anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
2019-06-01 04:28 am
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INBOX; un: jb.barnes text / audio / video / action "You've reached James Barnes. I'm busy at the moment. Leave a message." code credit
anotheroldsoldier: (drama king)
2019-05-25 12:27 am
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aefenglom application

Player Information
Name: Nekky
Age: 29
Contact: [plurk.com profile] nekky, nekky#8210 @ disc
Other Characters: Hiccup Haddock III

Character Information
Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Canon Point: Middle of Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier (2014) #1.
Age: Mid-30s. Exact age is unclear.
History: At Marvel Wiki

Personality:
They say you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. For James Buchanan Barnes, it was both. He is the sum of everything he's ever done, and everything he's been through. When other people might look toward their futures, in order to go forward, Bucky has always had to go back and face his past instead. The road to redemption is a long and rocky one.

"[Bucky is] a good man, who's been used by others against his will... and who's struggled to earn redemption for the things he was forced to do."


James Buchanan Barnes grew up in the 20s and 30s with an Army father and a younger sister, his mother long absent. He was always an angry kid prone to getting into fights, and not much changed about that over the years. After his father's death, and four years on base getting into trouble, the Army put his natural violent skills to use, trained him and pointed him at the looming threat of World War II instead. Suddenly he had purpose and a drive, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth and be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life, and his left arm, in service in early 1945.

The Russians recovered his body from the Channel, and when they resuscitated him, he had no memory of who he was; only languages and muscle memory remained of the brash, cocky young man who always had a joke on the tip of his tongue. He was pitted against his own country and his skills at assassination and espionage were further trained and refined. He became a weapon, put back on ice and forcefully reconditioned every time a glimpse of Bucky Barnes tried to break through. These days, with his memory back and several more tragedies under his belt, he's still trying to find himself and discover what he wants out of life. Some part of him has finally accepted that he's not going out so easily, but looking toward his future is still an insurmountable task.

At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, even when his instincts might steer him in the other direction. He's putting himself back together one piece at a time and chasing redemption for everything he's done in his past. Bucky is resilient in a way few people ever can be. He's remaking himself every day and he still keeps going forward. He isn't plucky Bucky Barnes, he isn't Captain America, and he is redefining what it means to be the Winter Soldier.

On the field, Bucky tends to be reckless. He has the skill and ability to strategize for any situation, but his plans usually boil down to throwing himself into things and hoping for the best. He's not an ideal hero or a shining beacon of hope; his fights are messy and he isn't afraid to get his hands dirty for the greater good. That part isn't even the Winter Soldier - it's all Bucky Barnes, the 16 year old the US Army trained for wetwork. These days, though, he has a choice, and he chooses not to kill.

It's almost easy to tell that Bucky actually hates himself more than anyone could ever hate him for any of the murders he was forced to commit in the past. He constantly questions his own self-worth and holds himself responsible for everything bad that happens around him. He remembered everything when Steve used the Cosmic Cube on him, for better or worse, although these days his memory comes and goes to where he almost can't trust his own brain anymore.

He still deals with anger issues, though Army discipline and age have served to give him some measure of control most of the time. It usually comes out when he turns to alcohol to numb his own feelings of desperation, hopelessness and grief. After periods of upheaval in his life he usually turns to the bottle, but these days, as the Man on the Wall, he's getting a hold of himself and focusing on his new mission.

In social situations, he used to be brash and flirtatious, with an easy smile on his lips, but these days he's much more subdued and serious. His sense of humor tends to run toward the dark or the dry, and his jokes can't always be pegged as jokes. Bucky tends to be very realistic or even pessimistic about situations, and he isn't the kind of guy to talk about his feelings - he'd rather just bottle them up. He isn't an easy man to get to know, but his walls come down around a very small circle of friends and almost-family. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, even though there are still days he doesn't feel worthy of their love.

Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good for a world that he wronged. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man - he cares very deeply, despite everything. He wants to believe still that good will win out over evil and that love can conquer all. He has a self-admitted soft spot for 'strays', anything abandoned out in the cold, and has a tendency to take them in.

At his heart, he knows he's not a good man, but he spends every day trying to be.

Abilities & Skills:
Bionic Arm: His left arm is bionic and fully integrated into his nervous system. It's Stark and SHIELD tech that functions just like a regular arm, with a few additions. It's super-humanly strong, compared to his real arm, and allows him to throw Captain America's shield around with accuracy and force, a difficult feat for most. It also has an EMP to knock out electronic devices, can discharge electricity, and has a sensory array that will let it and other objects through a metal detector undetected. He can also remove the arm, and it will function independently. I'm fine nerfing everything but normal function until he can find someone to work it into magitech?

Combat and Espionage: Bucky is a highly trained operative with years of experience in warfare, espionage, and assassination. He knows several forms of hand to hand combat and martial arts, and he's a skilled shield-fighter. He's also skilled with many types of weapons, including firearms, explosives, and throwing knives. He's been trained in acrobatics, stealth, quiet kills, tactics, strategy, and infiltration. He can also pilot most human-made aircrafts, and Atlantean aircrafts (thanks Namor).

Peak Human Conditioning: He isn't superhuman, besides his bionic prosthetic, but his level of fitness, strength, speed, and stamina are all at Olympic athlete levels.

Multilingual: Speaks fluent English, German, Russian, and Japanese, along with a rusty smattering of French and bits and pieces of some other languages. He's been shown to pick up new languages fairly quickly.

Inventory/Companions:
- His Winter Soldier tac suit and beat up leather jacket.
- A KA-BAR knife.
- His prosthetic arm.

Choice: Monster: Arachne
Reason: Bucky and the Winter Soldier have both long had an association with spiders. Back in Soviet Russia, he trained the girls of the Black Widow program, and also the men of the failed Wolf Spiders program, which was the male equivalent. As a spy and an ex-assassin, who has now left the stars and stripes of being Captain America behind to work from the shadows, making him deal with a transformation into a spider (with generally negative connotations) would be an interesting thing to explore with regards to his already-negative self-image.

Sample: Top level at the TDM
With Tony at the TDM
anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
2017-04-15 04:27 am
Entry tags:

riverview friendr


Friendr
«
»
» Age: Old man.
» Seeking: To get out of the house more. Bones will start to creak otherwise.
» Preferences: I don't know; women probably. No judgement here.
» Interests: Big guns and things that explode.
» Bio: I have a stupid nickname and a bad sense of fashion but an all right personality. And a bitchin' metal arm that you probably shouldn't ask about. Also, America. (And one day I'm going to rewrite this since I can't figure out how to delete my account.)
base code by photosynthesis
James "Bucky" Barnes
« ✘ ✔ »
anotheroldsoldier: (wry smirk)
2017-04-10 09:47 am
Entry tags:

riverview threads

threads ;;;

App Date: March 03, 2017
LogsNetwork

Bonus Link

Total Points: 317

Points Spent: 75 (motorcycle from home)

anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
2017-03-03 11:54 pm
Entry tags:

IC Contact

INBOX; un: jb.barnes text / audio / video / action "You've reached James Barnes. I'm busy at the moment. Leave a message." code credit
anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
2017-02-23 03:54 am
Entry tags:

riverview app

player information
name: Nekky
age: 27
contact: [plurk.com profile] nekky
other characters: NA

character information
name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
canon: Marvel 616
canon point: Post-"Who Will Wield The Shield?"
age: Roughly early-30s. He was born in 1925, and "died" in early 1945, was frozen until 1954, and then was periodically frozen and thawed for varying lengths of time, making his physical age hard to pinpoint.

(canon) background: @ Marvel Wikia

abilities:
Bionic Arm: His left arm is bionic and fully integrated into his nervous system. It's Stark and SHIELD tech that functions just like a regular arm, with a few additions. It's super-humanly strong, compared to his real arm, and allows him to throw Captain America's shield around with accuracy and force, a difficult feat for most. It also has an EMP to knock out electronic devices, can discharge electricity, and has a sensory array that will let it and other objects through a metal detector undetected. He can also remove the arm, and it will function independently.

Combat and Espionage: Bucky is a highly trained operative with years of experience in warfare, espionage, and assassination. He knows several forms of hand to hand combat and martial arts, and he's a skilled shield-fighter. He's also skilled with many types of weapons, including firearms, explosives, and throwing knives. He's been trained in acrobatics, stealth, quiet kills, tactics, strategy, and infiltration. He can also pilot most human-made aircrafts, and Atlantean aircrafts (thanks Namor).

Peak Human Conditioning: He isn't superhuman, besides his bionic prosthetic, but his level of fitness, strength, speed, and stamina are all at Olympic athlete levels.

Multilingual: Speaks fluent English, German, Russian, and Japanese, along with a rusty smattering of French.

strengths:
The thing about James Barnes is that he is determined to be better. He knows he isn't a good man, but he works hard to change that, to deserve his second chance in the world and make up for the terrible things he's done in the past. He's a determined man in general, and will power through a situation to do what he needs to, no matter how difficult it is. You could almost call it stubbornness. He also cares about the greater good, and will get his hands dirty so that other people don't have to. Bucky cares enough to want to spare other people the horrors he went through, making him quite altruistic. He's also very loyal to the few friends he has, and he would do anything for them, even getting himself captured by a villain to try and save his best friend's girl, for no other reason than Steve would want him to. At odds with his serious demeanor, Bucky has a soft spot, for strays, and for teenagers who need guidance. He shows this when he sits down to talk with Eli Bradley about the first Patriot, and in later canon when he takes in an alien pet. For everything he has been through and done in his life, he is a resilient man who wants to make the world better, who wants to live up to the expectations of him, who wants to be good.

weaknesses:
Bucky's weaknesses have to do a lot with his traumas. He is reckless and impulsive, he doesn't always think things through, tactically speaking, especially if his emotions get the best of him. He jumps into traps and puts himself in danger with only half-baked plans, at best. He doesn't care much about his own safety, as long as others are out of the way, and at times will even take the path of more resistance (and more physical pain). This is because he lives with the heavy weight of guilt and self-loathing on his shoulders for the crimes he's been forced to commit as the Winter Soldier. There is a lot of blood on his hands, and Bucky comes off as if he doesn't believe that he deserves to still be alive. He holds himself responsible for all the carnage, and it drives a lot of his self-destructive behavior and general lack of self-worth. When he's feeling low, he'll run right into danger and take more of a beating than he technically has to, because he feels like he deserves the pain. Bucky is also angry, has been angry since he was a child orphaned by the misfortune. He would constantly pick fights with bigger kids, and was honestly a bit of a bully. That anger hasn't really gone away, it's only been redirected and put to use by the Army, distilled into raw combat skill. Nowadays, he's angry about what he's done, what he's been through, the awful things that people still continue to do to innocent civilians. His temper can make him lose his head at times.

skills (optional): Combat, strategy, tactics, stealth, leadership.
housing (optional):

network username: jb.barnes

network sample:
jb.barnes, text;
Alternate universes aren't a strange concept where I come from, but has anyone else ever dealt with an alternate timeline? Where events happened differently to what you know, or that version of you had a different relationship to someone important than you did?


