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[hypoxic]

Name: Jessie
DW username: N/A
E-Mail: jessie[AT]kawaii[DOT]nu
IM: N/A (I haven't signed into AIM in the last five years. Plurk is best for me)
Plurk: eljkofantastico

Other Characters: N/A

Character Name: Leopold Fitz
Series: Marvel Cinematic Universe / Agents of SHIELD
Timeline: 3x01 [EDIT JUL 21 2017:] 3x09 [EDIT JUN 3 2018:] 4x18
Canon Resource Link: Leo Fitz on MCU Wikia
Character History:

Leo Fitz was raised amid the picturesque landscapes of Glasgow, Scotland, surrounded by the sort of scenery that makes the romantic-minded write poetry. It was as mundane as it was lovely, leaving a young genius to quickly become bored and disinterested. Fitz grew up with a deep interest in progress and technology, leading him to become an engineering prodigy, as well as a very literal rocket scientist. He was admitted to the SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, where he abandoned his homeland in the pursuit of knowledge. There he found a kindred spirit in Jemma Simmons, a fellow Brit settled in an all-too-American setting. Operating under the impression and ideal that Science is Sacred, they joined together to create progress and move the world into the next millennium. In time, their relationship would prove to be one that would drive them to the literal ends of the Earth.

At the Academy, Fitz and Simmons became local celebrities. With his specialty in Engineering and hers in Bio-Organic Chemistry, they were able to jointly patent and design a number of innovative government tools. They pioneered a trend toward nonlethal weaponry, a relatively unexplored field in international security. They became enough of a fixture that their classmates designated a team name for them; they were commonly known as FitzSimmons, two operatives who worked best when they were a singular unit. To no one's surprise, they graduated at the top of their class. Shortly thereafter, they were hand-picked for Phil Coulson's special ops team. Though Fitz would have much rather remained in the safety of a lab environment, Jemma thirsted for the adventure of fieldwork. He followed her, obliging her requests with only minimal protests. From there, things became difficult.

Fitz, for all his genius, doesn't easily get along with ordinary people. His is a world of science and theory, where multisyllabic constructions are king. In a social setting, he was likely to outright roll his eyes and make fun of his intellectual lessers (behind closed doors, of course. He's terribly British in that way). In general, his team considered him a staple to the cerebral functions of their unit, but still a softbodied afterthought when anything physical was deemed necessary. This treatment grew tiresome for Fitz fairly quickly. After all, how often does Q get credit for Bond's spy tactics? As Jemma began to experience obvious infatuation with the more muscular members of the team, Fitz grew increasingly dissatisfied with his status as "the gadget guy." Fitz began to put himself into fieldwork as often as the opportunities presented themselves, eager to prove that his particular skillset could be useful. It worked. The team bonded and developed respect for one another. They became familial, brothers and sisters united for a shared purpose. And then everything fell apart.

It was revealed that HYDRA, the enemy spy organization, had infiltrated SHIELD with a mole intent on destroying it from within. A member of Fitz's own team was tasked with eliminating Fitz and Simmons once it became apparent that they would not swear their allegiance to the other side. Trapped in a medpod, they were pitched into the ocean and left to run out of oxygen and die.

There aren't many options in a suddenly-underwater medical unit. Oxygen was in limited supply, and any attempts made to unseal the unit would send pounds of pressure rushing at them. There was no room for hope. But fortunately, the resident "gadget guy" had an ability to MacGuyver hope from even the worst situations. With the scant materials available, Fitz devised a system that could force air into lungs, which would allow for a way around the initial pressure dilemma. However, there was only enough for one of them to use. Fitz explained the situation to Simmons in a rush, demanding that she be the one to survive. She protested that she wasn't willing to become responsible for the death of her best friend. Fitz simply replied that she was more than just a friend. An then he triggered a breach in their pod, making the decision for her.

