McHaggis

Agents of SHIELD - Concluded

@Morose Edits made~

Omega Serenade

It was over as easily as that, huh? Daro shook her head in exasperation to an audience of none as Hazan came in over her omnitool, as if she hadn't been listening in during the operation. Well, it wasn't much of an operation. More of a snatch-and-grab.

At least, she thought those were the kind of criminal terms that she ought to be using nowadays, now that she was planning ambushes on couriers.

"I'm renting out a place in the Kima District. Let me send you the address," Daro said, hopping down from her perch and dispelling the combat drone now that the danger had passed. Still, she checked her six before exiting the alleyway. "And maybe the coords, too. It's a little out of the way, but I did buy some dextro-brandy."

It was all very cloak and dagger, leaving the scene of the crime in separate directions only to meet up in a safehouse. Not that Daro's clinics –– plural –– could ever be considered safe. This mission was to solve that issue in the first place.

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"And if you look over there, that's Archangel's last stand." Daro gestured to the large window of her new apartment. Across the street, on the other end of the district, the charred remains of a building that hadn't been touched by refurbishment efforts stood proudly against Omega's dim lighting. "I think that's why this place was so affordable: the mercenaries are a superstitious bunch. As soon as he was gone, most of them left this district. Well, except a vorcha problem in the sewers..."

This new place was furnished with only a sofa and a metal table that looked like it might once have been an operating table and would be again in the future. For now, it was a place to put glasses and decent collection of liquor for someone who only started drinking a year ago.

But the pressing matter of the courier's information made this––at least partially––a business meeting. It couldn't always be the mindless pursuit of pleasure, otherwise they'd be hitting the bar at Afterlife, she supposed. "I mentioned before that I had a broker who might be interested in this, an associate of Aria's, but I don't want to call her up with nothing to show for it."

Daro reached out for the envelope and unsealed it with little ceremony. Data held on physical drives, with no encryption to speak of... it wasn't sloppy, if one had no competition, or had more than a single courier delivering it to its destination. She separated what appeared to be credit chits and slid them over the table to Hazan, a small grin behind her mask. "These are all yours. I don't even want to know how much are on them, or who they belong to." Then, in a conspiratory whisper, she continued, "But I'm also very nosy, so I kind of do."

The other contents of the envelope were compatible with her omnitool, and she had it broadcast against the window. It was just as Hazan predicted, at least for the first one: rosters, personnel files and where they were to be distributed for the near future. Reading between the lines, that was more than just troop movements: that was supply movements. Why send guards to a depot on the other side of Omega if they weren't carting precious cargo?

Agents of SHIELD - Concluded

@Morose

Arcturus Hale

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Arcturus Hale

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Character Summary

Name: Arcturus Alexander Hale
Aliases: Archie / Arc
Species: Mutate
Powers: Telepathy – able to hear surface thoughts and transmit his own over a moderate distance (same room/floor of a building).
Age: Twenty-Two
Nationality: Swiss
Birthday: September 21th, 1997
Birth Place: Zürich, Switzerland
Gender: Male
S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy: Communications
Qualification: Graduate from Oxford (Modern Languages and Linguistics), 3+ Years Experience in Cybersecurity

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Appearance

Height: 5'7"
Weight: 130lbs
Build: Slim
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black (Dyed)
Skin Tone: Pale
Tattoos/Scars/Piercings: Pierced ears and tongue. No scars. Tattoo of a power button behind his left ear.
Personal Style: Arcturus has eclectic tastes and no interest in fashion, only comfortably. He usually pairs dark trousers and expensive dress shoes with huge cardigans, over-sized jumpers, and a variety of button-ups with bright, obnoxious patterns. Despite the eccentricity, each item of clothing tends to be from designer brands.

