Harry Benson

The less-empowered types, the undecided, the morally shifty and most mundanes who get slapped around by greater powers go here by default.
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IamLEAM1983
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Harry Benson

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Name: Harry Benson
Age: 120 years old
Gender: male
Species: bugbear

Strengths: standing at close to seven feet tall with a little over three hundred and forty pounds of flat muscles, some fat and a considerable amount of fur, Benson is like much of his kinsmen in that he couples natural resilience with the ability to dish out incredible amounts of damage in short spans of time. With a Sasquatch-worthy reach and terribly effective lunges aided by the presence of semi-prehensile feet, there aren't a lot of things he can't catch up to if said things aren't blessed with superhuman or supernatural speed. Add to this an inversely proportional regenerative ability, and you find yourself with a man who's fairly difficult to put down if you haven't gone for a head shot or otherwise riddled his center mass with bullets. Oddballs with habitually carried explosives aside or serial shotgun-toters wouldn't have to worry, but most of the city's criminal elements tend not to think that far – what with bugbears usually being an integral part of their contingents.

However, Harry hasn't earned respect from the HPD because he's a battering ram in a custom-tailored suit; he's reached his current mild law-abiding fame and somewhat considerable notoriety amongst the local hoodlums thanks to his unusually keen mind.

Bugbears, by default, aren't so much dumb as they aren't too racially inclined towards patience. With instincts rooted in the wilds of Summer's most treacherous slopes, the standard fare typically involves finding ways to club or bash away whatever can't be immediately dealt with. Place them in extremely concrete and immediate jobs – manual labor, for instance – and they'll be quite happy with themselves. Bugbear contractors or military squad leaders are typically the most Byzantine fare you'll encounter with Morgana's cultural allies. Benson is a notch or two ahead of those – and that makes him dangerous, valuable and interested in the common good.

With a species that's integrated mildly sociopathic tendencies into its average psychological makeup, it stands to reason that a form of reverse sociopathy could occasionally pop up, rooted in some sort of strangely beneficial cerebral anomaly. Benson is one of those – a weakling by bugbear standards, someone who prefers to think his way through problems, with not enough of an Amygdala to manage his kind's blind rages and too much of a frontal cortex to be self-serving.

While this means he stands at a disadvantage against his own people during social encounters, it also means he tends to come across as a taciturn bruiser with an unusually high amount of certified Police Academy degrees. Bugbear cops typically hug the Officer rank very closely and are unable to entirely adapt to the needs of law enforcement. The cops' very own Caliban Smith in a less chummy and largely more blunt fashion, he's pushed through institutionalized prejudice and acquired his Detective badge. The only plainclothes bugbear officer currently on record, Benson's managed to turn his rare condition into a serious asset. With his kind's keen nose and a profiler's training on hand, he's managed to do much more than simply smell crooks lying – he turns olfactory divination into hard and verifiable proof. If his nose already knows someone is lying to him, all he needs to do is keep playing along and figure out the why behind the what.

His mind also knows how to use his body for maximum psychological effect. People still expect him to be the Bad Cop of the typical “Good Cop, Bad Cop” routine. He might start in this general direction, maybe by cracking his massive knuckles once between two sips from his coffee cup – but he typically never puts his fists to use in these circumstances. He's understood how to use his physique to throw suspects in for a prejudice-fueled loop of animal terror with just a few gestures and not a single aggressive streak in sight. People who mistakenly believe they're in danger tend to blunder into rhetorical traps – at which points he has most prime suspects dead to rights.

It's gotten to the point where some other detectives tend to call him Deadly Harry. Not because he hurts or kills anyone – far from it – but because his metaphorical “kill streak” in the interrogation room is flawless.
Weaknesses: like other high-IQ types along the lines of John Smith, Detective Benson tends to get bored rather easily. He's taken to filing a few other officers' tax returns during his private time if only to keep himself occupied, among a few other hobbies. Otherwise, bored bugbears tend to become testy habitual eaters and nap-takers. He might be more clever than the average Bigfoot and generally more clever than the average human rank-and-file officer, but boredom is a slippery slope for Harry. His intellect goes nowhere – but his impulse control might have brief absences if he's pushed into his personal nadirs of idleness. An oddly bitchy streak might become a confrontational one if left unchecked, more in line with the bugbear standard of Shut up before I cave your face in. Considering, he's had a few run-ins with Internal Affairs regarding SWAT takedowns or Exosuit teams he more or less beat to the punch, being unable to simply wait in the rinks while someone else closes his books.