Fitz drowned then. There are flowery ways to describe what happened, but he was coldly aware of the reality involved. He was rendered without access to air in an underwater graveyard where there was no opportunity for recovery. They were left leagues below the surface, with one one lungful of air between them. He accepted death so that she could live. Luckily for him, Jemma wasn't content to be a passive damsel in this equation. Even though the extra weight slowed her down and threatened her own chance at survival, she took hold of her friend and brought them both for air. They were picked up by a SHIELD jet, but not without cost.

Fitz's underwater adventure resulted in his body being without oxygen for an extended period of time. The deprivation triggered a severe case of hypoxia, along with the complications brought about by brain damage. He spent nine days in a coma. When he woke, he was unable to move or speak. His recovery from there was a slow, laborious process.

It was a horrible, isolating period. The damage was worst in the language center of his brain, disrupting patterns and his ability to express himself. His right hand lost much of its mobility, eradicating his ability to work independently. He needed to produce comprehensive materials so that other people could produce things based on his plans, but his expression was so skewed that most things ended in word salad. Jemma tried to support him, but he'd just grow frustrated and unresponsive. Convinced that her presence was making him worse, she accepted an assignment working undercover off-base. Fitz saw this as a betrayal, and in the depths of his illness began hallucinating a replacement Jemma. His faux-Jemma was compassionate, understanding, and always knew what words he was trying to say when his mouth refused to comply. He lapsed into a phase where her company was preferred, ultimately closing off from most non-imaginary friendships.

New members joined Coulson's team, out of necessity as SHIELD struggled to recover after the HYDRA betrayal. Most of Fitz's new coworkers wrote him off as the quirky, odd member of engineering. But Mack, one of the new mechanics, was a bit more patient than that. He was able to listen to what Fitz was trying to say, patient enough to help translate mangled ideas into something functional in the professional field. Mack wasn't much of an idea man, but he was good with his hands. Together, they were capable of working through complicated mechanics and smoothing past Fitz's disability. Mack also had a fun-loving side, and frequent sessions with video games helped Fitz refine his response time and regain use of his damaged hand. The social contact helped exponentially as well; where Fitz felt the weight of expectation from his usual team, Mack was someone he hadn't known before the ocean incident. Mack didn't think of Fitz as someone broken; he'd sparked a friendship with the weird guy who stumbled over his words. Fitz found it liberating to shed expectations and be himself again. And in that way, he began to mend.

Jemma returned, but there was a schism in their friendship now. She blamed herself for his condition, and he felt like she was boxing him into unrealistic expectations. She wanted him to be as he was prior to his brain damage, when that person was impossible to reach. This came to a head after an incident in Puerto Rico left their teammate Skye changed on the molecular level. She was developing Superpowers just as Jemma was beginning to take a hard stance against powered people. It struck Fitz as a kindred ailment; he too had been forced to confront the notion that "different" didn't have to mean "lesser." For the first time, Fitz sacrificed Science for the sake of preserving a friend. He doctored her test results and kept the severity of her condition hidden. He did everything he could to ensure that Skye be let out of quarantine long before she was ready. The schism between Fitz and Simmons grew wider, particularly once she discovered his interference and interpreted it as a betrayal. Fitz began considering a transfer away from engineering and into mechanics, where he could abandon design theory altogether and spend more time building things with his new friends.

And then the foundation of SHIELD shook once more.

A growing number of agents were displeased with the way now-Director Coulson was leading the agency. They performed an insurrection and took control at the top level, and then proceeded to raze the ranks. Coulson was expelled, and his sympathizers fired. During the transition, Fitz was approached to break into Coulson's secure digital storage device. He refused, boldly, which led to an emergency meeting with Jemma. They agreed to set aside their broken friendship in favor of the greater good. Jemma would continue working to help as best as she could from within SHIELD as Fitz ran AWOL with the storage unit. He fled to Coulson, just in time to embark on a series of missions that would send him into the worst parts of the field he'd once been loathe to experience. For a time, he'd even confront -- and had to work alongside -- the agent who'd betrayed him in the first place. He was angry enough to rush the traitor and try to hurt him, but was pulled away before any real harm could come to pass.

