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[ H I S T O R Y ] Check's mind was set from his earliest days: he was going to be a detective. As he got older, however, this childish description slowly faded into a major in forensic sciences. After speeding through his high school classes and graduating early, college was an absolute mess, but Check pulled through with both eyes (neither then covered by his present trademark, a checkered bandanna) dead-set on the future. Fresh out of the school system at the young age of 18, Check never slowed down as he plowed on to begin his own detective agency in the heart of the town that needed it most: New Pike.
His skill as a private investigator gained him a noticable reputation in the city; his good work was thanks to his right eye. Although it's constantly changing state were often taken to mean that the eye was blind, this was as far from the truth as possible. Out of his two eyes, Check's moon cycle eye was particularly keen and allowed him to pick out important evidence at even the bloodiest crime scenes. The town had never before seen a detective quite like Check. No matter how much he loved his work, however, New Pike leaves no man uncorrupted. |
"Every day’s the same, every case is the same. Figure out how this person died, and move on. Each victim is just a form for me to fill out. And when I look at the abandoned shell of what was once a living, breathing human, whether taken by gunshot or knife or poison or bat or axe or rope or-- I feel nothing. And I hate myself for it. No matter how I look upon the idea that, well, this man or woman is dead, lost into oblivion, and they’re never coming back? I can’t seem to find it within myself to feel a thing. I can’t find myself in the infestation of death and murder that has taken roots in the deepest part of my mind. I am slowly driving myself to the brink of madness with the simple repetition of my existence, my work repeating itself over and over and over and over and over until I don’t have to feel a thing anymore. Every case just blurs into every other case to the point that they’re all the same, and those lives lost matter none to me.
The concept of death is one I am familiar with." |
New Pike was a city unlike any other; with incomparably high crime rates, Check had a never ending stream of cases that often ended more horribly than they started. On more than one occasion, Check would take a client's case, only to have the client found dead mere days or weeks later at the hands of one of the city's many gangs. He went from the city's top private eye to an apathetic mess of a man as time went on, losing sense of his feelings toward his cases as he declined more and more clients. At the lowest point his career, Check recieved some anonymous intel as to the murderers of one of his early clients. Although his life's guiding principle had been to cause no harm, Check set out in the rain with a gun in his hand.
In your hands: the king of spades.
The street is dark but your nerves are ablaze as your pace quickens down the roadway. Neon currents ribbon past your collarbone and around your lungs, darting in and out of dimmed windows and past the gaze of dimmed eyes, reflecting in dim raindrops. The fluorescent signs watch like angels, but which direction is heaven from here?
There are coyotes afoot in the alleyway perpendicular to your route, the act of strife bound into their palms with crimson string and known to them as a kind of religion that requires no book. Devotion is the pursuit of entropy’s course as they cling to each other in packs amongst raw strands of midnight, watching your journey from the sidelines.
They will not follow you.
The city, however, rests in the maw of the nighthawks, clamped between sharpened teeth and gutted by razor-edged talons. Your hopes, in order:
But you know better than to cling to either too tightly, and your progress down the street receives a storm-washed serenade of thunder.
Perhaps, if you were to look up within any small matter of moments, your gaze would fall even with ten trillion specks of dust in cosmos far away as the freckled heavens sprawl far across the pages of your existence and into that of others. Somewhere on a rooftop in this city, a hand that is not your own may dart up between the raindrops to try to grab a sliver of that light, drawing back into the huddled self predictably vacant. Unlike this someone, for as long as any part of your breathing self is weighted to the earth, you will keep your eyes down.
Because why would the unattainable be of any matter to you?
As you reach the end of the street, you welcomingly let your sight fall into an unfocused blur of urban cosmos when streetlights reflect their muted yellows into the puddles below your feet. Yet you dare to tread on these stars, dare to break the surface of each galaxy as your strides widen and you find yourself running, sprinting to who knows where and who knows when.
In the distance: the ace. It tumbles in hazy breaths.
The street is dark but your nerves are ablaze as your pace quickens down the roadway. Neon currents ribbon past your collarbone and around your lungs, darting in and out of dimmed windows and past the gaze of dimmed eyes, reflecting in dim raindrops. The fluorescent signs watch like angels, but which direction is heaven from here?
