Alias: Mug ShooAge: 37 Yrs
Gender: Male
Appearance:6' 2" / 183.5 lbs
Olive complexion, black eyes, dark brown hair. Stocky build; thick limbs and digits with broad shoulders and feet. Squared features all around, especially evident with jawline. A patent pattern of sunk-in wrinkles scar his forehead. Five o' clock shadow speckles chin, cheeks and upper lip. Bulky nose with equally prominent, bushy eyebrows that give his face a distinct expressiveness. Everyday wardrobe involves average dress clothes paired with solid-colored ties. Olive single-breasted trench coat typically thrown over top.
Personality:Altruism and drive beneath a dour visage. He carries himself with a sort of solemnity now, his very expression heavy with disinterest, bemusement, occasionally outright sadness, but it all undermines the truth that he is truly passionate for what he does. A natural humanitarian from the time he oversaw a person in-need, as he assumes, it has always been hard for him to communicate how deeply-rooted his inner compassion can be for strangers. His motive has been, all this time, to benefit people, to hire himself to help people. Such as why he became a PI, why he sticks with the title although he swears it is dragging him down. Within himself is a gaping pit of dread. He fears he is doomed; it shows in his face.
This man called "Mug" is not shrewd, nor witty, but he is impassioned, and that and Fortune's touch have gotten him to great places. His determination is remarkable, his unwillingness to let the unfinished slip by, his drive to see things to their finality. Whether a happy or sour ending, ambiguity bewilders him. "Mug" himself tritely thinks himself to be a "simple man", though undoubtedly he can be simple-minded, can be utterly ravenous for that conclusion and can put that passion over rationality. His temper is something remarkable. He will cause things to fly and flip backwards, then turn and struggle to say he "wasn't angry", because he hates vehemence like that, fervor that can break and crack and bend. "Mug" is a man that values both freedom of mind and lawfulness. He likes betterment, skyscrapers, cell phones, motives, small talk, coffee, mornings and sunshine. He likes a lot of things, "good" things, and he likes, most importantly, being a good person. Chalking things up to simplistic terms is both a talent of his and a relentless habit, one that always leaves him dissatisfied at his own puerile interpretation of the world.
Background: "Mug" comes from a German-American family of Jews and moved from Europe to the states when he was five with his younger sister and Jewish parents. He accounted once how he could never understand what his parents continually caviled about, as from his kindergarten years , he adored America. He loved the cartoons and the red-white-blue popsicles and the day he saw the men in blue by their matching cars with their notepads and sunglasses, he wanted to be just like them. A child's adoration later evolved into an honest fascination with the ways of law and workings of the justice system; he aspired to be a lawyer, now, but the dream died. He had not the heart for it, he figured, and he returned to a sea of options as he neared his college education. 'To be a PI'; the concept struck him solidly like an epiphany. If anyone contested with the idea, their protests would anyhow be entirely lost as he was already bolting towards the opportunity at a pace too fast to pause, listen or think. It was a potentially rash idea but it was the greatest show of recklessness he had ever made, and as he convinced himself, would ever make.
His career as a self-employed private investigator began from there and he immediately claimed the title for life. In the beginning, things were slow, but he was considerably patient, waiting out the quiet period for quite some time and giving out his credentials whenever he could. But he was young with a trustworthy background and promising resume, plus could front a somewhat-rusty German accent and speak the essentials—the Americans he knew idolized anything non-American, he'd gleaned from the very beginning, and was never less than astonished by. He found plenty of jobs, most concerning surveillance and background checks for heedful businesses. The simplicity never perturbed him because he invested himself the cases of anyone who called and felt satisfied when each was successfully closed. There were the few exciting instances but he felt contented all the same when the personal files and camera footage came up innocent.
He received a call on a Tuesday morning from his house, the TV turned to a morning sports show, and "Mug" himself half-sitting, half-standing at his kitchen counter with a coffee mug and a newspaper slightly-sodden from rain the night before. He could remember every action he made before answering the very phone call, every single select movement made after and in-between, and he had repeated them over and over to interviewers and inquiring minds, praying they would melt from his memory and roll off his tongue, never to be recalled by him again. The woman herself was remarkably calm about her situation, requesting a confidential background check on who she explained was her fiancee. An in-the-flesh meeting confirmed an implicit dread she held regarding him, patent in her voice and mannerisms, but "Mug" never did decode what he had done to invoke the paranoia. What he did eventually come to find, to cut yet another retelling brief, was a serial killer, convicted in the past far overseas, and through a deeper series of events, it was eventually found he had likely played a part in the kidnapping and eventual death of a minor while present in the states. Not exactly a murder, and the first may not have been either, technically, but the man was clearly unstable as "Mug" saw it. The entire case and everything surrounding the man became an obsidian rabbit hole that consumed the PI's life for a great many months. It was an eternal tumble down an empty shaft. In late December, the detained convict found it in his power to hang himself with a belt. The face when he tumbled from the rafters to the floor when "Mug" turned up was like roadkill, a rat's face smashed in with a shoe.
The fact that he went undisturbed by the image for a week scared him. The idea that the man had been another man with another life never hit him until he swore he saw him again in his closet, dangling from the ceiling fan, and later again in his very bathroom. His name was Abian, he had emigrated from the Phillipines, and there was very much detrimental about him, he had learned, but there was also an enigmatic element to him.
What was he thinking? Why did he do it? The inquiries struck like stones on his psyche and he began to question how "humanitarian" he could possibly be, now.
Meanwhile, he was being commended for Abian's conviction, committer of the unspeakable and elusive for nearly a decade. He had gang connections too; clearly he'd been busy about the California area. Only a gumshoe with an amenable level of dedication and stoicism could have cracked a formidable case and—go, "Mug"—he'd done it. "A modest upholder of justice," the reporter proclaimed. "A true-blue representative of American heroism." Lines that could be plastered on a person for their lifetime. He was no household name but he no longer necessitated business cards. He was hired more and more and his objectives grew increasingly grandiose. Every lawyer needed him, every law enforcer needed him.
He began to dread the days where they'd approach his office with their problems and he'd inevitably accept to solve them. His compassion-driven conviction was a curse. He found himself defined by his job as it slowly devoured him. Every discovery for a criminal he would never truly understand hurt him in some indescribable way. He learned only of their crimes; as he was defined by his benevolence, they were, in fact, defined by malevolence. And he learned, also, that there more crime and injustice and homicide in the world. He couldn't sympathize with perpetrators anymore. He became jaded towards their circumstances and he stopped asking questions about their inner self and well-being. For whatever reason, that added to the weight, the amalgam of doubt and gloom coalescing in his gut. He found he could not untangle or even distinguish the separate emotions that made up the knot. He did not understand if the foreboding he felt was what the knot amounted to or simply another, stronger feeling topping the pile. Either way, he began asking himself, "When?" and "How?" "What place will and happen?" and "Who will commit to it? Will it be me?" He couldn't answer anything but "Why"; he had half-resigned to his fate when he dived again into the rabbit hole and found it led into Japan.
Three strengths: Altruism: An open willingness to help out of selflessness and benevolence.
Determination: He puts everything he has into achieving a goal.
Physical Capabilities: Natural muscularity and bulk, as well as the ability to will a gun, as he owns a license.
Three weaknesses:Temperament: Can get overly-invigorated, worked up and unable to let a topic die.
Severe Self-Doubt
A Simple Mind: Likes simplifying subjects and instinctively avoids anything "too long". Many things can go over his head because of this.
Guilty Pleasure: 'Fifth Harmony'