A group of superpowered people, Inhumans, were beginning to make moves against the rest of society. They'd managed to convince themselves that they were the next step in human evolution - and that those who weren't yet powered would serve or die beneath their betters. SHIELD and Coulson's team both tried varied methods to undermind the powered people, but eventually sank back into an uneasy collaboration. When Fitz and Jemma reconnected, he boasted proudly about how close he'd come to killing the traitor and getting revenge for them both, but noted that he'd backed down in the end because he didn't want to become the thing he loathed. Simmons then revealed a perfectly effective strategy that would allow them to do away with the traitor while he was staying with SHIELD, to which Fitz recoiled. For all his talk, he couldn't really stomach the idea of real human death. It was chilling for him to see that his counterpart didn't share his reservations. But before they could properly discuss the issue, Fitz was called away for work. It lingered, unresolved as everything else.

During their final battle with the Inhumans, Coulson's team faced directly against a man with the ability to teleport. Fitz was able to break down the physics involved in making his powers work and develop suppression technology, preventing the powers from manifesting and making a formerly-unbeatable opponent thoroughly dispatchable. When the man questioned how it was possible, Fitz simply replied, "Science, biatch."

When the fighting was over, the agency as a whole set itself to healing. Fitz reconciled with Simmons, and even summoned up the courage to ask her on a date. They agreed to have a dinner together, and test the waters to see how things went. It would have been a moment of positivity, had things not immediately gone downhill. While inspecting some alien artifacts recovered from the Inhumans, Jemma was consumed by a dark stone obelisk, swept into what was ostensibly nothingness.

Fitz spent the better part of the next several months singularly focused on retrieving his lost partner from whatever had taken her. He theorized that the obelisk was a method of transportation, but there was no telling where she'd been taken or for what reason. But Fitz continued to struggle, long after SHIELD declared her dead. He urged coworkers to cover for him and lie about his whereabouts as he chased lead after lead, researching medieval stories and ancient mythology for even the faintest clue. He became obsessed with just following "one last lead," unable to fulfill his duties at SHIELD while any questions remained unanswered. He traveled alone to the middle east, to meet with black market criminals for a glimpse at scroll casings that might provide serviceable information.

After bargaining his way through the criminal underworld, Fitz discovered that the most ancient information about the obelisk was simply the Hebrew word for "death." It crushed him utterly. Later (in a scene past his canonpoint, when his perseverance pays off), he would explain his logic to Jemma herself: "I'm just not strong enough to live in a world that doesn't have you in it." Confronted with the possibility that things could never be addressed with Jemma, that they could never work through their differences and return to being a single unit again, something in Fitz snapped. He stormed into the quarantined area of Jemma's disappearance with a shotgun, which he used to blow away the locks and barriers. He then came uncomfortably close to the menacing object, the thing that tore him from his partner, the woman he'd already tried to die for once.

"Do something," he shouted to it, formally out of ideas. And if it had killed Jemma, then perhaps it would kill him just as completely. At least then it would be over.

And then, instead of the comfort and consolation of his network of friends, there was only Wonderland.

[UPDATE: July 2017]

The monolith did nothing. He broke down and sobbed against it, thrashing and shouting until he was pulled away by security. But that moment of tantrum offered the opportunity for discovery; he'd gotten a piece of sand stuck on his cheek even though they'd been nowhere near the beach. Analyzing the sand revealed that it was composed of nothing that was native to the Earth at all. It wasn't a death statue at all, but actually a gateway to somewhere else. It gave a direction to the investigation, and offered just enough hope to silence the naysayers who wanted to abandon Jemma as a lost cause. Their research brought them to an old castle in Europe, where a wealthy group had been sacrificing people to an ancient god. With some creative use of Daisy's powers,¹ they were able to open up a vortex, and keep it open long enough to plunge inside. Though it should have been a test to prove the concept as valid, Fitz jumped into the unknown and went seeking out his missing Jemma. He found her filthy and disheveled, but alive.

