@lock me=*Pete Wisdom @Sex me=Male @Aconnect me=@doing Friendly Neighborhood Ellis Insert @Desc me=%rPete Wisdom basically looks like your average Stylish Rogue: disarmingly bright blue eyes, thick black hair that both needs a trim and constantly has the coveted 'just rolled out of bed' look to it, pleasantly even features, permanent five o'clock shadow, quirky smile. Lord, he's usually even smoking, drinking, or both - and quite publicly.%r%rHaving learned through time that the simpler your wardrobe is, the less needless complications enter your life, Pete'll usually be seen wearing a rumpled black suit - with, of course, the occasional addition of a grotty black trenchcoat. Rumor has it he's got a closet full of white shirts and black trousers, and three identical pairs of shoes. This is untrue - they're scattered about his flat. It *is* a widely-known fact that he only has one tie, which he always wears loose; his sleeves are almost always rolled up.%r &TYPE me=Feature &FULLNAME me=Peter Paul Winston Wisdom &AGE me=32 &CODENAME me=Deathfinger! Ahaha, I jest. &OCCUPATION me=Black Ops agent &SPECIES me=Mutant &TEAMS me=Marvel Knights &POSITION me=Token Ellis Char &RATING me=R &TIMEZONE me=EST &ACTOR me=Rupert Everett @Adesc me=@pemit me=\[%N looked at you.\] &AFFILIATION me=MI-6, Black Air &E-MAIL me=wisdom@cleverdick.co.uk "E me=[u(q[rand(4)])] &THEMESONG me=Top Five Pete Wisdom Songs:%r%t1) Sunday, Bloody Sunday - U2%r%t2) Paint It Black - Rolling Stones%r%t3) Strange Brew - Cream%r%t4) Shape of My Heart - Sting%r%t5) England Made Me - Black Box Recorder &BG me=Peter Paul Winston Wisdom was concieved in June of nineteen-sixty-eight when a drunken Harold Wisdom (Detective Sergeant of New Scotland Yard) came home and got down to business with his wife. They didn't want another baby; they'd only planned for one (Romany), who was born in '54. In fact, Harold was quite surprised by the fact that his wife had gotten pregnant, and ignored it for a good long while, hoping it would just sort of go away. Obviously, the baby -didn't- go away, and Pete was born the following March, despite the massive inconvenience this caused his parents. In his early childhood, the boy's father used Pete as a scapegoat for just about anything that came up, and Pete got particularly good at belligerence. Likely, the only thing that kept him from getting horribly twisted over the whole thing was the fact that his older sister loved him an awful lot, and spent most of her free time with him. Honestly, other than almost constant clashes with his father and being ignored by his mother, both of whom he inexplicably loved, Pete's childhood and early teenaged years were uneventful. Even when he manifested his mutancy, it didn't cause much of an upheaval in his life - there wasn't even much of a Mutant Panic yet in the states, and there was nothing of the sort in the British Isles, or on the Continent. Granted, it was one more thing for his father to hold against him, but it didn't really change their relationship. &Q0 me=%r%t"It needs doing."%r &Q1 me=%r%tPete: "You know where the X-Men have been because it's on fire!"%r &Q2 me=%r%tKitty: "Well, it's not just being a family, it's hard for mutants to live in the outside world, what you're calling the real world. There's a lot of prejudice around out there, I've seen it kill mutants..."%r%tPete: "Did it ever occur to any of these wankers that dressing up in silly suits and calling each other dumb names and showing up just to blow things up and then vanishing mysteriously with no explanation or apology just might make most normal people nervous? Or mebbe plain scared? I've lived in the real world all my life just fine, thanks, but I try to fit in, not stick out like a ruddy sore thumb. I can just imagine what my mates would think if I showed up at the pub wearing red longjohns and calling meself `Deathfinger' or some such, blew down the door, blew apart the bar, blew up the jakes... Think they'd stand me a drink then? Or play darts with me? Not bloody likely..." %r &Q3 me=%r%tThe city of London was peaceful at night, especially along the Thames. Some might have to fear cut-purses at this hour, but not Pete Wisdom. There was an aura about him that most any criminal could pick up on. It was the definite sensation that if you were to cut off Pete's arm, he'd beat you do death with it out of spite before he passed out from blood loss.