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[bring_em_down]

PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Nini
OOC Journal: buccellati
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: No
Email + IM: AIM: LadyIverin
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye)
Canon: Marvel (Ultimates timeline)
Original or Alternate Universe: Ultimates is an AU of Marvel's original canon timeline (616)
Canon Point: Current to Ultimate Comics Ultimates; shortly after Texas launches the nuke
Number: 010 | 125

Setting: Ultimates universe at Marvel wikia
History:
Barton, Clint. 253519987. ID: Hawkeye.

If we believe everything we hear, Clint Barton got his start in the world of infamy by picking up someone's bow at the Olympic trials and beating the pants off everyone else, going on to become an Olympic archery champion. Maybe that's the myth behind the man, but what we know for sure from canon is this: He is a convicted killer, once relegated to death row, rescued from his fate by the one and only Nick Fury because everyone knew he had a talent.

Why him, though?

He could see differently. Better. His eyes could do things no one else's could. And Fury wanted everything to do with cultivating that. Sending him to scientists who were able to enhance the few shortcomings of his excellent distance sight, Fury created the world's greatest marksman. Implanted with a chip that gives a hell of a shock if the carrier misbehaves, Clint operates under the watchful eye of SHIELD, a government-aligned defense and intelligence organization. Essentially a partner of Nick Fury, he was on hand for the liberation of Kosovo and Afghanistan, and was there when the Berlin Wall fell. His background prior to the start of Ultimates 2 is vague, barely covered, but this is what we know for sure.

From dead man walking to elite black ops agent, Clint Barton, code name Hawkeye, has had a Cinderella story if ever there was one. Partnered with elite agent Natasha Romanov, codenamed Black Widow, he helps take down alien invaders like it's an easy day's work. After a number of missions, he is conferred the military rank of Captain, and becomes a liaison to the President's security council. These missions earn them both membership in the experimental superhero group codenamed the Ultimates, led by Nick Fury and under the umbrella of SHIELD.

Prior to the start of canon, Clint meets a woman named Laura, they have three children; everything in his life is perfect. At the end of the mission, he has a white picket fence and a family to go home to, and that's the main focus of his life. But all of this ends when Natasha enters his home with a team of men who execute his entire family. He is captured, made to give up SHIELD secrets under duress. But he escapes, finding his way back to a final fight against other superhumans in Washington, DC. In the end, he even tracks down the traitor who sold out the Ultimates--none other than the Black Widow--and executes her with an arrow-pinned crucifixion.

Facing the death of the Scarlet Witch and many other superhumans, he takes on a new purpose. Though SHIELD is wrested from Nick Fury's hands, Clint continues to serve SHIELD in whatever capacity he's asked to. Now reckless and favoring guns over his classic bow, he helps fight Magneto in the Savage Land and a host of enemies set on destroying New York.

At Nick Fury's behest, Hawkeye eventually finds himself shanghaied in the black ops group codenamed the Avengers. As one of Nick's most trusted companions and friends, he is the first member of this new team. As part of the group, he hunts down a rogue Captain America. Following an incident with the Red Skull, the team chases him down and Clint uses his aiming skills to help secure the final blow.

He is integral in helping track down Frank Castle and the Ghost Rider, saving the White House once again in a showdown with demons and forces not of the normal world. Though Frank was captured implanted with the same control chip as Clint, Clint knocked the device out of Frank's tooth with a well-aimed punch, freeing the man from further SHIELD involvement.

In the end, he also assists in taking down Tony Stark's rogue brother, who was shown to be yet another traitor to SHIELD and its associates. He is a side figure in most of these arcs, serving as a foil to Captain America, Monica Chang (the new Black Widow), and Frank Castle. The vast majority of this is spent revealing his changes in personality and his coping with the loss of his family.

When Loki and the Enchantress enlist the aid of some new superhumans and attack the re-formed Ultimates, Hawkeye is put in yet another life or death situation. Though they escape the custody of the villains, he seems to lose his way, verbally attacking those who would not only keep him under their thumb, but who would abuse access to the Ultimates in general. After threatening to walk away, he's approached by Steve Rogers, who returns Hawkeye's bow to him as he finds new purpose and re-solidifies his loyalty to the team.