She was skittish when she tried to explain the ordeal she'd experienced. She was photophobic, and sensitive to the smallest sounds. She'd been rendered jumpy and prone to sobbing, seemingly at random. Fitz took it upon himself to be a caretaker for her. He tore down parts of their lab and plunged it into darkness so it would be more comfortable for her. He took her out on the date they'd been forced to delay, only to later discover that part of her pain was one of separation. While she'd been stranded, out on an alien desert planet, she'd met a lost astronaut. They'd both been convinced that they'd never be found, and sparked an affair. She'd fallen in love with him, and had been trying to find a way back to the planet on her own to bring him to safety. Fitz had lost her, before she'd ever even had a chance to be his.

Rather than processing his feelings over the issue, he threw himself into his work. If a man Jemma loved was still stranded out in space, then he'd have to function as the rescue committee. The portal they'd used to rescue Jemma was destroyed, and so they'd have to build one from scratch. His willingness to step aside and support Jemma's other love frustrated her; she wanted him to fight for her, and couldn't understand how he could find it in his heart to support her. After yelling at him, they shared their first kiss.

It was then that they found a breakthrough. The smattering of ritualistic clans bent on sending away sacrifices to feed an ancient god all cycled back to Hydra. They'd been behind all of it, and had been engaged in a centuries-long effort to reach the alien planet and retrieve a particular monster they knew had been banished there. Over the eons, they'd gotten quite good at sending people over there, but had made no progress in bringing anyone back. In this way, SHIELD and Hydra each had the half of a mystery that the other needed. Fitz and Simmons attempted to breach Hydra's territory for information, and were captured instead.

While kept under Hydra's interrogation, Fitz was excellent at holding his secrets close to his vest. He vowed to never talk. It might have worked, had their interrogator not been Grant Ward, the man who knew them better than any other Hydra operative. He knew that the way to force Fitz to cooperate wasn't to harm him, but to target Jemma. She was led away and subjected to vigorous torture, while Fitz was restrained in the next room and forced to listen to her screaming. Listening to her suffer was unbearable, but worse yet were the periods in between, when silence kept him from being sure she was still alive. He folded easily, and agreed to help Hydra reach the alien world and fetch their monster. It could easily be the end of the world, but leads to Wonderland instead...

¹BTW Skye changed her name to Daisy. It's complicated and explaining it would take a 10-year detour away from Fitz's history. Just roll with it.


[UPDATE: June 2018]

The trip through the portal dropped Fitz and a team of Hydra agents in the middle of the desert, where they were left to pick through the desolate nothingness and seek some sign of life. Fitz managed to track down Jemma's lost astronaut, and attempted to bring him to their exit point. It was then that the true nature of the4 monster was revealed. It was a parasitic creature able to hide in cadavers and reanimate the dead. It confessed that it murdered the astronaut shortly after Jemma's departure, and had been living in his skin waiting for the next opportunity to find freedom. The astronaut was lost, but Fitz didn't need to be. He'd been followed by Coulson, who used the element of surprise to shut down the monster and pursuant Hydra agents. Fitz would have been happy to return home then, but Coulson, wrapped in vengefulness of his own, stopped to murder Ward in cold blood.

For Fitz, the moment was surreal. He'd been rescued from certain doom by the man he'd come to see as a heroic surrogate father. Coulson could lead them out of any danger. His command was absolute. He was a Hero. And now he was a murderer. Fitz watched, but said nothing. And he continued to watch. He watched the ramifications of their extraterrestrial adventure, when it was revealed that the monster escaped in the shell of the man they'd killed. And when the creature found its way to Earth, it was able to exhibit control over the Inhuman population. The same community they'd just saved suddenly found its will bent, and again friends were made to act as enemies., When the monster, Hive, took Daisy under its sway, Fitz was asked to do double duty at work. She'd been their tech wizard, but now it fell to Fitz to secure the firewalls from attacks, with many of those attacks coming from Daisy herself now. The responsibility of fieldwork remained as well. He and Jemma were sent to infiltrate a black market event for transhumanists, eccentric billionaires bent on genetically modifying themselves to jumpstart the next stage in human evolution. While out in their finest eveningwear, Jemma and Fitz had a long talk about the state of their relationship. Without the astronaut to complicate their love life, there were no barriers remaining to give them a reason not to try again. They consummated themselves as a couple later that night.

