Diego, still bent on revenge for Patch's death, follows him. Back at the assassins' motel, Hazel and Cha-Cha notice Diego stalking them, but are also called out by Five to ransom for their briefcase. They slip away from Diego (with Klaus just barely saving his brother from getting shot thanks to his inability to follow instruction) and sabotage his car by slashing all the wheels.

So they steal an ice cream truck, as you do.

And they interrupt Five's standoff with the assassins. By crashing said ice cream truck. Into them.

Yes, Klaus was the one driving.

Thanks to the Handler's intervention, everyone leaves the scene, uh, alive, with Five suddenly disappeared again and the assassins' guns mysteriously losing their cartridges.

And here's where time gets weird (again), but this time with feeling. With Five gone, the rest of the family (minus Vanya as usual) regroups and Luther tells them everything Five told him about the impending apocalypse, including the fact that they all die trying to stop it. Vanya returns with Leonard to invite everyone to her concert... only to find that everyone is having a family meeting without her. She is hurt and storms off.

Everyone, meanwhile, disagrees on what they should do about the apocalypse thing. Eventually, they disperse.

Klaus pulls Diego aside and, inspired by Diego's earlier comments, asks him to tie him up. Uh, wait, stop, okay, it's not a sex thing. He doesn't trust himself to stay sober long enough to do it, but he wants to be able to conjure Dave's ghost before the end of the world and see him one more time. Diego agrees to do it and they have a genuine bonding experience.

The moment Diego starts to walk away, however, Klaus stops him. He forgot to pee... before getting tied up.

This is handled offscreen.

As Diego starts to redo the whole tying his brother to a chair thing (totally normal, not weird at all), Klaus attempts to down just one last dose of pills. Unfortunately, thanks to Klaus opening up earlier, Diego won't let him, and the voluntary restraints end up a fair bit less voluntary as Klaus begs, even suggesting he'll conjure Patch for Diego. Diego doesn't budge and leaves him to sit and go through withdrawal alone.

Eventually, Klaus does it. He sobers up enough that Dave's ghost appears to him. He starts to cry from happiness.

And then none of that happened. I did say time got weird. Five returns from his siege of the Commission to... just after Vanya stormed out of the family meeting, thus instantly erasing everything that happened afterward. Hilariously, the implication ends up being that this basically ruined everything and in part sabotages his own attempts to stop the apocalypse and save his family.

Whoops!

So the day happens again, but this time worse! Five announces that he intercepted an order to the assassins to protect someone named Harold Jenkins, who he assumes is the cause of the apocalypse.

Leonard, meanwhile, overhears this on his way out with Vanya.


This time, with Five rallying them, the siblings minus Vanya agree to work together to stop the apocalypse by investigating Harold Jenkins and stopping him. This time, while three of them go to find more info, Luther stays behind because he is convinced that his father's final mission to him, which involved sending various readings down from the moon over the course of four years, has some connection as well. He goes to look for the research he sent his Reginald in his office.

Klaus uh, passes, because he's got a lot of stuff going on right now and he also happens to be in the throes of withdrawal, physical symptoms hitting him hard. He just kind of hovers around the house, still ruminating on the idea Diego planted in his head of seeing Dave one last time. Eventually, he seeks out Luther this time for help tying him up to keep him sober, since he's the only one still home.

Only he finds Luther very drunk on dad's liquor and lamenting the fact that the entire mission to send him to the moon was faked. He'd never even opened the files that were sent down. Reginald literally Planet Hulk'd him for seemingly no reason other than to get rid of him.

And, apparently, his method of coping is to ask Klaus for drugs. He wants to be carefree the way Klaus (apparently) is, because he had been the only one to stay behind and stay loyal to their father only for none of it to matter. Klaus tries to dissuade him, but Luther storms off.

Klaus follows, and starts to wonder if it even really matters, since the world is ending anyway and Luther needs a chance to live life in the way he never could until now. Ben appears and insists that Luther diving headfirst into a "party" lifestyle in response to a negative spiral after a lifetime of being extremely sheltered might have, like, consequences? What convinces Klaus is Ben's insistence that, if the situation were reversed, Luther would do anything to save Klaus.