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Psychology

Resilient ◆ Proud ◆ Perceptive ◆ Evasive ◆ Flirtatious ◆ Selfish

Sexuality: Homosexual
Relationship Status: Single
Personality: Notoriously tight-lipped about himself, Arcturus likes to distract from questions about his own life by overcompensating with interest in other people's. He's one of those good listeners, remembering and observing the little details, the names, faces, birthdays, likes and dislikes of everyone around him, no matter how inconsequential their role might be. An extrovert through and through, he enjoys being a social butterfly, and prides himself on his ability to find common ground with anyone, even if he has to fake a layman's knowledge in topics he has no idea about.

Arcturus has a disinterest in and is far from motivated by money. The fact that he was born into it is incidental and, other than liking the finer things in life, he doesn't believe it makes him any different from anyone else. At the same time, he doesn't seem to know or care about the value of it, careless with valuable possessions and blasé when it comes to ostentatious displays of wealth. He is spendthrift, especially when it comes to people he cares about and himself. A venn diagram of these two categories would be a circle.

His greatest flaw is egotism. Self-confidence in his own areas of expertise crosses the line into arrogance, and he doesn't believe himself fallible in those areas and others. Additionally, Arcturus places his own goals first even when he genuinely likes other people. At the very least, he values those personal relationships over the interests of any organisation, even if he can't put them above his own interests yet.

Habits: Compulsively checking his phone, picking at scabs.
Hobbies: High-stakes gambling, music.
Fears:

• Guns
• His Family
• Enclosed Spaces

Likes:

• Newspapers
• Hot Chocolate
• Cyberwarfare
• Celebrity Gossip
• Bad Movies
• Polyglottism

Dislikes:

• Mansions
• Crime Syndicates
• Power Cuts
• His Family
• Summer Blockbusters
• Traffic Laws

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Cards On The Table

General World Skills:

• Second Language (Swiss-German)
• Logic Puzzles
• Street Racing
• Card Shark
• Legerdemain

Speciality Skills:

• Foreign Language (Chinese)
• Foreign Language (Russian)
• Hacking
• Computer Science
• Cryptography

What Is On Your Person:

• Clothes: Black trousers, Armani shoes, pale cardigan and charcoal dress-shirt.
• SHIELD Academy ID Badge
• Dorm Room Key
• Phone
• Spare Phone
• Lighter
• Engraved Ring
• Wallet: Debit/Credit Cards, Starbucks Card, $100, £50

Dormitory:

• Desktop PC
• Laptop
• Assortment of High-End Computer Parts
• Translation Dictionaries
• Walkman Cassette Player & Audiobooks
• Dossier on Theodore Hale
• Old Deck of Playing Cards (Marked)

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History

Why did you want to become an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?: Arcturus happened to like the recruiter who approached him, and he wasn't quite ready to jump into proper adulthood. Further study in the academy seemed right up his alley, as opposed to whatever it was he would do otherwise with his degree. They promised that they would have a use for his language skills and his illicit online activities, and Arcturus chose to believe them, though mostly because MI6 was full of themselves.

General History: Arcturus Hale is the only child of noveau riche parents. His father, Alexander Hale, is an internationally-renowned investment banker only investigated twice for fraud, and his match to Arcturus’s mother, the socialite Léonie Morgenthaler, was one of convenience: they live in separate buildings if not separate countries whenever possible.

Sequestered in the family’s Zürich estate and home-schooled for most of his childhood, Arcturus was mostly left to amuse himself. The tutors tried their best, of course, but he was a precocious child, always up to no good and sneaking into his father’s office or uprooting flowers in the garden. He had little interest in learning. Some of the hired help encouraged his love of puzzles and games, and one even taught him simple sleight-of-hand tricks with small objects and a deck of cards as soon as he was dexterous enough. His parents were not satisfied by his progress, and that particular caretaker was swiftly out of a job.