It does speak to a somewhat stubborn streak in him. If he starts something, he has to finish it, protocol or procedure be damned. That's made him run afoul of quite a few gun-toting idiots in the past, but his healing factor only works in full force for superficial injuries. Bring a knife to a fight against a bugbear and chances are you'll lose. The bugbear in question, however, won't end up with much more than bloodied and sliced clothes and no visible knife marks or slashes. A big-game shotgun might pack more of a punch, while grenades and other explosives would largely work just as expected. Small-arms fire need not apply, but shrapnel grenades carrying payloads of pure iron are fairly common, pelting him with dozens of shards of the Bane.

Like it or not, he still has his racial ties to Faerie – and reacts to cold iron as any other member of the Fair Folk would.

Past that, the source of his intellectual strength is also one of physical weakness when opposed to his own kind. Benson has never been able to channel the strength-bolstering quasi-Berserker rages his kind are known for, with his neurological disability making him fit on the Autism spectrum, when compared to other bugbears. Try as he might, his own kind's social cues, made up of scents, grunts, twitches or sudden bellows, are all too much for him to process. When faced with another bugbear out in the field, his only hope is that he'll be able to take it down before he, himself is taken down.

Appearance: considering his above-mentioned size and weight, there aren't that many individuals on the force he can't dwarf or otherwise loom over. Indoors, this means seeing him with hunched shoulders and a deliberate slouch in his posture is fairly common, something he has to stick to in order to keep working in environments with comparatively low ceilings. Maybe it's the occasional back pains this causes, but while he never looks especially sour, he does have a fairly serious mien in most occasions.

Like most other bugbears, Harry has fairly simian features crossed with a slightly porcine look. With a flat and somewhat rectangular face, his lower lip tends to jut forwards a little, exposing his pair of fangs and a few extra teeth. With his mouth closed, there's typically one fang that refuses to stay in line with the others and that continues to poke out a bit. Otherwise, with a flat and dark nose in the middle of a leathery and brownish hide, he has a hard time looking traditionally happy. Something about the size of his lips feels as though grins would be subject to misinterpretation, while his heavy brow doesn't help matters much. With dark eyes perpetually looming under twin shocks of dark brown fur, he tends to have the same problem as Aldergard. What humans might refer to as the “resting bitch face” problem, the dragon sometimes jokingly refers to as the “resting evildoer face”. In Benson's case, this would be a case of “resting bruiser face”.

To put it simply, even if he's within five minutes of cracking a case and even has his bifocals on, he persistently looks like he's about to give up and smash something into pieces out of exasperation. Neutral looks are mistaken for surly glares, while smiles make him look like an overgrown bully who just found his favorite pummeling victim. Most anthros and theriomorphs tend to adapt and go by his pheromone cocktails in order to figure out how to react to him, but humans don't have that much luck. In their case, it takes a few months before Harry's own mannerisms become easily perceptible for what they truly are.

What unfortunately doesn't help matters is the culturally-reinforced means bugbears have found in order to express affluence or personal success. Benson is smart enough to realize he doesn't need to put on a show, but having the right social cues in front of his people tends to defuse potentially aggressive encounters – and he welcomes any conflict-skipping means that doesn't require him to actually talk to another bugbear. That means dressing the part of the archetypal Modern Successful Hairy Brute.