[He won't admit that this sort of thing is throwing him for a loop. But, there are more important things to discuss. Bucky gets to the point.]

Back to business, the scientists need soil samples from past the fence. I'm signing up, but I need another couple of people to go with to make it a full mission party. At least someone who knows how to take soil samples. Apparently it ain't just coming back with a box of dirt.

prose/action sample: TDM with 616 Steve Rogers, TDM with MCU Bucky Barnes, TDM with Yuri Plisetsky
anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
2016-05-14 03:03 am

application for [community profile] dragoncalled

The Basics
Canon: Marvel 616
Character Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
Character Journal: [personal profile] anotheroldsoldier
Player Name: Nekky
Best contact method: Plurk @ [plurk.com profile] nekky or AIM @ xnecronomical

Character Details
Canon Point: Post-Siege
Species: Human
Timeline of Important Events in Canon History:
  • Born in 1925, Shelbyville, Indiana, to George and Winifred Barnes. Older brother to Rebecca Barnes.
  • Mother dies at an unknown young age, leaving him to be raised by his father. They moved around because George was in the Army.
  • Age 12, his father dies in a parachuting accident on base, in what was supposed to be just training.
  • The Major sends his sister to boarding school and keeps Bucky on at the base. He's raised here for 4 years at Fort Lehigh, Virginia.
  • Age 16, he gets into one too many fights, and the Major sends him overseas to Britain for SAS training.
  • After his training, he's shipped back to the States.
  • He meets Steve Rogers, and becomes partner to Captain America as his "sidekick", Bucky.
  • They fight in WWII together, and with other teams, such as the Invaders, which is how Bucky met his other best friend Toro Raymond, and good friends Jim Hammond and Prince Namor of Atlantis. They also occasionally teamed up with Nick Fury's Howling Commandos.
  • Months before the end of the war, Bucky "dies" in an explosion of a drone plane over the English Channel - he loses his left arm and his body is frozen in the cold water.
  • His body is found by a Russian submarine and thawed out to test for Captain America's super soldier serum. He manages to be resuscitated, but has no memory and bad brain damage, and lashes out wildly.
  • They freeze him again until the 50s, when he is thawed, given a mechanical arm, and trained for the KGB as an assassin.
  • During the 50s, he trains the Black Widow girls, including Natasha Romanoff, whom he falls in love with.
  • He's frozen again when he starts to disobey orders 4 years after his first thawing.
  • Until present day, he is thawed and re-brainwashed with a sensory deprivation and mental implantation machine several times over the decades, to go on missions and then to be returned to cryo.
  • The Winter Soldier is decommissioned in the 80s, left in cryo in Karpov's storage facility.
  • Present day: Aleksander Lukin "inherits" the Winter Soldier, and thaws him out for another mission.
  • The Winter Soldier shoots the Red Skull in the head, and retrieves the Cube. He kills Jack Monroe and frames him for the Skull's murder. He also kidnaps Sharon Carter to set up Steve, and sets off a bomb in Philadelphia to use the deaths to charge the Cosmic Cube.
  • He is apprehended by Captain America and the Falcon while transporting the Cosmic Cube on Lukin's orders.
  • Cap uses the Cosmic Cube in the struggle to wish Bucky's memories back to him. Bucky destroys the Cube in a fit of guilt and anger and vanishes to Camp Lehigh.
  • Bucky goes off-radar for six months, volunteering in Philly, trailing supervillains and taking out threats on his own, directed by Nick Fury.
  • It's another six months before he works with Steve again to stop a giant robot in London. He continues working for Nick Fury under the radar.
  • Bucky largely stays out of the superhero civil war, until Steve Rogers is shot on the courthouse steps. He goes after the villains responsible.
  • Underground, he can't go to the funeral, gets in a bar fight, and decides he's going to kill Tony Stark.
  • He steals Cap's shield from SHIELD, and ends up fighting his former flame Natasha for it.
  • He goes after Lukin and the Red Skull while biding his time to get to Tony. Dr. Faustus kidnaps him and Sharon Carter, and he tries to escape. He's apprehended by SHIELD after being rescued by Sam and Natasha.
  • He escapes SHIELD custody and fights Tony Stark with the intent to kill him. Tony talks him down with a letter from Steve. Bucky agrees to be the new Captain America, and Tony sets him up with a suit and gear.
  • As Cap, Bucky works on a large plot between Lukin, the Red Skull, and some others to ruin the US and foils a presidential assassination plot by Sin, the Skull's daughter.
  • He fights the Skrull invasion of Earth with a lot of other heroes, and invites the New Avengers to use his apartment as a safehouse, since Norman Osborn has risen to power and the New Avengers are fugitives.
  • Steve doesn't turn out to be dead. Bucky and Black Widow help to bring him back, and Steve resigns the Captain America title to Bucky.
  • Osborn attacks Asgard, and Bucky and Steve both join the battle as Captain America. The Superhero Registration Act is abolished, and Bucky is officially inducted as a sanctioned Avenger.

    Personality:
    The two things that drive James most, serving as his basic motivation for most of his actions, are guilt and redemption. He feels a crushing guilt for the acts committed with his hands as the Winter Soldier, even though he was not himself to fully resist what his commanding officers told him, and he wants to make up for those heinous acts, in any possible way he can. He wants to be worthy, of being Captain America and of working with the heroes he's surrounded by. He wants to be a better man.
    "I never asked -- never wanted -- to be Captain America. But that mask, those stars and stripes, that shield... they change you. I can see now the burden that Steve's always carried. And it feels strange to admit I want that burden back... But underneath it all, what I really know is... I want to deserve it... somehow."

    Bucky was an angry kid, first and foremost. He lost his parents young, his dad at 12 and his mom even earlier than that, and he was separated from his baby sister after his father's funeral. After, he was raised within the little microculture of Camp Lehigh, among a thousand older 'brothers', appeasing his superior officers like a normal boy would try to appease his parents. He was brash, charming, silver-tongued, and beneath it all, directionless and angry. This egged him into fighting with the other kids around the base, with other soldiers, usually people much bigger than him, and he nearly always got in trouble for it. He was actually a bit of a bully in his youth, and went looking for trouble more often than not. An illicit trip to a bar with his fellow soldiers ended in a brawl on his 16th birthday, for no other reason than Bucky hit on some sailor's girl. His superiors directed this anger by training him, starting at age 16, to join his fellow soldiers in the field, and he took to it like a fish to water. Finally he had purpose, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth, wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life, and his left arm, in service in early 1945.

    The Russians twisted that when they recovered his broken, frozen body off the bottom of the English Channel. After his resuscitation, he had brain damage and severe amnesia. They turned him against his country, made him into nothing. Where Bucky Barnes was a fiercely shining star trying to find his place in the sky, the Winter Soldier was a ghost, a legend and a killer.

    James Buchanan Barnes these days is a mixture of everything he used to be and the weight of the world's expectations for him - and he weight of his expectations for himself. At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, though he isn't the ideal hero and he knows it. He's still picking up the pieces of himself, finding his footing and learning to live with himself and everything he's done. It isn't easy, but he isn't wholly broken - he's picking himself up and putting himself back together and coming to grips with the world, trying to find his place and who he is now, since he can't be little Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier anymore. Steve saved him in a way, but he's also saving himself every day that he keeps moving on, showing a resilience and a strength. He soldiers through each day.

    On the surface, Bucky is a gruff, serious sort of man, and can come off as distant or coolly detached at times. He finds it difficult to show affection except with the people he's close to, and he gets right down to business instead of making small talk about the situation. He can be quite sullen, actually, and brooding, with a sort of sadness about him that tends to linger. He isn't exactly knowingly malicious to other people, he just... tends to come off as brusque, clipped, and it's easy to mistake his self-hatred for hatred of other people. But those who know him better, who get in underneath that mask he puts on to conceal his own perceived weaknesses, he's a little awkward, a little quiet. He makes morbid jokes about killing Hitler that other people don't seem to find funny. He tries to do good for the world and for his team to make up for everything he's done in the past.

    Things are easier with his closest friends, Natasha and Sam and Steve, even Clint and Tony and Logan to degrees. He can make jokes and laugh and smile, and on those days, a bit of the charming, sly-grinned Bucky Barnes from the 40s is back in him. Like any soldier who has seen the worst of war, he has his good days and his bad days.

    On the field, he hasn't lost the confidence he had as a teenager, though - he's well trained and he knows it, so he tends to be reckless and do whatever he thinks best at the time instead of waiting for orders. Despite being Captain America now, Bucky is never really the perfect, ideal hero like Steve seemed to be; he's more ruthless, more willing to get the job done even if it means getting his hands dirty. That's what he trained for since he was sixteen, and he slips into the role easily, though he shows more restraint in modern times when it comes to killing. Lives are not taken lightly, but incapacitating is another story - he shoots HYDRA agents in the kneecaps with little remorse in the name of the greater good.