There was one exception to the regime of lessons he so expertly squandered, a bright spot in a friendless childhood: time spent with his paternal uncle Theodore Hale. Far more pragmatic than his brother, Uncle Theo shared his nephew’s interest in technology, particularly as he grew engrossed in the illegal activities one could get up to on it. A few lessons on coding here, then an outline on cybersecurity, and eventually it became something of a game to bond over –– breaking down the digital defences of certain businesses ‘just for fun’ with little thought given to those whose livelihoods would be directly affected.

No less nosy in his adolescence as he is now, Arcturus slowly pieced together his uncle’s secrets and just why he had such an eclectic mix of skills. Uncle Theo had been an operative at the tail end of the Cold War, a jack of all trades when it came to espionage. Upon being relieved of duty due to an injury, he turned to other pursuits as an information broker. Once the truth about the black sheep of the Hale family had been revealed to him, Arcturus realised that many of the so-called projects that they had done to improve his skills were actually to collect information.

Arcturus felt used, with the only adult who seemed to care about him having the ulterior motive of using his skills for some unknown, likely criminal purpose, and so he searched for universities far away from the gilded cage he had grown up in to move away from home. Though his uncle tried to apologise after a huge blow-up fight, he was dissatisfied with his entire family. He blew through his sizable allowance each month with alcohol and partying and, of course, driving (without a license), and nearly failed out his first year in an attempt to stay away from his roots, avoiding computing courses like the plague.

He graduated with a top degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics from Oxford instead, however, old habits die hard. Arcturus had already returned to performing white hat work on commission, patching up holes in the systems of businesses he previously helped to sabotage. For these efforts, he was scouted by both MI6 to join one of their cryptography teams and S.H.I.E.L.D. From there it is rather obvious what route he picked.

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Extras

Character Quote: 'Be so good they can't ignore you.'
Theme Song: Florence + The Machine - Hunger
Anything Else: Linky! I'm more of a DC fan...
_{*By submitting this CS in its completion I am stating I have read all the rules for this Rp and am agreeing to follow them to the fullest with respect and courtesy. I acknowledge that I can and will be removed from the RP without warning if I break a rule or cause problems with my fellow Rpers or the GM.}

Agents of SHIELD: #hailHYDRA

Also interested~

Naruto: Black Sun

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The Wolves of Red Lake (Completed)

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Robin Marshall

Location: Abandoned House

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"Pass on the basement. I'll take the inside of the house," Robin said, though he cast a glance at Heather in hopes that she would accompany them, despite the danger. A rubbernecker's dream would be snooping around at the site of the murder, but at the same time, he didn't want to find anything straight from a horror flick. Robin was surprised there were no cops left behind to guard the area, even city cops. They did however, the guy from the cafe, Declan, and his–– horse? Well, that was certainly a sign he was back in Red Lake...

Just a bedraggled detective, injury and all. PIs were in that in-between space between cop and civilian. He'd go ahead and call him cop-adjacent for now. Though he believed the man when he said that the house was dangerous –– his leg was proof of that –– it was probably just bad luck, and like lightning, it never struck twice. "Thanks for the warning," he said sincerely, "but I think we'll all be fine." Finally he turned to the others who might be heading in the same direction, past the PI and into the house. "We can split up once we're inside, take different parts of the house. If the structure's bad, it might be best not to have all of us standing in one room, right?"

Omega Serenade

Daro paced across the overhanging bridge, glancing occasionally down at the open space where Hazan was, blocked by various obstacles but still within range. This part of Omega was mostly safe for her to show her face, if only because she could not imagine any snitches getting to either the salarian himself or one of his cronies on time. Still, as she had spent most of the last few months in relative seclusion, leaving only in the quiet hours of Omega, seeing so many shadows moving about their daily business on the asteroid unsettled her.

