@LetMeDoStuff Alright, that's a fair judgement, and I get your points.
Your explanation of 'link to the USSR' is pretty accurate and I guess that can be worked on. As well the whole 'military focus' makes sense so that's worth noting for me in the future.
If there's any further suggestion/advice possible it'd be appreciated, and if you don't mind, I'll try and make a more practical character sheet.
To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.
Name Daniel Stanley Wright
Age 19
Gender Male
Birth-date August 16, 1929
Birthplace Lachine, Québec, Canada
Appearance In the looks department, Dan checks off as any other Caucasian male- when necessary, that is. Messy brown hair, apple green eyes, and a fairly young, light-toned face, although his expression and mood can be portrayed differently depending on his current task. Standing at 174 centimeters, Dan is a bit under-average for his background and gender, although he does stand out when compared to others with shorter mean heights, such as Japanese. At 62 kilograms, he is slightly thinner than ideal, although he is still rather lean and healthy, out of necessity as a fighter for the Allied cause.
The clothes Dan wears are very much dependent on his mission. If needed, he can pass off as unemployed hoodlum, or an dashingly handsome stock broker in an English suit. His official SOE uniform is drab with touches of red, including a beret. However, at the moment, he has it packed away safely for formal occasion. As a undercover agent, he does what is necessary to hide in plain sight. To him, a dark grey trilby, shirt & tie, blazer, and pants do the trick.
Personality Socially, Dan tends to be a personal extrovert, confident and charismatic. His applications of such a nature tend to involve gathering information and/or compelling others to sympathy, be it providing help in his mission or fighting a common enemy.
His outlook on the world as a whole is, in a word, observant. Growing up in a world where he had to work hard to succeed, he was keen on just that. More of a pragmatist than an optimist, he tends to lean towards keeping things in realistic terms; for instance, he would prefer to capture than massacre a company of enemies, out of caution against an even more violent retribution.
When considering nature and means, Dan puts rationale over emotion. Always trying his best to stay a step ahead, this sometimes manifests in long-winded preparation for a key event, spending meticulous hours to make sure the end result is the way he wants. Especially due to his undercover persona, he tends to hide his feelings, and see efficiency as more important than cooperation in general.
Despite this, Dan enjoys the thrill of thinking on the fly and keeping his options open. As a by-product of his former passion in acting, he is at this stage quite good at improvising and spotting opportunities. A core part of this is his belief that inflexibility crashes hard- preferring instead to be a flexible, relaxed nonconformist.
Dan's motivations are based around one thing: his father. Every mission, operation, and confrontation, to him, is just another step in defeating the Japanese Empire and finding his father. In the ideal world, he is reunited with his father, and can return to a happy, peaceful life in Canada. However, he knows this is seldom the most realistic case; Plan B is his expectation. If he finds his father, if his father is alive, if his father is in one piece: if none of these factors hold true, he intends to swiftly and quietly eliminate whomever did such a thing to his old man.
Team Relationships N/A
Classification Dan's specialty is not, in fact, combat. Although he has trained and engaged in shootouts in the past, he prefers to get behind enemy lines, and keep his head down. When it comes to making the kill, he would prefer to do so in a discreet, contained fashion, with a revolver shot to the head. However, if it comes to it, he is far from a coward on the battlefield, eager to use whatever he can to the best of its ability, in order to subdue the enemy as efficiently and quickly as possible. Even though he is more than accustomed to sitting back and taking orders, when the time comes, Dan is not afraid to lead others into the fray behind him, using his charisma or even multilingualism to his advantage. On that note, his linguistic extent reaches English (fluent Canadian/Midwestern/Australian accents), French (fluent Québécois/French accents), basic Russian, and limited Japanese.
Experimental Gear
To the untrained eye, the APS is just another Soviet pistol. To the cabal of Soviets aware of this top-secret development, it hallmarks the next step in special operations firearms. The demand for such a firearm arose when KGB and Spetsnaz agents required a pistol stronger than the Tokarev, yet smaller than a more cumbersome submachine gun. In simple terms, a stronger, Russian-based machine pistol, along the likes of the Mauser M712.
The APS is a machine pistol fed through 20-round 7.62x25mm Tokarev. It features a three-position lever. The first position, "PR", is the safety. When pointed downwards to "OD", semi-automatic fire is enabled. Finally, the rearmost "AVT" position puts the APS in fully automatic mode. A selective-fire machine pistol, the APS is the balance between a compact pistol and a gun with a high rate of fire.
When equipped, Dan employs a Stechkin pistol in action. In nearly any scenario, his revolver is enough to do the trick, due to his low profile and efficient rate of fire. However, in the event that things get hot and he is the only member of the group left without a primary weapon, he can utilize the APS' automatic fire to unleash the equivalent of a submachine gun's power from his own pockets.
Daniel Stanley Wright was born in Lachine, a town on Montreal Island, on August 16, 1929. The son of a determined pink-collar worker who immigrated as a baby, Dan grew up without much money to throw around, so he learned from a young age to work hard and save what he could. As a child, he never really cared much for politics or military, spending his free time hanging out with friends, or listening to Canadiens games on the radio.
