Force and Fury — Roleplayer Guild

Name: Gary Xu
 
Gender: Male
 
Appearance: Gary is a middle aged Chinese man of below average height, solidly built but not carrying any extra weight. He’s clean shaven, with lightly tanned skin and a full head of straight black hair worn professionally short and just starting to grey around the temples. His teeth are unexpectedly perfect, and though he sometimes wears glasses, he generally looks somewhat younger than his 41 years – perhaps mid-thirties. He can usually be found wearing a collared shirt in a hue of pastel with the top button undone, as well as a pair of business slacks and dress shoes. When not working, he prefers a pair of comfortable, slightly worn blue jeans and a golf shirt, or a tracksuit with blue Air Jordans. As one might imagine from this description, he’s fit and in good shape.
 
Age: 41 
 
Alias: (The Indestructible Man)
 
Alignment: undecided (he is leaning towards hunter, though likely as more of a facilitator)
 
Identity: Private and recently discovered
 
History: Gary was born in 1976 in the small mountain village of Wulingyuan in scenic Hunan province, south-central China. It was the final, violent spasm of the Cultural Revolution, and his parents, who were shop owners, were forced into hiding until a degree of sanity returned. In 1982, the nearby mountains were designated a protected area, and over the following decade, morphed into a significant tourist attraction. Gary’s father, a shrewd and intelligent man, soon expanded his business to provide beverages, tours, and lodging. He used his savings to purchase a second home in the nearby city of Zhangjiajie, and the young family split their time between the two places.
 
With Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy picking up steam, the area witnessed its first western tourists, and Gary’s father was of the opinion that there would be many more to come. The boy was enrolled in English lessons (which were not easy to come by in those days, especially in a provincial backwater), and given the English name that he still carries. Being able to speak the language of international business proved to be a huge boon to his prospects, and as a teenager, he earned a good deal of extra cash acting as a tour guide and bootleg interpreter to curious Americans, Europeans, and others who came to visit.

By the time that Gary was 20, he decided to make the move to Shanghai, a decision fully supported by his parents. The city was on the precipice of a major boom, and both Gary and his father could sense it.

Living on the cheap in rough and ready Baoshan, a former port town in the process of morphing into an industrial suburb, he paid the bills for most of his first year by working construction jobs.  During this time, Gary was involved in more than his fair share of barroom brawls, and found that he could take a punch better than anyone else either he or his new friends knew. However, he didn’t remain in his lowly position for long. With international companies beginning to move their manufacturing to Shanghai, his ability to speak passable English was a major asset and he was soon moved to international customer liaison.
 
1997 was a huge year for Gary, as he was promoted and used his newfound time off to moonlight as a student at Shanghai’s prestigious Jiao Tong University. While he didn’t have the money or education to formally attend, he bought clothes to look the part, became a regular in the library, and managed to sneak into lectures. There, he not only furthered his knowledge of marketing and economics, but he also made many friends from influential backgrounds. Before long, this young group began formulating plans and studying the marketplace, looking for investment opportunities. Gary worked two jobs, scrimped and saved in order to invest along with the others. Also, in the world at large, a couple of important things happened. Firstly, China opened up to Western media, with the box office hit Titanic becoming a massive cultural phenomenon there. Second, and more importantly, the presence of metahumans became publicly known, resulting in intense interest, debate, and official ambivalence. 

Gary had little time to worry about the actions of superheroes and supervillains so long as they didn’t affect him. Over the next three years, he and his group of ‘Young Tigers’ invested in ever larger projects, gradually amassing a fortune. Despite having been promoted again, Gary left his job to focus on becoming a fulltime investor. By 2002, he returned to his former employer, having purchased it outright. With an eye to the future, the young tycoon purchased shares in up and coming social media and online banking platforms as well as local distributors of cellphone technologies. His construction firm thrived during the boom and was able to buy out a number of its rivals. He eventually married and became a father of two, willingly paying the government-imposed fine for having a second child. Over the next decade, Gary managed to get his fingers in a number of industries: English training schools, entertainment, banking, and insurance. 

It was in the case of the latter that the metahuman issue impacted Gary the most. His firm was among the first to offer metahuman insurance, but this proved to be a difficult and unpredictable field, prone to losing money. Working closely with the government, he pioneered a public-private approach that combined compensation with both market prospecting and law enforcement. On a personal level, Gary was deeply disturbed by much of what he witnessed, becoming convinced that human beings with such power were inevitably bound to misuse it even if their intentions were good. 

Gary himself had become something of a renaissance man by the time that he celebrated his fortieth birthday. He spoke seven languages, was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Jeet Kune Do, as well as an avid hiker and cyclist who could also pilot personal aircraft. He maintained a large garage, as well as interests in history, physics, and geology. He attempted to learn guitar but found that he wasn’t particularly talented. 

