Application for Mask or Menace
Aug. 17th, 2014 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dogsled〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Reg
AGE: +
JOURNAL:regasssa
IM / EMAIL: regasssa and @ hotmail dotcom
PLURK: regasssa
RETURNING: yes
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Benton Fraser
CHARACTER AGE: 38
SERIES: due South (lowercase relevant)
CHRONOLOGY: After Call of the Wild, but before all the post-series roundup, just as he and Ray (Stanley Ray Kowalski) set off to find the hand of Sir John Franklin
CLASS: Heroic Good
HOUSING: Nothing to declare, must accept pets
BACKGROUND:
Concieved in an igloo, born in a barn, and raised in the wilderness of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, Benton Fraser - known to his family and friends in Canada as Ben - was the son of Caroline and Robert Fraser, himself a member of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The nature of his childhood meant that he moved around a lot, first with his mother and father following his attachments at Fort Worth and The Rat, then after his mother's death, his childhood was spent in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Alert with his grandparents (father's side), who were traveling librarians, and the occasional often eccentric member of his extended family.
Fraser was very close with his grandparents; his grandmother would give him books at every birthday, the first of which ended up being eaten by a walrus, but Fraser filled the long hours with agregating book knowledge (and skills, for example Fraser taught himself boxing using one of these ancient books) and was generally home educated by his grandmother, who had once been a schoolteacher. Fraser learned multiple languages, and would occasionally have friends of a similar age to his own with whom to play hockey, for example. He was also a scout. As a child he resented many of them their freedom, particularly the Inuit children. At twelve, bitter that other boys his age were allowed to hunt but he couldn't, he ran away from home, and his life was saved by a tracker named Quinn when he lost his footing on a cliff-face in the forest. Though he knew Fraser's grandparents Quinn understood why Fraser had run away from home, and chose instead to help him to find the caribou he was hunting. "If you don't find the caribou how will you know if you're prepared to kill him?" Despite guiding him that it was wrong to kill something he didn't intend to use every part of, Quinn allowed Fraser to shoot one of the stags, making what Fraser identifies as the biggest mistake of his life. After this, Fraser sought to learn more from Quinn, studying in greater detail the wilderness that was his home, refining the skills that would later help him in his RCMP responsibilities. He didn't - however - learn not to run away from home, as he again at sixteen fled his grandparents as a result of some incident involving a boomerang, a can of gas and a gold mine.
Following in the footsteps of the father he barely saw but none the less looked up to, Fraser joined the RCMP at an exceptional age, throwing himself into his study. Throughout this time he refined his knowledge and abilities, for example sharp shooting and knife throwing are both skills he's perfected ("Sharp shooter first class. Can take the head off a pin.") Like his father, he became an exceptional if perhaps overinvested officer, whose real value only showed when he was posted as far away from urban settlements as possible. He was once posted to Moosejaw (a city of just over 50,000), and was transferred out after just five weeks because he simply couldn't adapt to the urban lifestyle. Fraser, like his father before him, instead became the kind of man who could "track a ghost across sheer ice", though such pursuits often left thousands of dollars of damage in his wake, and found him frequently transferred from one district to another by superior officers unwilling to deal with his eccentricities.
"You're going to kill a Mountie? They'll track you to the end of the earth."
And then, in 1996, Robert Fraser was murdered to protect a secret conspired by powerful members of the Canadian government; a badly designed dam project had experienced difficulties - it wasn't designed to hold as much water as it did - and so secretly by dead of night the extra load was released, flooding the valley below and drowning the grazing wildlife on dry land. When efforts to bribe Robert Fraser failed, his death was covered up as a hunting accident by his superior officer and former friend Gerard.
Vowing to avenge his father's death, to the point of almost turning in his shield, Fraser convinced his superiors to transfer him to a posting that had opened up at the Chicago consulate, where he could at least keep an eye on the investigation (he'd tracked the group of dentists responsible that far). There, he met Detective Ray Vecchio, the man handling his father's case, and whom he would come to be partners with as official liaison with the Chicago PD, and later befriend. Fraser unveiled Gerard's betrayal and followed the corruption all the way to the top, but as a result made a great deal of political enemies in Canada, as well as in the RCMP, by turning in one of their own. He was instructed to stay in Chicago for his own good, the alternative being a posting much further north "That would put me in Russia."
Fraser and Vecchio became a close, talented unit. They brought down mobbed up Chicago capos together, tracked down escaped convicts, stopped terrorists from causing nuclear disaster, and prevented numerous small-time bad guys from hurting good people. Their solve rate together was impossible to deny, even if the way they went about it was dangerous, reckless and almost got them killed, sometimes several times per day.
Some of the most notable events of this period were: Victoria, a woman from Fraser's past whom he had once chased into a blizzard, each of them saving each other's lives within it, came to Chicago to find the man who had put her in jail and launder the stolen money from her bank job into diamonds; she framed Fraser as an accomplice, almost cost Ray his shield (after Fraser accidentally supplied him with stolen funds), shot Diefenbaker, and having nearly destroyed him completely, begged him to come with her from a moving train. Fraser pursued, and Ray - thinking he saw a gun - fired at Victoria, hitting Fraser instead and nearly killing him.
Frank Zuko, a mobster who had inherited his father's empire but had grown up friends with Vecchio as a child, insisted that his former friend investigate the theft of a poor box from their local church. Fraser felt that even a small theft should be met with the even hand of justice, but was horrified to discover that Zuko was in fact using Vecchio's responsibilities as a cop as a way to call a hit on the smalltime thief, ostensibly to protect 'his neighborhood'. Fraser called him on it and was beaten to a pulp, and Vecchio, realising that it took someone to stand up to thugs like Zuko, returned the favor, noting that now the men who had once respected and feared Zuko would do neither.
Unfortunately this caused a disbalance of power; Zuko's second in command attempted to frame him for killing Vecchio (for dancing with his sister) by setting a bomb in his car, but the explosion killed another Detective instead. The Chicago PD naturally turned on Zuko, whom Fraser exhonnerated, putting him at odds with his former friends who saw it as an act of betrayal--they had him on killing a cop, after all. Fraser's need for justice to be just, and Ray's gung-ho attitude with the Zukos let to Irene Zuko - the sister and former flame of Ray's - being shot dead, and Zuko and Vecchio buried the hatchet in their grief, even though Vecchio could very well have put him away for premeditated murder.