%r &BG2 me=Some time while Pete was in secondary school (and Romany was coming into her own as an occultist and \[gasp!\] semi-professional burglar, and doing crazy things like dating Union Jack), their parents' already long-rocky marriage took a turn for the worse, and they went through a horribly protracted divorce. Somehow, Harold wound up with custody of Pete (even though Harold hated him), and the teen spent less and less time at home. When he was about seventeen, he got into a terrible row with his mother, who told him in no uncertain terms that neither of them had wanted him, or loved him - naturally, he left, and then equally as naturally, she felt really bad about it afterwards and was waiting up for him to come back, which she was sure he would. While she was waiting for him, she was killed - and it's uncertain whether it was just random crossfire from someone else's fight, or if she was deliberately murdered.%r%rRight. Pause for a moment of silence over anything resembling normality in Pete's life.%r%rHarold didn't change his previous pattern of blaming Pete for everything, but this time, Pete agreed with him to a degree. His old man made it quite clear that he was no longer welcome at home, and the young Wisdom left without a fight, for once. &POWER_HOT_KNIVES me=%rHot Knives:%r%rBorn with the X-factor, Pete Wisdom manifested the ability to generate intense heat in his body and focus it through his fingers, released as sharp blades of superheated plasma he calls 'hot knives'. Applications and use of his power are as follows:%r%r%t- He doesn't have to release the plasma knives in order to disperse the heat that'd built up in his body. If he doesn't release the knives, the heat is released normally - off his skin into the air. This is one reason he never wears hats. (The other reason is that he knows they look terrible on him.)%r%t- If he claps or brings his hands together as he's generating the relatively smallish hot knives, they combine to make a rather larger dagger, which may not be hotter than the original knives but is a more concentrated force (and also leaves bigger holes).%r%t- The upper temperature of Pete's knives is unknown, but it's demonstrated as being at least hot enough to melt concrete and steel.%r%t- The speed of the knives or daggers as they're relased is roughly twice the speed of a thrown baseball. Pretty fast, but nowhere near the speed of ammunition from a projectile weapon. No 'faster than a speeding bullet' here.%r%t- Once released, the knives or daggers continue on through the air until they hit something or evaporate. Pete's range is, again, roughly twice the average range of a standard pitching arm. You know, if he flings his hand out as he's extending and releasing the knives, they'll have around twice the speed and range of a fastball.%r%t- It's possible for Pete to extend a hot knife and -not- release it; if he does this, it's just reabsorbed into his body when he's done with it. This is great for backing up threats with a demonstration, burning things (like skin or walls that need to be written on and he hasn't got a pen) at close range, and lighting cigarettes.%r%t- Much like a standard goofy comics-physics speedster-style trick, if Pete spirals hot knives out around him to superheat the air, it'll create an updraft which slows his falling. It's not anywhere near enough for him to fly, but it'll let him land without breaking anything except for people's sense of reasonable science.%r &BG3 me=This was the point at which most young men go and join the army, or maybe the French Foreign Legion. Or at least get a job as a deck-washer and go to seek their fortune, maybe in Alaska. These traditional means of anonymous young male fortune-seeking, however, held absolutely no appeal for the young Wisdom, and he went and applied for training for the British Secret Service. That's right, spy school. With his particular psych profile, x-factor, and apparent lack of guardian/emotional ties, he was accepted quickly and began training immediately. While Pete was there, he poured himself into his studies and physical training, excelling in every field and rising to legendary status among even his peers, nevermind future classes; some of the people he trained with, he still keeps track of today. It was two years before he finished the necessary classes and internships - but this was, y'know, ahead of schedule. It was a bit like taking the accelerated track in high school, graduating as a junior instead of as a