"We take out the runner, then. Non-lethally, of course. Cold-blooded murder doesn't sit quite right with me unless it's Perix," she decided, moving to lean up against the window. "I do know an information broker who might be interested, depending on what's on the menu. She is as trustworthy as an information broker can be, I suppose. And injury-prone." All of Daro's friends and acquaintances and Omega, even Hazan, had the bad habit of showing up at her door with something to fix. Anyone else might have been concerned, but Daro reasoned that if medicine was her hobby, it was no surprise that her entire network was made up of patients. "I just worry that there won't be sufficient information on the courier to take Domititus down in one swoop."

The results of Hazan's reconnaissance mission, particularly those detailing the security around the warehouse, caught the quarian's attention. "If that is the case, then we may need to head directly to the source."

She lazily circled one of the clunky biometric scanners (with the annotation 'point and laugh') and saved the image for later reference. That was a Delumcore 1600. Or a 1666––there was little difference between them, and either way, they were only a few steps above facial recognition software. Fallible, given the right preparation, and adequate information. It was something to mull over. All it would take was a little bit of DNA and an automatic bypass system... With any luck it would be a turian employee.

She'd keep that thought to herself for now, and wait until they had dealt with the runner. Baby steps.

"Let's get this done as soon as possible, on the next run." Daro shut down her omnitool, though left the connection open as she stared down into the open area. "Oh, and Hazan? I don't think I've said thank you yet, but thank you, truly," she said quietly. "You didn't need to help me out of a mess of my own making, and I appreciate it."

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Twenty-one hours later, Daro was settled in a shadowy alcove in an alleyway for what was not the first time in her life. A combat drone hastily erected in the dead hours between their last meeting and the current mission hovered overhead, programmed for non-lethal combat. Regardless, if things turned sticky –– she could always flip the switch to turn him from stun to kill.

And she had a shotgun.

"He's on his way in," she muttered to Hazan as an alert pinged her omnitool: an early warning system of a sort. The runner had tripped the first of them, and was within reach. A great weight was lifted off her shoulders. "Could you imagine how difficult this would be for us if he changed up his route? Idiot."

Omega Serenade

A new identity sounded wrong to her ears. She was Daro'Shuris nar Konesh, and given that the Konesh didn't exist anymore, she was determined to keep that sliver of history in her name. The second option, however, had potential. "This clinic is not officially associated with Perix anymore. It was the reason his mercs were sent after me in the first place, in fact. His prices were a rip-off, and they kept going up to force us out of business, so..." Daro shrugged. There was really no good way to admit that she had stolen a not insignificant stock of medical supplies from him, albeit for what she perceived was a good cause. "I would not shed a tear if anything happened to him, so yes, it sounds good."

If it was even possible. Still, assuming the plan would go ahead (and she had little reason to doubt Hazan's proficiency at this point), they would need information. Information that she, in theory, had.

"So, a third-party employer? I don't remember seeing anything like that while I was working under him..." Daro said, wracking her brains through every interaction she had ever had with Perix's associates, before she cut contact with the salarian and his monopoly not too long after founding her own clinic. Way back then, she had been just one of many underpaid medical technicians, but the mercenary guards who worked in the same facility were hired with no direct interaction with Perix himself.

My only stipulation is that we do not hire the Blood Pack except in the direst of circumstances. It would be hard to trust a medical practice who keeps filth around.

It must have been a small agency he hired them through. Daro could not recall its name, but she knew that she had heard it before, and that it definitely existed. It had no brands or logos, just a contact name and number. Even before the theft, her clinic hadn't been profitable enough for even a token security force, and Daro managed with automated defenses and a few ornery regulars. But, it was in her contract that all mercenaries hired as guards had to be organised through a single name.

"Actually, maybe I do know something about this." Daro brought up her omnitool in a flash, scanning back through saved correspondence, staff newsletters and the like. Anything to do with the operation's security, how to report problems with the hired mercenaries and such. The name was on the tip of her tongue now, D-something. "Perix is a paranoid snake: he hates working with lowlifes. Any third-party would have to be at least a recognised name on Omega for him to trust them to handle his mercenary out-reach, and the less opportunity for spies, the better. I'm certain that it was only one single middle-man. And the name is..."