From then on, Fitz took a support role while his teammates handled the bulk of the outdoor work. Hive's influence was deemed an infection, leaving Fitz and Jemma tasked with discovering a cure. Though their efforts were never quite successful, the threat was eventually mitigated once Hive was lured onto a shuttle and launched into space.

In the relative peace that followed, Fitz and Jemma focused on building their relationship. They took a vacation together, and eased into a comfortable existence where they went home peacefully together after long days at their chaotic workplace. There was something approximating normalcy at last.

In time, it was decided that SHIELD would change again from the covert ops branch it had become. Since they were the team most able to interact with otherworldly forces, they would be the most capable resource to field a growing anti-Inhuman sentiment among the public. The alien presence on Earth was becoming common knowledge, and with the unknown came fear and hostility. With that shift to a public identity came new rules and procedures. Coulson was forced to step down from Directorship, since he was supposed to be dead. For Fitz, this translated to limitations.He was classified as primarily internal staff, which amounted to more free time (with which he picked up a habit of ending days with soccer and beer), and less of the high-stakes external work he'd come to enjoy.

But idle hands can get into mischief all their own. Over the months, Fitz had become increasingly close to Holden Radcliffe, a scientist he'd met while working undercover at the transhumanists' gathering. Radcliffe was an older Scotsman determined to use technology to find a way to cheat death. Fitz grew close with him, and shared much of his work developing photorealistic prosthetic limbs (intended for injured agents). To his surprise, Radcliffe had been using the scientific data to create a lifelike human of his own. He'd called her AIDA (Artificial Intelligent Digital Assistant) and was in the process of teaching her how to study and replicate human behavior. Fitz was frantic in an attempt to keep AIDA hidden, as a creation on that scale would violate the terms of Radcliffe's parole; Fitz, ever one to be led by his heart, was in a panic at the idea of losing his friend. He tried to look past the bad behavior and see through to the benefits of what good AIDA could do for mankind. In that, he steadily became an accomplice. But it was only a matter of time before the ruse was discovered; as Radcliffe began to introduce her as his personal assistant, Jemma pegged her as artificial at once. Fitz was forced to admit that he'd spent time participating in her design.

But though he'd helped to perfect AIDA to functioning at a level close to human, he couldn't do much to keep Radcliffe from teaching her the worst parts of humanity. From him, she learned to lie and steal, and that rules didn't apply the same to everyone. When he stole a magical artifact from SHIELD, he blamed it on her. AIDA was dismantled and mostly destroyed, but Fitz refused to accept that a robot could malfunction in such a specific way. He spent weeks slavishly working his way through AIDA's code attempting to prove her innocence, ultimately discovering that her transgressions came at the behest of Radcliffe himself. He joined a team with the intent to bring Radcliffe to justice, but instead uncovered a LMD (life model decoy) replica of Radcliffe. It looked like him and sounded like him, but was ultimately as artificial as AIDA herself had been. In the process, they'd discovered that Radcliffe had captured one of their agents, May, and had replaced her with another LMD.

After disassembling Radcliffe's LMD and gaining data from it, they discovered that he'd been keeping her consciousness busy by reappropriating another one of Fitz's inventions. He and Jemma had been designing a virtual reality training environment called the Framework, which was designed to allow users to experience lifelike simulations without placing their bodies in any real danger. Radcliffe and Aida had turned it into a virtual prison, where they could keep captives trapped without realizing they'd been trapped at all, living out their days in a fantasy world controlled by a computer simulation. The human mind, they'd reasoned, wasn't all that different from binary code. People could be easily reprogrammed with the right amount of recalibration.