senior. MI-5, the internal affairs branch of British Intelligence, snapped him up as soon as he was out - even though he was still only nineteen. It was during his time in the later stages of 'spy school' and his early days in MI-5 that he met and befriended (and, well, seduced) the first of the Wisdom Girls (har har): Monica Perry and Edina "Eddie" Averil. They can still be counted on to back him up, though (don't get any funny ideas) their relationships with him now are purely on the friend level. Or maybe professional friend. If he ticks them off enough, just the professional level. &TECH_WEAPONRY me=%r%rWeaponry:%r%rPete Wisdom has ready access to a number of small arms for use in his covert operations. These generally tend to be semi-automatic handguns, and the assortment isn't terribly extensive. He also has scopes, silencers, and other accessories to customize these weapons if needed. In addition to firearms, Pete can also acquire plastic explosives or grenades for missions that require mass destruction.%r &TECH_SPY_GEAR me=%r%rSpy Gear:%r%rWhile he doesn't get flying cars, belt grappling hooks, or other exotic gadgets, Pete does use some intelligence and counter-intelligence gear in the field. This includes concealed and encrypted radio transmitters, a laptop computer, and assorted surveillance equipment.%r &TECH_VEHICLES me=%r%rVehicles:%r%rPete typically drives his personal car to get around, but MI-6 can arrange for boats, helicopters, and a variety of land vehicles. This is only for special missions where such transport is gauged as a necessity.%r &TECH_INTEL_CONTACTS me=%r%rIntelligence Contacts:%r%rThanks to his years in the British Secret Service and his time in Black Air, Pete has amassed an impressive assortment of associates, informants, and friends in the intelligence community. These range from field agents and covert operatives to bureaucrats and petty snitches. The vast majority are in some way related to the United Kingdom or its former imperial holdings.%r &TECH_MI-6 me=%r%rMI-6:%r%rPete Wisdom is employed as a field agent of the British Secret Service's foreign operations branch, also known as MI-6. In exchange for his taking care of threats to England and Her Majesty, he has ready access to a pool of gear and contacts. It can include weapons, vehicles, or just special favors. They do not extend to the sort of massive, ultra-tech resources the likes of Nick Fury can call upon, however. They are also limited by the needs of a particular mission, and Pete has to deal with some red tape in acquiring 'special' items.%r &TECH_RESOURCES me=%r%rResources:%r%rPete regularly risks life and limb in the service to the Crown (and not the pub). As such, he is paid a decent salary, perhaps comparable to most middle level corporate executives. Unlike most superspies, his wardrobe and tastes tend to be more blue-collar than country club elite, ans as such, he keeps a relatively modest lifestyle. Aside from his apartments in London and New York, he has a nice car.%r &SKILL_SABOTAGE me=%rSabotage:%r%rPete's trained in the fine arts of blowing things up, breaking machines, making things inoperative, disarming explosives, and your average 'smash and grab' mission. This would mean, yes, he's particularly good at going in, getting what he's been assigned to get, trashing the rest, and then levelling the place. He's also good at making it look like an accident, or like an insider did it.%r &SKILL_LOCKPICK me=%rLockpicking:%r%rPete's spent a lot of time getting into rooms that the owners of the rooms preferred he didn't get into. He can pick locks that use keys, depending on how complicated they are, with little to a moderate amount of effort. He can pick electronic locks only if he knows beforehand and has brought the correct equipment.%r &SKILL_FIREARMS me=%rFirearms, use of:%r%rAs a black ops man, Pete's not only had the opportunity, but many times has _had_ to use a variety of different firearms. He's versed in the use and care of quite a few, from assault rifles to handguns, and everything in between.%r &SKILL_DISGUISE me=%rDisguise:%r%rGenerally, Pete's job on missions has been 'get in, do your thing, get out, don't be seen'...but if he's required to make any sort of contact, be it for purposes of information gathering or for doing a job that'll leave witnesses, he's gotten rather good at changing his appearance. Obviously, he's no shapeshifter, but secret agents have been doing the 'change your face/hair/build with makeup/prosthetics' thing long before shapeshifters became more to the public than a fairytale.