Considering, tailored suits are a must for him, paired with the rare items of masculine jewelery that will reinforce the notion that he's made it. Two-piece suits are his forté, with delicate cufflinks and tie clips that offset the hugeness of his hands and wrists. Neutral colors evoking professionalism in his mind, there's a kind of “Drab Chic” theme in what he wears, as he's well aware that he needs to walk the line between gloating in front of the other Sasquatches in town while still avoiding the pitfall of coming off as being full or himself or more important than the other DTs. Typically, he does manage to look approachable on the mundane level while packing just a smidgen more personal care than what you'd expect out of a cop with a desk job. Cribbing his colognes from the same department stores that service the gruffs and caprine Chimeras, he just has more natural musk to cover than either of these two species. The only permanent item is his equally tailored raincoat, a must if you're trying to keep a dozen pounds' worth of fur clean and generally dry.

Considering his species, however, winter clothes are a non-issue. He never needs more than his raincoat even if his fellow detectives are in full-on parkas or anoraks, and never wears shoes or socks for the purposes of keeping a good grip on the floor. Naturally, he compensates for this by keeping a flawless set of personal hygiene habits; taking five to wash his feet in the nearest washroom every so often.

In normal circumstances, he doesn't have much in terms of accessories, other than his oversized coffee mug and his pair of bifocals. Being rather uncanny in terms of compartmentalization, he never uses notepads or tablets while out on a case, being apparently able to consign everything to memory. As he rarely eats at the precinct, seeing him with a glazed donut in hand, a hamburger or something from one of the vending machines is typically the sign that he's growing bored. For all of his quirks, he hasn't escaped his people's tendency to resort to eating as a sort of time-waster. Considering the inhospitable native climes of his species and their frequent need to fast for days as they search for new herds to hunt, slow and day-long eating spells are common occurrences in cases of extreme idleness. As long as there's work to do, though, he tends to stick to a more recognizable and balanced diet. As big as he is, however, nobody has severe suspicions that he might undermine his ability to perform out in the field.
Behavior: some cops take to what they do with a smile and a wink, others sink into the grit of it all and never come back out. Harry is somewhere in-between, for lack of a better explanation. Naturally taciturn and generally leaning on the laconic side of things, he tends to be the all-purpose conscientious objector other investigators might need, the all-around sober type who's seen too much to pack sunny idealism into the proceedings and who still has enough of a heart to avoid sinking into the pitfalls that send other cops to the force's attributed therapist. Unfortunately, this means people tend to see him as belonging to either one of these tropes, and not as his own man. Not being terribly verbose, he sometimes is confused for the ostracized type who would've taken to police procedure as a way to dish out vigilante justice. Not being that much of a sad sack, either, his bursts of wry humor can sometimes fall on ears that are too receptive for their own good – and then someone else thinks they've found a big and burly funnyman to pal around with.

The truth of the matter is that Benson is his own man and is quite content with that fact. On the personal spectrum, he has no problems cultivating a decent amount of friendships. Professionally, he prefers to stick to his office and his car – and not strictly because of his size. Rare are the people who serve as decent sounding boards for him, as he's sometimes perceived as too sensitive and also seen as too detached. The Deputy Chiefs could vouch for the uniqueness and the effective nature of Benson's own little process, but it isn't an approach that's clearly recognizable.

The long and short of it is that he's extremely malleable as an investigator. He'll manage the art of taking the long road around something he wants to tackle if his subject needs to be eased in – like a child or a visibly frightened adult. He'll also loom around, maybe sparing someone the occasional look – suggesting they'd be better off speaking to him. Of course, he can also slap his hands on the table and trade patience for a semblance of exasperation, pushing when he feels his suspect needs to be pushed.

Obviously, he can also break out into a dead run after a fleeing suspect, using whatever amount of force will be necessary.

At the root of all this is a peculiar condition, something that can best be described as a case of him having a human's mind in a bugbear's body. With a voice located somewhere between Ron Perlman and Jeff Bridges, he feels like a plus-sized Joe Schmoe with a badge, someone who's seen all the archetypes Hope has to offer and who's decided to reject most of them. He'd be terrific as the requisite dumb cop asleep in his squad car, but he has too much of a mind to spoil.