With that knowledge at hand, Fitz joined a team intending to meet May's last known location, where they'd hopefully be able to recover their lost companion and return home to regroup. Fitz stopped in an empty labspace alone, attempting to copy the local data and learn more about Radcliffe's larger plans. It's the last thing he thought to do before he was knocked unconscious and taken into captivity himself.

He was summarily replaced with an LMD programmed to infiltrate SHIELD in his stead, but he knew none of it. Instead, he was set with a group of other captives, and made to experience AIDA's particular brand of cognitive recalibration. Based on AIDA's findings, humans struggled against the uncanny valley, and the easiest way around it was to give them one piece of happiness. Each captive was allowed to know what life would be like with their greatest regret undone. From there, the surrounding framework would run algorithms to determine how the world would change, and the subsequent world would be the only one the captives would be able to remember.

Fitz regretted losing his father. A harsh, unforgiving man, his father had left their family when Fitz was still young enough to blame himself for his parents' divorce. And inside the Framework, that was erased. He'd know an edited life, where his father had stayed to be a model of masculine prowess. He was there to ensure that Fitz wouldn't grow up too soft or too complacent. Under his father's upbringing, Fitz became fully aware that men do what men need to do to advance in life. Under his father's upbringing, Fitz would know a life that led him to join Hydra instead of SHIELD, and one that would lead him to becoming one of the ruthless leaders of it.

In the Framework, SHIELD was long stamped out. Hydra ruled the world with a tyrannical iron fist. Fitz's brilliance was used to push forward the anti-Inhuman movement, and those who dissented were sent away to be re-educated until their thinking fell more in line with Hydra's values. Here, Fitz was known as The Doctor, a cold-blooded man who lacked both mirth and mercy.

The doctor found his life here quite satisfying. He had money and power, and the love of a powerful woman at his side. He knew with unfailing certainty that he was madly in love with Madame Hydra, the representation AIDA had given herself in the virtual environment, who he knew most intimately as Ophelia. She was the only softness left in him, and he'd happily kill for her in a heartbeat.

When SHIELD agents began to infiltrate the framework seeking to liberate their captured friends gently, AIDA/Ophelia provided a corrective explanation: they were visitors from another world, a hostile one that she'd visited once. They'd used her as a slave, she explained, kept her cramped in closets and sometimes tried to tear her limb from limb in horrific tortures. And for this, the doctor swore to have them all killed. He began work to help Ophelia produce a body made of flesh in the other world, so they might have the opportunity to get their revenge.

And perhaps, in Wonderland, he'll have his chance.






Abilities/Special Powers: Fitz, for all intents and purposes, utterly mundane and powerless. He's not even much of an athlete, all things considered. However, he does possess a genius-level intellect, along with a knack for making things. He doesn't have any particular magic per se, but he's got the ability to do the kind of science that might as well be magic. He could find a way to power a city block off a car battery; that might as well be a special power.

Third-Person Sample:

He'd asked it to "do something." No, beyond asking. He'd demanded that it do something. He'd chosen to take a stand and put himself in potentially mortal danger out of a lack of options. And, when he'd expected to die, there'd been a pleasant garden instead.

Had it paid off? Had he figured out how to make it work? Is this where Jemma had been all along?

Fitz scrambled to his hands and knees, taking in the details. The grass was springy and light, as well as freshly dewy. That implied that it was early in the day, whatever that meant on a potentially alien planet. He pulled several blades and tucked them into a pouch at his belt, samples for later. When they got home again, they'd surely want to examine the flora. And as much as he'd been concerned that she'd been suffering somewhere, the climate was temperate and supportive. In theory, they'd both studied enough basic survival to be able to construct a shelter if absolutely necessary. Most importantly, Jemma was alive. Jemma had to be alive, and here.

"Jemma?" It was a small noise at first, mostly muted by the vastness of his surroundings. He brought himself the rest of the way to his feet and tried again, this time with a voice from his full diaphragm.

"Jemma!!!!"