    It's hard to guess from how Bucky goes on with his life, from how he presents himself to other people, that he actually hates himself more than anyone. He has a lot of self worth issues and guilt issues that come from decades of being a brainwashed KGB killing machine who took a lot of innocent lives at his handlers' behest. He remembers everything, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, for better or worse - this means he remembers most of the war, which were his happy years despite the horrors of WWII raging around him, and he remembers all the things he did as the Winter Soldier, horrors that meld with the rest of his memories and give him horrible nightmares. This, though, doesn't mean that he can always remember everything at every one moment. The Cube likely never healed his brain damage from his death and resuscitation, and so his memory can be spotty sometimes, with things fading in his mind until they're brought up.

    He's primarily serious and subdued, though he still has a sense of humor, if a dry, sarcastic sort of one. Bucky can be a bit snide depending on the situation. He's kind of bitter and jaded from his experiences.

    Another thing he deals with constantly is his anger issues. When he was a child, after his mother died, he was angry at the world and took it out on other kids at the base, beating up anybody bigger than him just to prove he could. It disappointed his father, who used to be a roughneck himself and wanted something better for his son, but that anger in Bucky never really went away. The Army channeled it into punching Nazis instead, and it actually worked pretty well. The discipline and the training the Army gave him helped to mellow him out a little, to give him a focus and something to do with his restless self. Being Cap's partner meant the world to him, and he took his job very seriously, even though he knew what he was doing was dirty work (but he did the dirty work so that Steve wouldn't have to). He's clever and quick-minded even still, and he trusts his instincts on the field. The anger still remains even lately; when he first got his memories back, he went after Lukin, his former handler, with the intent of killing him for what he'd done to Bucky. When Steve "dies", he goes after Tony, who he blames for Steve's death. Blind, overwhelming anger and rash, poor decisions.

    Speaking of rash, poor decisions... He also tends to be a bit of an alcoholic when he's thrown into a depressive swing by a traumatic event. When Steve dies, for example, he drinks heavily in a bar, takes his anger out on a bunch of rednecks, and then decides it'd be a great idea to go kill Tony Stark. He's not exactly the best at handling his own emotions; he's a product of the 40s and macho army culture, where men were not supposed to show weakness or feelings. He grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude, learning it from his soldier father and all the soldiers at Camp Lehigh, and so he resorts to handling his feelings the only few ways he knows how. Which tends to be self-destructive behavior, like the drinking and running into fights.

    Bucky primarily chases redemption for the things he'd been made to do in the past. He wants to be deserving of the love he gets from the people who care about him, he wants to be a good person who feels like he deserves to be part of the world, but at the same time, he isn't sure he can ever make up for the weight of his guilt. This is why he tends to be so rash and reckless, some part of him feels like he should be punished with pain while he tries to make up for his sins on the field, making the world safer. The weight of the world's expectations for him as the new Captain America also tend to weigh very heavily on him.

    Extremely important to him are the few people he's close to and trusts. He isn't an easy man to get to know, primarily because he distances himself from people to protect them (and because he sees himself as someone unworthy of their friendship), but Tom Raymond, Steve Rogers, the rest of the Invaders, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and some of the New Avengers did manage it, and he thinks highly of them. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, like the time he fought to save Sharon Carter even though he didn't know her and, in truth, she had actually wanted to kill him at one point, just because she's Steve's girl and he would do anything for Steve. The New Avengers were the closest thing he had to a family after coming back to the world, and Sam Wilson the closest thing to a best friend who wasn't his best friend before the war. Steve brought him back to the world and tried to give him a place in it, and he's grateful for that, even if he doesn't feel like he deserves it.

    Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good and feel like he belongs in the world. He has a tendency to rely on one or two highly important people in his life for comfort and keeping himself grounded. Usually this is Steve, and/or Natasha, sometimes Sam. Mostly Natasha. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man, who places a lot of emotional importance on certain people and things and feels for those very deeply. Natasha is an obvious example, in Winter Soldier he thinks naively that his love for her can help to break her brainwashing even though he knows better, he knows intellectually and deep in his soul how deep the programming can go, and yet he wants to believe that love will conquer anyway. He also idolizes Steve, putting him on a pedestal. The shield got similar treatment - he went to a lot of trouble to steal it from Tony and SHIELD, because after Steve "died", he didn't want anyone else touching the shield. He didn't think he deserved it, but he knew no one else did because in his mind no one else knew what Steve had meant to the world.

    At his heart, he knows he's not a good man, but he spends every day trying to be.

    Abilities, Magic and Supernatural Skills/Afflictions:
    Badass Normal: James is a highly trained, Olympic-level athlete and acrobat, and while his strength, stamina, speed and dexterity are not super-human, they're near to peak for a regular human.
    Fighter: He has been heavily trained throughout his life from age 16 by several of the world's best martial artists, soldiers, and assassins. He's adept at hand-to-hand combat and skilled with several types of weaponry.
    Marksman: James is highly trained with firearms and throwing knives, and can calculate like a sniper to make extremely difficult shots.
    Spy: He's also skilled in espionage, scouting, concealment, information-gathering, demolitions, and survival.
    Languages: He has a skill for learning languages. Speaks English, Russian, German, and Japanese fluently, and speaks some French.
    Bionic Arm: His only "superpower" is his bionic left arm. It has some degree of superhuman strength and enhanced reflexes, and has built-in sensors that enable him to use it like he would a regular arm, albeit an enhanced one. It also has sensors that let it pass through security and metal detectors unimpeded, can discharge electricity, and can produce an EMP to knock out electronics. It can also be detached from the socket built into his body and can function separately from Bucky.

    Dragon & Magical Element
    Elemental Alignment:
      Ice - Ice is fitting for irony's sake, really. Bucky was kept in cryosleep for decades and trained in Russia - he can weather the cold easily. He was the Winter Soldier for a reason.
      Shadow - As the Winter Soldier, Bucky was a feared assassin, to the point of being legendary. No one could confirm if he existed or not, and he never left evidence behind on a kill, like a shadow.
      Wind - Another for irony's sake. Bucky is shown to be afraid of heights, and having to conquer this fear, since his father died from a fall in a parachuting accident. A wind element would be interesting to make him embrace heights and the open sky.

    Dragon:
    His dragon will be female, and eventually reach an adult size of large, at about 2.75 to 3 meters tall. She'll be more of a Western-mythology-type dragon, with a reptilian body and blunt-nosed head atop a long, graceful neck. Her back legs are strong and sturdy, tipped with three large claws on each foot, and her front two "legs" are more like the wing-arms of a bat, with more prehensile (though not as dexterous as a human hand's) "fingers" at the tips of the wings, also clawed. She walks generally on fours, the wing parts of her "arms" curving up in graceful arcs against the sides of her body. She has a long tail as well, tipped with short spines at the tip and broad fins that unfurl, which assist in flight navigation. At full size, she should be able to carry the weight of two grown men on her back, and flight comes naturally with her broad, leathery wings.

    Her body is entirely scaled, and a dull, vaguely metallic gunmetal grey. The scales on the more visible parts of her body are a little on the small side, and harder than the finer, smaller, softer scales that cover her belly and throat. These belly scales are much less protective, a lighter shade of soft grey, and have a bit more shine to them, in certain lights taking on a vague rainbow shimmer like an oil slick. On her head are four black bone horns, one set longer and curved back, curling a bit at the tips, and between them a shorter set, more like nubs. The sides of her face have a set of short fins that mostly lie against the skull and only flare out when threatened. She also has a "mane" of black, short, blunt spines that get smaller, to barely nubs, as they reach the base of her neck. Her teeth are on the shorter side, and razor sharp for tearing, the same black as her horns and spines, and she has two rows of them on top and bottom, similar to a shark. Her eyes are a pitch black with no visible pupil or iris in the sclera. Reflections and light shines in her eyes can give the impression of stars in a night sky.

    She's an omnivore, but prefers meat when she can get it. Still, she can eat certain kinds of fruits and vegetables, and does not like leafy greens, grass, or fibrous stalks, the kinds of things that need to be chewed with flat teeth instead of torn.

    Her egg is ostrich-egg sized, and a tarnished silver sort of color, with some spots still shiny but others a dusty black. It's mostly smooth but with little dips and indentations, similar to beaten metal. Like this in color and shape.

    Personality traits inherited from Character Bond:
  • Reckless
  • Determined
  • A little socially awkward
  • Sentimental

    Writing Samples
    First Sample: TDM Thread (I used my other journal, bloodonmyhands, for icon reasons.)
    Second Sample:
    It isn't that Bucky doesn't believe in magic. He's met Stephen Strange, after all. He knows, logically, that magic is a thing that exists in the world, but he's never really had to face it before. He's never felt it before the way he feels it so keenly now. His last memory, a huge shape blocking out the sun, a world-ending nightmare the Avengers were powerless to stop. They never even saw it coming, did they?

    When he wakes in this strange new place, his suit and his shield and his weapons are gone. He feels small and exposed in a white linen tunic with short sleeves, white linen pants, a leather belt and simple leather boots. Unarmed, unshaven, the metal of his arm gleaming and bared, he feels... incomplete. The city looms before him, intimidating, sprawling, and his training, deeply ingrained, says to scout the area, find information. Something else in him says no, though, and keeps his feet moving steadily down the road into the heart of the city.

    Something is calling for him.

    It's like he knows instinctively where to go, and the thought is troubling - what's been done to me? What magic has messed with my mind? I said never again and here I am. But it doesn't feel like conditioning, it doesn't feel like he's making the slow march to his own demise. He's in search of something, beginning a journey.