They manage to find Luther by following the rumors of someone of his particularly unique appearance, leading them to a rave. Where Luther has already apparently taken a bunch of drugs and is currently dancing wildly, completely shirtless, mutated body on display. You know, sort of the opposite of anything Luther would normally do. Klaus is immediately overwhelmed by the loud noise and heavy crowds and flashing lights, likely due to early symptoms of withdrawal. Struggling, he makes his way to Luther to try to convince him to come back home and stay safe. Luther ignores him and tries to pop some ecstasy right in front of him, at which Klaus snatches the tablet from his hand and throws it across the room.

Immediately realizing his mistake(?) as withdrawal starts to hit him harder, he goes after the pill to retrieve it. The act of crawling across the ground, the flashing lights, the chaotic atmosphere, the loud noises... Klaus starts to experience flashbacks to the war. When he finally reaches the pill, he cradles it in his hand and sees Dave's body there instead and starts to have a breakdown on the floor.

Meanwhile, someone's jealous boyfriend is apparently pissed that Luther attracted that someone to dance with him. (He's surprisingly popular at the club??? This is why some fans suspect it's a furry rave but there were NO fursuits so I will deny it to my grave. It's 2019 and everyone's lowkey a furry.) The jealous man gets his friends to go take down Luther, and appear to be packing weapons, which Klaus notices and he hurriedly tries to intervene.

In the struggle, he's thrown to the ground and cracks his head hard on the concrete, passing out. Apparently he hit his head so hard he almost fucking died? He has some kind of surreal out of body experience in a dreamlike place, where he meets a little girl on a bicycle who may or may not be God, who immediately calls Klaus a bitch. He's directed to a solitary cabin, and "God" hints that someone is waiting for him there. Klaus expects Dave. He gets someone he's way less happy to see.

Reginald Hargreeves, apparently now a barber in the afterlife, gives Klaus what he describes later as an incredible shave, but also says a bunch of things that basically prove he was always a terrible person and was never going to change. The important part is, Reginald admits he set up the entire murder mystery himself for the sole purpose of reuniting his adopted children. Apparently he forgot that they all completely understandably hate him. He also hints that Klaus' powers have a lot more potential than Klaus has allowed them to reach. He then starts to say something super important about the apocalypse, but predictably Klaus' body decides to interrupt him by waking up.

While Klaus was busy almost dying for no reason, Luther apparently got escorted peaceably out of the club by security. Cool.

The next morning, Klaus decides to get a little revenge by noisily waking Luther up from his bed, which he apparently decided to share with a woman from the club. Klaus, upon realizing that Luther was a virgin up to this point, loudly mocks his brother. But then he reaches his point: he's calling a family meeting this time.

In Klaus' defense, he does try to help Luther deal with the hangover. Try, because Five instantly steals the full cup of coffee from under Luther's nose.

Klaus explains to Luther and Five (and Ben) what he heard from Reginald's ghost. Since no one takes him seriously, Pogo has to show up and confirm that he was in on the entire conspiracy. This marks the start of a trend where it turns out that Pogo methodically reveals himself to have always been a complicit motherfucker at the most convenient times possible.

Everyone is pretty upset about this, and Klaus is left alone again. He decides to sit in his room and try to teach himself to knit. He has zero idea how to knit. It mostly involves him tangling yarn around a needle ineffectually, but at least he has something to concentrate on other than getting high I guess.

Five eventually bursts into the room and tells Klaus they're leaving.

"To save the world."

"Oh, is that all? Great."

Reluctantly, Klaus puts up his needles and yarn. Five is basically going full conspiracy theory at this point about Reginald's murder set up, and how it relates to the imminent apocalypse. Since apparently everyone else's brooding, Five has decided to conscript Klaus into some kind of plan to stop Harold Jenkins from causing the apocalypse.

Luckily for Five, Diego arrives home from breaking out of jail. Long story. He explains that Allison is in danger, and I guess offscreen he fills Klaus in on the fact that Vanya's boyfriend, Leonard, is actually the notorious Harold Jenkins. And is also kind of obsessed with the Umbrella Academy, in a really creepy sort of way. Realizing how dire the situation is, with Allison confronting Leonard and Vanya alone, they stop to retrieve Luther as well. Apparently, he's still not done getting drunk over the whole dad betrayal thing, but the moment they mention Allison is in danger he rushes into action as well.

