+ application (haven)

[integrated]

Name: Trace.
Contact Info: watchtower
Other Characters Played: Lightning Farron, Clementine.
Preferred Apartment: An empty upstairs room with canonmate-OC Tollie (singsongsoldier) on account of... otherwise, lots of people die. :|a If it can't be one of the empty ones, one of the emptier ones would be fine. C:

Character Name: LTC James Granier ("Jimmy" to his pod.)
Background/History:
First things first, the universe that James is from is... absolutely fucking huge. You may want to skim this right here. It's a comprehensive look at the galaxy and the war that shaped it, as well as more detailed explanations of some of the terms I'll be using. C:

His personal history is quite a bit simpler.

Born on Cobrius, a colony of the particular luck to be innocuous and useless (both tactically and resource-wise), he was forced to spend a good deal of his childhood feeling the affects of war without actually seeing it. As with any colony in such a wartime culture, he grew up learning to scrimp and save and recycle and generally make do with less or worse-quality of just about everything for the good of the troops, but look on the bright side: Many of the more valuable colonies were raided or otherwise massacred by the Calched offensive front long ago.

At that point, the enemy most certainly had the war tipped to their favor--as such, the UTS military and its profoundly high turnover rate was almost literally a form of suicide to most. But while your average teenager would take that opportunity to cram themselves in an invaluable occupational niche to avoid the draft, there was really nothing left on that planet for James, so he up and enlisted of his own accord.

This was something he proved very good at. James received standard army training in addition to basic flight mechanics and explosives, and that's just to start. Because he volunteered, he received an officer’s training and became well versed in the daily work of squad leadership; when to push, when to hold off, how to mitigate disputes and at what distance to hold himself in order to command respect. And his skill, combined with a hell of a lot of luck (the 'explosive hit the soldier next to you instead, congrats' sort of luck), leaves him with a nearly spotless record as he rises through the ranks. See, that's the thing--he's consistent. He's not a hero, he's not the guy who takes one shuttle in and saves thousands. No way. James is the guy who goes in, gets the job done to a 'T', and gets out. No unnecessary risk, no reckless bravery. No grabs for glory. That's why they liked him so much: He was no galactic messiah, not by far, but damn if they couldn't count on him to do the job and do it right, every single time.

So when he decided to pursue a specialization, he had an incredible amount of leniency that other soldiers might not have been offered. He tried a wide variety of things, including but not limited to science, medicine, and mechanics, with varying levels of interest or success. He ultimately backed out of each of them (science was short-lived, while he stuck with mechanics the longest), a pattern that the brass weren't particularly fond of but humored because of his proficiency in combat. Really, James was never sure exactly what he was looking for. He knew what he wasn't looking for. What he was tired of. He was unsatisfied with the general military so far, with being another faceless soldier no matter what rank they gave him. It felt pointless, on a practical level. He didn't want glory, but he didn't want to be another nameless, faceless casualty either.

The Azurian Project, putting it into modern terms, is like where you'd go if you graduate Harvard in the top 3%... If all eight years of attending, you had technologically-superior freaky-as-fuck alien scum trying to take your head off your shoulders on a twice-daily basis. Oh, and your personality has to match, too. Really, it was to the point where even if you could apply for the Project, nobody did. Not anymore, anyway. They figured they'd have spent their time better writing their own rejection letter than the application to start with. (So most everyone in the Project was recruited in some way for being exemplary, for having profound skill that doesn't quite fit properly in the normal ranks. But that's beside the point here, back to Jimmy!) So Jimmy was already downright positive they'd laugh in his face if he applied. Hell, one of his buddies applied a year or so back, a damn good soldier that one, and not only did the AZP laugh in the guy's face, but pretty much all of his fellow soldiers did too. But it finally hit a point where he was just so frustrated with his recent specialization drop-out that he just said fuck it and turned in an application that night.

Except he was accepted.

Saying life as he knew it was utterly different from that point on is really a profound understatement. Once his buddies got over the 'you're full of shit, Granier, lemme see that fucking letter' stage, there was a fun little stage where nobody he used to fight beside had a clue quite what to say to him. The way they acted, it was like he'd suddenly been revealed as a genius and they didn't dare open their mouths for fear of looking like the basest form of idiot in his eyes. And honestly, that's probably exactly what they thought. That's the usual sort to get into the AZP, after all. He was a fluke, an exception made because a record quite as spotless as his is almost as rare as that intergalactic savior, albeit a hell of a lot more subdued. He'd shine, brilliant or no, because as far as the brass were concerned, if anyone was made for the military as they knew it, it was James.

The universe opened up to him then. It was like as a soldier, he'd been sealed in an airtight box, and the AZP was letting it out into the world. He quite possibly learned more in that first week with the Project than in his entire military career--about Azurians, the genetically-perfected weapon-soldiers he'd been chosen to work beside. About the enemy, the Calched, and what exactly they were truly capable of. Things that the soldiers back in the regular ranks would've considered ground-breaking secrets, things that could ruin the structure of the UTS military as they knew it if he so much as spread it back to his old buddies, but he didn't. He wasn't even inclined to. He was part of something a hell of a lot bigger now... And that's the attitude they were counting on.