    His slow walk into the heart of Nuren, dressed in loose white clothing, it feels like a pilgrimage of sorts. Bucky takes very little notice of the people around him, the architecture, the entrances and exits and potential weapons or escape routes. That can wait. This feels important. The cavern entrance looms above him, the inside massive and the ground littered with... eggs? Eggs set into the ground like a massive hive, small as a chicken egg or as big as an ostrich's. He doesn't understand the symbols that glow and pulse around each egg.

    His feet bring him to one in particular, a large egg with a tarnished silver surface like hammered sheet metal, and he kneels in front of it, cautious. "What are you?" He whispers, reaching out slowly with metal fingers. The runes around the egg pulse and glow, briefly, before they fade, and allow him to settle his hand on the smooth surface of the egg. He can't feel if it's warm or cold to the touch; flesh fingers settle atop the egg, and unbidden, a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. There's a sense of completeness, holding the egg in his hands, and he brings up to cradle against his chest.

    The walk outside of the cavern feels a lot less lonely, holding that smooth, round object to his chest. Bucky pauses outside, glances down at the sunlight dappling the dimpled metallic surface of the egg. It starts to crack.

    It cracks, and it breaks, and it falls away like eggshell, not like metal at all. Inside half the shell still, she pokes her little black-scaled head out, and stares at Bucky with unblinking dark eyes. Something like warmth suffuses throughout his chest as he feels the first inkling of emotion from the baby dragon, something that feels like 'partner'.

    "What the hell," he mumbles to her, helping to peel away the pieces of eggshell that cling to her damp scales and leathery wings. "I always did have a soft spot for strays."
  • anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
    2015-08-05 01:07 am

    application for thisavrou

    OUT OF CHARACTER
    Player Name: Nekky
    Are you 16 or older: Yes
    Contact: [plurk.com profile] nekky
    Current Characters: NA
    Tag: james barnes

    IN CHARACTER
    Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
    Canon: Marvel 616
    Canon Point: Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier: Issue #2, back on the satellite station with his new pet alien pig.
    Age: Nebulously early to mid 30s but his age is complicated.

    History: The Unabridged Life of James B. Barnes

    Personality: Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Except for Bucky Barnes, who died a hero and was still twisted into the exact thing he had died to fight - a monster.

    Bucky's upbringing contributed a lot to his personality before his 'death'. He was raised within the little microculture of Camp Lehigh, amongst a thousand older 'brothers', appeasing his superior officers like a normal boy would try to appease his parents. He was brash, charming, and beneath it all, angry - having lost his parents young, and having watched them send his sister (his only other family) away to a proper boarding school, he was always full of a rage he couldn't quite quell. It egged him into fighting with the other kids around the base, with other soldiers, usually people much bigger than him, and he nearly always got in trouble for it. The superiors directed this anger by training him, starting at age 16, to join his fellow soldiers in the field, and he took to it like a fish to water. Finally he had direction, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth, wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life in service.

    The Russians twisted that when they recovered his broken, frozen body off the bottom of the English Channel. They turned him against his country, made him into nothing. Where Bucky Barnes was a fiercely shining star trying to find his place in the sky, the Winter Soldier was nothing, a ghost, a legend and a killer.

    James Buchanan Barnes these days is a mixture of everything he used to be and the weight of the world's expectations for him. At the very heart of it is the man he used to be when he liked himself, the man he used to be that he hates surrounding that, the man he is now and the man he wants to become on top of that. At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, though he isn't the ideal hero and he knows it. He's still picking up the pieces of himself, finding his footing and learning to live with himself and everything he's done. It isn't easy, but he isn't wholly broken - he's picking himself up and putting himself back together and coming to grips with the world, trying to find his place and who he is now, since he can't be little Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier anymore. Steve saved him in a way, but he's also saving himself every day that he keeps moving on, showing a resilience and a strength.

    On the surface, Bucky is a gruff, hard sort of man, and can come off as distant or coolly detached at times. He finds it difficult to show affection except with the people he's close to, and he gets right down to business instead of making small talk about the situation. He can be quite sullen, actually, and brooding, with a sort of sadness about him that tends to linger. He isn't exactly knowingly malicious to other people, he just... tends to come off as brusque, clipped, and it's easy to mistake his self-hatred for hatred of other people. But those who know him better, who get in underneath that facade he puts on to conceal his own perceived weaknesses, he's a little awkward, a little quiet. He makes morbid jokes about killing Hitler that other people don't seem to find funny. He tries to do good for the world and for his team to make up for everything he's done in the past. He's awkward around babies and girls.

    On the field, he hasn't lost the confidence he had as a teenager, though - he's well trained and he knows it, so he tends to be reckless and do whatever he thinks best at the time instead of waiting for orders. Despite being Captain America for a time, Bucky was never really the perfect, ideal hero like Steve was; he's more ruthless, more willing to get the job done even if it means getting his hands dirty. That's what he trained for since he was sixteen, and he slips into the role easily, though he shows more restraint in modern times when it comes to killing, likely because of his guilt issues.

    It's hard to guess from how Bucky goes on with his life, from how he presents himself to other people, that he actually hates himself more than anyone. He has a lot of self worth issues and guilt issues that come from decades of being a brainwashed KGB killing machine who took a lot of innocent lives at his handlers' behest. He remembers everything, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, for better or worse - this means he remembers most of the war, which were his happy years despite the horrors of WWII raging around him, and he remembers all the things he did as the Winter Soldier, horrors that meld with the rest of his memories and give him horrible nightmares. This, though, doesn't mean that he can always remember everything at every one moment. The Cube never healed his brain damage from his death and resuscitation, and so his memory can be spotty sometimes, with things fading in his mind until they're brought up.

    He's primarily serious and subdued, though he still has a sense of humor, if a dry, sarcastic sort of one. Bucky can be a bit snide depending on the situation and who he's talking to, but he can also manage to be polite if necessary. He was raised with good old '30s manners, after all, his father trying to instill in him a good work ethic and politeness. Granted, it didn't always work out - Bucky was a headstrong, angry kid who got in a lot of fights, but he was always respectful of his superiors at Camp Lehigh. Still, nowadays, he's kind of bitter and jaded from his experiences.

    Another thing he deals with constantly is his anger issues. When he was a child, after his mother died, he was angry at the world and took it out on other kids at the base, beating up anybody bigger than him just to prove he could. It disappointed his father, who used to be a roughneck himself and wanted something better for his son, but that anger in Bucky never really went away. The Army channeled it into punching Nazis instead, and it actually worked pretty well. The discipline and the training the Army gave him helped to mellow him out a little, to give him a focus and something to do with his restless self. Being Cap's partner meant the world to him, and he took his job very seriously, even though he knew what he was doing was dirty work (but he did the dirty work so that Steve wouldn't have to). He's clever and quick-minded even still, and he trusts his instincts on the field. He might not be book smart, having dropped out of school to join the Army, but he's very well trained and being on a battlefield is second nature to him. Of course, this means he won't always wait for instruction or take the cautious route, he has no problems barreling into things head-first and without thinking. The anger still remains even lately; when he first got his memories back, he went after Lukin, his former handler, with the intent of killing him for what he'd done to Bucky. When Steve "dies", he goes after Tony, who he blames for Steve's death. Blind, overwhelming anger and rash, poor decisions.

    Speaking of rash, poor decisions... He also tends to be a bit of an alcoholic when he's thrown into a depressive swing by a traumatic event. When Steve dies, for example, he drinks heavily in a bar, takes his anger out on a bunch of rednecks, and then decides it'd be a great idea to go kill Tony Stark. He's not exactly the best at handling his own emotions; he's a product of the 40s and macho army culture, where men were not supposed to show weakness or feelings. He grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude, learning it from his soldier father and all the soldiers at Camp Lehigh, and so he resorts to handling his feelings the only few ways he knows how. Which tends to be self-destructive behavior. It ties in again to the self-loathing, he cares a lot less if his decisions negatively affect him than he cares if they affect other people.

    Extremely important to him are the few people he's close to and trusts. He isn't an easy man to get to know, primarily because he distances himself from people to protect them (and because he sees himself as someone unworthy of their friendship), but Tom Raymond, Steve Rogers, the rest of the Invaders, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and some of the New Avengers did manage it, and he thinks highly of them. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, like the time he fought to save Sharon Carter even though he didn't know her and, in truth, she had actually wanted to kill him at one point, just because she's Steve's girl and he would do anything for Steve. The New Avengers were the closest thing he had to a family after coming back to the world, and Sam Wilson the closest thing to a best friend who wasn't his best friend before the war. Steve brought him back to the world and tried to give him a place in it, and he's grateful for that, even if he doesn't feel like he deserves it, or much of anything.

    Bucky primarily chases redemption for the things he'd been made to do in the past. He wants to be deserving of the love he gets from the people who care about him, he wants to be a good person who feels like he deserves to be part of the world, but at the same time, he isn't sure he can ever make up for the weight of his guilt. This is why he tends to be so rash and reckless, some part of him feels like he should be punished with pain while he tries to make up for his sins on the field, making the world safer. The weight of the world's expectations for him as the new Captain America also tend to weigh very heavily on him, and he probably needs therapy but good luck getting through his constant fog of manpain to convince him of that. Despite the fog of negative emotions, he doesn't let them stop him from doing what he thinks is right, what he thinks Steve would do, or what needs to be done. He isn't broken

    Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good and feel like he belongs in the world. He has a tendency to rely on one or two highly important people in his life for comfort and keeping himself grounded. Usually this is Steve, and/or Natasha, sometimes Sam. Mostly Natasha. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man, who places a lot of emotional importance on certain people and things and feels for those very deeply. Natasha is an obvious example, in Winter Soldier he thinks naively that his love for her can help to break her brainwashing even though he knows better, he knows intellectually and deep in his soul how deep the programming can go, and yet he wants to believe that love will conquer anyway. He also idolizes Steve, putting him on a pedestal. The shield got similar treatment - he went to a lot of trouble to steal it from Tony and SHIELD, because after Steve "died", he didn't want anyone else touching the shield. He didn't think he deserved it, but he knew no one else did because in his mind no one else knew what Steve had meant to the world.