Brought back to prominence once he's finally fully come to terms with the death of his family, he's sent to the South East Asian Republic. Nick Fury, now back in charge of SHIELD, tasks him with controlling a situation wherein the SEAR government has involuntarily unleashed their own super soldiers. Many of these superhumans find themselves in a sect called The People, led by the powerful figures Xorn and Zorn, who both oppose and balance each other out. Hawkeye seeks the Source, a powerful serum that creates these superhumans, on behalf of Nick Fury. In the end, they find that there is a much bigger threat facing the world, and he leaves their company on decent terms, and with the object he came for.

This comes into play again during the companion sequence, which primarily takes place in Europe and America. Having returned from the SEAR, Clint finds the world in disarray and SHIELD at its knees. He helps coordinate an attack on the City, a utopia created by Reed Richards. The attack fails, and the City proceeds to destroy a great portion of eastern Europe. After briefing the Pentagon, the US initiates a sequence of events that ends in the dissolution and segmenting of the country, and the destruction of Washington, DC. And even then, the Ultimates are branded as traitors, hunted down by government forces. Oh, and among the great threats? The state of Texas has declared independence and has a vendetta against the remnants of the US government.

And as we leave him now, Clint has just successfully assisted in disarming a nuke launched by the New Republic of Texas.


Personality:
No matter how difficult the target is to hit, I never miss.

The earliest Clint Barton we see is kind of an asshole in prison for murder, and wants little more than to be left alone. With explosive anger and a direct approach to everything, he forms the foundation of what we see throughout the Ultimate timeline. That man, though, is only a base. He gains complexity, experiences a world where nothing is ever the same from day to day, and becomes his own sort of hero.

At first, Clint seems cavalier about his profession, a trained killer, soldier, operative who enjoys the job and gets it done quick. His stance on killing is certainly quite carefree, stating that "the first ten or fifteen are always the worst" kills. He fights brutally with bow and gun, stopping anything that gets in his way. His partnership with the equally brutal Natasha Romanov simply underscores the darker aspects of his character. Casualties are casualties. Missions are missions. He is driven to succeed, always following through on every mission, even when it seems to go awry. As he states, he sees things in high contrast, black and white, sees what's really going on and looks for weaknesses immediately. This is part of what makes him so effective at his work.

An initial glance might make him seem cold hearted or perhaps even cruel. But there's a flip side to that. While he is a trained killer who does his job and does it well, he has a side that is softer and kinder. Through the life Nick Fury gave him the door to, he becomes a better man. He's the type to call his girlfriend (later wife) to say goodbye before every mission, who always brings something home for the family and takes care of the people who guard them every day. He also shows pride in his work and his accomplishments, firmly and continually asserting that he never misses, among other things.

He often seems happy with his place in the system, somewhat content to serve where needed (or at least to concede with only minimal complaint). He'll follow whoever he needs to follow to get the job done. He's loyal to Nick Fury throughout his tenure with SHIELD, however, never truly doubting him and always following his lead. Gratitude springs to mind as a reason, considering Nick is the one who saved his life by recruiting him. But he serves Danvers as well, and follows whatever needs to be done to keep SHIELD moving. At his core, he's a soldier: he follows orders, the job gets done, he moves on to the next. (But don't screw with his loyalty, or you'll get a scathing speech.)

But not all of this is natural. He says, to Frank Castle, that "(SHIELD) trained me" and that all Frank has to do is "submit" if he wants the same result. He's well aware of his own place in the machine, and he doesn't mind it. Clint wasn't always the good soldier boy, and he's where he is because SHIELD trained him to be a better man. Whatever he came from, however he ended up where he is, he was once "rebellious", to quote Nick Fury.

While these things remain true, a few things do not. There is an arc of personality change that he follows due to circumstances in his history, and not all of it is pretty. After the death of his family, he becomes borderline suicidal, reckless and careless, favoring bullets over arrows in combat and changing his costume. This new costume features a characteristic H that hearkens back to the original universe, but features a bullseye situated squarely on his forehead. He stops exhibiting the caring, nurturing glimpses we saw before, instead taking far more joy in the act of killing (whereas before he seemed most satisfied with the result).

He reflects on his life over the course of several story arcs, first asserting that no one should have to endure the loss of a loved one. Later, he faces a new Black Widow, whose attitude toward taking the name consists of "Barton needs to get over it", in essence--granted, he also calls her a bitch, but that's beside the point. He speaks of his family to Frank Castle, the Punisher, who also lost his own family quite brutally. Though rebuffed by the other man, it shows the great lengths Clint goes to to find meaning in the situation, and to reach out to others who he identifies with. It's a glimpse at the return of his compassion and his positivity that he tries to repeatedly console someone who hardly even wants to listen, someone he sees much of his earlier, angrier self in.