It was only once Jimmy was in the AZP, running through the rigorous nine-month test-to-destruction training and survival war-games, that he showed the true value carried by quiet competence and carefully planned skills. Here he was, one man surrounded now by many infinitely more brilliant or fierce or heroic than he, and yet his record was marked over and over again with success after success. Success where others failed, where they overshot or overthought or just plain folded under the pressure. And then, one fateful day, he and a dozen others were dropped off on a quiet space-station colony a good distance from where they'd been trained. James and the others were more or less told to take a load off.

He was certain that meant he'd failed.

The station was a melting pot of humans, Azurians, and other Adapts--Whips, with their wiry muscles and almost amphibious skin, and even a few Uplifts (though until they're more used to the program, newer recruits tend not to quite wrap their heads around the fact that the dog or even squid they're looking at is at least as sentient as they are). James takes it all in, acutely aware that this may be his last taste of this world before the brass shove him back into the military and the metaphorical hole that Lieutenant Colonel Granier once occupied. And as relaxed as he seemed about it (most of the others were pretty much like 'AUGH HOW DID WE FAIL!?' and attempting to find some semblance of authority to suck up to and worm their way into a second chance), he found himself utterly unsettled in a way that he couldn't remember ever being. Because they were probably right: It was entirely likely that they'd flunked out. He knew for a fact that he wasn't the best. But for the first time, he dropped out of something that actually felt right. It was what he'd been looking for, he realized. All that time, all those specializations. It was this. Here, where he had a role.

Not much that could be done about it now, though. He had a little more pride than to grovel and cry, so instead, he found himself a bar to quietly drink away the knot in his gut. And in that bar, he found himself an unlikely ally. Well, rescued one more like. Thomas Carps had been a vague acquaintance even back in the normal ranks, a familiar enough face and a name he could almost place, and that was enough to keep him on Jimmy's radar from the day he found out Carps was in the AZP too. They worked together often enough, but never side-by-side. Not like that night at the bar, anyway--after a few tactless but entirely accurate words about one of the Whips, Carps was well on his way to getting himself smeared up and down one of the walls. Jimmy stepped in before the brawl got too far underway, neutralizing the situation and diffusing most of the tension, then hauled Carps' bloodied jackass self out of the bar before the Whips could change their mind. (In Carps' defense, he swore to god they cheated him at poker. And honestly, they very well might have--he's not one to brawl over a lie.)

A few days later, James got word that at that point, he really wasn't expecting: He'd passed. This colony interlude, it was a test. It was his first freeform interaction with Adapts in general, let alone Azurians, and it was ultimately the deciding factor in whether or not he'd be placed in an active unit or sent home crying. Jimmy had passed with flying colors, and within twenty-four hours, he was scheduled to meet the first members of his new pod.

Meanwhile, backing up a bit: What happened to Jimmy and Carps, after that lovely little bar-fight? They stuck close enough for the remainder of their stay on that particular depot, not out of friendship but as a strange sort of safety net. On a base level, Carps had figured out James'd bail him out of shit, and James figured Carps owed him one if the favor ever needed returned. So ultimately, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when Jimmy's first podmate turns out to be none other than Thomas Carps (whose first reaction was a laugh and 'Well fuck me,' I might add). They're informed that they're to be part of a pod structure known as a 'lance': two humans, one Azurian.

And a couple of days later, that Azurian came in the form of a ten-foot-tall redhead with an unexpectedly sunny disposition. 201-113, that wass her official 'name', but it was Tollie for short. There was no time for introductions. Instead, they sat her down at a table, sat Jimmy down opposite her, and gave him a handheld device. He knew what was going on--the importance of this process was impressed upon James and all of the rest of them multiple times. From the screen, he read a series of even, carefully-measured syllables. Thirty-seven of them, with two carefully-counted pauses, then her name. And his. And her name again. And he stares into her eyes, and she stares back, because she has to. That's how she's been conditioned. And all at once, she smiles.

You see, Azurians are very much their own people, but just as much so, they're a product of careful genetic shaping and deep-set mental stimulus-response conditioning. There's abrief whistled tune that will completely disable her motor function, for example, or a similar command that will cause her to go into unprompted cardiac arrest. The syllables James read firmly integrated him into the part of her mind where only her podmates would ever go. And when Carps read them, the same went for him. She adored them in an instant. Why wouldn't she? They were her boys. Meanwhile, James knows the necessity of it of course--the pod needs immediate functionality, and the integration process skips straight past the awkward 'getting to know you' phase to the desired 'will give my life for you because I love you' endpoint. But when he sees it in person, when he inflicts it on an Azurian face-to-face, such an offense against free will (however practical) strikes a strange, sour note in his head. This is forgotten as time goes on (as Jimmy grows fond of her in return, the fact that her love was initially artificial fades a bit in relevance), but it resurfaces later on when matters of free will are brought into question again. We'll get there, though. I'm trying to do this in order, ffft.