It was shortly after his forty-first birthday that an incident took place which would profoundly alter his world. He was in the middle of a meeting when a fight between a pair of local metas – Suprasonic (a deliberate – though flying – knockoff of Supersonic) and The Mountain – erupted nearby. Gary was in the process of evacuating when the metas did serious damage to the office tower that he was in, causing the elevator cables to snap. The tycoon and two of his long-time associates plunged over four hundred feet to their deaths – except, Gary didn’t die. In fact he was completely uninjured while his colleagues were killed instantly. Removing himself from the building before it collapsed, dazed and confused, he quickly invented a story to account for his survival while the Chinese government cracked down harshly on metahuman activities. 

Over the past two months, he has been on leave from his many business ventures, rethinking a number of incidents in his past that he had originally put down to good luck, a strong constitution, and sheer toughness. His father always liked to recount the story of how Gary had fallen into a steep ravine as an infant while his family was running from the red guards, only to be found completely unscathed. Then there had been the time that a carelessly handled i-beam had struck him as a young man working on a construction site, sending him tumbling over forty feet to the ground below. He had dusted himself off and resumed working later that same day. His youthful brawls where he’d been able to swing for the fences while brushing off opponents’ punches had to be reconsidered, as did a waterskiing incident a few years back where he’d hit the water going nearly 100km/h and been completely unharmed. When Gary really thinks about it, he realizes that he can’t remember a single significant injury over the course of his life. The inescapable conclusion is that Gary Xu has been a metahuman the entire time. He is what he has come to hate. How he will deal with that going forward, only he can know.  
 
Personality: Gary’s a man who has lived a lot. He is very competent in a number of areas and possesses a deep – though slightly cynical – understanding of human nature. He enjoys making dry jokes and wry comments, and isn’t afraid of being self-deprecating, though his humour is almost always situational. In general, he’s a friendly guy and a good communicator, with a large circle of friends. However, his relationships with other people are best described as ‘friendly but somewhat distant.’ This extends to his own family. That doesn’t denote a lack of caring, however, just a desire to maintain a healthy distance between himself and other people and a lack of involvement in their everyday and quite frankly mundane affairs.

As one might expect, he’s extremely motivated and determined, almost obsessively so. When Gary sets his mind to something, he will systematically break it down, examine it in detail, and execute a carefully-laid plan. He’s not entirely averse to risk, though he does try to minimize it. Perhaps due to his success in life, Gary is not easily impressed and has little sympathy or use for people who complain or make excuses, especially if they have a background or talents that give them a head start. Though he tries to see the world for the subjective thing that it is, and to always keep his own ego in check, he can be unintentionally arrogant at times. 
 
Skills: Gary is in good though not exceptional shape. Though fairly small, he is a skilled and experienced hand-to-hand fighter, schooled in multiple martial arts, as well as possessing elementary training with some traditional Chinese weapons. He has never fired a gun before and hopes that he’ll never have to. He has, however, piloted personal aircraft and boats up to the size of a small yacht. He enjoys racing his collection of exotic cars at the track. 

Gary’s also perceptive and a good negotiator, able to read people and situations quickly and thoroughly. Finally, he is fluent in Mandarin (including his local Hunan dialect), Cantonese, English, and Korean, as well as passable in Italian, Japanese, French, and Spanish.
 
Abilities: Gary hasn’t really had the chance to become familiar with his metahuman abilities, though he seems to possess only one: he is completely indestructible. Beyond that, he is a bog-standard human.
 
Equipment: Gary doesn’t really have any special equipment right now, except for an extensive garage full of exotic cars, aircraft, and boats. Obviously, he can’t bring this with him. Beyond that, he has a name that means something in business, dozens of high-level international contacts, and a credit card with no limit. Maybe he’ll build a batcave?

Having heard Shel's advice, Rintor turns and squints in the direction of the horizon. There are mountains in the near distance ahead and to the left, which is... We don't even know our cardinal directions here. He thinks for a moment while others begin talking again. Perhaps sense will prevail over ego and ambition after all and his skills will be put to use. Some of that ego is your own, he reminds himself.

"We will need a defensible position," he tells Esailia, Shel, and the others closest by. "But first and foremost, we will need to find a reliable source of fresh water. I believe that our best bet is near the foot of the mountains, perhaps on somewhat higher ground but with access to a stream." Assuming that there's even water here in the sense that we understand it. He raises his voice slightly. "It is my opinion that we head for the mountains, so long as there aren't any strong objections. We stand to find both drinkable water and a defensible position over there, and perhaps," he adds wryly, "should we be so fortunate, even a place where our changeling can bathe to her heart's content." 

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