There are coyotes afoot in the alleyway perpendicular to your route, the act of strife bound into their palms with crimson string and known to them as a kind of religion that requires no book. Devotion is the pursuit of entropy’s course as they cling to each other in packs amongst raw strands of midnight, watching your journey from the sidelines.
They will not follow you.
The city, however, rests in the maw of the nighthawks, clamped between sharpened teeth and gutted by razor-edged talons. Your hopes, in order:
- That your walk will end safely.
- That the hawks are long gone for tonight.
But you know better than to cling to either too tightly, and your progress down the street receives a storm-washed serenade of thunder.
Perhaps, if you were to look up within any small matter of moments, your gaze would fall even with ten trillion specks of dust in cosmos far away as the freckled heavens sprawl far across the pages of your existence and into that of others. Somewhere on a rooftop in this city, a hand that is not your own may dart up between the raindrops to try to grab a sliver of that light, drawing back into the huddled self predictably vacant. Unlike this someone, for as long as any part of your breathing self is weighted to the earth, you will keep your eyes down.
Because why would the unattainable be of any matter to you?
As you reach the end of the street, you welcomingly let your sight fall into an unfocused blur of urban cosmos when streetlights reflect their muted yellows into the puddles below your feet. Yet you dare to tread on these stars, dare to break the surface of each galaxy as your strides widen and you find yourself running, sprinting to who knows where and who knows when.
In the distance: the ace. It tumbles in hazy breaths.
He arrived at a casino on the city's coast, the site of the Ace's newest takeover. After making his way up to the roof, Check waited in the shadows of the roof's doorway as he watched the gang's leader, Diamante, talk with his bodyguard as they overlooked the city in the rain. Silently, he stood from his hiding place, and raised his gun. It only took a single shot for the bodyguard to crumple, his corpse tumbling off the roof and into the bay below. Dia, for a moment, didn't turn. In the silence following the shot, Check simply threw his gun across the roof, clattering across puddles and sliding to a halt between the two men.
Finally, Dia turned, looking the killer of his bodyguard in the eye with his hands in his pockets and his expression blank. Check spread his arms, rain pelting him from the heavens as he finally decided to speak: "Go on then, kill me." Dia made no move to kill him, rather took a moment to observe the man before him before replying. "If you care so much, do it yourself." And Check did just so. Courrupted beyond a sense of will, he took four short strides, leaned down, picked up the gun and stared at it in his hands for a matter of moments before he began to raise it to his head. Dia, however, couldn't understand why this man had done exactly what he had asked. He had seen many broken men in his days, but never one that seemingly was acting on command. "Wait," Dia called. One more, Check did so, lowering the gun and looking to Diamante. This was the beginning. |
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[ P R E S E N T ] Check was quickly taken on my Dia as his replacement bodyguard, as there's no command he won't obey. His only purpose in life is to serve Dia and the Aces, to further their control of the city. He is the epitome of a perfect solider: stoic, apathetic, and ready to fight at a moment's notice.
But a professional alliance is not the only bond that formed between Check and Dia. It was undeniable that there was a degree of attraction between the two, and with Dia's socialite nature, a covert relationship quickly developed. While they do their best to keep it hidden for politics' sake, it's as if Check can feel again when he's around Dia. The apathy fades, and is replaced by a fierce loyalty that would drive him to death for his boss' sake. When they're in public, however, it's a strictly professional affair... though this doesn't stop Dia from teasing Check and trying to get him to lose his cool. He mainly specializes in sharpshooting; the same eye that aided him in unwrapping cases now serves as an unfailing eagle eye that can shoot down anyone, from any distance, with any firearm. His best work is with long range weaponry. Dia will often take Check on his solo missions, with Dia leading and Check following his every move. When they're not out, they're often in one of Dia's many casino penthouses, the few places Check will openly express himself. A non-working Check is a fidgety Check; when he's on his own or just with Dia in this state, he constantly has to be moving things around or messing with one of his weapons. |