A train carrying Mounties and their horses for the Musical Ride was taken over by terrorists posing as a phony film crew and, combined with explosives, set on a collision course with another train loaded with nuclear material. After drugging the Mounties in the middle of 'Ride Forever', Fraser and his commanding officer Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher, tho) tried and failed to stop them, briefly ending up tied up in the caboose, and also briefly kissing on top of the speeding train. The villain, after Vecchio delivered the 2 million dollars he wanted, shot his accomplices dead, took Thatcher hostage and detached the couplings on the caboose, leaving Fraser to stop the train--but not without the help of Ray, who jumped onto the moving train with Diefenbaker. They diverted the train, stopped the countdown on the bomb, and the sleeping Mounties wake up just in time for the chorus, and to mount up and ride out after the escaping criminal. I swear to god this actually happens.
After two years of working with Vecchio, going through two mint condition 1971 Buick Rivieras (both exploded, and only one time was it actually Fraser's fault), each taking a bullet (Ray for Fraser, after he accidentally shot him in the back), and each of them being fired at least once, Fraser at last accepted the order for him to go on vacation (which of course in Mountie speak meant going back to Canada to chase bad guys).
Back in Chicago, Vecchio was reassigned undercover with the Las Vegas mob (since he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Langoustini consigliere). When Fraser returned to the city, he found another man undercover in the role of Detective Vecchio, Detective Stanley Kowalski (named after the character in A Streetcar Named Desire by his father), who by coincidence used his middle name 'Ray' to identify himself, and also by coincidence was recovering from his recent separation from his childhood sweetheart and wife Stella (Yes, Stella Kowalski).
Unlike his relationship with Ray Vecchio, Fraser's relationship with Ray Kowalski got off to a much shakier start; Kowalski was much more aggressive and instinctual, impatient, and far more prone to buck his responsibilities. He was also somewhat neurotic, given to frantic babbling when nerous, and full blown hysterics when he thought he'd been exposed to nerve gas. In their first meeting, his impatience in a pursuit caused him to lean on the Riviera's horn, triggering an ignition device in the steering wheel that set the car on fire with them inside; a week later, Ray's preoccupation with finding a bank robber that he'd faced off with as a pre-teen had him staked out in a graveyard and ignoring calls from the LT to come in and shake off internal affairs; and shortly thereafter, Fraser once again found himself in trouble when Ray's heartsickness over losing his wife led him to stalk her while they were on duty together. Despite his flaws, Kowalski, like Vecchio, was an honest cop, and his brand of eccentricities, detecting ability and sheer nerve forged a strong partnership bond between himself and Fraser over time.
Together, and at great risk to their lives (but that's a given), they chased down everything from petty criminals to people dumping toxic waste in the great lakes, and closed out their adenture in pursuit of the legendary criminal Muldoon, whom - as it turned out - was responsible for his mother's death. Muldoon was smuggling guns to American Defence League (the terrorists Ray and Fraser took down previously ) through mob contacts, using an ice field and a stolen submarine to make his exchange. Naturally this led to Fraser blowing Ray Vecchio's cover spectacularly, and the two Rays working with the Mountie to catch the bad guys (well one, in the end, since Vecchio got himself shot taking a bullet for Fraser again, and had to sit out the final act. He did at least get the girl, Stella, go figure, and getting shot did mean not having to jump out of a moving airplane without a parachute.)
If that was the end of it, that'd be great, but due South combined the dramatic storyline with comedic and supernatural elements that are otherwise difficult to explain in the narrative.
Relevant cast as of yet unmentioned: Turnbull, a fellow Mountie who was airheaded to the point of disbelief; Thatcher, his commanding officer whose frostiness concealed the fact that she found Fraser very attractive; Ray's boss, brash Lieutenant Welsh, who was played by Beau Starr and that says it all; fellow Detectives Huey and Dewey (And poor Lois) whom Ray called the 'Duck brothers' after Scrooge McDuck's nephews; Diefenbaker, Fraser's lifetime companion, a deaf wolf whom he rescued from a bear-trap as a pup, and saved Fraser's life when he fell into Prince Rupert Sound two years later at the expense of his hearing (and who is generally in canon given Fraser's personality, albeit without his rigid sense of self control--Dief can eat in excess, swoon over pretty women and refuse to go to work); Robert Fraser, the ghost of his dead father, who appears like an advisor or a conscience - sometimes both - after Fraser begins to dig deeper into his father's journals (whether the latter is a ghost or an hallucination is never spelled out, although his former partner and his daughter can also see him); Maggie MacKenzie, Fraser's Mountie half sister, whom he meets for the first time in the second to last episode; Eric and his family, a group of Tsimshiam people whom both Fraser and his father knew well, and who saved Fraser's life when Gerard tried to shoot him "I shot a caribou once. The next time I looked, he turned into a man"; Francesca Vecchio, Ray's sister who has an incorrigible crush on Fraser and won't take no for an answer; and finally Robert Fraser's former partner Buck Frobisher, who was played by the late great Leslie Nielsen, and again you can probably guess how that went.
PERSONALITY:
There are three major influences in Fraser's life: his grandparents; the wilderness and its people; his father and the RCMP. In effect these are the guidebook to his entire personality.
"No, simple for you is some long, drawn-out story from you from your grandmother's library in Runamukluk."
After his mother's death, Fraser took to reading in his grandparents' library. All of the books were incredibly out of date, naturally, but Fraser read anything that remotely interested him, books on Queensbury boxing and old pilot manuals from 50 year old planes no longer in production or use, books on language and oprah, classical fiction, and extensively world history. As a result, Fraser developed an outdated chivalrous view of the world around him, one bolstered by multi-culturism and, as his worldview expanded through friendships forged, the Indian view that the Creator made all peoples equal.
