Post by SA Dr. John Clark on Jun 9, 2011 20:54:08 GMT -5
JohnNMNClark
General Information
Full Name| Complicated, as subject is an amnesiac. The codename "Rattlesnake" and the identity given to him by FBI HQ as "Clark" is the only name even he knows for himself, aside from another codename from his former life he's trying to leave dead and buried... the complications of having already died and gone to Hell once and for some reason being given a second chance at life don't help either.) Has assumed the name "John Clark" for the duration of his FBI employment.
Birthday| Summer 1980.
Age| Chronologically 30-ish, accelerated maturity means intellect, wear and appearance closer to 40-45. (As of Summer 2011.)
Gender| Male.
Occupation| Former: covert operative, journalist, freelance historian, executive-protection. Current: junior Special Agent with FBI Division Six, sometime hobbyist-gunsmith, freelance development engineer and basement-inventor/"mad scientist". Bureau position contingent on pending graduation from FBI Academy (which has allowed a special "Distance Learning" program so he can complete his courses from the field.)
Sexual Orientation| Straight. Awkward to describe, as his only experience in this matter was with Director Shepard at NCIS, a few days before she died.
Education| AAS in Business. MA in WWII Studies, BA in Psychology (was a Psych/History double-major), pending PhD's in Military History and Forensic Psych, and planning a program in Vertebrate Paleontology.
Appearence
Play by/ Face claim| Face, Ronald Lacey, ca. 1981 (Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark look), normal business voice Edward Woodward (Robert McCall from '80s TV show The Equalizer).
Hair Color| Brown with odd single gray hairs, thinning and hairline receding. ("Male Pattern Baldness" early stages.)
Eye Color| Brown, never seen--subject requires near-permanent wear of polarized filtered optics due to extreme light sensitivity.
Body Style/Build| Five-by-five. Short and portly, but deceptively capable for his apparent bulk.
Height| 5'4"-5"6", depending. When provoked to the brink of killing rage, actually gains two measured inches from spine and posture adjustments for a maximum of 5'8".
Weight| 180-210lbs. bare, depending on season and other variables. Huge frame-size plus being massively over-built in skeletal structure and deeper-than-normal ribcage/abdominal wall (and a full 10% below normal body water-weight percentage yielding higher "dry weight" proportion) mean much lower body-fat than appearance would lead one to believe. Out the door weight 300, due to an armored shell bolted together around his torso that acts as a functional replacement for a ruined spinal column.
Tattoos| None.
Piercings| None.
Overall Appearance| Pale complexion with not-quite-Fester Addams dark circles around the eyes from chronic lack of sleep and minor rosacea. Caffeine addict. Severe hand tremors mean all field notes are taken on an iPad, netbook or laptop for sake of readability--hand is only steadied by around a 3lb. weight (which is, coincidentally, the weight of an M1911A1 .45-caliber pistol). Will only be seen in either "Men In Black"-styled black suits, or WWII-like khakis styled after those worn by his hero (and later to be revealed, one of his mentors even if as a ghost) General Douglas MacArthur. Wears extensive bracing over most of his spinal column and legs. Basic appearance could be described as "Heavyweight, Mini-Me MIB".
Personality
Likes| His girlfriend and "children." Well-crafted weapons, historical miniatures wargaming, all things WWII or Old West. History, science and technology. Huge fan of R. Lee "Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann" Ermey, who he quotes regularly. The BAU team, who he's worked both alongside and against and hopes to stick with a while. Collects historical wargaming miniatures (primarily the Wings of War, Axis & Allies Miniatures and A&A: War at Sea lines), model B-52 bombers, historical American military small-arms and plush sharks. His friend and weapons instructor Mas Ayoob, who he takes classes with at every opportunity, though with the catalog near exhausted he may need to move studies to Thunder Ranch.