%r &SKILL_STRATEGY me=%rStrategy:%r%rTeam or solitaire. You *have* to be good at both coming up with plans ahead of time and changing them to fit the circumstances if you're going to be doing work as dangerous as Pete's done. Normally he works alone, but if given the resources of a team, he can quickly figure out a good way to use them all to their capacity.%r &SKILL_CHEMICALS me=%rChemicals:%r%rA lot of the dirtier jobs Pete's done for the Security Service, at different levels, have required him to have a working knowledge of the effects of certain chemicals on human and mutant neurological systems. He's able to concoct mixtures that can kill, incapacitate, or make any human target and a good lot of mutant targets extremely free with information.%r &SKILL_MULTILINGUAL me=%rMultilingual:%r%rPete knows, for various reasons (mostly from having to go relatively deep into a situation before defusing or disposing of it, but not all) a plethora of languages. He's not fluent in all of them, and some of them he only has a passing knowledge of, but he can get by. These languages French, Russian, German, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, and smatterings of Hindi, Pashtu, and Japanese.%r &SKILL_DRIVING me=%r%rDriving:%r%rYep, Pete can drive. Since England *still* has people driving on the opposite side of the street from a good deal of the world, I thought it'd be good to mention that he can legally drive in both systems, and is rather good at it. International license, you see.%r &SKILL_PILOTING me=%rPiloting:%r%rCome on, he's a Secret Agent Man. And he's reasonably old, and he's been at it since he was seventeen. *Several* of the missions he's been on have ended up with pilots dead, and he was luckily (not actually luckily - forseeing the unforseen is something spy school's good at) able to fly the plane. This, it should be noted, is limited - he's not able to fly jumbo jets or whatnot, just small aircraft and helicopters.%r &SKILL_PARAMEDIC me=%rParamedic:%r%rPete's been trained as a paramedic, just in case someone he's responsible for is seriously injured in the field and no doctors are present, and there's time to take care of the person instead of offing them or leaving them to rot.%r &SPECIAL_BITING_SARCASM me=%rBiting Sarcasm:%r%rPete's sardonic nature, background, and perspective make him a particularly biting critic of the world around him. He can deflate egos, puncture beliefs, and taunt people with skill. In addition to pointing out the hypocrisy around him, he knows how to bait people into arguments and debate, even to the point of making them desire to do physical harm to his person. He does this most typically when he's bored, but it can come in handy when faced with people who are full of themselves or when a distraction is needed.%r &SPECIAL_LONDON me=%rLondon:%r%rWhile not a particularly useful bit of knowledge when he's here across the pond, it's still a relatively solid bit of knowledge. Pete's got quite more than a passing familiarity with London and its surrounding area, having lived there all his life; if necessary, he can direct people to any number of safe houses or hide-outs. He's also managed to keep himself hidden there for reasonably long amounts of time.%r &FLAW_DUTY me=%rDuty:%r%rPete is a member of MI-6, and one of their more trusted field operatives. He is privy to state secrets and many resources, but this comes at the price of his personal freedom and some degree of security. He is regularly asked to perform extremely hazardous missions and to place himself in the line of fire when something threatens the British people. While he does get vacations and breaks between operations, he can never be sure that a phone call might come at any time calling him to service.%r &FLAW_BLACK_AIR me=%rBlack Air:%r%rPete was, until very recently, a member of Black Air, a covert and corrupt branch of the British Secret Service. While he has freed himself from their immediate control, they still conspire in the background for their own sinister plans, plans which may hinge upon gaining vengeance on him or else utilizing Pete as their pawn. He is naturally cautious about avoiding their notice or anger, but is likely to clash with his former masters again in the future.