With all their dillydallying, they end up finding Allison alone, on the ground, bleeding profusely from her throat. Whoops? They rush her home to be patched up by Grace, who says that Allison has lost so much blood she will need a transfusion, fast. Literally every person in the room offers their blood instantly. After Luther is informed his blood is now incompatible due to his mutation, Klaus steps in heroically, declaring his love for needles. Pogo stops him, citing the reason that Klaus's blood is much too polluted.

They use Diego's.

As Allison recovers, Klaus reaches a breaking point in the life of sobriety. He searches his room for drugs, while Ben tries to argue with him. Klaus explains that being sober has gotten him nowhere, he still can't conjure the man he loves, and no one takes them seriously even when he's not high. If life sucks either way, why not just be numb? Ben takes offense, saying that life is meant to be hard, that bad things happen, that good people die.

"Wow, playing the dead card again, huh? You need new material, bro."

"I was talking about Dave."

Klaus seems to respond to that, agreeing with Ben and apologizing. And then the moment Ben turns his back, he yells psych and shoves a bunch of random pills in his mouth.

Ben punches him in the face.

Yeah, Ben. The ghost. The pills go flying out of Klaus's mouth, but Klaus is distracted from the loss of the drugs now. He thinks Ben did something to physically manifest somehow, but Ben is sure that Klaus was responsible.

Point made, Klaus reconvenes with the family. He's distracted, ruminating on what just happened as everyone argues about the whole Leonard thing. As they start to spring into action to track him down, Klaus tries to weasel out of it. He argues that he's pretty much useless anyway, but Five isn't having it. Klaus says they can't make him go with them, which Diego instantly disproves by throwing a knife dangerously close to his nethers.

They track down Harold/Leonard and uh, apparently he died at some point. Very bloodily. Cool, apocalypse problem solved.

Unable to find Vanya to tell her the good news or whatever the plan is there, Diego gets antsy about his revenge plot and goes off on his own, leaving just Five and Klaus. Five tries to grill Klaus about his encounter with their father, but doesn't get much, while Klaus is more focused on trying to figure out what Reginald said about his potential and how that might relate to the incident with Ben.

Five basically ignores everything Klaus has to say and berates him for not being sober, still focusing on the apocalypse despite the fact that the problem now seems solved. Klaus indignantly says that he's been sober for almost two days, which to him feels like forty-five years. Klaus says they are both fighting their addictions. Five gets incredibly angry at being compared to Klaus, but Klaus insists that all the signs are there: Five is obsessed with the apocalypse to the detriment of all other aspects of his life, to the point that he has no idea who he has without it. In Klaus's eyes, it's the same as his own drug habit. Five storms off.

Meanwhile, Allison wakes up at last and communicates that Vanya had powers all along. Pogo confirms he totally was in on it the whole time, yet again. Vanya was the one who had attacked Allison.

When Vanya finally returns to the house, shaken by her belief that she accidentally killed her sister, Luther immediately imprisons her in one of Reginald's fucked up child containment cells. Diego and Klaus are... slightly concerned. Klaus, particularly, is reminded of his own confinement. Klaus has a hard time believing that Vanya's powers could be as destructive as Luther claims, and even if they were, he could never see Vanya being one to use them to hurt anyone. Both Klaus and Diego argue vehemently for Vanya's release, and Allison arrives to join them, trying to physically free her. But none of them can overpower Luther, who was superhumanly strong even before his mutation.

Everyone gives up on trying to convince Luther. They leave Vanya, and Klaus continues to focus on trying to practice the new physical aspect of his power with Ben.

It doesn't take long for Vanya to tap into her newfound powers, completely destroying her subterranean cage so explosively that everyone in the house is alerted immediately. At this point, Vanya has been pushed to her breaking point.

She leaves destruction in her wake as she passes through the caverns, into the mansion, through the halls. Everyone starts to panic and try to evacuate the building before it collapses. Klaus and Diego try to find their mother to get her out, but start to get caught up in the explosions shaking and breaking apart the building. At the last second, Ben once again physically manifests to pull both Klaus and Diego out of the way of the collapsing ceiling. Unable to find Grace and the building coming down around them, they hurry outside to safety.