Dislikes| Communists (Soviet Commies put a death mark on a very close friend). Politicians. Terrorists in general, Islamist terrorists and especially the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in particular (another "death-mark-on-a-friend" grudge match). Most mass-market beers, which he disdainfully calls "pXXX-water macrobrews"--about the only ones he'll drink are Guinness or Rolling Rock, the latter introduced to him by friend and gunfighting mentor Mas Ayoob. (Note: Ayoob connection is carryover from RP'er to character.) Agent Strauss. DO NOT mess with Texas, particularly the Alamo, in his presence.
Special Skills| Unique insight into the mind of assassins (having been one for various cloak-and-dagger government agencies). MacGyver/Michael Westen-like gadgeteering (was once DARPA's "golden boy" for tech R&D, and thanks to that still has access to or custody of a lot of Pentagon hardware, even requisitioned and got a fully-armed B-52 on short-term loan once). Natural-born profiler. Holds all available FAA pilot and mechanic certifications, and is type-rated on most aircraft flying today and even a few that are all but extinct. Basically, if you can get a Greyhound bus off the ground he can fly it.
Strengths| Eidetic memory. Encyclopedic knowledge. Fast reflexes. Can engage two targets at once with his double-brace of .45s due to enhanced peripheral vision and audio direction-finding. Fanatical loyalty. Devotion to perceived duties and Warrior Mindset such that he's been called "American Samurai" by some that know him, including at least one legitimate descendent of the original Japanese samurai. Master with most firearms--qualified Distinguished Expert on almost everything from .22LR to 155mm howitzer--and multiple-time President's Hundred winner at the National Match marksmanship competitions, but cannot hit the broad side of a barn from inside with any Glock or Beretta 92/96/M9-family pistol. Master of "outside the box" thinking. Redundant "dual-core" mind allows him to take psychological damage that would kill anyone else and still press the engagement. All 5 senses enhanced beyond human normal in some areas. Instinctive "Threat Warning Receiver" sense borders on low-grade clairvoyance.
Weaknesses| His family and friends. All the standard downsides of full-house Asperger's Syndrome (see Reid, and imagine a gunfighter version). Strong sense of "honor" can be crippling, despite being the "amoral" person in the room. Assimilative personality means real risk of developing into whatever subject he profiles. Easily goaded into competing with SSA Reid, despite having a 30-point IQ disadvantage. Still blames himself for Shepard's death, as she ordered him to stay behind at NCIS and assist Gibbs and McGee while she took Ziva and DiNozzo as her protection detail, the one time he has ever overruled his own never-wrong instincts and he sees the facts as being his obeying an order against his better judgment killed a woman he loved and who was trying to help him out of his "Devil's Bargain" at NSA. Poor upper-body strength due to misshapen upper torso and odd upper-ribcage angles; struggles with controlling some rifles and shotguns "from the shoulder" for same reason. Very slow runner, easily winded and with severe shin-splints. Occasional severe leg cramps can render him temporarily paraplegic, crippled from the waist down; not even his power-assisted exoskeleton helps with this. Goes "Batcrap Freakin' Postal" if not all-out "Baghdad" when Reid, Prentiss, or his "children" are threatened. Not totally sane. "Dual cores" make for a distinct "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde" or "David Webb/Jason Bourne" kind of split personality. Occasionally veers off into tangents of how various historical Warrior's Codes including Bushido say to address a problem, leading insight to sometimes be easily but not always correctly dismissed as "more of that mystical mumbo-jumbo samurai BS." Enhanced senses come with tradeoffs, like being nearsighted, seeing better to the side than straight ahead and almost deaf to certain audio frequencies and from specific angles, along with vulnerability to migraine-inducing "Sensory Overload" triggered by bright lights (or prolonged exposure to unfiltered normal light) or high-frequency audio (subject can actually hear some dog-whistles). "Threat Warning Receiver" sense only registers for threats to him, requiring a "Diversion" protective strategy of goading the hostile to refocus on him instead of the original intended target.