His grandmother, a fierce woman who in her twenties had once held onto a burning tree in a brushfire in order to prevent her students from being swept away in the river they'd sheltered in, was hardly the coddling type. Many of his life lessons were taught by her: she taught him to be loyal and honorable, to never lie or steal, to never rise in anger, or raise his voice at insult. His father, although often absent, taught him that a man honored his responsibilities, as well as other more practical snippets of knowledge, such as that there was no honor among thieves, and to sew his wallet to his underwear (he doesn't still do that, seeing as he keeps his money in his hat).
"I think there's only one thing that a father needs to leave his son, and that's a good example of how a man should live his life. Anything else, the son can learn for himself. The greatest gift my father ever gave me was the courage to trust my own abilities, and I learned that through his example."
His childhood was spent often in the passing company of his father and other Mounties. Gerard - as one of Bob Fraser's partners - was one of them; Fraser had looked up to him as a child, and cites him as one of the influences to his joining the RCMP. For a young child, the scarlet uniform (still in more frequent use at the time) and authority, bravery and spirit that he saw in his father and his companions, was a thrilling aspiration. Fraser, resourceful and ambitious and determined even as a child, stood up to bullies (he was beaten with a sea otter) and once insinuated himself into a group of hunters in an effort to catch a baby seal killer (he was beaten with clubs). But through these experiences he learnt--even despite them.
He learnt. His uncle taught him escapism, Quinn taught him how to track and stalk, the Scouts taught him survival skills, his father taught him - primarily - tactics, and about the criminal mind. His books taught him all the knowledge he needed to know, and all the wisdom he needed came from the people in his life and the land around him.
"This is what's wrong with you, Fraser. You see a problem and you have to fix it. You can't even go to the men's room without stopping to tell some simple stupid charmingly witty Inuit story that inspires people to take on the world's social ills."
This is all well and good, but what's his personality like?
As a grown man and a seasoned officer of the RCMP, Fraser lives by certain tenets: he never lies, he maintains the right (maintiens le droit) and he always gets his man. He is honest to a fault, to the point where if a lie might even save their lives he simply can't do it. He follows the law to the letter - for example not even carrying a loaded gun because he didn't apply for a US firearm license. And he pursues those who break the law far beyond the call of duty, across hundreds of miles of tundra or even international borders if need be.
He is impossibly idealistic, altruistic, seeing the potential for attrition or goodness in even the most evil of men; this means that he can be forgiving even to his own detriment. While his partners might respond to the 'big soulful Mountie eyes', seasoned mobsters find the whole thing to be a joke when Fraser insists that they will come around and 'do the right thing'--then arrange to have him beaten to a pulp (never killed, the fact that he's a cop generally makes them at least a little wary, although that's usually when Fraser keeps pushing).
"Meaning guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairy tale. And girls like you get hurt and guys like him don't even know it and that's life."
Fraser is chivalrous; conscientious, kind, fair, never ingenuine. As a result of giving the impression that he's the last good man standing, he consequently garners a great deal of female attention--not that he knows how to cope with any of it, women in the Yukon being so much less assertive than the American variety. While Fraser does mellow by the time he meets Ray Kowalski, and becomes much more talented at rebuffing unwanted attention or getting closer to people he does like, Vecchio's prediction does generally still hold out. When it comes to affairs of the heart, Fraser is clueless at best, awkward at worst, which is interesting for a man with such strong family values (he envies RayK his living parents, although not even remotely in an unpleasant way, it's an almost earnest, heartsick envy), and it's clear he's thought about having children. He also gets homesick, and despite all of the above is a hopeless romantic--emphasis on hopeless.
He finds it easier by far to understand the men in his life, even bickers freely with his partners as though they're old married couples (which they get accused of being). He develops a working relationship with both Rays which is fluent and predictable (though RayK is far more fond of Diefenbaker than RayV), pushing both beyond the limits of what is reasonable sometimes (making RayV blow up his beloved Buick Riviera; making RayK jump 80ft into water when he can't swim), but none the less inspires unshakeable loyalty in both of them, unsurprisingly making both of them better people.
As a police officer he is cooperative with other police officers - or would be if the FBI in due South were remotely good at their jobs "They couldn't find Waldo if they took the book home for the weekend" A talented investigator, sensitive and efficient when going door to door, he sometimes makes leaps of logic that would horrify Sherlock Holmes. Which is where we come to his eccentricities.
"You're licking things again? Stop that!"
So quite apart from the fact that he talks to his dead father - often while trying to have a conversation with someone else, and othertimes in a closet where his father has put the whole of Canada and therein built a log cabin - and sits down for long discussions with his wolf (a side effect of being alone with noone else to talk to; he claims to have started a conversation on an ice flow which in jest he pretends to regret), Fraser's keen tracking skills go beyond what anyone else would consider acceptable. He applies usual forensic abilities, of course, such as examining tracks, taking the pulses of his witnesses, and studying the dirt under people's fingernails, but he also licks the bottom of people's shoes to find out where they've been, can identify a breed of dog or individual animal by the smell of its urine, can taste day old special sauce on people's fingers, smell pizza on his partner's cheek from four foot away--and (worst of all, as far as Rays are concerned) he does all these things in public.
In addition to smell, taste and sight, as well as a cop instinct when things aren't quite right, and an all but eidetic memory, he has a keen sense of hearing refined by the silences of the North, can hear the approach of police cars before their sirens would be audible to normal people and even identify how many vehicles are coming. He can hear the make of a gun in the sound it makes when it's cocked, and his recollection is never wrong--for example he can tell how many gunshots have been fired even in the midst of a firefight. He types a hundred words a minute, can lipread, use American sign language, play ice hockey, baseball and basketball with reasonable skill, ride like a cavalryman, throw knives perfectly on target and is a marksman with a rifle and pistol. He can also base jump and parcour, drive a dog sled, dance, sing, and makes a very convincing woman; in fact, he excels at undercover work.