Please contact Tenus Domititus for more information on hiring security.

After showing Hazan the name on her omnitool, Daro slumped back in her chair. "I don't know how to find him, though. And I guarantee an upstart like him has his own private guards. He can probably afford it, though I doubt it's as many as Perix."

Omega Serenade

It was after she had finished the unfortunate task of garbage disposal that her omnitool began to play a tinny tune in an attempt to get her attention –– the first few lines of a song from Fleet and Flotilla, sans all the lyrics about pining. "Aha! I was right after all," Daro crowed triumphantly to an audience solely consisting of her drone. It didn't phase her, but perhaps it should have. She had been right in that it was Hazan who had turned up in her neck of the Lower Wards, as the melody was attached to his signal moving into reach of their short-range communications. The cameras going dark over the main entrance was probably just a mistake, a momentary blip on the radar.

Then she heard the first gunshot from the direction of her clinic. Daro held her breath as she counted them. One. Pause. Two. As the seconds ticked on without a further incident, at least none that was audible from outside the building, she summoned one of her security drones to her, activating its defensive protocols. It was better safe than sorry. Anyone who lived in the Lower Wards, no, anyone who lived on Omega grew accustomed to the gunshots over time, and it was easy to just ignore them right up until it was a bullet with her own name on it.

Giving her volus patient's earlier warning, Daro didn't think for a second it was for some other sad soul. But it wasn't until Hazan's message came through that she had those fears confirmed.

"Daro? Hazan here, listen: I found some thugs trying to cause a ruckus at your clinic. I sent 'em packing, but you might want to come up here quick before more of 'em show up."

Suspecting was different from knowing, and knowing that she was going to have to run away from mercenaries again did not make the prospect any less daunting. With a wary glance at the upper floors of the building, she replied to Hazan's message. "Thugs? Batnor Cal said I was on the Blue Suns' radar again, but I didn't think they'd be after me so soon." She sighed, wiping at her mask with the back of her hand, but it was relief that filled her rather than all-consuming fear of having to escape out the back window. "Thank you for letting me know – and for handling it. I'm on my way up."

It didn't take Daro long to reach her floor, given that it was a borderline emergency, an amber alert if not a red one. Still, the welcome arrival of one of her few friends on this rotten hunk of an asteroid, just in time to alleviate her little merc problem, left her comfortable enough to dismiss her drone beck to its usual station.

She turned the corner after leaving the stairwell to survey the destruction the turian had caused in her absence. Three bodies: one writhing, one breathing, one all too still. A lump formed in her throat at the sight, but she persevered through it with forced lightheartedness. "Aw, Hazan, I just got back from taking out the garbage," Daro chimed, gaze settling upon the cooling corpse that was, quite literally, left on her doorstep. Even without closer inspection, the human's vitals were nil, according to the internal HUD of her mask. Common sense could have also led to that conclusion, as no human had that much blood left in them.

She swallowed, but that lump (what was it––fear? disappointment? horror at her own apathy?) remained. At least she didn't have to clean up the body or the blood, given she intended to break her lease tonight. It wasn't like she could stay there.

The turian cradling his brutally snapped limb was no threat yet, but his mumbling and groaning was unhelpful. Daro reached to her utility belt for a thin syringe, the contents of which were sheathed in a metal casing. Ignoring the mercenary's protests and frantic attempts to flee through the crippling pain, she slipped it in through a gap in his plates, piercing through the leathery hide. Turians were a pain to work with, medically, if only because their whole biology was tough: a radiation-resistant carapace that made surgery... problematic.

But she didn't intend to perform surgery to fix this turian's arm, though it sorely needed it if he was ever to retain full functionality (without cybernetics). In fact, Daro was avoiding doing anything more than the bare minimum, which in this case amounted to shutting him up. He'd live either way.