Though discontent with his life in the Ultimates, their position in the grand scheme of SHIELD's plans, he indicates that he at least has learned what not to do in mourning, and how not to handle it. Once he has come to terms with the death of his family and his place in the Ultimates, he re-adopts his old uniform, returns to using bows, and shows a stability and mindset similar to his initial appearance. As he progresses through his recovery, his leadership skills come to the forefront as well, showing him to be a highly intelligent man, a quick thinker, and a boundless source of hard truths. He becomes, once more, someone his teammates can rely on. Though he still has issues with his past, he seems to have a sense of closure.

Other than that, he's fairly consistent. His dark sense of humor follows him throughout; quirky like his original universe counterpart, he often says things that are slightly off-color or far too straight to the point. His words can cut to the quick, but he never dishes out more than he can take. He speaks casually to many around him, freely using all sorts of names and titles, and never fails to let people know exactly what he thinks when the opportunity arises. Clint is a man others can have confidence in because his results have proven time and time again that he always gets the job done and he never, ever misses.


Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Clint has naturally good vision, enhanced by biotechnology in something called "The Program" (which is never explained), as well as further adapted by SHIELD tech. He is known as the world's greatest marksman, and as he claims, he never misses a shot. This applies to gun and bow, and he's a mean shot with throwing and flicking items as well. If it can be used as a ranged weapon, he'll find a way to make it lethal. He is physically fit, and able to jump, run, and otherwise be an action hero to a degree that a very well-rounded athlete is. In addition to this, but unrelated, he apparently speaks Thai.

His weaknesses as shown center mainly on memories of his family, attacks on his character and life choices. In other words, sticks and stones don't hurt him, but words can make him clam up. The effect of this has faded over the course of canon, but I still consider it to be a weakness.

Inventory: Bow and trick arrows (if allowed), glasses/goggles
Appearance: 6'3" and solidly built, Clint Barton is in the peak of physical condition. His strength and stamina are no more than that of a man who works out frequently and weight trains, but he maintains the carefully toned muscles a top-notch archer would need. He has brown eyes, blond hair, and is frequently seen wearing glasses (both regular and shooting). His uniform is black, sleeveless with a red arrow-like section on the front. It's clearly armored.
Age: 40

AU Clarification: Earth-1610, the Ultimates universe, differs from its predecessor and more graceful main universe counterpart by being obnoxiously edgy, gritty, and at times revolting. Characters are darker versions of their prior selves, sometimes antiheroes as opposed to the shinier versions of the main Marvel timeline. In this series, Texas has nukes, Reed Richards blows up France, Thor is confined as a mental patient, and Steve Rogers dates a married woman. Technology is the focus rather than magic, magical abilities often relegated to scientific explanations.

SAMPLES
Log Sample:
The gunshots rang in his ears, and he fought to keep his eyes open. Screams, shouts, stunned silence. He couldn't handle any of it, not again, not like that. Maybe he could change it, he thought. Maybe, just maybe he'd be able to alter time and space and save one of them, two of them, all of them. But just the same, as every time, he heard the screams, the shots, the footsteps as he lost consciousness once more.

A flashback, in the worst way.

His hands shook as he woke from the nightmare. Sweat beaded, unwanted, on his brow; he turned his face into the pillow and took a deep breath to steady himself. It wasn't right. No, it wasn't fair. But it was life. He'd grown used to it over the years, and so he thought maybe, just once, he'd be able to control it. To handle it. To not wake up wishing anew that the world would stop and let him off.

But the pain faded as he woke, and he regained that clarity of thought he'd so carefully cultivated since the incident. I have closure, he told himself. I have answers.

Wrenching himself from the meager bed, he turned his attention to the glasses he'd set aside just before sleep. And today, as every day, he put them on without a second thought. Clint was no stranger to waking up like this at odd hours, but tonight just seemed tougher than most.

Comms Sample:
[Anyone witnessing Clint trying to make this post may be amused by the number of times he stares it down as though it has offended his honor. Once he figures it out, though, he vaguely smiles.

Yeah, technology.

So his face appears on the screen for all to see, somewhat odd for the lack of his glasses.]

So... I appreciate the help with the lunch situation yesterday--not that I needed it--but if you wouldn't mind giving me the glasses back, I'd appreciate it. I don't really have time to kick anybody's ass.

[And from the look on his face, you can tell he means business.]