Neat and fastidious in all aspects of his life, Fraser has the resourcefulness to survive in the harshest of environments, and doesn't blink twice at the slum he originally moves to "Cops do not live in areas like this. Most people we bust wouldn't live here." Fraser prizes integrity and common sense, and is selfless and generous--and naive (he lends a grifter 100 bucks, and is returned the money later that week). He inspires even the hard done by people who live in the slum with him to aspire to better things (almost costing them their homes in the process due to his lack of understanding of the ruthless moneygrubbing world in which he's come to live), and he fights stubbornly for what he believes in.
Fraser is clearly sentimental, but he is also realistic. He eats meat, for example, despite citing killing the caribou in the forest as the biggest mistake of his life. He cares also about every person he meets, and tries to help them when he can--and when he can't it hits him a devastating blow. But he's also very accepting of 'the way things are', and has ways of sidestepping issues for the sake of his friends, for instance urging Ray to leave the pizzeria and come bowling with him when his partner is complaining about the mobster Frankie Zuko taking up the whole place. He's incredibly good at reading subtle nuances and changes in mood when trouble is on the table, and protective of his friends is willing to step into a fight and take blows or even bullets for them.
He lived in a barren apartment, surviving without electricity or hot water, slept on a bed roll (although he did later buy a bed) and reads with a tilly lamp. He has more candles to his name than any other possession, and can sleep anywhere (he's claimed to take a micronap while walking downstairs). However it's true that when he briefly lost his memory even he was appalled at the state in which he lived "Am I being punished?". Fraser is also a powerful swimmer with increased lung capacity, can operate boats of various shapes and sizes, is resilient against the worst that nature can throw at him, and has other skills including the ability to hypnotize his colleagues (and himself), get knee deep in garbage without so much as getting a speck on him, catch knives thrown at him, judge trajectories based on angles, do complicated mathmatics in his head...the list is extensive, and it occasionally materializes in ways that make other people find him insufferable.
But there's a lighter side to Fraser's loyalty too. He's a good friend; he can joke and tease and make gestures of loyalty that surprise people. And he can act like a fool or a big teddy bear on occasion. At one point he 'accidentally' slams his car door into Stella's new boyfriend's chest in his supposed haste to get the back door open for him, and admonishes RayK's "Thanks" with a hasty "Shh", all while trying to conceal a smirk. His straight laced goodie-two-shoes act does slip, now and again, but only really with people he truly trusts and cares for.
POWER: In canon, Fraser has a number of abilities that normal people might consider to be superhuman, such as artificially reducing his core body temperature or hearing the calibre and make of a pistol in the sound of a gun being cocked four rooms away. He's intelligent, fit, a magnificent tracker and multi-lingual--this is just what he does.
As a result, the abilities I intend to choose for him are the following, and given in the spirit of the canon source:
Power: Spirits of the North; Animal transformation limited to the species of the Yukon/Northwest Territories where Fraser was born and raised.
limitations: max 1 hour, 24 hour recharge or trapped in form penalty, should he exceed the 1 hour. Further, individual animal instincts difficult to control without repeated use, and should limit of 1 hour be exceeded, will become hourly more difficult and then impossible to control. injuries/unconsciousness/death sustained as an animal won't change his physical state, and if trapped in too small a space such as a cage unable to transform back.
Power: Winter in June; Ability to reduce the ambient temperature around him. In the series, Fraser frequently demonstrates a preference for the cold, such as standing in the frozen food section of a supermarket and applying dairy foods to his forehead.
limitations: decreases at far as 60 below, but no ability to increase the temperature, which must normalize on its own. no limit re. use, if he wanted to he could walk around like a walking air conditioner, leaving a chill in his wake, but as that would mean causing discomfort to other people it's unlikely. at most he will use it for his own comfort, to give bad guys 'the chills', and in a pinch offensively. can be triggered by emotional conflict/physical injury, and disarmed via unconsciousness/death
Power: Stetson of Invulnerability; While wearing his stetson, Fraser is invulnerable to harm, which always seems to happen instead when he's been rendered hatless for some reason. A joke in the series, it feels right to make this one a genuine power.
limitations: instant protection while hat is worn, but only while the hat is worn. it acts more like a good luck field than actual invulnerability; bullets will miss him, guns will misfire, cars will miraculously swerve aside rather than hit him, landing impossible jumps, surviving impossible falls etc. if necessary in a playercharacter-playercharacter conflict, the details would be resolved on a case by case basis. the hat can be given to someone else to protect them, however it is Benton himself that imbues it with its ability, and there can be only one, i.e. if he gave someone his hat and got a new hat, the new hat would have the power. damaging the hat, for instance shooting it, disarms it.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ The man that appears on screen is wearing red from head to waist--or at least so far as it went out of shot. He wore a leather Sam Browne, a white lanyard, and more gold buttons and badges than was probably necessary, but he smiled a genuine smile too - handsome; blue eyes, dark brown hair - exuding as much professional warmth as any man could hope to. No, there was no hat on his head--he was, believe it or not, trying to dress down. ]
Good afternoon. My name is Constable Benton Fraser. I first came to Chicago on the trail of my father's killers...except this isn't Chicago; it's not even Illinois, and I've never been much further south than the 42nd parallel in my life. [ And did he mention it is insanely hot? ]
Generally speaking, I serve the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Generally speaking. That's rather why I'm here. You see, in the absence of holding a commission, which I'm hoping to reobtain as swiftly as possible, the fact remains that I am presently a private citizen, and as such the uniform is... Well, it's unnecessary. [ And a lie. ] That and it itches.
I would be eternally grateful if there was anyone who might be able to spare me a change in clothes, at least until I have the opportunity to find my feet; in fact, I'd insist on returning them within a week--laundered and freshly ironed, of course.
[ He inhales slowly, and there's a fraction of emotion slips through that is hope and concern and fear, before his schooled mask is back in place. ] And if anyone has spoken to a Chicago PD Detective named Ray - Raymond Vecchio...
[ He trailed off, ducked his head, kneading his left eyebrow with his thumb and forefinger. He missed Ray; either of them. Both. He was supposed to be looking for the hand of Franklin, not dying of heatstroke in Florida, and the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Ninuviat--Canada--they all seemed so impossibly far away. Whatever he was saying before didn't matter, he decided. If Ray were here he'd make himself known, and it was a superfluous waste of other people's patience. ] Thank you kindly for your time.