%r &FLAW_TEMPER me=%rShort temper:%r%rPete has the tendency to fly off the handle when his buttons are pushed. This is, naturally, only while he's not in 'spy mode', where he'll only blow up over after the job is done. He doesn't *stay* mad, though, and he doesn't hold grudges - that's the job of his ex-girlfriends - but when we're talking mad, we're talking throwing-things-and-breaking-them mad.%r &FLAW_FOUL_MOUTH me=%rFoul mouth:%r%rPete's language is rated Vertigo. If in mixed company this will include a lot of CCA-approved bleeps and blotted-out words and pound signs and ampersands. He *can* be awfully diplomatic, but again, this is only when in 'spy mode'. It should be noted that much of his low-class blue-collar persona is entirely unnecessary, as he was English-public-school educated and hasn't done straight manual labor since he was, oh, fourteen; he can dispense with it completely if absolutely necessary, but he likes making people flinch.%r &FLAW_WARPED_MORALITY me=%rWarped morality:%r%rHe doesn't have any problem with the phrase 'the ends justifies the means', or with killing if it needs doing, or with low-down dirty spy tricks if he has to use them. However, he's overprotective of anyone he actually lets get close to him, and would cheerfully break the rules if it helps one of his friends, or unbegrudgingly take a bullet for someone if he feels that the situation is entirely unjust.%r &FLAW_RECKLESS me=%rReckless:%r%rAll right, so this one goes hand in hand with the second half of the 'warped morality' flaw. Somewhere down deep inside, he has this thing called a 'conscience'. It focuses him through this motto he'll say whenever he asks why he does something stupid or reckless that saves lives but puts his in danger: 'The job needed doing.' So, right, his conscience makes him do terribly reckless things in order to save other people's lives.%r &FLAW_ADDICTIONS me=%rAddictions, mild or otherwise:%r%rHe smokes like a chimney pretty much all the time, and deals with emotional trauma by drinking until he passes out and letting the trauma work itself out of his subconscious in dream-form. So he's definitely addicted to nicotine, and while he doesn't drink -all- the time, when he does drink, he displays some of the symptoms of alcoholism.%r &FLAW_WEAK me=%rComparatively weak:%r%rNot a *weakling*, per se, but definitely not the best physique in the world. His strength is wiry, but it's hampered by the fact that he smokes and has smoked for years, and therefore hasn't got the full use of his lungs.%r &FLAW_PARANOID me=%rMad bloody paranoid:%r%rPete is a Secret Agent Man. He has been one for the entirety of his adult life. Therefore, paranoia is ingrained so thoroughly into his psyche that it'll never fully come out. He sits with his back against the wall, he checks for bugs under tables and cameras in corners, he eyes shadows suspiciously, and he doesn't trust anyone.%r &PERS_MORAL_CODE me=%rStrict Moral Code:%r%rWisdom has, believe it or not, a strict moral code. It's covered in flaws under 'reckless' and 'warped morality', but I'll rephrase it here for the sake of thoroughness. While he'll certainly kill and doublecross if they're part of an assignment, he's also not above killing and doublecrossing the people who gave him the assignment if he thinks a) it needs doing and b) he can pull it off. Everything he does by choice, he does because he thinks it should be done. Whether that entails stealing a helicopter to bring a dying friend to the hospital or trashing an ally's base because he finds out they're manufacturing a 'recreational' drug that targets mutants and kills them with even the slightest dose, he'll do it because he feels it needed doing.%r &PERS_CYNICAL/PESSIMISTIC me=%rCynical/Pessimistic:%r%rPete's idealism is hidden under a gigantic layer of cynicism and pessimism. He trusts precious few people and figures that pretty much anyone he meets would be likely to screw him over given half a chance, and that any job he takes on is likely to be his last. He doesn't hold a lot of faith in the goodness of human nature.%r &FLAW_GUILT me=%rGuilt:%r%rEven though Pete knows intellectually that he didn't cause the death of his mother, he blames himself because he'd exchanged harsh words with her over the phone just before she was killed...and that she was waiting for him to show up in person, standing around outside looking for him to arrive, and was gunned down. In addition to _this_ guilt, he also feels (and rightly) an immense guilt for killing a good lot of the people he was assigned to kill over the years. Some of them, nah; they deserved it. But other situations, he's killed completely innocent people because he was told to, and he's feelin' it.