Morgan Hart

[Akela]

Oh god, this took so long to write! It got kind of long, and he is a little depressing ball of trauma and violence, but I wuvs him! I do hope his concept is okay; I went with the assumption that usually, no matter where, when, or who, there is a criminal underbelly to things, and I thought it'd be fun to flesh out and play in.


Name: Morgan Hart
Species: I’m human, damnit! – Cyborg.
Age: 26
Sex: Male

Appearance: Hart is a handsome, smooth-skinned man, tall enough to please the ladies and thin enough to trigger their mothering instincts. He possesses a stern, dour face, expressive amber eyes, and a smile so endearing one can’t help but like him, however rarely it plays on his lips. His skin is light and seemingly resistant to any method of tanning, but appears healthy enough; a mop of straight, deep brown hair, so dark as to appear black, reigns unfettered atop his head, trimmed only into slight manageability. Hart shaves inconsistently enough to have stubble frequently running free along his chin and cheeks, though it never gets out of hand.

Fairly well kempt outside of the realm of hair, Hart prefers dressing in the uninteresting shades of black, white, and gray, and rarely defies his great routine. He is frequently garbed in simple, collared shirts and straight-legged slacks, but no matter the clothing or weather, Hart can almost always be found in a well-tailored overcoat, elegantly trimmed, which hugs his body as it tumbles from its heavy collar to his knees. Nothing else in his wardrobe is as consistent, save for the high black boots he wears, which seem to be the only pair of shoes he even owns. He also occasionally carries a sturdy pair of aviator’s goggles, which dangle about his neck when not in use.

In terms of build, the man is hard to pin down by body type, if only because he hides so much of himself away. Hart is lean and toned, muscled under his pallid complexion, a life of hard work reflected in every aspect; his quick reflexes make such a thing dangerous. Should one be so lucky as to get him shirtless, the incidents of his life make themselves apparent on his body; a short scar runs down his right side, about as recent as the few slashes and pockmarks that decorate his back and chest. By comparison, the faint white lines that run down his spine seem much older, faded with time, but never entirely gone.

Hart’s most noticeable feature is the sleek metal cybertronics of his right arm, a silver and copper mechanical limb gleaming dully from the elbow down. Though Hart often wears a thick black leather glove to hide his ‘disfigurement,’ the bulk and heft of the arm are apparent however he tries to disguise it. When not covered, it is a smooth thing of steel and wire, delicately made and near-seamlessly jointed, an almost beautiful example of the triumphs of cyberprosthetics.

On the underside of his metallic wrist, a barely-noticeable phrase is scoured into the steel: “absit omen.”


Personality: Despite his rather cold and gruff exterior, Hart is a man of many pleasures (others might refer to them as vices). A drunk and a gambler, Hart distracts himself from the more distasteful aspects of his life with the simple pleasures of the flesh. A sip of whiskey can turn him from a dour old man into a jester, and just for such situations, he keeps a flask of the stuff on him at all times; it loosens his tongue and brings a smile to his face, and he can be seen sipping from it in tense, irritating scenarios. Hart claims it keeps his temper in check.

The man is fairly no-nonsense, even when enjoying himself. He has a fondness for cards and dice, but would never be seen cheating at either, and despises laziness as well as promoting accountability. A man should own up to his actions, or so he believes. This doesn’t seem to extend as far as lying, however, though Hart would explain it as situational… sometimes you have to twist the truth to get what you need.

He is respectful of women, if incredibly untrusting; towards men, he is simply cold. Friendships are fire-forged and long lasting, but few and far between; it takes a strong individual to last with him long enough to break through. Relationships, with either sex, are rarely more than one-night stands. Hart takes pleasure in the company of others, but the taint of his past lurks so strongly within him, that he finds it hard to grow close to those near him, no matter the desire. He is fond of his privacy and distance.

All in all, Hart is a lonesome, aloof sort. He operates as a vagrant, feeling no ties to a singular home except the blackness of space, and enjoys finding time away from society, out in the endless dark.

Of varying morals and an overall enigma, Hart needs a steady, firm hand, and an individual not keen to judge him, if ever he were to change his ways.


Other: Hart is withdrawn, distant, and often on edge. He has a wickedly short fuse and drinks to overcome this, though a percent of the time it only amplifies his anger and irritation. He’s the model of a creature trying, if slowly, to self-destruct; a gambler, smoker, alcoholic, and sex fiend, Hart works on the outer rim of society, a broken noble among lowlifes. While he is respectful enough when the situation requires, he can also be crass and rude to those who he deems undeserving, and is willing to accept the frequent fights that develop from this behavior.