NAME: Reg
AGE: +
JOURNAL:
regasssaIM / EMAIL: regasssa and @ hotmail dotcom
PLURK: regasssa
RETURNING: yes
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Benton Fraser
CHARACTER AGE: 38
SERIES: due South (lowercase relevant)
CHRONOLOGY: After Call of the Wild, but before all the post-series roundup, just as he and Ray (Stanley Ray Kowalski) set off to find the hand of Sir John Franklin
CLASS: Heroic Good
HOUSING: Nothing to declare, must accept pets
BACKGROUND:
Concieved in an igloo, born in a barn, and raised in the wilderness of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, Benton Fraser - known to his family and friends in Canada as Ben - was the son of Caroline and Robert Fraser, himself a member of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The nature of his childhood meant that he moved around a lot, first with his mother and father following his attachments at Fort Worth and The Rat, then after his mother's death, his childhood was spent in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Alert with his grandparents (father's side), who were traveling librarians, and the occasional often eccentric member of his extended family.
Fraser was very close with his grandparents; his grandmother would give him books at every birthday, the first of which ended up being eaten by a walrus, but Fraser filled the long hours with agregating book knowledge (and skills, for example Fraser taught himself boxing using one of these ancient books) and was generally home educated by his grandmother, who had once been a schoolteacher. Fraser learned multiple languages, and would occasionally have friends of a similar age to his own with whom to play hockey, for example. He was also a scout. As a child he resented many of them their freedom, particularly the Inuit children. At twelve, bitter that other boys his age were allowed to hunt but he couldn't, he ran away from home, and his life was saved by a tracker named Quinn when he lost his footing on a cliff-face in the forest. Though he knew Fraser's grandparents Quinn understood why Fraser had run away from home, and chose instead to help him to find the caribou he was hunting. "If you don't find the caribou how will you know if you're prepared to kill him?" Despite guiding him that it was wrong to kill something he didn't intend to use every part of, Quinn allowed Fraser to shoot one of the stags, making what Fraser identifies as the biggest mistake of his life. After this, Fraser sought to learn more from Quinn, studying in greater detail the wilderness that was his home, refining the skills that would later help him in his RCMP responsibilities. He didn't - however - learn not to run away from home, as he again at sixteen fled his grandparents as a result of some incident involving a boomerang, a can of gas and a gold mine.
Following in the footsteps of the father he barely saw but none the less looked up to, Fraser joined the RCMP at an exceptional age, throwing himself into his study. Throughout this time he refined his knowledge and abilities, for example sharp shooting and knife throwing are both skills he's perfected ("Sharp shooter first class. Can take the head off a pin.") Like his father, he became an exceptional if perhaps overinvested officer, whose real value only showed when he was posted as far away from urban settlements as possible. He was once posted to Moosejaw (a city of just over 50,000), and was transferred out after just five weeks because he simply couldn't adapt to the urban lifestyle. Fraser, like his father before him, instead became the kind of man who could "track a ghost across sheer ice", though such pursuits often left thousands of dollars of damage in his wake, and found him frequently transferred from one district to another by superior officers unwilling to deal with his eccentricities.
"You're going to kill a Mountie? They'll track you to the end of the earth."
And then, in 1996, Robert Fraser was murdered to protect a secret conspired by powerful members of the Canadian government; a badly designed dam project had experienced difficulties - it wasn't designed to hold as much water as it did - and so secretly by dead of night the extra load was released, flooding the valley below and drowning the grazing wildlife on dry land. When efforts to bribe Robert Fraser failed, his death was covered up as a hunting accident by his superior officer and former friend Gerard.
Vowing to avenge his father's death, to the point of almost turning in his shield, Fraser convinced his superiors to transfer him to a posting that had opened up at the Chicago consulate, where he could at least keep an eye on the investigation (he'd tracked the group of dentists responsible that far). There, he met Detective Ray Vecchio, the man handling his father's case, and whom he would come to be partners with as official liaison with the Chicago PD, and later befriend. Fraser unveiled Gerard's betrayal and followed the corruption all the way to the top, but as a result made a great deal of political enemies in Canada, as well as in the RCMP, by turning in one of their own. He was instructed to stay in Chicago for his own good, the alternative being a posting much further north "That would put me in Russia."
Fraser and Vecchio became a close, talented unit. They brought down mobbed up Chicago capos together, tracked down escaped convicts, stopped terrorists from causing nuclear disaster, and prevented numerous small-time bad guys from hurting good people. Their solve rate together was impossible to deny, even if the way they went about it was dangerous, reckless and almost got them killed, sometimes several times per day.
Some of the most notable events of this period were: Victoria, a woman from Fraser's past whom he had once chased into a blizzard, each of them saving each other's lives within it, came to Chicago to find the man who had put her in jail and launder the stolen money from her bank job into diamonds; she framed Fraser as an accomplice, almost cost Ray his shield (after Fraser accidentally supplied him with stolen funds), shot Diefenbaker, and having nearly destroyed him completely, begged him to come with her from a moving train. Fraser pursued, and Ray - thinking he saw a gun - fired at Victoria, hitting Fraser instead and nearly killing him.
Frank Zuko, a mobster who had inherited his father's empire but had grown up friends with Vecchio as a child, insisted that his former friend investigate the theft of a poor box from their local church. Fraser felt that even a small theft should be met with the even hand of justice, but was horrified to discover that Zuko was in fact using Vecchio's responsibilities as a cop as a way to call a hit on the smalltime thief, ostensibly to protect 'his neighborhood'. Fraser called him on it and was beaten to a pulp, and Vecchio, realising that it took someone to stand up to thugs like Zuko, returned the favor, noting that now the men who had once respected and feared Zuko would do neither.
Unfortunately this caused a disbalance of power; Zuko's second in command attempted to frame him for killing Vecchio (for dancing with his sister) by setting a bomb in his car, but the explosion killed another Detective instead. The Chicago PD naturally turned on Zuko, whom Fraser exhonnerated, putting him at odds with his former friends who saw it as an act of betrayal--they had him on killing a cop, after all. Fraser's need for justice to be just, and Ray's gung-ho attitude with the Zukos let to Irene Zuko - the sister and former flame of Ray's - being shot dead, and Zuko and Vecchio buried the hatchet in their grief, even though Vecchio could very well have put him away for premeditated murder.