%r &PERS_PARANOID me=%rParanoid:%r%rHe sits with his back against the wall, he checks for bugs under tables and cameras in corners, he eyes shadows suspiciously, and he trusts maybe five people altogether. Maybe six. In the entire world, see? After having it drummed into his head to 'trust no one' for most of his life, and after seeing it play out in doublecross after triplecross, he's got good _reason_ to be paranoid as hell.%r &PERS me=%rStrict Moral Code:%r%rWisdom has, believe it or not, a strict moral code. It's covered in flaws under 'reckless' and 'warped morality', but I'll rephrase it here for the sake of thoroughness. While he'll certainly kill and doublecross if they're part of an assignment, he's also not above killing and doublecrossing the people who gave him the assignment if he thinks a) it needs doing and b) he can pull it off. Everything he does by choice, he does because he thinks it should be done. Whether that entails stealing a helicopter to bring a dying friend to the hospital or trashing an ally's base because he finds out they're manufacturing a 'recreational' drug that targets mutants and kills them with even the slightest dose, he'll do it because he feels it needed doing.%r%rCynical/Pessimistic:%r%rPete's idealism is hidden under agigantic layer of cynicism and pessimism. He trusts precious few people and figures that pretty much anyone he meets would be likely to screw him over given half a chance, and that any job he takes on is likely to be his last. He doesn't hold a lot of faith in the goodness of human nature.%r%rParanoid:%r%rHe sits with his back against the wall, he checks for bugsunder tables and cameras in corners, he eyes shadows suspiciously, and he trusts maybe five people altogether. Maybe six. In the entire world, see? After having it drummed into his head to 'trust no one' for most of his life, and after seeing it play out in doublecross after triplecross, he's got good _reason_ to be paranoid as hell.%r%rIdealistic:%r%rYes yes, I know, this is crazily opposed to the cynicism - but it works. Even though he doesn't believe in the goodness of human/mutantkind, Pete wants to make a better world. He will do anything he feels he has to to make a better world. He will kill and destroy and maim and blackmail and betray in order to make sure that when he's dead, the world will be better for other people. And I don't mean that in an ironic way, either. He thinks it's actually possible to change the world for the better. (Not sure how many ways I can rephrase this without getting ridiculous, but I'm not sure how clear I'm being.)%r%rOpinionated:%r%rIn/credibly/ opinionated, in fact. Pete's beliefs about the spandex set, in fact, are widely known because he's so loud about it. His opinions on other things might not be quite as notorious, but if you ask him about just about anything, he's likely to tell you exactly what he thinks about it. If he's drunk when you ask, he'll tell you at great length.%r%rEntertained:%r%rPete Wisdom has seen the joke that is life, and is endlessly entertained by it. Sometimes, granted, this is a morbid amusement - gallows humor - but he'll almost always be able to laugh. It drives people crazy because they generally think he's laughing at them, and sometimes he is, but if he is it's not personal. They're just, well, funny. Even if they're tragic (in which case, all right, it's kind of a bittersweet 'funny', like a Very Special Episode of Blossom, or maybe an episode of M*A*S*H.)%r &SPECIAL_SLOPPY me=%rSloppy:%r%rWasn't quite sure where to put this, since it's not really a flaw and not really a personality trait, so here goes this. Immediately upon entrance to any room, said room seems subconsciously messier or more unkempt. If he's in said room for more than ten minutes, it *will* be messier or more unkempt, due to cigarette butts and ash and an all-pervading smoke, newspapers, shoes or his jacket, empty glasses, scribbled-on notepapers, et cetera ad nauseam. He doesn't do this on purpose, and it's not like a power or anything, but it's almost like he generates mess. And he actually feels uncomfortable in any space that's too clean or neat.