They realize now that Harold Jenkins was only the original cause of the apocalypse, but Vanya was the weapon.

The remaining siblings regroup at a bowling alley to try to figure out what to do about their problem sister. Most of them understandably take issue with the idea of simply killing her. Klaus realizes while looking at a newspaper and not paying attention that Vanya must be at her orchestra's concert, which happens to be today. Diego then takes the time to thank Klaus for saving his life, but Klaus finally comes clean (because Ben is standing right there watching him get the credit) about the fact that he now seems to be able to manifest Ben physically. Yet again, no one believes him.

He tries to give them proof by throwing a bowling ball directly at his dead brother. Thankfully, it simply passes right through him. Everyone is pretty angry at Klaus for seemingly trying to be the center of attention at a completely inopportune time. Klaus, lashing back, accidentally drops the bomb that Luther slept with a girl from the rave, and Allison leaves in a huff, Luther following after her.

A rando shows up and suggests that Five, apparently a thirteen-year-old boy, should be bowling with kids his own age, suggesting he join her son Kenny's birthday party. You know, if it's okay with Five's "two dads." Five reacts... the way he usually does. With threatening violence. Diego says even if he was attracted to men he would never be attracted to Klaus, and Klaus simply says he would be lucky to have him.

Yes, that was extremely important to recount in this history write up.

Five wanders off to go fall into the Handler's trap, while the rest reconvene and realize they have very little time left to stop Vanya from turning her orchestra into an instrument of mass distraction. Get it? Instrument?

Anyway.

With Five distracted, the Commission's realized that the entire family is now an issue, and sends some people to shoot up the bowling alley. Klaus birthday cakes a man to death. They escape.

Finally at the performance, Allison insists she try to reason with Vanya alone. Luther, surprisingly, relents... because he wants to use her as a distraction while they incapacitate Vanya. Klaus is given lookout duty. Realizing he's just being pushed out of the way, Klaus just goes and gets a burrito.

The Commission takes the opportunity to storm the orchestra hall, with the intention to do whatever it takes to ensure Vanya destroys the world.

Ben, very belatedly, overhears the gunfire going off within the building. Meanwhile, Cha-Cha, covered in blood, arrives on the scene; finally, Klaus does his job as the lookout and runs in to alert the others. He provides the perfect distraction for the others to start to fight back against the gunmen. In the chaos, Klaus's powers react to the violence around him and he manifests Ben completely, allowing him to appear visible to everyone. Ben takes the opportunity to use his own powers to incapacitate like half the entire room. He totally rips a guy in half and everything.

Vanya uses her violin to wreak havoc. Luther's plan at this point is for all of them to rush at her from all angles, a suicide mission in the hopes that at least one of them can get through the waves of destruction and incapacitate Vanya. Allison is the only one still committed to not hurting their sister, desperate for a peaceful solution.

The plan instantly fails. As Klaus and his brothers are about to be killed, Allison sneaks up behind Vanya with a pistol. Rather than taking the opportunity to shoot her, she uses the proximity of the fired gun to temporarily deafen Vanya, cutting off the source of her powers: sound.

Unfortunately, this redirects a massive amount of energy directly at the moon, destroying it.

As everyone celebrates having saved the world, Klaus notices chunks of the moon coming down onto the earth. Whoops, apocalypse still on.

There's one last gambit. Five suggests he attempt to time travel all of them for a second chance. Everyone, including Vanya, is transported through time as the world is destroyed around them.

Personality:

What most people see when they look at Klaus is a carefree, hedonistic, deadbeat junkie. In a sense, this is partly true. He's pretty hedonistic, sure, and his lifestyle is heavily implied to have long been involving doing whatever it takes to scrounge up enough cash to chase the next high, never settling down for long and taking advantage of anyone who so much as accidentally offers help. He doesn't drive, doesn't work, doesn't pay if he can help it, and he gets around by mooching off of anyone he can.