A train carrying Mounties and their horses for the Musical Ride was taken over by terrorists posing as a phony film crew and, combined with explosives, set on a collision course with another train loaded with nuclear material. After drugging the Mounties in the middle of 'Ride Forever', Fraser and his commanding officer Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher, tho) tried and failed to stop them, briefly ending up tied up in the caboose, and also briefly kissing on top of the speeding train. The villain, after Vecchio delivered the 2 million dollars he wanted, shot his accomplices dead, took Thatcher hostage and detached the couplings on the caboose, leaving Fraser to stop the train--but not without the help of Ray, who jumped onto the moving train with Diefenbaker. They diverted the train, stopped the countdown on the bomb, and the sleeping Mounties wake up just in time for the chorus, and to mount up and ride out after the escaping criminal. I swear to god this actually happens.
After two years of working with Vecchio, going through two mint condition 1971 Buick Rivieras (both exploded, and only one time was it actually Fraser's fault), each taking a bullet (Ray for Fraser, after he accidentally shot him in the back), and each of them being fired at least once, Fraser at last accepted the order for him to go on vacation (which of course in Mountie speak meant going back to Canada to chase bad guys).
Back in Chicago, Vecchio was reassigned undercover with the Las Vegas mob (since he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Langoustini consigliere). When Fraser returned to the city, he found another man undercover in the role of Detective Vecchio, Detective Stanley Kowalski (named after the character in A Streetcar Named Desire by his father), who by coincidence used his middle name 'Ray' to identify himself, and also by coincidence was recovering from his recent separation from his childhood sweetheart and wife Stella (Yes, Stella Kowalski).
Unlike his relationship with Ray Vecchio, Fraser's relationship with Ray Kowalski got off to a much shakier start; Kowalski was much more aggressive and instinctual, impatient, and far more prone to buck his responsibilities. He was also somewhat neurotic, given to frantic babbling when nerous, and full blown hysterics when he thought he'd been exposed to nerve gas. In their first meeting, his impatience in a pursuit caused him to lean on the Riviera's horn, triggering an ignition device in the steering wheel that set the car on fire with them inside; a week later, Ray's preoccupation with finding a bank robber that he'd faced off with as a pre-teen had him staked out in a graveyard and ignoring calls from the LT to come in and shake off internal affairs; and shortly thereafter, Fraser once again found himself in trouble when Ray's heartsickness over losing his wife led him to stalk her while they were on duty together. Despite his flaws, Kowalski, like Vecchio, was an honest cop, and his brand of eccentricities, detecting ability and sheer nerve forged a strong partnership bond between himself and Fraser over time.
Together, and at great risk to their lives (but that's a given), they chased down everything from petty criminals to people dumping toxic waste in the great lakes, and closed out their adenture in pursuit of the legendary criminal Muldoon, whom - as it turned out - was responsible for his mother's death. Muldoon was smuggling guns to American Defence League (the terrorists Ray and Fraser took down previously ) through mob contacts, using an ice field and a stolen submarine to make his exchange. Naturally this led to Fraser blowing Ray Vecchio's cover spectacularly, and the two Rays working with the Mountie to catch the bad guys (well one, in the end, since Vecchio got himself shot taking a bullet for Fraser again, and had to sit out the final act. He did at least get the girl, Stella, go figure, and getting shot did mean not having to jump out of a moving airplane without a parachute.)
If that was the end of it, that'd be great, but due South combined the dramatic storyline with comedic and supernatural elements that are otherwise difficult to explain in the narrative.
Relevant cast as of yet unmentioned: Turnbull, a fellow Mountie who was airheaded to the point of disbelief; Thatcher, his commanding officer whose frostiness concealed the fact that she found Fraser very attractive; Ray's boss, brash Lieutenant Welsh, who was played by Beau Starr and that says it all; fellow Detectives Huey and Dewey (And poor Lois) whom Ray called the 'Duck brothers' after Scrooge McDuck's nephews; Diefenbaker, Fraser's lifetime companion, a deaf wolf whom he rescued from a bear-trap as a pup, and saved Fraser's life when he fell into Prince Rupert Sound two years later at the expense of his hearing (and who is generally in canon given Fraser's personality, albeit without his rigid sense of self control--Dief can eat in excess, swoon over pretty women and refuse to go to work); Robert Fraser, the ghost of his dead father, who appears like an advisor or a conscience - sometimes both - after Fraser begins to dig deeper into his father's journals (whether the latter is a ghost or an hallucination is never spelled out, although his former partner and his daughter can also see him); Maggie MacKenzie, Fraser's Mountie half sister, whom he meets for the first time in the second to last episode; Eric and his family, a group of Tsimshiam people whom both Fraser and his father knew well, and who saved Fraser's life when Gerard tried to shoot him "I shot a caribou once. The next time I looked, he turned into a man"; Francesca Vecchio, Ray's sister who has an incorrigible crush on Fraser and won't take no for an answer; and finally Robert Fraser's former partner Buck Frobisher, who was played by the late great Leslie Nielsen, and again you can probably guess how that went.
PERSONALITY:
There are three major influences in Fraser's life: his grandparents; the wilderness and its people; his father and the RCMP. In effect these are the guidebook to his entire personality.
"No, simple for you is some long, drawn-out story from you from your grandmother's library in Runamukluk."
After his mother's death, Fraser took to reading in his grandparents' library. All of the books were incredibly out of date, naturally, but Fraser read anything that remotely interested him, books on Queensbury boxing and old pilot manuals from 50 year old planes no longer in production or use, books on language and oprah, classical fiction, and extensively world history. As a result, Fraser developed an outdated chivalrous view of the world around him, one bolstered by multi-culturism and, as his worldview expanded through friendships forged, the Indian view that the Creator made all peoples equal.