Despite being significantly tougher and more dangerous than anything he'd done before, pod life was actually an alarmingly easy lifestyle to get used to. Even if he did have to leave nearly every aspect of any and all former lifestyles behind. Despite his acceptance into the Azurian Program, he'd kept a few of his closer military pals throughout his AZP training, but he lost them in one fell swoop when he decked his old bunkmate for taking a verbal shot at Tollie. The whole lot of them had thought he was playing it as a double-agent of sorts. Thought he was going to report back with all of their secrets, with what he'd been taught and what it was like working with a ten-foot-tall killer. They talked about Tollie like an animal, like a mad and muzzled dog, because that's how they saw Azurians. So he broke his old pal's nose, and they collectively beat him all to shit for it before Carps could jump in and break things up. The higher-ups let him off with a warning, because quite frankly, with a record like his? If he got into a brawl, the other guy probably deserved a hell of a lot worse than he was giving them.

Which they probably didn't. Not really. It was just a comment, when it came down to it, however derogatory it may have been. But it made James realize that who he was now just plain couldn't mesh with who he'd always been. And it made him realize in sharp clarity how invested he'd truly become in the AZP, and even moreso, in his pod. His newfound family, really, though he thinks about them in less sappy and cliched terms.

By that point, they were already a fully-fuctional unit. They were regularly sent on missions, which usually consisted of some sort of information-gathering or scouting. Almost all of their missions would have some sort of combat--they'd send pods like Tollie's into places almost as if to test their reaction, with orders that generally meant something like 'we expect you to go in there and for shit to be stirred up by your presence'. (Pure recon would be the job for a Whip, not an Azurian enforcer.)

More and more they were asked, as the war went on, to do more in the range of 'kill all the things', eliminate the target. And as such, they became one of the more effective pods as an individual unit. Which, funnily enough, led them to be one of the few pods not often called to team up with other pods quite so much. It slowed them down, in a sense. At first, anyway. Then the war grew even tenser as they pushed farther into enemy territory, and in addition to piling on more solo-pod missions, they were assigning them an increasing number of group missions as well, teaming up with another pod, a trio of pods, or even a small army. They were doing double-duty from then on out, and they barely had time to eat and sleep, let alone relax. Was it ethical? No way. Did it run them ragged? Like you wouldn't believe. But did they mind? Not nearly as much as you'd think. Because as different as the three of them were overall, that's one thing they had in common--they lived for the fight.

And for a long while, things went relatively well. It was dangerous, it was tiring, and there wasn't a single day that didn't have them some kind of sore (and usually all kinds of sore), but it was a life worth living. It was exactly what James had wanted.

And then came the Terran Blitz, where the fighting was fiercer than ever before in the largest space-battle humanity had ever fought, and the Earth was burning, burning to her death and no one could stop her, and all of humanity was drunk with rage and sorrow (even those who'd not once set foot on Earth)... It was the biggest tragedy humanity had seen thus far, but it didn't mean the fight was over, no way. As miserable as humanity was in the wake of what had just occurred, from a military standpoint, it was all the fuel they needed to turn the war in their favor once and for all. Humanity went into overdrive, bettering their technology in a big way and then proceeding to overproduce it. And even then, they'd give their all into every Calched fight as if they still outmatched humanity tenfold. For once, the Calched weren't just being fought off; they were being annihilated. They'd reach a Calched-occupied planet and eradicate all enemy life within million of miles. And they could've stopped once they'd driven the Calched out of UTS space, but they didn't, pushing the war effort into Calched territory as more and more of the enemy were destroyed. Humanity was flat-out kicking ass.

That was when it happened. You always hear, 'it was a routine mission, nothing was supposed to go wrong!', but there are no real 'routine missions' in the AZP. But it was a mission from which they were expected to return with minimal injuries (as opposed to those increasingly-frequent that were more or less suicide), disabling a Calched space station, and it all went wrong. And they lost Carps. And James had to weigh the odds, to think about their odds of going back and Carps' odds of even being alive if they did, and it was just... There was no way. No way to go back. No way to try to save him. James fed Tollie the unbinding code himself before they'd even left the station, and for the whole ride home, Tollie kept asking Jimmy why he looked so sad. Thanks to that one little code, she didn't remember Carps had ever existed.

For the first time, James witnessed firsthand what would happen to Tollie when he was gone, what would happen to the love and friendship they shared. And it hit him a lot harder than he'd expected. Almost as hard as what happened to Carps, to realize that in the span of a ten-second verbal cue, she could forget him just as quickly. And he remembered the flame of injustice he'd felt at his and Carps' integration four years prior. And these, combined with his lingering pain and bitterness over what happened to Carps in the first place, changed his priorities almost entirely. He was once the soldier they could count on to follow orders and protocol to the letter, and now he bent rules left and right. Never quite enough to attract attention--after almost fifteen years with him in the UTS military, they just assumed he'd keep doing what he's always done, and that worked to his advantage. But his end-goal was no longer 'win this war'. Now, his mind and heart were set on breaking Tollie out of the chains of her conditioning, one way or another. It was an utterly revolutionary notion, and it went entirely against just about every protocol the military even had on Azurians, but she was... shit, how do I even explain. She was his co-worker, sure, but she was like a sister and a daughter and the sweetest thing he'd ever had the profoundly good fortune of meeting, and if he had to see them decide for her what she thinks and feels one more time... That just wasn't something he could handle. Not with Tollie.