    At his canon point, Bucky is a bit more subdued, learning to live with himself on his own and not rely on others to prop up his mental health. He's suffered a deep blow by losing Natasha and not insisting they try to make her remember, and with the death of Nick Fury, he has become the man standing between Earth and intergalactic threats - The Man on the Wall. He's got his own satellite station and a friend slash not!sidekick, and he's learning to cope. He regrets that he can't decide what he wants out of his own life, but duty has always come first for him, and Nick Fury's old job needs to be done. Still, he's settling a lot better than he did after previous shakeups, even gaining back a sense of humor that isn't entirely (but is still pretty much) morbid. He's not in a good place, but more than before, he's getting there.

    Abilities/Skills:
    Bionic Arm: Bucky's only actual non-human "ability" is with the cybernetic prosthetic left arm that replaces the one he lost in '45. The current model is SHIELD and Stark technology, shaped like a human arm and with the same range of motion as a human arm. It also has superhuman levels of strength, which can only be applied in so many situations because the rest of him is still squishy. The arm itself has several cool functions, including sensors that will allow it to pass undetected through a metal detector, an EMP to knock out electronics (it likely has a fairly specific range since it doesn't disable the arm itself), an electric shock that can be discharged through the palm to electrocute someone or short-circuit something, and when removed, he can control it remotely. It's as creepy as it sounds.

    Expert Combatant, Assassin, & Spy: Bucky is extensively trained in espionage, assassination, and combat techniques. He knows multiple forms of martial arts, he's acrobatic and at peak fitness, and he's strategic and clever. He's been trained to eliminate enemies since he was sixteen, and often did the dirty work during the war, the things that Captain America, national icon, couldn't do. He's excellent at stealth and disguise, he can blend into any crowd, and he's adept at gathering information. The Winter Soldier was a ghost story even amongst the intelligence communities, the boogeyman under the beds of all baby spies out there. Basically, he's a very dangerous man.

    Marksmanship and Weaponry: He's a crack shot with any kind of firearm, and he can use multiple types of weapons to get a job done. He tends towards guns, knives, and garrotes. He's also one of the few people who can effectively fight with Captain America's vibranium-blend shield.

    Multilingual: He speaks fluent Russian, German, Japanese, and some French, on top of English.

    Strengths/Weaknesses:
    Strengths:
    - Combat and strategy
    - Familiarity with advanced military and defense technology
    - Knowledge of weaponry and explosives
    - Physical fitness
    - Leadership skills
    - Espionage
    - Marksmanship
    - Multilingual

    Weaknesses:
    - Stubborn & hard-headed
    - Doesn't take orders well
    - Prone to manpain
    - Basic human weaknesses

    Items: His Winter Soldier uniform and undergarments, which is a black body suit with lightweight, bullet proof armor pieces, a belt with storage, a thigh holster, heavy combat boots, and a knife sheath in one boot. He's probably only carrying two small handguns and a bit of extra ammo, a small hidden boot knife, and a bigger combat knife in his belt. Somewhere on his person he also has a hidden garrotte wire.

    SAMPLES
    Network Sample:
    [When it comes to the network, Bucky mostly stays off of these things. He likes to control what, of his varying bits of information, gets out and to whom it goes to, and a mass audio post is a bad way to do that. But he's still relatively new on this ship, and here willingly (if you can call it that, signing the contract had been more of a matter of necessity than wanting since, hey, guys, he's kind of got a whole Earth to protect single-handedly back home) or not, it doesn't matter. He needs to get the lay of things, and figure out who is sharing the ship with him. If his universe got tapped for talent, maybe he isn't the only one.]

    So how about a little meet and greet? Names and favorite quotes. I'll start, this is James Barnes. I've got one phrase for you all, Avengers assemble. [If that means anything to anyone on board, they'll come out of the woodwork and find him. When they do, friend or foe, he'll be ready and waiting.]

    Prose/Action Sample: TDM with 616 Tony, TDM with MCU Steve. (I was using a different journal for "main journal's paid is expired and has no decent icons left" reasons oops.)
    anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
    2014-11-22 03:26 am
    Entry tags:

    IC Inbox + Mailbox



    This is Barnes, leave a message.
    anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
    2014-09-25 07:11 pm

    box application

    Player Information
    Player name: Nekky
    Contact: [plurk.com profile] nekky, AIM @ xnecronomical
    Are you over 18: Yes
    Characters in The Box Already: N/A

    Character Information
    Character Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
    Canon: Marvel 616 (comics)
    Canon Point: Mid-Gulag, some time after his gladiator-style fight with Ursa Major the Man-Bear but before he breaks out.
    History: The Unabridged Life of James Buchanan Barnes
    Personality:
    Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Except for Bucky Barnes, who died a hero and was still twisted into the exact thing he had died to fight - a monster.

    Bucky's upbringing contributed a lot to his personality before his 'death'. He was raised within the little microculture of Camp Lehigh, amongst a thousand older 'brothers', appeasing his superior officers like a normal boy would try to appease his parents. He was brash, charming, and beneath it all, angry - having lost his parents young, and having watched them send his sister (his only other family) away to a proper boarding school, he was always full of a rage he couldn't quite quell. It egged him into fighting with the other kids around the base, with other soldiers, usually people much bigger than him, and he nearly always got in trouble for it. The superiors directed this anger by training him, starting at age 16, to join his fellow soldiers in the field, and he took to it like a fish to water. Finally he had direction, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth, wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life in service.

    The Russians twisted that when they recovered his broken, frozen body off the bottom of the English Channel. They turned him against his country, made him into nothing. Where Bucky Barnes was a fiercely shining star trying to find his place in the sky, the Winter Soldier was nothing, a ghost, a legend and a killer.

    James Buchanan Barnes these days is a mixture of everything he used to be and the weight of the world's expectations for him. At the very heart of it is the man he used to be when he liked himself, the man he used to be that he hates surrounding that, the man he is now and the man he wants to become on top of that. At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, though he isn't the ideal hero and he knows it. He's still picking up the pieces of himself, finding his footing and learning to live with himself and everything he's done. It isn't easy, but he isn't wholly broken - he's picking himself up and putting himself back together and coming to grips with the world, trying to find his place and who he is now, since he can't be little Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier anymore. Steve saved him in a way, but he's also saving himself every day that he keeps moving on, showing a resilience and a strength.

    On the surface, Bucky is a gruff, hard sort of man, and can come off as distant or coolly detached at times. He finds it difficult to show affection except with the people he's close to, and he gets right down to business instead of making small talk about the situation. He can be quite sullen, actually, and brooding, with a sort of sadness about him that tends to linger. He isn't exactly knowingly malicious to other people, he just... tends to come off as brusque, clipped, and it's easy to mistake his self-hatred for hatred of other people. But those who know him better, who get in underneath that facade he puts on to conceal his own perceived weaknesses, he's a little awkward, a little quiet. He makes morbid jokes about killing Hitler that other people don't seem to find funny. He tries to do good for the world and for his team to make up for everything he's done in the past. He's awkward around babies and girls.

    On the field, he hasn't lost the confidence he had as a teenager, though - he's well trained and he knows it, so he tends to be reckless and do whatever he thinks best at the time instead of waiting for orders. Despite being Captain America for a time, Bucky was never really the perfect, ideal hero like Steve was; he's more ruthless, more willing to get the job done even if it means getting his hands dirty. That's what he trained for since he was sixteen, and he slips into the role easily, though he shows more restraint in modern times when it comes to killing, likely because of his guilt issues.

    It's hard to guess from how Bucky goes on with his life, from how he presents himself to other people, that he actually hates himself more than anyone. He has a lot of self worth issues and guilt issues that come from decades of being a brainwashed KGB killing machine who took a lot of innocent lives at his handlers' behest. He remembers everything, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, for better or worse - this means he remembers most of the war, which were his happy years despite the horrors of WWII raging around him, and he remembers all the things he did as the Winter Soldier, horrors that meld with the rest of his memories and give him horrible nightmares. This, though, doesn't mean that he can always remember everything at every one moment. The Cube never healed his brain damage from his death and resuscitation, and so his memory can be spotty sometimes, with things fading in his mind until they're brought up.

    He's primarily serious and subdued, though he still has a sense of humor, if a dry, sarcastic sort of one. Bucky can be a bit snide depending on the situation and who he's talking to, but he can also manage to be polite if necessary. He was raised with good old '30s manners, after all, his father trying to instill in him a good work ethic and politeness. Granted, it didn't always work out - Bucky was a headstrong, angry kid who got in a lot of fights, but he was always respectful of his superiors at Camp Lehigh. Still, nowadays, he's kind of bitter and jaded from his experiences.

    Another thing he deals with constantly is his anger issues. When he was a child, after his mother died, he was angry at the world and took it out on other kids at the base, beating up anybody bigger than him just to prove he could. It disappointed his father, who used to be a roughneck himself and wanted something better for his son, but that anger in Bucky never really went away. The Army channeled it into punching Nazis instead, and it actually worked pretty well. The discipline and the training the Army gave him helped to mellow him out a little, to give him a focus and something to do with his restless self. Being Cap's partner meant the world to him, and he took his job very seriously, even though he knew what he was doing was dirty work (but he did the dirty work so that Steve wouldn't have to). He's clever and quick-minded even still, and he trusts his instincts on the field. He might not be book smart, having dropped out of school to join the Army, but he's very well trained and being on a battlefield is second nature to him. Of course, this means he won't always wait for instruction or take the cautious route, he has no problems barreling into things head-first and without thinking. The anger still remains even lately; when he first got his memories back, he went after Lukin, his former handler, with the intent of killing him for what he'd done to Bucky. When Steve "dies", he goes after Tony, who he blames for Steve's death. Blind, overwhelming anger and rash, poor decisions.