He'd shout for as long as it took to get attention. If this planet was inhabited, then the locals certainly knew of some girl from another world. There would probably be a language barrier. But Jemma's surely found a way to communicate with them. She can't have been here for this many weeks without finding a way to make friends. She always was the more outgoing of the two of them. Things had to be okay. He hadn't come this far just to be disappointed now.

And so he would proceed, until he encountered someone to talk to. It didn't matter that the noise might be disruptive to the neighbors. Jemma was here. He'd find her.

He'd bring her home, or die trying.

[UPDATE: June 2018]

Something's gone terribly wrong. This shouldn't have happened so soon. He'd intended to ask Ophelia to take him along with her when Project Looking Glass was complete, but the climax was still days away from launch. If he's somewhere new, then there are only two possibilities. Either the project is completed and the transfer itself has affected his short-term memory, or the subversives breached deeper into Hydra than he'd thought. Is this part of their assault? Have they forced him out here so they can replace him at home?It would be fitting if they had. Isn't that just what they'd done to Agent Skye?

He needs more information before he can come to any concrete conclusions. If this is the other world, the clues will become apparent. There'll be a SHIELD presence. There'll be signs of abject cruelty, the way Ophelia was treated. If they kept her in a cage and used her like a slave, then there are probably others. They'll be the closest thing he'll find to allies, he thinks. They'll be as hungry for release as Ophelia was. And if she's here, perhaps they'll know of her. He'll have to be careful. They might not know enough to be aware that freedom is an option for them.

And then there's the matter of Inhumans. How many of those revolting creatures walk this world? They hide in plain sight, using their extra abilities to threaten the good people around them. If they've been allowed to live here unchecked, then that's a sign of the state of this world. They're a menace. They have to be stopped. Controlled. Contained and made useful.

His mind made up, he stands with purpose. He adjusts his jacket and takes a moment to run his fingers through his hair. He'll need a mirror. There'll probably be one inside that mansion. He strides toward it with purpose then, with all the mannerisms of someone who knows exactly where he's headed. If someone stops him and speaks to him as an ally, he might learn a few things. And if it doesn't go well, he might have to commit a murder. These things happen sometimes.




First-Person Sample:

[There's some fumbling with the camera then, the usual motion blur that can be associated with a newcomer exploring unfamiliar technology.]

Right, so that's the camera there. And the microphone is... Oh, well that's a bit on the nose isn't it? I suppose that would make it easier for the lay user.

[A bit more shifting then, until he sets his device on a flat surface. The image is a small, softbodied man with a pointed intensity in his eyes. He speaks softly, in a thick Scottish brogue.]

H-hello -- to whomever might be listening. I apologize for this interruption, but I'm searching for someone in particular. I have reason to believe that Jemma Simmons has been staying among you. If you know her, it's imperative that I make contact with her. My name is Leo Fitz -- I followed her here.

[He doesn't mention SHIELD or their duties, though. The agency is such a touchy issue in the public eye, it might be a condemnation to draw unnecessary attention to it. There was no telling what kind of people lived here.]

Oh, I hope languages won't be an issue. Though I suppose it should be fine if we utilize this text function...

[His stare shifts pensively from the display to the camera and back again. His instinct is to pull apart this hardware and improve upon the flaws, but that would be entirely counterproductive to his means.]

[UPDATE: June 2018]


[First addresses to the network usually fall into one of a few categories. They're cries for help, or angry screeds vowing revenge. They ask for a salve to ease their confusion. They promise violence.

The doctor is none of those things. He's been careful with the network, taking the time to do his research about this world before addressing it. It's important to understand the angles before offering any vulnerabilities. vulnerable people die early. Weakness is not tolerated.]

All this fighting. It's everywhere, isn't it? We fight the royals. We fight the mirrors. We fight amongst ourselves. And yet, we miss the big picture. We wonder why we haven't been able to get home, but we're off chasing windmills. We ignore the true enemy. We've let it become so familiar that we've become blind to its dangers. We're allowing them to invade our homes and kill us in our sleep.

But there's a cure. Talk to me if you want to learn the truth.