They continue as a pair for a bit, as long as they can before they report back to a manned military station and can't avoid reporting Carps' death any longer. Over the next few months, they go through a wide assortment of temporary thirds (mostly high-ranked ordinary specialists, like he'd tried to be), but none of them stick. Not nearly well enough to let them read the code and integrate themselves. James hated them all for not being Carps, but he was eternally diplomatic so they never knew. Tollie resented all of them too, because they weren't 'hers' so to her they were just annoyances she was forced to babysit. She expressed this by acting robotic at them, which didn't help their opinions of Azurians as human beings, but it was entirely professional of her considering the fits she could have thrown.

Meanwhile, Jimmy had taken to going for walks, feeling the need more and more lately to find some way to clear his head. And after a bit of promotional prompting from one of his superiors, one such walk found him in the Uplifts wing. Canines specifically. See, canine Uplifts had been working with the normal military for ages, but they hadn't been certified for work alongside an Azurian pod... until now, in theory. He was really just passing through so he could tell the man he'd taken a look and wasn't interested, but after an unexpected and alarmingly lengthy conversation with a young female, he accidentally maybe possibly found a new friend.

Her name was Maggie, short for 'Magnum'--this generation of pups were all named for old-fashioned firearms: Magnum, Barrett, Dragunov, Uzi, you get the picture. And no matter how 'diplomatic' he acted, she stuck to his heel the way your own dog does when they sense that you're hurting. Tollie didn't like her, but that was to be expected, since Maggie took some of James's attention now too. But that settled into a grudging respect as Maggie proved her worth on the field many times over.

Meanwhile, the good part of a year had passed since they lost Carps, and James finally just... concedes. There was an explosives specialist who'd worked with them through the last few missions, and he wasn't half bad. Even Tollie gave him a little less of a cold shoulder than she gave the others, though that was something only Jimmy really noticed. And this one, he grudgingly admitted to himself, could easily be exactly what they need to complete their Lance-pod trio. It was as if his entire self had finally stopped rebelling to anything that wasn't Carps-shaped filling that role. So he started trying to bridge the gap, to appeal to both sides. To make Tollie seem more human to the specialist, and to... convince Tollie to try and seem more human to the specialist, basically. Success was limited, but it was better than nothing. Because this was what had to happen, so damn it, he was going to make it work.

And then the unexpected happened: They found Carps. God knows how he survived, he told Tollie and James a different story each time, but with a barely-discernible haunted look in his eye that kept Jimmy from pressing for the truth. All anyone knew was that he drifted into a UTS space station on the fringe of Calched space in a half-wrecked shuttle running on empty, and that they needed to get him back into the AZP as soon as humanely possible. And it was Carps, so he was probably the one exception to ever exist, as far as Jimmy's emotions toward Tollie's conditioning were concerned.

But the thing is, this wasn't a thing that had been done before, re-impressing someone. You only decommission them with the Azurian if they're dead, so there'd be no need to reintegrate them to start with. It was unprecedented, and very much untested (because in theory, it's wiped clean when the person's decommissioned, so it'd be like integrating a total stranger, right? wrong, actually, because...) Tollie's programming thereafter was a little bit fucked as a result. Tollie hit a sudden self-awareness upon getting Carps back. She realized she'd had him before, and all at once, she was acutely aware that she was a large chunk of time spent both unconcerned by his supposed death and utterly unaware that he existed to start with. She realized she'd forgotten him. And this made her overprotective in a big way from then on out, as if something or someone would up and take him away again. Take both of them away--that extended to James, too.

That slight unbalance came to a head when Carps, entirely aware that Tollie was acting a little off in the head, brought his concerns up to the higher-ups. This was a problem they'd never heard of, only compounded by quite how thoroughly James had hid from them that any problem existed to start with. He didn't want them anywhere near Tollie's head, but this was a conviction that had come to solidify in the year Carps was gone, so poor Carps had no idea what he was doing by tipping them off. He figured, something was legitimately wrong with someone he loved, and he knew people who could fix it.

But when the brass rolled in to try to assess the situation, Tollie refused. She thought they were coming to take her boys, her boys, and threw them into a sort of reverse-hostage situation where she had the three of them holed up behind a bulkhead and doors locked tight and barricaded, threatening unspeakable violence of the brass didn't leave her boys alone. She was keyed up and ready to kill, worse than James could ever remember seeing her, which made this a ridiculously dangerous situation. The brass recognized this, and that violent reaction was what told them there was definitely a problem here (they were just coming to casually assess, if you remember). Meanwhile, Carps and James knew this couldn't go on forever, but Tollie was absolutely blind-panicked and wouldn't be reasonable.