His grandmother, a fierce woman who in her twenties had once held onto a burning tree in a brushfire in order to prevent her students from being swept away in the river they'd sheltered in, was hardly the coddling type. Many of his life lessons were taught by her: she taught him to be loyal and honorable, to never lie or steal, to never rise in anger, or raise his voice at insult. His father, although often absent, taught him that a man honored his responsibilities, as well as other more practical snippets of knowledge, such as that there was no honor among thieves, and to sew his wallet to his underwear (he doesn't still do that, seeing as he keeps his money in his hat).
"I think there's only one thing that a father needs to leave his son, and that's a good example of how a man should live his life. Anything else, the son can learn for himself. The greatest gift my father ever gave me was the courage to trust my own abilities, and I learned that through his example."
His childhood was spent often in the passing company of his father and other Mounties. Gerard - as one of Bob Fraser's partners - was one of them; Fraser had looked up to him as a child, and cites him as one of the influences to his joining the RCMP. For a young child, the scarlet uniform (still in more frequent use at the time) and authority, bravery and spirit that he saw in his father and his companions, was a thrilling aspiration. Fraser, resourceful and ambitious and determined even as a child, stood up to bullies (he was beaten with a sea otter) and once insinuated himself into a group of hunters in an effort to catch a baby seal killer (he was beaten with clubs). But through these experiences he learnt--even despite them.
He learnt. His uncle taught him escapism, Quinn taught him how to track and stalk, the Scouts taught him survival skills, his father taught him - primarily - tactics, and about the criminal mind. His books taught him all the knowledge he needed to know, and all the wisdom he needed came from the people in his life and the land around him.
"This is what's wrong with you, Fraser. You see a problem and you have to fix it. You can't even go to the men's room without stopping to tell some simple stupid charmingly witty Inuit story that inspires people to take on the world's social ills."
This is all well and good, but what's his personality like?
As a grown man and a seasoned officer of the RCMP, Fraser lives by certain tenets: he never lies, he maintains the right (maintiens le droit) and he always gets his man. He is honest to a fault, to the point where if a lie might even save their lives he simply can't do it. He follows the law to the letter - for example not even carrying a loaded gun because he didn't apply for a US firearm license. And he pursues those who break the law far beyond the call of duty, across hundreds of miles of tundra or even international borders if need be.
He is impossibly idealistic, altruistic, seeing the potential for attrition or goodness in even the most evil of men; this means that he can be forgiving even to his own detriment. While his partners might respond to the 'big soulful Mountie eyes', seasoned mobsters find the whole thing to be a joke when Fraser insists that they will come around and 'do the right thing'--then arrange to have him beaten to a pulp (never killed, the fact that he's a cop generally makes them at least a little wary, although that's usually when Fraser keeps pushing).
"Meaning guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairy tale. And girls like you get hurt and guys like him don't even know it and that's life."
Fraser is chivalrous; conscientious, kind, fair, never ingenuine. As a result of giving the impression that he's the last good man standing, he consequently garners a great deal of female attention--not that he knows how to cope with any of it, women in the Yukon being so much less assertive than the American variety. While Fraser does mellow by the time he meets Ray Kowalski, and becomes much more talented at rebuffing unwanted attention or getting closer to people he does like, Vecchio's prediction does generally still hold out. When it comes to affairs of the heart, Fraser is clueless at best, awkward at worst, which is interesting for a man with such strong family values (he envies RayK his living parents, although not even remotely in an unpleasant way, it's an almost earnest, heartsick envy), and it's clear he's thought about having children. He also gets homesick, and despite all of the above is a hopeless romantic--emphasis on hopeless.
He finds it easier by far to understand the men in his life, even bickers freely with his partners as though they're old married couples (which they get accused of being). He develops a working relationship with both Rays which is fluent and predictable (though RayK is far more fond of Diefenbaker than RayV), pushing both beyond the limits of what is reasonable sometimes (making RayV blow up his beloved Buick Riviera; making RayK jump 80ft into water when he can't swim), but none the less inspires unshakeable loyalty in both of them, unsurprisingly making both of them better people.
As a police officer he is cooperative with other police officers - or would be if the FBI in due South were remotely good at their jobs "They couldn't find Waldo if they took the book home for the weekend" A talented investigator, sensitive and efficient when going door to door, he sometimes makes leaps of logic that would horrify Sherlock Holmes. Which is where we come to his eccentricities.
"You're licking things again? Stop that!"
So quite apart from the fact that he talks to his dead father - often while trying to have a conversation with someone else, and othertimes in a closet where his father has put the whole of Canada and therein built a log cabin - and sits down for long discussions with his wolf (a side effect of being alone with noone else to talk to; he claims to have started a conversation on an ice flow which in jest he pretends to regret), Fraser's keen tracking skills go beyond what anyone else would consider acceptable. He applies usual forensic abilities, of course, such as examining tracks, taking the pulses of his witnesses, and studying the dirt under people's fingernails, but he also licks the bottom of people's shoes to find out where they've been, can identify a breed of dog or individual animal by the smell of its urine, can taste day old special sauce on people's fingers, smell pizza on his partner's cheek from four foot away--and (worst of all, as far as Rays are concerned) he does all these things in public.
In addition to smell, taste and sight, as well as a cop instinct when things aren't quite right, and an all but eidetic memory, he has a keen sense of hearing refined by the silences of the North, can hear the approach of police cars before their sirens would be audible to normal people and even identify how many vehicles are coming. He can hear the make of a gun in the sound it makes when it's cocked, and his recollection is never wrong--for example he can tell how many gunshots have been fired even in the midst of a firefight. He types a hundred words a minute, can lipread, use American sign language, play ice hockey, baseball and basketball with reasonable skill, ride like a cavalryman, throw knives perfectly on target and is a marksman with a rifle and pistol. He can also base jump and parcour, drive a dog sled, dance, sing, and makes a very convincing woman; in fact, he excels at undercover work.
Neat and fastidious in all aspects of his life, Fraser has the resourcefulness to survive in the harshest of environments, and doesn't blink twice at the slum he originally moves to "Cops do not live in areas like this. Most people we bust wouldn't live here." Fraser prizes integrity and common sense, and is selfless and generous--and naive (he lends a grifter 100 bucks, and is returned the money later that week). He inspires even the hard done by people who live in the slum with him to aspire to better things (almost costing them their homes in the process due to his lack of understanding of the ruthless moneygrubbing world in which he's come to live), and he fights stubbornly for what he believes in.