    Speaking of rash, poor decisions... He also tends to be a bit of an alcoholic when he's thrown into a depressive swing by a traumatic event. When Steve dies, for example, he drinks heavily in a bar, takes his anger out on a bunch of rednecks, and then decides it'd be a great idea to go kill Tony Stark. He's not exactly the best at handling his own emotions; he's a product of the 40s and macho army culture, where men were not supposed to show weakness or feelings. He grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude, learning it from his soldier father and all the soldiers at Camp Lehigh, and so he resorts to handling his feelings the only few ways he knows how. Which tends to be self-destructive behavior. It ties in again to the self-loathing, he cares a lot less if his decisions negatively affect him than he cares if they affect other people.

    Extremely important to him are the few people he's close to and trusts. He isn't an easy man to get to know, primarily because he distances himself from people to protect them (and because he sees himself as someone unworthy of their friendship), but Tom Raymond, Steve Rogers, the rest of the Invaders, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and some of the New Avengers did manage it, and he thinks highly of them. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, like the time he fought to save Sharon Carter even though he didn't know her and, in truth, she had actually wanted to kill him at one point, just because she's Steve's girl and he would do anything for Steve. The New Avengers were the closest thing he had to a family after coming back to the world, and Sam Wilson the closest thing to a best friend who wasn't his best friend before the war. Steve brought him back to the world and tried to give him a place in it, and he's grateful for that, even if he doesn't feel like he deserves it, or much of anything.

    Bucky primarily chases redemption for the things he'd been made to do in the past. He wants to be deserving of the love he gets from the people who care about him, he wants to be a good person who feels like he deserves to be part of the world, but at the same time, he isn't sure he can ever make up for the weight of his guilt. This is why he tends to be so rash and reckless, some part of him feels like he should be punished with pain while he tries to make up for his sins on the field, making the world safer. The weight of the world's expectations for him as the new Captain America also tend to weigh very heavily on him, and he probably needs therapy but good luck getting through his constant fog of manpain to convince him of that. Despite the fog of negative emotions, he doesn't let them stop him from doing what he thinks is right, what he thinks Steve would do, or what needs to be done. He isn't broken

    Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good and feel like he belongs in the world. He has a tendency to rely on one or two highly important people in his life for comfort and keeping himself grounded. Usually this is Steve, and/or Natasha, sometimes Sam. Mostly Natasha. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man, who places a lot of emotional importance on certain people and things and feels for those very deeply. Natasha is an obvious example, in Winter Soldier he thinks naively that his love for her can help to break her brainwashing even though he knows better, he knows intellectually and deep in his soul how deep the programming can go, and yet he wants to believe that love will conquer anyway. He also idolizes Steve, putting him on a pedestal. The shield got similar treatment - he went to a lot of trouble to steal it from Tony and SHIELD, because after Steve "died", he didn't want anyone else touching the shield. He didn't think he deserved it, but he knew no one else did because in his mind no one else knew what Steve had meant to the world.

    At his canon point, Bucky is a bit more subdued, coming off being Captain America and having been put through a difficult trial for his past actions as the Winter Soldier. All he wants is to be redeemed, to make up for his past sins as a brainwashed assassin, and so he's calmly accepted his fate and agreed to serve his time for his crimes - being whisked away to a Russian gulag filled with other ex-KGB superheroes and villains.
    Items on your character at canon point: A prison jumpsuit and a split lip. Also at this point his bionic arm has been modified to only match the human strength in his right arm, but that could be fixed by someone with the know-how most likely.
    Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
    Strengths and Abilities:
    Bucky is a regular human being, and therefore has no special innate abilities. He's at Olympic levels of fitness though, due to heavy training, and he has several useful skills in his repertoire from his upbringing.

    Bucky Barnes is a master combatant who knows quite a bit of martial arts and hand to hand fighting techniques, armed and unarmed. He was trained by WWII greats including Rex Applegate, William Fairbairn, and Captain America (Steve Rogers). He learned a lot in months of training with the SAS in Britain when the SAS was still in its infancy, and later in his life, he was extensively trained and trained others in the Russian Red Room. He also knows how to fight with a shield, having needed to to carry on Steve's legacy as Captain America. He is an expert marksman and prefers the weight of a gun in his hands than a knife or a shield, though. He is intensely fit and flexible, having been trained in some acrobatics to make maneuvering easier. Stealth and quiet killing are both things he's famous for.

    To back it all up, he's pretty gifted when it comes to tracking, battle strategy, and planning missions, no matter the objective. He's pretty much been a soldier his entire life, it's what he knows, it's what he's good at, and it's what he loves, for the most part. He's probably one of the most dangerous men in the Marvel Universe despite his lack of powers.

    Some other skills he has: bomb defusing and explosives knowledge, he speaks four languages fluently (English, Russian, German, and Japanese) and knows a little French, he has a lot of SHIELD intel and works closely with master spies like Nick Fury Sr. and Black Widow, advance scouting, stealth, breaking and entering, assassination with a multitude of weaponry, and general ass-kicking. He knows a lot about firearms, motorcycles, and the aforementioned demolitions.

    He is an amputee, though, and his missing left arm was replaced with a bionic one wired into his nervous system and brain. The bionic arm has super-human strength levels, better reaction time, sensors to get it and other weapons through metal detectors, electrical discharges from the palm, EMPs, and it can be remote controlled when removed. Yes, it's exactly as creepy-hilarious as it sounds.

    Weaknesses:
    Himself. No really. Mental instability and self-hatred and guilt issues are all things with Bucky and it causes him to do stupid things. There's a reason his friends will decline plans, citing that they sound like 'Bucky plans'. He sometimes tends to rush into things without thinking about his own personal safety, which can go disastrously, of course, and he ends up getting hurt because deep down he thinks he deserves it. His biggest weaknesses really are psychological. It isn't super hard to manipulate him if you know what minefields to set off in his head. He has a history of brainwashing and memory loss, and probably some lingering brain damage, has a lot of nightmares, etc. He's also only human, despite the arm, and he's died or nearly died a couple times. Obviously he is also not immune to limb loss, being shot, being knifed, falling off of things, falling onto cars, or bears. He's really not immune to bears. Also while he might be smart, and a quick study when it comes to new weapons and technology that will help with his missions, he also isn't some kind of genius. Nat probably set up all his computer equipment.

    Samples
    Network/Action Spam Sample:
    [He keeps the device he's lifted off someone to audio. It's not that he can't figure it out, it's more that he doesn't really want to show his face right now, especially looking like he is. Which is to say, a little like death warmed over, dirty and covered in bruises.]

    Not exactly what I had in mind when I thought I wanted out. I'd do some really awful things for an aspirin right about now. [Short and simple, get his voice out there. If anyone he knows is here, they'll recognize his voice, they'll come and find him or make themselves obvious so that he can come to them. He doesn't have high hopes of finding someone familiar, but at this point, he's completely at a loss for what to do.

    He has to keep moving. It isn't safe. He has no idea how he got out of the gulag but this is most likely another downswing in his life that will just lead to more trouble. If they know he's gone, Russia's going to start an international incident, and boy, won't that be a headache for Steve?]
    Who's in charge? Don't evil masterminds usually wanna gloat? Well, pal, I'm listenin'.

    Prose Log Sample:
    He wakes up feeling like he went three rounds with the Hulk.

    In reality, it was one round, and it was with Ursa Major instead of the Jolly Green Giant, but still, the aches and pains in his body feel similar enough to make the comparison. His right arm is fucked up, is the first thing he notices when he sits up in the tiny, hard bed of his cell, and his fingers are unsteady as he fashions a crude sling from a dingy towel to rest it in for as long as he can. He has no doubt he'll be needing his arm when the guards come to fetch him again tonight.

    Today as he's let out for breakfast in the mess, he can feel the other prisoners' eyes on him again, just as before, but this time, there is fear, respect, cautious loathing in their gazes. They're not so eager to go a round with him now that he's put Ursa Major in the infirmary. He keeps his head down, considers this a blessing in disguise - he doesn't trust himself not to lose it if they push him around too much. He never could back down from a fight, not since he was a scrappy kid on Army bases beating up kids bigger than him, and the guard said it best. What would Iron Man or Ms. Marvel think if they came and found him in solitary confinement? And these people would do whatever they could to put him there.

    This is the trajectory of his life, and he just doesn't want this to become his new normal. Not this, not the chill of Siberia, the falling snow, the too-thin jumpsuit and ratty coat and hard leather shoes he wears, the sheer isolation and the cacophony of muttering Russian voices. He's barely slept since he got here, the remainder of the Winter Soldier's world bringing back memories like sharp glass, cutting through his waking and sleeping mind.

    Just a few more days, Buck, he tells himself. You just have to hold on for a few more days, and then a rep from the Avengers will be here. You can tell them all about the illegal after-hours prisoner fights. Bucky knows they'll believe him, the proof is all over his skin painted blues and blacks and purples with bruising, inflamed red with improperly treated cuts and scrapes, his swollen split lip and the awkward sprain in his right arm.

    He gets through 'breakfast', he gets through work assignment. Breaking rocks in the hot sun, he thinks that's a song, can't help but let out a short, quiet laugh as he brings the hammer down. What he wouldn't give for that hot sun, breaking rocks in the frigid snow doesn't have the same ring to it. A prisoner shoulders him roughly as he moves by with an armful of stone, jarring Bucky's right arm as he barks in broken English, "Why you laugh?"

    He wants to deck the sneer right off the man's face. Bucky turns back to his work instead. "No reason."

    Just a few more days and then maybe he can do his time somewhere else. Back home, maybe, in the States. Prison isn't glamorous but American prisons are not this hellhole.

    But with his luck, things will just get worse from here. They always do, because that's the trajectory of his life.