%r &BG4 me=Due to his highly destructive capability of his mutant power to generate 'hot knives', Pete was reassigned from MI-5 to a shadow organization called 'The Factory' a few years after he'd gotten his first assignment. This covert unit's purpose was data extraction from genetic anomalies - mutants. During his time there, Pete committed the type of offenses that he so zealously avenges and protects against now. His conscience was eroded bit by bit, until one final assault to his sensibilities proved to be too much, and he broke. He put his foot down, refusing to do any more - but you don't resign from that kind of job. He was marked a traitor to the organization, incarcerated, interrogated, and tortured ruthlessly (enter Scratch for the first time, here. Scratch's -mutant- ability is to generate high voltage and release it through touch, and his -developed- ability is to extract information from sentient beings in as painful a manner as possible), until he could no longer function. Once he'd been completely and utterly broken - we're talking total psychotic break - the Factory figured he'd be harmless, and released him. Their official line was that he'd been hurt in the line of duty, but their unofficial statement was that he was an example of what happens when you try and cross them. Pete's older sister Romany took him home with her and got him the best psychiatric help she could afford - which was pretty good - and nursed him back to health over a period of about three years. When she initially got him home, he was catatonic - couldn't do anything but take food and drugs through a tube for months. You'd think that these experiences would teach him to stay out of the business, but they didn't. Once recovered, Peter was determined to change the world from one that had such people as his former employers in it - change the system from the inside. &BG5 me=Wisdom's first action upon recovering was to contact the main British Intel organization - the home branch, his first employers. MI-5. Due to his experiences in the Factory, which had since been shut down, the higher-ups decided that he'd best serve his country mainly based outside of it. They moved him over from MI-5 to MI-6, the espionage branch. Now, instead of working with Pitman as his boss, Pete was working for a man named Doyle - someone who actually knew what was up with Wisdom, and who knew how to exploit his strengths without adding to his weakness. During his years in MI-6, Pete was one of the Good Guys. A spook, certainly, but the organizations and threats that he worked against genuinely did evil things, and he could kick arse and take names without adding more innocents to his conscience. He spent a good deal of time in Russia and Genosha (long before the civil war in the comics) as a government liason, in missions both aboveboard and surreptitious; he also spent a decent amount of time in Hong Kong, though it was still a British holding then. Somewhere around 1994, in the middle of his run in MI-6, he took on a mission at the behest of a man in Criminal Intel that he'd known for a good many years - a man named Jardine. It seemed that the man's daughter Amanda was a photojournalist who'd gotten herself into a bit of a tight spot in China, prying into things that she didn't have the means to protect herself from. Pete, seeing a job that needed doing, went in and got her out - taking three bullets meant for her in the process. This, of course, while it didn't please his bosses particularly, won Pete a spot in Jardine's circle of 'I'd do anything for the bloke, -anything-' circle of friends. &BG6 me=Pete stayed in MI-6 for a good long time - he was there for the advent of S.T.R.I.K.E., which was replaced by the R.C.X., which W.H.O. replaced; W.H.O. was eventually absorbed by British Intelligence, bringing a mishmash of ex-military, civilian researchers, and police corps into the ranks of MI-6, if only peripherally. Jardine was brought over from Crim Intel to assist with the new, re-formed W.H.O.; this was when Pete first came into contact with Brigadier Alysande Stuart and her twin brother Alistaire. His relations with them were cheerfully contentious, if that makes any sense, and he dealt with the lot of them as much as he had to, and not much more. It didn't seem to faze Pete when Sandy Stuart was killed by Sat-R-9 and Jamie Braddock - after all, he hadn't known her that well - but it should be noted that whenever anyone managed to catch up with him in the following weeks, he was always at various stages of 'very drunk'. Once Alysande was dead and her