When war broke out between the Allies and Axis, the entire atmosphere around Dan had changed. The ball started rolling with the enlistment of his father in the Royal Rifles of Canada, 22nd Regiment. The last time 12-year-old Dan ever saw his old man was at the train station, while the 22nd Regiment departed for Hong Kong. With a hug and a wave goodbye, Dan finally realized that things were changing. Later that year, this would truly resonate, as the news broke that Hong Kong had fell, and that the Royal Rifles had surrendered along with it.
Emotionally scarred, Dan went into depression upon news of his father's surrender and capture in early 1942. Having to take a part-time job to help support his mother and sister, and having to deal with several other issues in his personal life, he nearly committed suicide by jumping off the Sun Life Building, sneaking out at night to head downtown. A stroke of luck drove him to bump into his uncle Ernest, arriving home from a play. With one last chance to vent his issues, Dan was rewarded with an invaluable piece of advice: to try his best, and never surrender. As it had turned out, his father Stanley was caught in the exact same situation as a young adult, and those principles pushed him through. Dan returned home, determined to live up what his father would have expected of him.
Fast-forward to 1946. Daniel Wright stars as the titular male protagonist in Collège Sainte-Anne's production of Romeo and Juliet. With a talent for acting, some say Dan is destined for Broadway or Hollywood. His family, faring rather well now, is extremely impressed by Dan's charismatic and strong-willed nature, earning the respect of many. But from his own eyes, he is not a career actor nor a hit with the girls. His primary interest in school and the future is criminology, out of a desire to protect his community and deliver justice to anyone who dares ruin a nation already afflicted by war. Both of these factors pique the interest of the Special Operations Executive.
Peggy and Dale Wright constantly received letters from Upper Canada College, the private boarding school in Toronto that Dan was supposedly staying in for senior year, on a scholarship. In reality, he was spending 6 months in Special Training School No. 103, or 'Camp X', an SOE training facility 60 kilometers northeast. He shared a room with 3 other trainees in their late teens; Aaron Ward, a Saskatchewan farm boy and outstanding Army Cadet, Joanna Nathans, Aaron's childhood friend and expert at martial arts, and Kazuto Sobu, a Japanese nisei from Vancouver. Over the course of the next few months, this group of four grew into a tight-knit team of friends.
On a chilly December night, all seemed silent, as usual. In the middle of the night, Dan awoke to an empty lower bunk beside him- Kazuto had sneaked out. On a search to find his friend at 0100 hours, Dan eventually caught 'Kaz' in the files room, stealing confidential information to transfer to other Japanese double agents in Vancouver. After a long chase, the confrontation ended when the commotion woke Aaron and Joanna, who helped apprehend their betraying comrade.
In recognition of the group's valor and resolve, they were graduated early and sent on their first special operation, related to their previous encounter: Operation Arquebus. Dan, Aaron, and Joanna had developed new identities, and were shipped off to Australia to serve as counter-intelligence agents.
Dan, rather, Michael Hudson, was a 23-year-old criminology graduate student from Ohio. Aside from his SOE and personal gear, which he kept safe, all his outfits and markings said so- his Ohio State degree in criminology (acquired via a scholarship due to hard times, as his father was involved in the Akron rubber strike of 1936), Cleveland Indians personal items (going so far as rooting for them over the radio, listening to them win the 1948 World Series), and clothes, all of which were purchased either in Australia or Ohio. His flat was beside 'Johnny Stargell' and 'Erica Robinson', two dating criminology students from Seattle. Although they considered eloping, a mission was at hand: posing as students under a suspected Japanese spy, teaching as a professor.
Their extended vacation in Brisbane came to a dramatic conclusion on the transport ship SS Katoomba, where 'Professor Umeda', actually named Ryosuke Seita, was boarded to link up with Japanese agents on New Caledonia. Disguising as Australian field medics (using their daily experience in the country to formulate passable accents). Aaron and Joanna waited until night, then confronted Seita alone, in the middle of a radio call. A shootout ensued- and although Joanna was shot in the arm defending her love interest, Seita soon collapsed to the floor, a round in his skull, Dan's revolver smoking behind the dead operative.
With Operation Arquebus complete, Dan's rise in the ranks took a new step. The SOE had a special agreement, and ordered him to simply meet with a 'Mr. Zubkov' in Moscow. After a few weeks studying basic Russian and the layout of Moscow, Dan bade farewell to Aaron and Joanna, and boarded the plane to Russia. Once he arrived, and was escorted to a base of what seemed to be KGB officials, who had him perform interviews & biometric tests. Then, following months of training in their means of espionage, weapons, and language, he was presented with his own Stechkin APS, and directive to a 'Squad 914'. Although he was unsure of its end goal or practical application to the Allies, it beat sitting in the green room of a Montreal theater, thinking of how he could have rescued his father.
Experience September 1946-January 1947: Camp X December 1946: Confrontation with Kazuto Sobu January 1947-June 1948: Operation Arquebus June 1948: Confrontation on SS Taroona July-October 1948: Squad 914 Training, Moscow October 1948-: Squad 914 Deployment
If the 1948 US Presidential Election hasn't taken place yet, I assume it'd be Truman going up for re-election against some Republican candidate- either Eisenhower (SHAEF general, nationalist), Dewey (domestic policy, IRL nominee), or Taft (conservative, anti-New Deal). It's a tangled mess when considering the politics of our universe's America, but if you ask me, it's possible Eisenhower comes close (assuming he doesn't leave the Army) or maybe Taft, in a neck-and-neck with Truman.
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