To those that are familiar with this kind of life, it's clear that Klaus is definitely not quite as carefree as he seems. The drugs he uses are to numb himself from years of abuse and trauma, not to mention his power to see the dead that he's terrified of. And that's not to mention what he goes through during the series proper. He already had a form of PTSD, but it worsens and compounds over the course of the season, and he starts to more regularly experience flashbacks and breakdowns. He copes by self-medicating and self-deprecating and just saying whatever he thinks might be the funniest thing in that particular moment. Seriously, though, he does not shut up, even in potentially lethal situations. He annoys the shit out of his own kidnappers.

Of course, the fact that he uses humor to deflect from anyone looking too deeply at him has the awful side effect of... no one looking too deeply at him. No one takes him seriously, even in cases where he's being logical, because no one expects an honest or deep thought from his mouth, and he has no practice in being openly vulnerable. He's a little sensitive about this, despite the fact that it's an effect of his own making; he frequently spirals because he feels like no matter what he does to try to turn his life around or improve himself, no one will care or even believe he's serious about it.

The thing is, he can be surprisingly competent and sharp if the situation calls for it (and he's not high out of his mind at the time). For example, when Five brings Klaus along to interrogate someone, solely using him because he's the one least likely to ask any questions about why he needs to pretend to be Five's dad, Klaus ends up being the one turning the situation into their favor by taking charge and using unconventional methods to pressure the unfortunate target. Five seems to even be impressed for a moment, at least until Klaus opens his mouth again and pure idiocy comes out. And then, of course, he survives the front lines of the Vietnam War.

Klaus is clearly a mess of contradictions in eyeliner. He's selfish, obviously, doing whatever he can to look out for himself, but he's equal parts compassionate. Flashbacks to his childhood make it seem like it's more in his nature to be a source of comfort and a kind person in general until he grew to learn to be selfish out of necessity in order to survive. He's shown to be surprisingly empathetic when it comes to the pain of others, though this doesn't always manifest in the nicest way. Sometimes he just uses it to lash out in an argument. His one fatal flaw is his cowardice, which prevents him from a lot of things in life, missing opportunities and hardly realizing any of his own potential.

But most of the time, when left to his own devices, he's a victim of his own impulses, he's reckless, he doesn't listen to anyone, he's attention-seeking, and he can't seem to make himself care about anything up to and including the literal apocalypse. Basically, he's got a long way to go, despite the fact that he's sort of working on improving himself.

Abilities:

Klaus has the ability to see the dead. Normally, he can only speak to them, and they are completely incorporeal. There are some suggestions that a dead person is more likely to manifest if they have some connection to the area or to Klaus himself. The most obvious example is Ben, the ghost Klaus sees most often and most easily since they were close in life before Ben's death. He also was able to manifest Dave in the overwritten timeline, due to their connection despite the fact that Dave had no connection to the area in which Klaus was. This might also be why it's more difficult for him to manifest Dave otherwise; the only catalyst is Klaus himself, whereas Ben usually has a connection to the places Klaus hangs out since they grew up together.

Other examples: When Klaus was locked in the mausoleum as a child, he was harassed by ghosts who presumably were the people buried there. When Klaus started seeing ghosts while he was captured by Hazel and Cha-Cha, they were all the spirits of people who were killed by the two assassins.

As the series progresses, Klaus finds that his aversion to his own power has avoided its full manifestation. He starts to be able to physically interact with spirits, although it has only been Ben at this point. Eventually, he can even make it so Ben can interact with others. This happens very occasionally and Klaus has very little control over it, and it only seems to happen in tense situations. Ben's own desire to interact with Klaus seems to come into play as well, such as when he punched him during their argument, although it may be suggested that Klaus subconsciously wanted to be stopped as well.

Little is known about this aspect of his power at this point, and Klaus has very little control over it.

One important aspect of this power, however, is that when Klaus self-medicates with drugs and alcohol, it numbs him to the point of the powers not working entirely. Even if he starts to sober up, as long as any intoxication is still in his system, the only ghost he can see is Ben, due to their strong connection. He has to be entirely or at least mostly sober (and withdrawing) to see anyone else. However, if he is completely intoxicated, even Ben can't manifest.

Anyway.

Inventory:

The clothes on his back. He happens to be wearing bowling shoes at the time too. It's all very inconvenient. He doesn't even have drugs on his person at this canon point. And he lost his half-eaten burrito. Everyone press F on the world's smallest keyboard.

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Thread Sample:

TDM Toplevel
TDM thread with Ben