    Later that night, before the guards will come to fetch him, Bucky scrubs a chill metal hand over his eyes in the dim light of his dirty, cold cell, right arm cradled to his chest protectively. Some part of him has given up already, has accepted that he'll die alone for the things he's done in the past, and the rest of him is holding on to just a few more days like a lifeline. He's accepted his responsibility, accepted his punishment, but as the day goes on, as he finds out more and more about why he's here, what they want with him...

    Is his acceptance doing anyone any good, or will things just get worse from here?

    Somehow he knows the answer.
    anotheroldsoldier: (concern)
    2014-06-24 08:41 pm
    Entry tags:

    application for inthepines

    Player Information
    Name: Nekky
    Age: 24
    Contact: [plurk.com profile] nekky, [personal profile] nekky, AIM: xnecronomical
    Current Characters: NA, have an app for an OC also.


    Character Information

    Name: James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky, The Winter Soldier, Captain America
    Age: WHO EVEN KNOWS. Probably like early 30s physically? He was born in 1925.
    Canon: Marvel 616
    Canon Point: Forever Allies #1, when he's riding through Colorado.
    Reference: The Unabridged Life of James B. Barnes: A Tale of Manpain and Brainwashing
    Suitability: NA he's a grown ass man who wrestles bears.
    Arrival: Bucky was just dropped off in Colorado via plane jump, and his ride dropped with him. He was on his way through a wooded area, on backroads most likely, toward the Rocky Mountain Federal Prison to gather intel on Lady Lotus, a supposed prisoner there. After leaving the prison, he heads back out through the woods on bike and instead of finding his way out of the state, the road takes him straight into Great Pines.

    Personality:
    Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Except for Bucky Barnes, who died a hero and was still twisted into the exact thing he had died to fight - a monster.

    Bucky's upbringing contributed a lot to his personality before his 'death'. He was raised within the little microculture of Camp Lehigh, amongst a thousand older 'brothers', appeasing his superior officers like a normal boy would try to appease his parents. He was brash, charming, and beneath it all, angry - having lost his parents young, and having watched them send his sister (his only other family) away to a proper boarding school, he was always full of a rage he couldn't quite quell. It egged him into fighting with the other kids around the base, with other soldiers, usually people much bigger than him, and he nearly always got in trouble for it. The superiors directed this anger by training him, starting at age 16, to join his fellow soldiers in the field, and he took to it like a fish to water. Finally he had direction, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth, wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life in service.

    The Russians twisted that when they recovered his broken, frozen body off the bottom of the English Channel. They turned him against his country, made him into nothing. Where Bucky Barnes was a fiercely shining star trying to find his place in the sky, the Winter Soldier was nothing, a ghost, a legend and a killer.

    James Buchanan Barnes these days is a mixture of everything he used to be and the weight of the world's expectations for him. At the very heart of it is the man he used to be when he liked himself, the man he used to be that he hates surrounding that, the man he is now and the man he wants to become on top of that. At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, though he isn't the ideal hero and he knows it. He's still picking up the pieces of himself, finding his footing and learning to live with himself and everything he's done. It isn't easy, he's still broken deep down where he can't quite be fixed, but a brave face has always been his mask.

    On the surface, Bucky is a gruff, hard sort of man, and can come off as distant or coolly detached at times. He finds it difficult to show affection except with the people he's close to, and he gets right down to business instead of making small talk about the situation. He can be quite sullen, actually, and brooding, with a sort of sadness about him that tends to linger. He isn't exactly knowingly malicious to other people, he just... tends to come off as brusque, clipped, and it's easy to mistake his self-hatred for hatred of other people. But those who know him better, who get in underneath that facade he puts on to conceal his own perceived weaknesses, he's a little awkward, a little quiet. He makes morbid jokes that other people don't seem to find funny. He tries to do good for the world and for his team to make up for everything he's done in the past. He's awkward around babies and girls.

    On the field, he hasn't lost the confidence he had as a teenager, though - he's well trained and he knows it, so he tends to be reckless and do whatever he thinks best at the time instead of waiting for orders. Despite being Captain America for a time, Bucky was never really the perfect, ideal hero like Steve was; he's more ruthless, more willing to get the job done even if it means getting his hands dirty. That's what he trained for since he was sixteen, and he slips into the role easily, though he shows more restraint in modern times when it comes to killing, likely because of his guilt issues.

    It's hard to guess from how Bucky goes on with his life, from how he presents himself to other people, that he actually hates himself more than anyone. He has a lot of self worth issues and guilt issues that come from decades of being a brainwashed KGB killing machine who took a lot of innocent lives at his handlers' behest. He remembers everything, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, for better or worse - this means he remembers most of the war, which were his happy years despite the horrors of WWII raging around him, and he remembers all the things he did as the Winter Soldier, horrors that meld with the rest of his memories and give him horrible nightmares. This, though, doesn't mean that he can always remember everything at every one moment. The Cube never healed his brain damage from his death and resuscitation, and so his memory can be spotty sometimes, with things fading in his mind until they're brought up.

    He's primarily serious and subdued, though he still has a sense of humor, if a dry, sarcastic sort of one. Bucky can be a bit snide depending on the situation and who he's talking to, but he can also manage to be polite if necessary. He was raised with good old '30s manners, after all, his father trying to instill in him a good work ethic and politeness. Granted, it didn't always work out - Bucky was a headstrong, angry kid who got in a lot of fights, but he was always respectful of his superiors at Camp Lehigh. Still, nowadays, he's kind of bitter and jaded from his experiences.

    Another thing he deals with constantly is his anger issues. When he was a child, after his mother died, he was angry at the world and took it out on other kids at the base, beating up anybody bigger than him just to prove he could. It disappointed his father, who used to be a roughneck himself and wanted something better for his son, but that anger in Bucky never really went away. The Army channeled it into punching Nazis instead, and it actually worked pretty well. The discipline and the training the Army gave him helped to mellow him out a little, to give him a focus and something to do with his restless self. Being Cap's partner meant the world to him, and he took his job very seriously, even though he knew what he was doing was dirty work (but he did the dirty work so that Steve wouldn't have to). He's clever and quick-minded even still, and he trusts his instincts on the field. He might not be book smart, having dropped out of school to join the Army, but he's very well trained and being on a battlefield is second nature to him. Of course, this means he won't always wait for instruction or take the cautious route, he has no problems barrelling into things head-first and without thinking. The anger still remains even lately; when he first got his memories back, he went after Lukin, his former handler, with the intent of killing him for what he'd done to Bucky. When Steve "dies", he goes after Tony, who he blames for Steve's death. Blind, overwhelming anger and rash, poor decisions.

    Speaking of rash, poor decisions... He also tends to be a bit of an alcoholic when he's thrown into a depressive swing by a traumatic event. When Steve dies, for example, he drinks heavily in a bar, takes his anger out on a bunch of rednecks, and then decides it'd be a great idea to go kill Tony Stark. He's not exactly the best at handling his own emotions; he's a product of the 40s and macho army culture, where men were not supposed to show weakness or feelings. He grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude, learning it from his soldier father and all the soldiers at Camp Lehigh, and so he resorts to handling his feelings the only few ways he knows how. Which tends to be self-destructive behavior. It ties in again to the self-loathing, he cares a lot less if his decisions negatively affect him than he cares if they affect other people.

    Extremely important to him are the few people he's close to and trusts. He isn't an easy man to get to know, primarily because he distances himself from people to protect them (and because he sees himself as someone unworthy of their friendship), but Tom Raymond, Steve Rogers, the rest of the Invaders, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and some of the New Avengers did manage it, and he thinks highly of them. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, like the time he fought to save Sharon Carter even though he didn't know her and, in truth, she had actually wanted to kill him at one point, just because she's Steve's girl and he would do anything for Steve. The New Avengers were the closest thing he had to a family after coming back to the world, and Sam Wilson the closest thing to a best friend who wasn't his best friend before the war. Steve brought him back to the world and tried to give him a place in it, and he's grateful for that, even if he doesn't feel like he deserves it, or much of anything.

    Bucky primarily chases redemption for the things he'd been made to do in the past. He wants to be deserving of the love he gets from the people who care about him, he wants to be a good person who feels like he deserves to be part of the world, but at the same time, he isn't sure he can ever make up for the weight of his guilt. This is why he tends to be so rash and reckless, some part of him feels like he should be punished with pain while he tries to make up for his sins on the field, making the world safer. The weight of the world's expectations for him as the new Captain America also tend to weigh very heavily on him, and he probably needs therapy but good luck getting through his constant fog of manpain to convince him of that.

    Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good and feel like he belongs in the world. He has a tendency to rely on one or two highly important people in his life for comfort and keeping himself grounded. Usually this is Steve, and/or Natasha, sometimes Sam. Mostly Natasha. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man, who places a lot of emotional importance on certain people and things and feels for those very deeply. Natasha is an obvious example, in Winter Soldier he thinks naively that his love for her can help to break her brainwashing even though he knows better, he knows intellectually and deep in his soul how deep the programming can go, and yet he wants to believe that love will conquer anyway. He also idolizes Steve, putting him on a pedestal. The shield got similar treatment - he went to a lot of trouble to steal it from Tony and SHIELD, because after Steve "died", he didn't want anyone else touching the shield. He didn't think he deserved it, but he knew no one else did because in his mind no one else knew what Steve had meant to the world.

    That's where he is now, trying to be the Captain America the world needs, not because he's the best man for the job but because he doesn't trust anyone else with his oldest and closest friend's legacy.

    Abilities/Powers: Bucky is a regular human being, and therefore has no special innate abilities. He's at Olympic levels of fitness though, due to heavy training, and he has several useful skills in his repertoire from his upbringing.