Fraser is clearly sentimental, but he is also realistic. He eats meat, for example, despite citing killing the caribou in the forest as the biggest mistake of his life. He cares also about every person he meets, and tries to help them when he can--and when he can't it hits him a devastating blow. But he's also very accepting of 'the way things are', and has ways of sidestepping issues for the sake of his friends, for instance urging Ray to leave the pizzeria and come bowling with him when his partner is complaining about the mobster Frankie Zuko taking up the whole place. He's incredibly good at reading subtle nuances and changes in mood when trouble is on the table, and protective of his friends is willing to step into a fight and take blows or even bullets for them.
He lived in a barren apartment, surviving without electricity or hot water, slept on a bed roll (although he did later buy a bed) and reads with a tilly lamp. He has more candles to his name than any other possession, and can sleep anywhere (he's claimed to take a micronap while walking downstairs). However it's true that when he briefly lost his memory even he was appalled at the state in which he lived "Am I being punished?". Fraser is also a powerful swimmer with increased lung capacity, can operate boats of various shapes and sizes, is resilient against the worst that nature can throw at him, and has other skills including the ability to hypnotize his colleagues (and himself), get knee deep in garbage without so much as getting a speck on him, catch knives thrown at him, judge trajectories based on angles, do complicated mathmatics in his head...the list is extensive, and it occasionally materializes in ways that make other people find him insufferable.
But there's a lighter side to Fraser's loyalty too. He's a good friend; he can joke and tease and make gestures of loyalty that surprise people. And he can act like a fool or a big teddy bear on occasion. At one point he 'accidentally' slams his car door into Stella's new boyfriend's chest in his supposed haste to get the back door open for him, and admonishes RayK's "Thanks" with a hasty "Shh", all while trying to conceal a smirk. His straight laced goodie-two-shoes act does slip, now and again, but only really with people he truly trusts and cares for.
POWER: In canon, Fraser has a number of abilities that normal people might consider to be superhuman, such as artificially reducing his core body temperature or hearing the calibre and make of a pistol in the sound of a gun being cocked four rooms away. He's intelligent, fit, a magnificent tracker and multi-lingual--this is just what he does.
As a result, the abilities I intend to choose for him are the following, and given in the spirit of the canon source:
Power: Spirits of the North; Animal transformation limited to the species of the Yukon/Northwest Territories where Fraser was born and raised.
limitations: max 1 hour, 24 hour recharge or trapped in form penalty, should he exceed the 1 hour. Further, individual animal instincts difficult to control without repeated use, and should limit of 1 hour be exceeded, will become hourly more difficult and then impossible to control. injuries/unconsciousness/death sustained as an animal won't change his physical state, and if trapped in too small a space such as a cage unable to transform back.
Power: Winter in June; Ability to reduce the ambient temperature around him. In the series, Fraser frequently demonstrates a preference for the cold, such as standing in the frozen food section of a supermarket and applying dairy foods to his forehead.
limitations: decreases at far as 60 below, but no ability to increase the temperature, which must normalize on its own. no limit re. use, if he wanted to he could walk around like a walking air conditioner, leaving a chill in his wake, but as that would mean causing discomfort to other people it's unlikely. at most he will use it for his own comfort, to give bad guys 'the chills', and in a pinch offensively. can be triggered by emotional conflict/physical injury, and disarmed via unconsciousness/death
Power: Stetson of Invulnerability; While wearing his stetson, Fraser is invulnerable to harm, which always seems to happen instead when he's been rendered hatless for some reason. A joke in the series, it feels right to make this one a genuine power.
limitations: instant protection while hat is worn, but only while the hat is worn. it acts more like a good luck field than actual invulnerability; bullets will miss him, guns will misfire, cars will miraculously swerve aside rather than hit him, landing impossible jumps, surviving impossible falls etc. if necessary in a playercharacter-playercharacter conflict, the details would be resolved on a case by case basis. the hat can be given to someone else to protect them, however it is Benton himself that imbues it with its ability, and there can be only one, i.e. if he gave someone his hat and got a new hat, the new hat would have the power. damaging the hat, for instance shooting it, disarms it.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ The man that appears on screen is wearing red from head to waist--or at least so far as it went out of shot. He wore a leather Sam Browne, a white lanyard, and more gold buttons and badges than was probably necessary, but he smiled a genuine smile too - handsome; blue eyes, dark brown hair - exuding as much professional warmth as any man could hope to. No, there was no hat on his head--he was, believe it or not, trying to dress down. ]
Good afternoon. My name is Constable Benton Fraser. I first came to Chicago on the trail of my father's killers...except this isn't Chicago; it's not even Illinois, and I've never been much further south than the 42nd parallel in my life. [ And did he mention it is insanely hot? ]
Generally speaking, I serve the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Generally speaking. That's rather why I'm here. You see, in the absence of holding a commission, which I'm hoping to reobtain as swiftly as possible, the fact remains that I am presently a private citizen, and as such the uniform is... Well, it's unnecessary. [ And a lie. ] That and it itches.
I would be eternally grateful if there was anyone who might be able to spare me a change in clothes, at least until I have the opportunity to find my feet; in fact, I'd insist on returning them within a week--laundered and freshly ironed, of course.
[ He inhales slowly, and there's a fraction of emotion slips through that is hope and concern and fear, before his schooled mask is back in place. ] And if anyone has spoken to a Chicago PD Detective named Ray - Raymond Vecchio...
[ He trailed off, ducked his head, kneading his left eyebrow with his thumb and forefinger. He missed Ray; either of them. Both. He was supposed to be looking for the hand of Franklin, not dying of heatstroke in Florida, and the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Ninuviat--Canada--they all seemed so impossibly far away. Whatever he was saying before didn't matter, he decided. If Ray were here he'd make himself known, and it was a superfluous waste of other people's patience. ] Thank you kindly for your time.