And then the worst started happening: Over the loudspeaker into the room, a voice read off the code to decommission her pod as a whole. But Carps' integration was already fucked--she couldn't forget him again. It was busted. But it damn well worked on Jimmy, which meant he was now a stranger locked in a room with an Azurian set to kill. So before the fog in her head cleared, he cut the lights and crammed himself into the smallest ball in the most unobtrusive corner he could find.

For nearly a day after, they stayed holed up--the brass knew the situation inside would self-destruct on its own, now that James was the enemy, so they let it unfold at its own speed. For nearly a day, Jimmy crouched in that corner, listening as Tollie tried to work through the newfound haze in her own head. She seemed boggled now, as if they'd scrambled something that was already out of order, most of her coherent thought aimed toward distress that she'd ever forgotten Carps. Until it occurred to her that there'd been someone else. The pieces didn't fit together right otherwise. Carps, of course, encouraged this train of thought. Prompted her to think about it, to try to remember. Jimmy was right there, so close, but he couldn't move or speak or anything, because doing so would end in her stability shattered or his skeletal system shattered and probably both. So he listened as Tollie worked through it in her head, eventually settling on a name. His name. A name she shouldn't have remembered. What happened from there isn't nearly as interesting, a reunion and a strategy to get out of that mess (part of which included sleeping in short shifts to recover a little energy they'd lost in the last 24 hours, which is actually his canonpoint), but that was... essentially the biggest breakthrough to ever occur any Azurian thus far in history. She overcame her conditioning, and it was a struggle but it happened. Just like he'd hoped, pushed for. It was one of those 'if we can do this, we can do anything' moments, so even though Tollie's canonpoint is a bit earlier (okay, nearly a year earlier, before they lost Carps), I couldn't bring him in without it.

Oh god, I just realized at the top I called this 'simpler'. l-lmao


Personality:

"See, that's the thing--he's consistent. He's not a hero, he's not the guy who takes one shuttle in and saves thousands. No way. James is the guy who goes in, gets the job done to a 'T', and gets out. No unnecessary risk, no reckless bravery. No grabs for glory. That's why they liked him so much: He was no galactic messiah, not by far, but damn if they couldn't count on him to do the job and do it right, every single time."

James Granier thinks, feels, and breathes his Azurian 'pod'. To say that his job has permeated and become every part of his being is underestimating the strength of the familial bond of the pod as a whole. Because the person Jimmy is now is almost entirely shaped by what's required to keep them alive, healthy, and in the brass's good favor. And hey, sometimes even happy.

So as such, it's almost impossible to talk about who he is without talking about his duty, his responsibility, or one or both of his podmates. So bear with me on that one, and I'll try to make this as quick and painless as possible.

The first thing you need to understand is this: His job isn't to lead the pod. It isn't to strategize, it isn't to give orders, it isn't to shoot the enemy dead. Those are all tasks and skills that his job requires, but that isn't why he is an integral part of one of the most effective Azurian units to date. Why, then? It's because above all, James is utterly and inescapably stable. Almost fifteen years under surveillance of varying intimacies, and not once have the brass spotted a single chink in his armor. A long fuse, no triggers, and the ability to keep a calm head through even the most stressful of situations meant that he'd be the perfect keystone to a unit that would be ridiculously dangerous under the effects of any sort of unanimous discord. This trait is partially how he's always been and partially how he's learned to be to get where he wanted to end up, even if he didn't quite know where that was at the time.

"Never take up a vendetta that's not worth giving your life to." Someone much wiser than I am said this, and while he's never heard it, it summarizes quite well a philosophy James internalized long before he set foot in the military. Hell, maybe he had it all along. But as such, he's incredibly difficult to anger. James only gets mad over things that are worth getting mad over. That sounds straightforward enough, but it's actually a shockingly rare quality in today's world, let alone in the UTS military (as in, surrounded by testosterone and ego on a daily basis. like, I swear, even the women have testosterone in a place like that). It's something the pod has come to count on, though--while Tollie loves the both of them, she's learned to take her cues from Jimmy rather than Carps, and Carps is glad for it. A long fuse in itself isn't always enough, though, and he realized this very early on. So over the course of the last ten or fifteen years, James has taught himself a deep-set tendency toward diplomacy as a general rule. (As an example? The fact that the specialists that cycled through in the year without Carps never once caught even a hint of how he really felt about them.) It's not that he's manipulative, or even just a particularly fantastic liar. He just knows very well how to play nice with others, whether he loves them or wishes he'd never seen their face. That's his curse, or one of them anyway: There are so many things he's just plain not allowed to hate because he can't escape the knowledge that it's his responsibility not to. His responsibility to stabilize the pod's emotions, so he has to unquestionably be the designated 'good influence', himself.