It is his prosthetic arm that gives him the most irritation. Not willing to be suddenly classified as a “cyborg,” as though he were different following the accident, he hides it away in its leather glove, if only to get over the stigma it brings to first meetings and conversations. After all, it is almost always the first thing noticed, and he has learned from experience the different reactions people will have upon knowing. Hart’s wheeling and dealing can benefit from hiding it or leaving it in plain sight, he’s noticed, and there can be a heavy impact by “unsheathing” the limb in the middle of a deal. Apparently, in the criminal underworld, missing body parts imply you mean business.

In terms of construction, the arm is only slightly larger than its biological counterpart, and very well crafted. It has limited feeling, mainly centered in the fingertips, and is warm to the touch; had he chosen to skin it properly, it would be almost imperceptibly lifelike. His reasons for leaving it in its metallic state are personal and painful: it is a reminder of past mistakes. Hart cannot let himself forget that.

The arm itself possesses an advanced strength only intricate could grant, and so Hart can have a difficult time controlling the power of his own grip, particularly when losing his temper.

Without a defined profession, the man finds himself most often as a smuggler and middleman, tied to no gang or cooperation, instead running outside jobs for whichever circle he finds himself working with this week. His personality does not mesh with authority, and so instead Hart works for himself, only hired as an outside man to fit the need. It is not his desire to work with the criminal element, but his dislike of general society leans him towards this unfavorable—and dangerous—line of work. It is in his head to get out of it, but alone, Hart believes he’s lost too far in, stuck.

Being that his distrust and callousness towards each sex is very nearly equal, Hart also happens to be bisexual, if only because it allows him further options in terms of partners, sexual or not. While he may be more attracted to women physically, men have an easier way to approach him mentally, making his preferred long-term companions (even in terms of friendship) men. It would take a strong woman to slide through his wall of distant caution for more than anything casual.

When allied, Hart is a powerful hound at your side, and could follow you to the ends of the earth—but he is too broken to easily trust.

History:
Morgan Hart was eight when his mother sold him.

Though the only son of a fairly well off couple, Hart had known nothing but trouble since his earliest years. They moved, like clockwork, every year and a half; the houses became smaller, closer to the city, became condos on the outskirts, became apartments within. His parents made an effort to keep up the illusion of luxury, despite their accommodations, and though they no longer hosted parties in their nicely furnished apartment, they went out each day in their best clothes, and sent him off to school with excess change in hand. The maid went away, the food became sparse, but their appearance was shined and polished and primped and pressed; one would never guess that Mrs. Hart was gambling their fortune away.

Maureen Hart was indebted to Mafia. After wasting away the majority of the family money, she turned to another Family, and her loans slowly piled up. Unable to repay such vast sums, their daily life became more and more interrupted by grease-haired men in slick black suits making polite requests, then muscled boys with baseball bats, then Mr. Hart dumped at their own doorstep with a smashed-in kneecap. Obviously, some drastic measures needed to be taken, and Maureen knew just how to cope.

And so, just a month after his 8th birthday, Morgan was handed over to the Mafia for the absolute abolishment of his mother’s debts. Whatever blissful, childlike naiveté he possessed was shattered; the belief in his world as solid and whole, that he was a child loved and protected, was gone. He did not scream as they picked him up and left the apartment, left all his things behind. He saw only his mother, who watched him leave without tears, a cigarette burning to smolders in her hand. Taking a drag before turning away, she tapped the ash off on to the floor and ground it out with a heel, shutting the door on his life completely.

The branch of the Mafia his mother had been dealing with happened to be operating an underground child labor ring; for all intents and purposes, he had been sold into slavery. The majority of the children they picked up went to work in shops and factories, essentially earning back the debt that had been canceled with their parents, but a select few were picked up by the Family itself, kept around as housecleaners, assistants, gophers. Morgan was one of these “lucky” ones.

His life was suddenly twisted upside down, and he became the lackey of and older man named Enzo, brought up to run errands and perform less-than-desirable jobs, from scrubbing toilets to running packages of illegal paraphernalia from one section of the city to the next. His schooling stopped, and he was educated by Enzo, on occasion, but most often by the other men and women who frequented the house—Enzo cared about the boy enough to see to that much. His real schooling was in the art of subterfuge and espionage, of lying, cheating, and stealing, and of utmost loyalty to Enzo himself.

Not that the man was overly kind. As Morgan grew, he learned this over and over; any misplaced steps would find him outside, shirtless, whipped for his indiscretions. And yet he idolized the man as his new father and master, and strove to prove himself in any way possible; his exploits grew dangerous, reckless.

But darker days we coming, as Morgan neared the age of 12, and then 13, the planet’s ultimate fate suddenly became a concern to the young boy. There were rumors, and then facts, of assured destruction, and the city fell into chaotic shambles, frightened and panicked. It was easy to make a living in those days; everyone was buying into everything. Fake tickets off the planets, scams, drugs, even the most noble of aristocrats could be found sniffing about alleyways for a hard boy like Morgan to sell them a pick-me-up, a way to forget the final hours. He liked to fancy that his parents were doing the same thing, their fortunes gone, their minds wasting away, drug-addled and lost in an alley. Morgan liked justice.