    Bucky Barnes is a master combatant who knows quite a bit of martial arts and hand to hand fighting techniques, armed and unarmed. He was trained by WWII greats including Rex Applegate, William Fairbairn, and Captain America (Steve Rogers). He learned a lot in months of training with the SAS in Britain when the SAS was still in its infancy, and later in his life, he was extensively trained and trained others in the Russian Red Room. He also knows how to fight with a shield, having needed to to carry on Steve's legacy as Captain America. He is an expert marksman and prefers the weight of a gun in his hands than a knife or a shield, though. He is intensely fit and flexible, having been trained in some acrobatics to make maneuvering easier. Stealth and quiet killing are both things he's famous for.

    To back it all up, he's pretty gifted when it comes to tracking, battle strategy, and planning missions, no matter the objective. He's pretty much been a soldier his entire life, it's what he knows, it's what he's good at, and it's what he loves, for the most part. He's probably one of the most dangerous men in the Marvel Universe despite his lack of powers.

    Some other skills he has: bomb defusing and explosives knowledge, he speaks four languages fluently (English, Russian, German, and Japanese) and knows a little French, he has a lot of SHIELD intel and works closely with master spies like Nick Fury Sr. and Black Widow, advance scouting, stealth, breaking and entering, assassination with a multitude of weaponry, and general ass-kicking. He knows a lot about firearms, motorcycles, and the aforementioned demolitions.

    He is an amputee, though, and his missing left arm was replaced with a bionic one wired into his nervous system and brain. The bionic arm has super-human strength levels, better reaction time, sensors to get it and other weapons through metal detectors, electrical discharges from the palm, EMPs, and it can be remote controlled when removed. Yes, it's exactly as creepy-hilarious as it sounds. Sometimes the arm is also covered with a fake skin covering to keep from drawing attention.

    Presumably, his latest dose of Infinity Formula will slow his aging temporarily, but the stuff is never mentioned again so no one really knows how that affects his physiology. Comics. But this only applies to a post-Fear Itself Bucky.

    Weaknesses: Himself. No really. Mental instability and self-hatred and guilt issues are all things with Bucky and it causes him to do stupid things. There's a reason his friends will decline plans, citing that they sound like 'Bucky plans'. He sometimes tends to rush into things without thinking about his own personal safety, which can go disastrously, of course, and he ends up getting hurt because deep down he thinks he deserves it. His biggest weaknesses really are psychological. It isn't super hard to manipulate him if you know what minefields to set off in his head. He has a history of brainwashing and memory loss, and probably some lingering brain damage, has a lot of nightmares, etc. He's also only human, despite the arm and the Infinity Formula, and he's died or nearly died a couple times. Obviously he is also not immune to limb loss, being shot, being knifed, falling off of things, falling onto cars, or bears. He's really not immune to bears. Also while he might be smart, and a quick study when it comes to new weapons and technology that will help with his missions, he also isn't some kind of genius. Nat probably set up all his computer equipment.

    Items/Weapons: His Captain America uniform underneath his clothes, made of bulletproof and impact resistant fabric and skin tight. Thanks to Tea, he has sport underwear with a cup under them. On top he's wearing boot cut jeans, a white t-shirt, black leather jacket, black leather gloves, black combat boots, and sunglasses. He's riding in on a modified (can reach Los Angeles from Colorado in ten hours instead of twelve) replica Indian motorcycle, cherry red, with his belt, knife, gun, shield, and some fake identification for "Barney Jamieson, freelance writer" in the saddlebag.


    Samples

    First Person:


    Third Person:
    "We got word of a major fluctuation in the power grids in northern Chechnya. Based on reports from the power company in Grozny, somewhere big just lost power. It could be running on generators, or it could be abandoned, but we need to find out what it is - it was using a hell of a lot of energy while it was going, but it was buried under paperwork."

    Bucky hadn't needed to hear much more. Chechnya is too close to Russia for his comfort, considering the circumstances, and he had been dropped off by plane that night in the vicinity of where SHIELD techs had pinned down the power-suck as being. They hadn't been wrong, it didn't take long for him to find hidden entrances to what seemed to be an underground bunker, and boy, wasn't this familiar? The traps on the doors are dusty and were placed there a while ago, from the looks of it, similar mechanisms to what he remembers of the Red Room. In this area, it's not completely impossible that AIM or HYDRA could have gotten hold of KGB technology or intel, but he still doesn't like the thought.

    Disarming explosives is simple, quiet business, and these are at least a year old, not well protected from the elements. There are recent fingerprints in the dust - they were deactivated and activated again very recently. Soon the thick metal door slides open with a soft hiss of stale air escaping. Inside is dark and silent, and Captain America switches on the night vision feature in his modified cowl - provided by Tony Stark for this specifically. He can't risk turning on any lights just in case it's not as abandoned as it seems.

    The smell hits him hard. Dust, lingering traces of antiseptic, the stale, cold, recirculated air of somewhere devoid of human life. Like the warehouse they took him out of the last time as the Winter Soldier. As he moves through the shadows quietly, he can feel the hallway tilting downward; he's going deeper. There are no schematics for this bunker in SHIELD's intel, and so he relies on his own instincts, his own experiences with places like these, to make his way through.

    A few abandoned yellow beekeeper-like helmets, cleaner than the rest of the detritus, tell him that this was definitely an AIM base, scattered papers and clean spots in the grime on tables and walls telling him that they took small things that they could carry and ran in a hurry. Moving house, maybe the power outage caught them off guard. It was the power company's fault, an unexpected mishap. The smaller stuff is definitely gone, it seems, but the small stuff isn't what Director Stark wants. He wants to know what they were doing here, what technology or medical experiments they were working on. Or that's what he told Bucky, they don't exactly talk much.

    He risks pulling out a flashlight as he gets deeper into the chilly bunker and the rooms grow larger, made of more utilitarian concrete down here, dotted with suspicious dark patches here and there like splatters. Ominous but not unexpected. Still, he kind of regrets turning on the light when he sees the cylindrical chambers lining the room, tubes and wires hooking them into the walls, small glass viewing ports on the fronts covered with a light, light coating of dust. Dread sits heavy in the pit of his stomach, choking him.

    A gloved hand wipes a trail through the dust on one of the cryochambers' viewing ports, and the light shines in. Before he left for Chechnya, he went to dinner with Natalia, at a fancy little bistro she loves. The steak he'd had, he thinks, was one of the best of his life, and now his stomach threatens to heave it up again as he takes in the sight of the melted chemical sludge, cryo-prep chemicals and something else, a rotting soup without electricity to keep the chambers cold. A distorted eyeball floats in the goop aimlessly, and he nearly does throw up, then, as it grows in his mind with dawning horror what sorts of things AIM had stolen from the KGB. This was once a beehive of horrible activity.

    He moves on, he can't bear to look anymore. Bucky can't bear to wonder if that could have been him, had Lukin not thawed him out one last time.

    Bucky moves on because it's all he can do. He's putting together a picture in his mind and the farther he ventures down the rabbit hole, the uglier and more twisted it gets. And SHIELD wants this technology, their research?

    In the next room, his breath catches in his throat with- not fear exactly, not for himself, but for whatever poor creatures were experimented on here. Another cryochamber, bigger, more tubes and wires connecting it to more machines whose purposes he can't discern, and this one is ajar, cryo-prep fluid in puddles on the smooth concrete floor. Something in this bunker is, perhaps, still alive. He casts the flashlight around, but the light is weak in such a large room, and most of it stays shrouded in the dark.

    The flash drive and biohazard sample kit are heavy in his belt pouch, telling him to complete the mission, get what he can off AIM's computer systems and report back to SHIELD, but this technology, what would they use this for? Would they put more people through whatever the poor souls who died here went through? And he realizes then, too, why those AIM guys were in such a hurry to run. Some more of them lay dead around the outer edges of the massive lab, days dead, mutilated and smashed to bloody pulp where they took blows from something strong.

    Bucky is lost in the dawning horror, and barely has time to react when something lumbers from the darkness, knocking the flashlight out of his metal hand and far away. He rolls with the blow and avoids getting it worse, flipping on the night vision in his cowl again to get a better look at what's attacked him - a man, or what used to be a man, now bulging grotesquely with ill-placed, artificial muscle and veins, raised blisters spotting skin pulled tight and thin like that of an overripe tomato. The creature is naked, enraged, wet and smelling distinctly of the chemicals used to prepare a body for cryostasis. Woken abruptly then, melted and thawed when the power went out here, not brought out of it properly. Dangerous to the psyche, he knows, and this... Who knows what they did to it.

    It raises both arms and tries to bring them down on Bucky's head, but he blocks with the shield, tries to swipe its feet out from under it. The ex-man isn't much of a fighter, too consumed with sheer rage, but it's strong, and the force of the blow rattles Bucky's brain in his skull and sets his teeth grinding. Close quarter fighting won't turn out well for him, he stages a tactical retreat back by yards toward the machines, the computer equipment by the chamber.

    It lets out a garbled roar of panic, primal animal fear, and Bucky realizes later that it still had words - "No more! No more!"

    SHIELD would want a report of this. SHIELD would want tissue samples, would want to take it in alive to determine what AIM had done to it. Bucky raises his handgun, though, and fires off a clean shot through the temple.

    He doesn't leave the base immediately after the creature dies, nor does he gather the information he's been sent to get. He stands there and watches the corpse for what seems like, tactically, a long time. He whispers to himself, "It's a mercy," and wonders if he would have thought the same, if someone had done the same to him all that time ago.

    The file on the console details the super-soldier serum recreation attempt, performed on an Agent Barkov, of SHIELD. He burns the whole bunker to the ground, and brings nothing back.

    There but for the grace of God go I.
    anotheroldsoldier: (Default)
    2013-05-09 12:25 pm
    Entry tags:

    hmd

    Comments, criticism, and canon fail are all welcome. While I have read most of his appearances, this is comics and I seriously doubt I've read it all. If I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.

    ANON: ON
    IP LOGGING: OFF
    SCREENING: Screened on request