But really, that's not asking quite as much as it sounds like. James is pretty damn laid-back naturally, not in the 'kick back with your feet up' sense, but more... how do I describe it? He's reserved, but not standoffish or closed-off or any of the other words that mean 'unusually difficult to talk to'. He's still an active part of of whatever conversation is occurring, even if that active part mostly consists of sitting back and listening while others converse around him. (Usually, that means 'Tollie and Carps'. They bicker at each other a hell of a lot more than he talks to either of them, but nobody minds because that's just his way.) He doesn't show a ton of emotion by default, but at the same time, he isn't trying not to. He'll smile if you amuse him or say something kind, and he'll do it without hesitation. Although technically, I guess it depends on who's asking, re: his feelings -- A reporter once asked him what he feels when he takes a life, and you and I both know by now that he's not a cold hard killer, but he looked this reporter straight in the eye and without missing a beat he said, "Recoil." From his rifle. Tollie snerked in his earbud, but he has a flawless poker-face and the reporter was clearly just short of horrified. To him, it wasn't a joke so much as a firm shut-out, because while he doesn't mind sharing emotion, having it milked for the media goes a little too far.

On that note, just because that wasn't a joke, that doesn't mean he's lacking a sense of humor entirely. Usually it consists of dry comments with faux-grudging amusement, the unexpected punchline to whatever conversation the rest of the pod was engaged in, or playing the straight-man to Carps' jokes. He gets a quiet kick out of making Carps look like an ass, though that's mostly setting Carps up to make himself look like an ass and sitting back with a drink to watch it unfold, and it's never anything truly horrible. A lot of his best jokes, though, are delivered entirely deadpan. The sort of jokes where you legitimately can't tell if he's serious, and you assume he is but then there's that 5% of the time when he's just in a good mood and feeding you bullshit and you can't even tell. That, combined with his well-trained ability to take everything in stride, make the bi-yearly mandatory psych exams pretty difficult back home, for example. The psych exams poke at the same nerves as the earlier-mentioned reporter, the 'dissecting his brain on display' nerves. They pretty much sit you down in a room with a psychologist who's damn sure they know you better than you do, and for four hours you're stuck talking about yourself and answering any personal question they can cook up. And they say it's private, but they write it all down and film every minute so who do they think they're fooling? So he has to peel back all the band-aids and show his boo-boos, and it's stupid because it doesn't help heal him or any of them, but refusing altogether would be a black mark on his record and potentially ruin the life he's got himself set up in. So he fucks with them, entirely straight-faced but blatantly enough that they know he's doing it on purpose. The 'come on, guys, let's just not?' sort of fuck with them. They ask about childhood trauma, and he goes off on how his mom was Amazonian and abused her five husbands or some other off-the-wall shit, different every time. And he words it as if he's being entirely cooperative--the politest defiance you'll ever run into.

As another point (I guess I went off on a thing there... although it was relevant), James is, as that courier-font paragraph at the top of the section says, someone people can count on. He's the one everyone and their mothers know they can depend on, not 'depend on to be phenomenal' or 'depend on to be brilliant'--although both of those have happened from time to time--but depend on to be dependable. To come through, without fail. In his job or anything even resembling it (a rescue mission in an RP context, for example, or a disaster that needs to be neutralized), he has that penchant for methodical perfectionism that every CO he's had has loved him to bits for. Personality-wise, he's the kind of guy who's rarely in charge but the go-to for a SIC. Given the choice, he'd rather be the one that holds the team together than the one who commands the assault. Incidentally, his job has him doing a fair amount of both, but that's beside the point.

All of that extends to matters on a personal level, too. James is kind of the go-to guy back home when you need an ear who'll listen, and while he's no Dr. Phil by far, he has a way of getting to the heart of an issue that people tend to find relatively helpful. The better he knows a person, the more useful he is in that regard. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are definitely worse people you could choose to talk to.

Hmm, what else, what else... Right, right, the segment I like to call James Is Passionate Sometimes, I Swear. Now that I've covered his general lack of vendettas, it's time to list a few of the things that do rile him up. We already touched on one of them--even if he doesn't feel like he has anything to hide, he doesn't like it when people try to swan-dive into his mental-emotional state for personal gain. Reporters, psychologists, the whole lot of them. The inside of his head is a sensitive topic lately. Which really is probably just emotional bleed from how sensitive a topic the inside of Tollie's head is. Because hooboy is that one sensitive. Despite having been throughly trained in the hows and the whys of it, he still feels like the conditioning leashing Tollie's mind (and every other azurian's mind, but he isn't nearly as attached to them) is unjust. Cruel, even, though it's supposed to have zero adverse effects. He's of the firm belief that Tollie, like anyone else, should be able to choose what she thinks and feels, even though he was under the belief for the longest time that such a thing was impossible now that the conditioning's been set into place. You shouldn't be able to destroy a relationship in a handful of syllables, initiate cardiac arrest in a brief whistled sequence. In a human being. It's just... It's wrong. So while he knows just about every conditioned code Tollie's subconscious can recognize, he'll only use them under extreme and otherwise inescapable duress. It's the one thing he truly hates. It's that vendetta he's given his life to. It's the vendetta that changed something inside him, made that shift from the perfect soldier to a closet revolutionary of sorts, lying to the brass and trying to mentally unleash someone who could kill them all and everyone on the station or colony with very little effort.