But the boy slowly became aware that his own continued existence might not be definite. Enzo, he knew, was arranging with his own cohorts and channels to have a safe passage off the planet, but had said nothing of taking anyone with him. He, too, fell to the waves of hysteria and panic, and started wasting the little money he had saved, the money he had earned swindling and cheating—the money he had been paid for good work by Enzo.

When Enzo found him trying to steal money from his personal safe, it was the last straw. The boy wasn’t even beaten—he was thrown out on the street, alone, left to the fate of dying on the broken planet.

Morgan wandered the streets in the last days, starving and broken, lost. It took all his courage to end up back on Ezno’s doorstep, pleading and crying, offering up any apology and prayer he could think of, desperate for a way off the dying world. Enzo, graciously, took him inside, and took him away. Loyalty, as always, meant more to the Mafia than anything, and mercy could work more than cruelty.

Of course, that didn’t stop the man from beating Morgan, and when they left the planet two days later, the boy still couldn’t sit with his back to a chair, and the thin cuts all down his back would be a permanent fixture for the rest of his life.

And so came space. Empty, dark, lonely, and boring.

The next few years were uneventful. Morgan grew, learned, and schemed, working his way back into Enzo’s good graces, and running his own circles on the massive, crowded ships. The people leaving were still just as desperate for relief as those he’d swindled before the destruction. Eventually, with the establishment of the Drifting City, Morgan took his leave from his mentor, and with good wishes, set out on his own. He had paid back his debts, and the debts of his parents; Enzo, however he acted, would always be a friendly face, his father-figure. There was no more reason to stay.

Starting from scratch was difficult work. His savings leaked away, but Morgan was young at 17, proud, strong, and determined, and slowly he etched out a living as a self-employed smuggler and middleman. The remnants of the Mafia were quick to use him for their own ends, and his start was well-invested by their channels; eventually, other such criminal organizations heard of him, and he came into his own.

It was around this time that he met Nel.

She was gorgeous, intelligent, and every bit as devious as he was; he fell in love the moment he met her, he would say, and she came around to his way of thinking after several months of courtship. It was a twisted love, an on-and-off relationship, though through the course of three years, they would always find their ways back into eachother’s arms. Morgan thought he was on top of the world.

She left him again, when he was 21, but these things happened. He knew she’d come back; she’d left some of her things in his small quarters, and she always came back, after all. This time, though… this time, she didn’t. And Morgan went searching.

The clues were all there, but didn’t add up; his informers and moles, those that fed him the information he sold at top-dollar, they slowly began pointing him in the right direction. A small gang, a group of thugs he had snubbed by not selling to them—they mistreated women, he had heard, and he didn’t condone it—had taken her. Taken her, to lure him out, to teach him a lesson.
It was hard, and expensive, to set up the rescue he did, but he had enough savings to put it together, even if it meant he’d live off scraps for the next few years; Nel was everything to him. He would sell his whole business to get her back, if it took that much. He prayed not.

So he went for a meeting, some hired guns in place to ensure his safety, to discuss terms, conditions—in reality, he was his own distraction, letting another man he’d hired slip in, find Nel, and get her own before the negotiation was done.

It all went wrong.

Even before money came up, before they were finished with their introductions, Morgan knew something wasn’t right. His fears were confirmed when he felt the bullet enter his side, felt the pain shooting up his body, felt it all before he even registered the gunshot. Morgan fell, bleeding, and waited for his hired guns to fire.

Nothing happened.

Morgan Hart, a lord of the criminal underworld, had been out-maneuvered.

He was dragged away, the blood mopped up behind him, and taken away to the gang’s personal shuttle, then given only the crudest of medical care to keep him alive. He would pay for his disrespect, they said. He had to be alive long enough to pay.

The hours, days, weeks, they all blended together into sleep and pain. The wound in his side never healed, only festered with puss, but the men who came to beat him treated his infection, too. “How kind of you,” he mused to them once, and they hit him harder after that. They bled his information out of him, his money, his property, every fact he knew bubbled out of him under torture. It took time, but he broke under their cruel hands, until there was nothing left to do but wait and hope for them to finish him off.

The wound in his side ached, ached enough that the pain and bruises of everything else seemed distant, secondary. The broken fingers, the blackened eyes, it was all nothing anymore. Morgan was not crying when Nel opened the door to his cell, but that is not to say he didn’t cry. There was just nothing left in him by the time she took him out. He felt hope for the first time in what felt like forever, and though he was too weak to hold her, he smiled as she supported his weight, marching the both of them down the dim halls. It was all going to be okay, he knew. She was here. This was the way things were meant to be; Morgan was unquestioning. There was nothing odd about her cleanliness, her clothes, her being there at all. He was happy; he had hope.