Habits| Always carries a bullet with his name on it. Off-duty can frequently be found at MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk or the Alamo in San Antonio communing with the spirits of his long-dead mentors, or out in the bone beds of the Southwest during the digging season. DO NOT threaten him with death, particularly by suicide-bomber, as it WILL backfire. ("Oh, great, another damn-fool human bomb. wasn't impressed when I faced one in high school, ain't impressed now. *yawns, stretching* Why can't you idiots ever come up with something ORIGINAL?") Very picky about his weapons; usual carry is a .45 once owned by MacArthur (on semi-permanent loan from the MacArthur Memorial) and another once carried by his great-uncle when he was hunting Nazi SS with General Patton, with preferred long-arms being a customized M14 rifle, a shot-out-and-almost-scrapped FBI Thompson submachine gun (which he's removed the stock from and refit with the original "Chicago Typewriter" vertical foregrip, along with lovingly rebuilding it to Better Than New condition and never-before-seen-for-the-type accuracy), a custom-built Saiga-12 shotgun named Abomination, modeled after one in a friend's novels, or a Remington 1740 (two Remington 870's joined together into one massive, heavy, butt-ugly double-barreled pumpgun). Sometimes carries a katana that was a personal gift from Emperor Akihito of Japan along with a personal samurai battle-flag, which this "American Samurai" considers among his most treasured possessions.
Fears| Dogs. Failure. Crustaceans (seriously, show this guy a crab even if it's dead with no warning and he either screams and runs or draws down on it right there--don't get one within ten feet whatever you do unless he has time to prepare a defensive position). Losing someone who means as much to him as Director Shepard did again.
Goals in Life| Not go back to Hell! Other than that, settle down, preferably wooing his favorite profiler to do so, and start a family. Or at least find a "mother" for his AI "children" before he dies again... and "if the opportunity miraculously happens, getting a Moonshot would be pretty cool too".
Overall Personality| An "anti-hero" archetype, but one seeking redemption for his past sins. Seen it all, done it all, still wraps himself in the trappings of his dark past to hide the limits imposed by inner nobility (think a Black Knight turned White, but still keeping his old colors and rep for a "shield"). Always operates on the assumption that each day could very easily be his last; while he calculates the consequences of his actions very carefully, still boils down to an "I might not see the next sunrise anyway, so what've I got to lose" attitude. Fits the following tropes: Insufferable Genius, Badass Bookworm, Berserk Button, Big Brother Instinct (can be pushed into Knight Templar Big Brother), Magnificent Bastard. Regular practicioner of tropes: Fun With Acronyms, Precision F Strike (usually with Genius Bonus), Single Issue Wonk (well, four instances--don't wind him up on Communism, terrorism, defense/military issues or so-called 'gun control'), And Some Other Stuff, Batman Gambit, Bond One-Liner, Deadpan Snarker (and particularly vicious one at that), Awesome By Analysis, Genre Savvy, Xanatos Gambit.
History
Hometown/Nationality| Seattle area. Thanks to a friend high in management at Nauticus, Quantico-area alternate residence is a closed-to-visitors section of the officers' quarters aboard the mothballed battleship Wisconsin in Norfolk. ("Rent" is one weekend a month as a tour guide and two weeks a year of Restoration & Preservation work.) Usually lives out of either his desk, his girlfriend's place or his private R&D firm's hangar on the Marine base's Turner Field.
Parents| Doesn't talk about them--ever. (Total estrangement.)
Siblings| None.
Significant Other| SSA Paige Whyn, a profiler who Division Six has their eye on to recruit.
Kids| Biologically none. Two artificial-intelligences, KARR (installed into a 1980s Firebird modeled after the AI's namesake, KITT's "evil twin," but also further customized into a speculative "what KARR might have become if reprogrammed and rebuilt") and Blackout (a second-generation AI adapted for air/spacecraft control, C3I* and electronic warfare, package designed for easy fit to any digitally-controlled aircraft but usually "incarnated" as a heavily modified military-surplus Sikorsky MH-53 helicopter whose acquisition was facilitated by DARPA as a technologies testbed.)
*Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence--basically, all these capabilities make Blackout a combined Sentry AWACS, JSTARS surveillance platform, Predator recon drone and E-4 Nightwatch airborne command-post, all in a footlocker-sized package.