As far as weaknesses are concerned, here's aabig one: James has a hell of a time trying to form emotional attachments. Tollie and Carps were a fluke almost five years in the making, by now. Just look at his life: Left his normal, loving family on Cobrius, never looked back. Ditched the precious few friends he had from the military for a single derogatory remark about Tollie, which shows how attached he really was to them anyway, oops. And then-... Well, okay, this is way after his canonpoint, but it's relevant: After the war's won, Tollie becomes the poster-child for Azurian rights as human beings, and tl;dr through that changes a whole bunch of lives, but she's shot in the head one day speaking in front of a crowd. This legitimately ends what would be considered 'James's life'. Carps goes on to get married, has kids, and while James is Uncle Jimmy to them of course, he never does the same. He spends the rest of his life... not necessarily unhappy, but there isn't a single person who can't tell that the life he wants to be living was twenty years ago, out in the field with his pod. Everything that really makes him bust out grinning, Tollie and the shenanigans and winning the war, that was all in the past. It was the one thing he truly found his place in, with the only two people he ever loved with all of his heart. Rewind back to the present, and it's safe to say... yeah. Attachment issues. Could be why he's so level-headed all the time, who knows. (In an RP context, I feel like enough time spent around long-standing CR would end up forming exceptions to this--he's spent almost half of his life in the military, nobody stuck around long enough to get attached to anyway. But making that leap between 'someone he's friends with who interests him' and 'someone he's incredibly passionate about protecting' is gonna take some serious time.)

On a lesser note, James isn't used to dealing with fighting blind. Azurians are all networked on a mental level, so anything that happens with any of them is known by all of them soon enough. As such, the higher-ups don't even try to hide most things from AZP specialists, because they'll just find out from their Azurians anyway. Which means he's used to being privy to a hell of a lot more information than he'll be getting in Haven, so I can that being a point of mild irritation for him.

BUT OKAY. Now that we've got the basics, it's time for crucial relationships. Because really, he's a slightly different person with Tollie than he is with Carps, and the two meld together when the pod's together as a whole. And he's someone different altogether when it's time for business.

So first things first.

Tollie. God, he loves that girl to death. She's like a sister and a daughter and a best friend, someone who fills that empty ache in his chest because he's entirely aware that somehow, she cares even more for him in return. He'd die for her, in an instant. Hell, he almost has on multiple occasions. Her outwardly-innocent nature both lights up any room they're in and sets fire to a stronger protective reflex than he's really ever felt before. Not that she needs it, she's ten feet tall and built to slaughter the masses, but that's beside the point. The James that Tollie sees is inescapably 'her Jimmy'. Her Jimmy will tell her she's too beautiful for any of the normal-sized clothing. When she forgets the words to a song she's idly singing, her Jimmy will feed her the next line, quiet but sing-song all the same, because her Jimmy knows all of her favorite songs. This James is like a secret they share, because not even Carps is quite allowed to realize that Jimmy's got this side of him where he's pretty much this big pathetic softie. But that's okay. Tollie will keep his secrets anytime he wants.

Then there's Carps. While his job and responsibility means 'babysit Carps' is definitely a thing, he's actually... for lack of better terms, more of a bro when it's just him an Carps. He smiles more, not in the quiet smile sort of way, in the 'two guys having a beer and bullshitting' sort of way. He banters more, he takes a few more risks, et cetera. Really, he's the big brother that Carps (being a clone) never really had, and the only person Carps feels like he can legit open up to. He will forever sneak Carps out the back doors to the bars so the brass don't catch him drunk with his eye blacked, and Carps will always give him shit for it later. It's the circle of life, except instead of lions in the pride lands, it's AZP specialists in various bars and barracks. True story.

When the three of them are together, he quiets down a whole lot. Usually, this is when he gets shit done--reads the news, does paperwork, cleans his guns (and Carps' guns and Tollie's guns because hell if they're ever really clean without his help), the list goes on. Not that it means he's ignoring them, he's just content to let the two of them act like children amongst themselves until they speak to him or until he's called into battle against Carps on Tollie's behalf. Which only rarely has the effect Tollie intended, but hey. In the meantime, when they're actually getting something non-work-related accomplished, they're actually freaky-efficient. Take breakfast, for example. Every morning, god knows how, they end up with three different meals and the news read aloud... But not one of them cooked more than like half of their own meal, nor did any of them at any point stop specifically to read the news. It's the most organized chaos you've ever seen, and it's entirely commonplace for them. (Which means that quite a few of their daily tasks are gonna be utterly inefficient here without poor Carps. ffft. Ah well, they'll adjust.)

