Killy

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Killy is a fictional character from the manga BLAME!, by Tsutomu Nihei.

Killy is person who is on the unenviable task to find a human with the Net Terminal Gene within the Megastructure to access the Netsphere. He is equipped with a Gravitational Beam Emitter (GBE), a petite but awesome weapon capable of creating holes miles long in the Megastructure. He is soon joined by Cibo in his quest.

Looking to be in his early to mid 20's (Once saying that his "growth period is over."), he is a glum looking person, never smiling (except madly when shooting on occaision) and has a slight slouch in his normal standing position, he isn't afraid to fight, and readily shoots the GBE. He also often shows superhuman strength and endurance, being thrown through solid walls and floors before standing right back up with no apparent injuries. The GBE is so powerful that he's flung backwards by its sheer power, often into walls and the ground, but he always gets up. Even in its lowest power, his arm jerks up and back from the force of it. During the encounter with the giant Safeguard outside Toha Heavy Industries, he fires at the Safeguard with the GBE at Level 4 Extra power level. The recoil from the GBE is so powerful that he is thrown back a considerable distance, his right arm badly broken and exposing bone and tissue. He heals very quickly, as well, recovering from more serious injuries much more rapidly than an average human. In the times when it's quiet, he injects drugs into himself in the forehead, and when he's low on power, he may inject it straight into his hand.

It seems he was equipped with cybernetic enhancements, as he has an electronic connector to create signals to stop Builders and to transmit information from one person to himself, and vice versa. He also has no memory of his past, or how he obtained the GBE. He also mistrusts Silicon Creatures on sight, and disposes of them whenever he can; the fact that they had not been hostile towards him nor his objectives does not appear to bare weight on his judgement. This is most clear in the chapter, "The Observer", when Killy killed a harmless Silicon Creature, observing the city's limits - upon which, his current companion, a small memory reservation asked him why he did it. His reply was, "That was a Silicon Creature."

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From Volume 3 onwards, it turns out that Killy is not really human after all. In her attempt to register Killy as a Safeguard, Sanakan, intentionally or not, (re)enabled Killy's Safeguard functions. During the encounter outside Toha Heavy Industries, where he was knocked out from using too much power from firing the GBE, we see from his point of view that he can now scan for the NTG automatically. Zuru asks him if anything is wrong, and we see his viewpoint, filled with little windows and analysing the eyes of the person, along with other unknown elements.

This is where he leaves the room and immediately scans the people outside, even Cibo, who is unaware of his change. However, he senses a strange reading from one of them, even a small x-ray showed up with a metallic endoskeleton. It was Sanakan, as she was one of the Safeguard, she then activates her functions and starts destroying things with her own GBE. He then apparently 'rejects registration with the Safeguard', and Sanakan tries to kill him, only to be defeated for the time being.

Another attack at the same place involved many Safeguard Exterminators, and one large creature, who possessed a GBE much larger than Killy himself. After shooting the creature with the GBE at full power (let's call this Level 4), it hit it, but made little damage. He then later powered up further by connecting himself to several of the now dead SG he killed, to power up his GBE to Level 4 Extra, blasting through the creatures own GBE beam, and destroying it completely.

Later in the manga, Killy is shown to be able to see objects as far away as 3,000 kilometers using his naked eyes. This contrasts his need for binoculars in the volume 1 of the manga.

According to the Governing Agency, Killy is 'a secret agent from a pre-Safeguard system'. Essentially, he's the same as other Safeguard, except he's not hostile to humans. As his journey continues, we see that he no longer uses the drugs he once injected often. We see that he heals from his wounds quickly, and occasionally see him repairing himself. The drugs are probably nanobots that are used to repair damage, as in the past he had no conscious memory of who he was, and thus couldn't activate his 'self-repair mode'.

Another factor is that the GA obviously knew who Killy was, so another possibility was that he was 'rejected' for whatever reason from the pre-Safeguard system, and thus left deep inside the Megastructure. When the 'state of chaos' appeared inside the Megastructure (the constant expansion of the city, the Silicon Creature infestation, and the Safeguard running amok)he was reactivated and sent on his quest for the Net Genes. As the Safeguard were introduced at the same time as the Silicon Creatures, perhaps Killy was pre-programmed to kill all Silicon Life, as well as to find the NTG, and to take his 'drugs' periodically. This is all speculation, but in one way, it makes sense.

Killy's outfit changes three times throughout the manga, be it from regenerating new tissue, getting an arm ripped off, or even losing 40.82% of his body mass. He has also been alive for a very long time, when he lost the latter amount of body mass, it took him over 14 years to regenerate the lost mass, and we know that a lift trip took a minimum of 33 days. Tsutomu Nihei, the author of the manga himself, stated that Killy is over 3000 years old and his memory loss is merely a side-effect of his aging (it seems that even cybernetic bodies have their limits).

Eventually, he reaches the edge of the city with the NTG carrier, and in the last frame of the manga, he is shown to be alive and well, firing his gun past the camera, with the NTG carrier behind him, clothed in protective gear against the poison the SC introduced.

Tsutomu Nihei
Works
Blame! | NOiSE | Biomega | Net Sphere Engineer | Abara | Digimortal
BLAME! characters and structures
Killy| Cibo | Sanakan | Graviton Beam Emitter | Net Terminal Genes |