Now, the batarian, though––there was a patient who needed immediate medical attention. Daro was feeling unsympathetic, but it was a well-known fact that Omega's quarian doctor of dubious morality didn't like death. She could count on one hand the amount of people she had actively, purposefully killed, and didn't require the extra digits that humans had to do so, either. A quick reading under the dim orange glow of her omnitool predicted his chances of survival without treatment at 50% and dropping by the minute.

That would be the fault of the knife stuck in him. A real knife. Considering everyone and their mothers used cheap omniblades these days, Daro was relatively impressed. (But of course Hazan would have a knife. He was ever-prepared for any eventuality.)

With little care, she pulled it out, careful not to twist the blade and deepen the wound no matter how satisfying it might have been. As his lifeblood began to pour out, a quick tap with the side of her glove caused an omnigel seal to form over it that would, by her best estimations, hold for a few hours. More than long enough for him to wake up and get to a clinic––well, a different clinic––and for her to decide on the next course of action.

Daro pressed her hand against the console next to the door (scratched up, probably by the mercs), which unlocked the security mesh and allowed them entrance, although she turned back to Hazan as soon as they were in the door. The inside of Daro's clinic-slash-home was drab, and save for some lace curtains and soft, pastel-coloured lights and a Blasto poster (that came free with the flat and practically affixed to the wall), it was still marked by an impersonal, steely tone. A cold metal operating table, a frozen box of medigel hooked up to the wall and numerous scattered mechanical bits and bobs filled the main living area.

"One last patient in this old place. Fess up, it was three-on-one. You've got to be a little bit injured." she said cheerfully, a level more genuine than it had been previously. She winked, albeit behind the safety of her mask, and in a flash, she was running diagnostics to ensure there were no hidden knife wounds, or anything more serious than a bruise. There was a secret stash of good stuff hidden in one of her cupboards, and pain relief for the bonafide action-hero that was Hazan Volintis with it seemed to be as good a use as any. Thankfully, he didn't need it, or so her omnitool seemed to say.

"I don't think there's an apartment in the city that will take me while the Blue Suns after me." The Blood Pack might have, but for various reasons, primarily the lack of proper sanitation, Daro vetoed that option before it was more than an errant thought. The salarian that was her former employer, with his exorbitant prices and unethical business practices, would just buy them all out. He had that luxury. Short of leaving the station, which Daro was not willing to do while her heart still remained with the good (or mostly good) people of Omega, there was nothing left to do.

"...which of course means, I'm out of options. If you've got any outside-of-the-box suggestions, Haze, I could really use them right now. How do I get mercs off my back?"

The Wolves of Red Lake (Completed)

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Robin Marshall

Location: Abandoned House
Interacting With: Olivia Johnson, Heather Ali, Finley Alestair, Miranda Burke

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Robin parked up somewhat haphazardly outside the house, keeping a wide berth (or as wide as possible) from the other car already present. That it could have been a cop, as Heather worried, was a daunting prospect that set him on edge, a live-wire of anxious energy. Before leaving his van, he slipped out his lockpicking kit from a storage box under the driver's seat, which fit – barely – into the deep inner pocket of his leather jacket.

"A PI?" That was reassuring. At least it wasn't the police. Hell, there was a part of Robin that would rather have a murderer or kidnapper than the police at this point. "Could be worse. Plus, the door might already be unlocked if he's inside."

Robin approached the front door, just behind Finley, who was correct in saying that they were on the right track if the professionals were here. He kept his back facing the abandoned house to shoot Heather a reassuring grin. "Even if it was cops, we're all squeaky clean, law-abiding citizens, so I'm sure it wouldn't come to much. Unless one of you have some literal skeletons in your closet..."

He didn't lock the Dancing Queen, but kept a careful eye on it for as long as he could before they entered the house. Sometimes a quick getaway was crucial, but he hoped it wouldn't be one of these times.