Finally, Jimmy with the pod in the field. Or in public in general, really, he tones down his familial affection for the both of them in a big way. Only the people he trusts know how much he cares for his podmates, because the more blatant it is, the more likely it becomes a weakness for the enemy to exploit. To the outside viewer, it tends to look like a more professional fondness. As for in the field specifically, they're crazy-efficient out there, too. When they have to be--too many of the missions are ridiculously simple, and James doesn't have to do much more than watch from his sniper vantage point. But on the riskier missions, they're almost impossible for additions (Whips, Uplifts, etc) to work with because of how efficient their internal code is. Most strategies or maneuvers can be initiated with a single word over the headset, or even a syllable at times. If it's really tense, enough so that their communications themselves might be compromised, Tollie can sense the Azurine in his and Carps' armor. He can't so much as flex his fingers without her sensing, so if it comes down to it he can flex the right fingers just slightly and signal her without a word from over a mile away. All in all, James is the sole reason Whips and Uplifts can come along at all. He makes sure they're informed and kept in the loop, where Tollie and Carps are both off to the races without much of a second thought. (They're not necessarily the most sensitive to outsiders, out in the field like that. Oops.) In the meantime, while he's not a strategist by trade, having a bird's eye view of things tends to give him the right perspective to call the right shots 995 of the time. (It also leaves him wide open to a bullet in the back--he's on his fourth kidney and counting, oops.)

All in all, James is a man who's devoted almost half of his life to fighting a war against an enemy that thus far has proved almost insurmountably superior in every way. A place like Haven? It's just one more challenge with terrible odds. Same old, same old. This should be fun.



Abilities/Powers:
He's, for all intents and purposes, a normal human being. Everything he can do is through extensive training and lots and lots of practice. That being said:

• Due to his versatility (by chance and necessity) throughout his long stint in the normal military, he was forced to become proficient with just about every sort of firearm available. Rifles, both sniper and assault. Launchers of all sorts, heavy pistols, the works.
  
• Due to his pre-AZP dabbling in various fields, he's passably proficient in near all of the primary areas of specialization--
  + medicine: excellent combat medic, not fantastic at much more. can probably perform an Azurine detox (i.e. if someone gets Tollie's blood in their bloodstream), or at least give detailed instructions on the process. would not be familiar enough with Haven's level of technology (ancient, to him) to be much use otherwise.
  + science: mostly focusing on biology (human and Adapt both), xenobiology, and the direct and indirect effects of Azurine. he noped right out of this one relatively fast.
  + mechanics: mostly in the 'inter-stellar shuttle' sense, but he could probably use it to get some sort of vehicle up and running, if one were found.
  + technology: p. much useless here. Haven technology blows. :|a
  

Items/Weapons:
1. heavy armor set, a helmet with a sweet-ass visor that has a HUD in it and a dedicated comm line just for his pod running an ultra-encryption. it can change color using military-patented Cugrand-brand camo and render himself damn near invisible, but that function doesn't work if he moves around, so it's basically only good for being a stationary sniper ( however, he won't wake up with this, if that's alright. we were gonna make he and tollie miserable for a bit first and have their armor somewhere in Haven North to trip over on one of their scavenging trips. C: )
2. UTS military-grade sniper rifle + ammo
3. heavy pistol + two magazines

as a note: As a member of the Azurian project, he is equipped with multiple failsafe mandatory and voluntary procedures including self-activated suicide measures and subcutaneous blades, flexible knives surgically embedded below his skin which he can remove and use through carefully trained muscular control. The odds are pretty high that he'll never have to use any of these, but to bring him in without them would literally be to cut them out from under his skin, so. oops.

Sample Entry: (oh god, it was the only sample topic i could think of, so have some raincake)

[ The feed turns on, and for a second, all you can see is a steady view of the pouring rain. And in that pouring rain is a cake, once carefully iced and now looking downright miserable.

He gives you a second to get an eyeful of what's actually going on here. Because he's new enough that he may be mistaken, but cake generally isn't a thing you find lying around in a place like this. Especially... unsupervised?

Then: ] I'm not sure I quite grasp the symbolism here. [ There's the faintest hint of amusement in his tone, like 'yeah, alright, I'll humor you this once'.

After another few seconds of this, his voice comes again. ]

Something tells me I'm going to regret asking this, but is anyone missing a cake?


Sample Entry Two:

It's not entirely unheard of, to wake up in a foreign room with no warning or recollection of travel. At least, that's what James tells himself as he slides out of the nondescript bed and casts a sharp eye over the rest of the room. Five more beds, but they seem untouched. His hands slide down his arms and torso, checking for any sign of bandaging or sudden pains, because so far this feels most like the medical wing of an offshoot-station on a profoundly low-tech colony, and that means it's entirely likely that he may or may not have been shot again.

No such luck.

Really, that's only made worse by the state of the buildings outside. Ruins. All of them--James steps closer to the window, scanning the skyline for anything less than wrecked, but at that point he's 0 for 2. The sky past the window is a quiet blue, achingly reminiscent of an Earth that no longer exists. His brow knits. A simulation? If it is, it's unscheduled, but he'll bite.

A quick pass over the room lets him know what he's got to work with. No gun, no armor, and no sign of Tollie or Carps. Just some sparse furniture and what looks like a primitive phone. He exhales a preparatory sigh, hauling one of the beds to brace against the door (the easiest route is just about always a trap) and returning to the window. Cracking the window, Jimmy shoves it open and eyes the wall he's going to have to scale to reach the ground. It's... doable. It won't be his favorite activity, but then, neither is an impromptu post-apocalyptic survival sim, anyway.

Then his eyes drift up to the billboard. 'In Haven, we will all be safe... together!' Right. Well, we'll see.