When she helped him hobble out into the engine room of the rather expansive shuttle, his brain started clicking into gear. The sight of the very men who’d put him here, who’d done this, who’d taken Nel from him… that snapped him back into reality. His parched throat didn’t have the words to question, but they were quick to answer. Nel passed him off to be held up by two men, and went to stand with the Nikkolai, the man identified as the gang’s dangerous leader.

"You have lasted thirty and one days with my fellows, Mister Moorgan," said Nikkolai with an accent Morgan couldn’t place. "And now, you last me. You have learned not to snub my men, yes? You have learned your lesson?"

And Morgan nodded, staring at Nel’s feet.

"Is good, yes? Then I have two more lessons for you. First, your woman... she belongs to me, now."

"N-n-never!" came the strangled reply, and Morgan struggled with what last scraps of energy he possessed, writhing in his captors’ arms.

"Ah, but taking her would not be a proper lesson, yes?" continued the large man, even as Morgan struggled, watching as they dragged him towards the ship’s large and complicated machinery. The hums and pops of the engine, the steady, heavy thump of the huge pistons as they crashed down nearby, it fell upon deaf ears.

"She has come willingly, you see. She has… as you say, betrayed you?"

Morgan’s eyes met Nel’s for just the briefest of moments, but in that second, he knew it was true. She stood next to Nikkolai not by force, but by her own will, though she had the grace to look shamefully away from him. But with that, in those moments, he was lost. Morgan slumped in the arms of his assailants, the fight gone out of him.

"But as I said… I have two lessons for you, boy. I have taken your woman, and for the second… I take your hand."

There was chaos as Nel suddenly leapt forward, disgust written on her face, as she shoved past the men to reach for him. "You can’t do that," she cried. "You promised you wouldn’t hurt him anymo--!"

Her outburst was cut off by a slap to the face, from Nikkolai himself. "You will learn to hold your tongue with me—and quickly, I think. Irik, Stannis, finish this quickly."

Morgan was pressed back into the bowels of the ship, into the twisted, gyrating machinery, his right arm suddenly stretched taut beside the thumping, pounding pistons. He saw only Nel, as she was dragged away, before his hand was thrust between the raised piston and the flat metal where it would crush down, drawing all of his suddenly horrified, realized attention.

He passed out before the weight crunched home.


Morgan awoke, days later, in a moderately clean hospital bed, located in the infirmary of the Drifting City. His was bandaged nearly from head to toe, wrapped up in splints and cloth, and his right arm, from the bundle of bandages on his elbow down, was completely missing. He consented, if hesitantly, to a new model of cybernetic limb, though he refused cosmetic attachments to make it look "authentic." His arm would forever be known for what it was. Morgan would not let himself, or anyone, forget.

His recovery was shaky, but swift, and they released him within two weeks, still limping, but alive. While his housing was destroyed, his monetary and material possessions broken and taken, Morgan was not one to sulk; he gathered the last of his hidden funds, borrowed enough money to set him straight, and took off for the blackness of space. The ship he purchased was small but sure, and he slowly began piecing his life and business back together, operating tighter than ever.

Lost with various pieces of his life was his name. In an effort to distance himself further from those he was dealing with, Hart referred to himself only by his last name, hoping that if he did so for long enough, personal, painful information on him would be utterly forgotten by anyone other than himself. He never went searching for Nel, for Nikkolai and his men, and he simply hoped thay they never searched for him, either. That part of his life was done.

The rest of his life, in comparison, has been a storybook... a storybook where the hero drinks, smokes, gambles, and brawls just to keep his head on straight. One cannot deny that his terrible vices are a direct result of his past trauma. His business is mildly successful; there is always someone who needs a little smuggling, courier jobs, tailchasing, or just plain wetwork. He still prefers to work alone, though has an established web of those he relies upon, men and women he can farm out jobs to, but that is not to say he trusts them. Aside from various streetfights and brawls which he can't seem to stay out of, Hart has struggled to fly under the radar, and despite his line of work, keep himself out of serious trouble.

There is no peace of his lifestyle. There are only two extremes: chaos, and emptiness.

[The Cosmos]

Uuuuuuuummmmmm. Yes.

Whoa.

*applause from thousands of people*

I started out reading this like every other application, pretty much seeing what inconsistancies I could find and point out. But, yeah. Um. Wow.

I knew as soon as I saw the words dour and crass, I was gonna like it. So, dispite the fact I see some conflicting areas in his personality, there is no doubt in my mind that you can one hundred percent portray this character and fully understand him.

Brilliant job! Well done! Accepted!