brother tried to take over as head of the organization, it wasn't very long at all before the government reorganized the department again, seemingly dissolving it and sending all but its most hardcore, disciplined members back to the departments they'd originally come from. These agents, along with a few from MI-6 proper and a few old throwbacks to the Factory, formed another covert organization - one called Black Air. It was created to catalogue and eliminate paranormal incidents/beings, rather than research them. Much to Wisdom's chagrin, another task of Black Air was to eliminate any -witnesses- to said paranormal activity - and he found himself once again carrying out the orders of a corrupt organization that valued secrecy and power above the lives of innocents. &BG7 me=Unfortunately, Scratch was one of the people who'd made it over from the Factory with the organization of Black Air, which was plenty motivation for Pete not to try and back out of the situation withoug having a solid plan. Beautifully, early on, the heads of Black Air (Threadgold and Michele Scicluna) had assigned Wisdom and Scratch to the same case, likely in an attempt to see whose modus operandi would come out on top. It was a mission in which the deaths of witnesses would be optional - Pete would be likely to leave them the hell alone, and Scratch to murder them in cold blood. Before the two of them had gone five kilometres in the plane they were in, Scratch was already driving Pete up the wall, hissing foul things and being a total creep and reminding him what he'd done to him in the Factory, as a joke - so when they landed, they hadn't gone five feet before Wisdom beat the living daylights out of Scratch, taking advantage of the fact that the other agent needed time to charge up his power before whammying someone with a giant jolt of electricity. Really, honestly, beat the snot out of him - Pete's responsible for causing his positively ghastly appearance, in fact - and quietly did the whole mission by himself. Naturally, this caused Scratch to build quite a grudge, and he'll still take any chance he can get to kill Pete.%r%rIt was also during his time in Black Air - somewhere around three, maybe four years ago - that Pete met and befriended the only BA agent he could concievably get along with, Ed Culley. It's likely that regular trips to the Crown - 'downtime' bar and neutral ground for the various divisions of British Intelligence, and visiting spies - to play pool or poker over a couple rounds of drinks with Culley, Jardine, and the likes of Doyle, Perry, Averil, and Pitman, were Pete's only real touchstone with sanity while he was in the depths of working for Black air. (Sometime hazy, like several years ago, it should be noted that Culley got deathly ill on a job for Black Air, and Pete stole a helicopter to get him to the hospital on time. This is another example of his breaking the rules to get a job done.) &BG8 me=Doing job after job for Black Air, things got worse and worse and Pete's conscience was eroded further and further - he was starting to feel like it was the Factory all over again, which is saying a lot. Long before Ronsaphan, he'd already decided he'd get out as soon as he possibly could, as soon as he'd found an opening. Ronsaphan just made the looking all that more desperate: it was an incident he was solely responsible for. He was assigned to go in and exterminate an entire village in eastern Europe, which had borne witness to the birth of a demon, which was duly appropriated by Black Air - but Black Air couldn't, as usual, leave them alive. So they sent in Wisdom, with his destructive power and his deadened heart, and he killed every last villager and animal in the town and destroyed their buildings and burned their foliage. He made it look like it had been bombed, all with the heat focused through his hands.%r%rAnd Peter Wisdom cried.%r%rScicluna gave Pete a leave after that - she saw what it'd done to him, and knew that if she didn't give him a chance to recuperate, he'd wind up dead (and probably by his own hand). He spent the leave reviewing his options with Romany and drinking himself into a stupor whenever he went out, which was every night and sometimes mornings. Finally, after a good month and a half, Wisdom was put back on active duty, accepting an assignment to the States. The only thing Scicluna and Threadgold didn't know was that he'd sworn to himself it would be his last. @set me=ANSI