Other Relations| Distant descendant of Col. David Crockett (which explains his "spectral mentorship"). Very close to most of his ex-professors, but takes great pains to isolate them from the rest of his "current life," as with everyone else from "former life." Primary medical care providers are Dr. Donald Mallard in the NCIS morgue, the doctor who originally pronounced him clinically dead only to have him reawaken a few days later on the table while prepping for autopsy, and Dr. Gregory House (who took the case simply for the challenge of it). Friend of New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia (note: roleplayer is one in real life), who frequently advises about keeping Abomination cutting-edge. Outside that, his sometimes-allies/onetime-opponents at the BAU are just about the only lasting living human contacts he has, though he does seem to be a magnet for ghosts, shades and other paranormal entities and calls a few of them friends as well; those connections are what lets him truthfully say he learned to fly combat from the Red Baron and pistolcraft from Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
Overall History| A literal "dead man walking." Recruited to FBI by Reid's old friend "John" (remember the Michael Ironside character at Reid's NA group?) to the FBI with an undeclared "secondary mission" as Reid's bodyguard, but hopes to earn a position in the BAU in his own right despite his very brief tenure. Close ties to both Jethro Gibbs's NCIS MCRT and the BAU, as both seem to have had UNSUBs target Principals he was hired to protect on a distastefully regular basis. (Plus having been briefly and mistakenly hunted by the BAU as an UNSUB himself once while on his own molehunt for NSA--"For once, it's good to be on the same team!") Profiling/investigative specialties: Assassination/Stalking, Terrorism, Espionage, Insurgency/Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency, Political/Ideologically-Motivated Crimes. With KARR and/or Blackout assisting, passable with Cyber Crimes as well.
About the Roleplayer
Name| Will answer to just about anything, "DB" being commonly-used shorthand on many forums. (Sorry, I guard my anonymity very carefully, having been very close to--and in one case employed as Executive Protection for--individuals with stalker problems IRL.)
Age| 31.
Experience| Not much, but a little. A few boardmates on a forum dedicated to the 1930s-'50s and I used to run an "online radio serial", and I used to be part of a server for the Microsoft space-sim Freelancer that was real heavy on RP. Beyond that, I do have one thing going for me: I've played the "Gunfighter Psychologist" game for Real Marbles, and the fact that my Principal and I are both still alive and breathing I believe should be testament to firsthand knowledge of what we're writing about. (Not trying to beat my own chest, just saying writing what you know makes the going a lot easier.)
Sample roleplay|
[to Strauss]"I've already died and gone to Hell once. After that, ain't nothin' you got that can intimidate or scare me... though you do have a singular gift for pXXXing me off." [OR] "You get off on annoying people, don't you?!"
[to Hotch]"Sometimes, that woman (Strauss) makes me wish Dr. Mallard had proceeded with my autopsy..."
[to JJ]"I know Will and Henry keep your hands full, but if something happens to me, would you be willing to adopt KARR?" (note: speculative, haven't figured out who on team would be best fits to adopt his AI's)
[chasing an UNSUB through the passages and compartments of USS Wisconsin, yelling over the 1MC*]"Guess YOU picked the wrong rec-room to break into! That's right, this ain't just a deactivated old ship, it's MY HOUSE, [REDACTED]!" (throws some switches to kill all shipboard lighting) "I know this ship like the back of my hand, and I can see just fine in the dark. Do you feel lucky, knowing that when I find you I'm gonna kill you as a home-invader in accordance with Virginia law, or do you wanna quit running and fighting and discuss options that might let you leave this ship alive?" (off mic, aside over team radios) "Prentiss, Morgan, Rossi, you still have those IFF tags I gave you so we don't shoot each other? Reid, Garcia, you got him on infrared? Hotch, can you give me a Go/NoGo for operation as planned? Blackout, you ready on air support with those floodlights?"
*1MC is a warship's version of a public-address system.
EDITED with recent developments Feb 2012.