If anything, he and Bucky Wallace could be seen as sharing the same bastardized Zen ethos. Where one manages to stay mostly content through thick and thin, the other's chosen a more median emotional standpoint, being wary of most, if not all extremes. The Wallace man might've managed to find felicity in the art of sleeping in and pondering Zen koans, Benson is at his best when safely confined in the nine-to-five. He always comes in one week earlier than most other detectives when out on vacation, and the reason invoked for his premature return usually involves some variant on needing to do something, lest he go insane with undeserved leisure hours and the idleness they'd encourage.

There's always a tipping point he reaches, while out on vacation: one particularly sedentary set of plans sees him take five minutes to visit the fridge – and the next thing he knows, he's finished what he'd prepared while still slowly and steadily scarfing down half of his own reserves. This is his usual cue to get back to work, lest he turn into a Netflix abuser with a lifeline to the local pizzerias and other fast food joints.

Goals: to live life on his own terms, regardless of the occasional idiotic human's prejudices or of his own species' institutionalized bigotry of “smart people”. Finding a Crossword puzzle buddy would also be appreciated – along with a precinct-mandated partner that wouldn't chafe on him after ten minutes.

Otherwise? Eh. Life isn't that bad.

History: Jonas and Margaret Benson were bugbears out of another sense of place and time, relics of the Victorian Era's gaslight ruffians and madames – even if Margaret really was her establishment's bouncer. The father wasn't much more than a pair of fists contractually grafted to a Clank bookie in the underground fighting rings of the era – but an immortal is as an immortal does. The passage of time made Whitechapel a less-than-stellar working environment as it grew safer, until the lack of prospects even in Faeside forced the family to try for a bid in the employ of one Alphonse Biggs, the Sicilian-American mob boss of Hope, Rhode Island.

For a while, the previous status quo was resumed. Humans were pummeled or “escorted” out of the capo's establishments and the occasional sideline as a contractor put some extra garnishes on their plates. For Veil-bound Wyldfae, the couple was living fairly well. Then, in 1905, Margaret almost unexpectedly gave birth, her sturdy physique and her routine preventing her from noticing her pregnancy. As soon as little Harry was out in the world, however, Margaret knew she'd be stuck with a caseload on her hands.

Normal bugbear babies don't crave maternal contact so much as they do the milk that comes with it. Motherly warmth and early socialization being almost tertiary concerns, she was surprised to see the little thing quail the way a human baby would, settling down only once she'd absently snuck it the crook of an arm. That would inform much of Harry's childhood and adolescence, with his base needs being absently fulfilled while everything else was lacking. Almost human peals of melancholy and longing sometimes broke the tedium of his existence, but try as he might, he just couldn't find himself. With a combination of abysmal grades and a history as a classroom bully, compounded by an honestly observable potential but no means to express it, he found himself bound to several decades of personal confusion. A few months as a bouncer and criminal enforcer only made his displeasure more palpable, with piteous depression cycles taking him regularly between 1920 and 1950. Being what he was, however, wailing and suicidal thoughts didn't factor in as much as excessive drowsiness. He worked odd jobs for ridiculously low hours and spent sometimes upwards of twenty hours a day sleeping like his life depended on it. Looking back on this period, he'd admit that he used to be exactly what mortals expect of bugbears. Fat, sluggish, despondent and chronically unhappy, his mildest form of solace was that his very unhappiness made him fit in with the rest of his peers. As long as his mind was covered in the thick jelly of excessive sleeping hours, he didn't offend his kindred with bright peals of insight.

The resurgence of superheroes stoked his long-denied fire, with a fortuitous Veil failure in front of Amazo in 1969 making him look to the possibility of equal employment opportunities. The ashes of the Transgenics Wars had barely fallen that he'd signed up for police training, the Vienna Accords granting him normalized physical training courses. Having access to tests that honestly did challenge his mind, however, pushed him to try and realize his long-denied potential. For someone his size and shape, he turned out to be the academy's most dedicated student, and kept their teachings in the forefront of his mind by preparing other, more specialized degrees on his off hours as a rank-and-file officer.

It all worked perfectly, in more ways than one. The Harry Benson who slept in squad cars over the night shift with his belly rested over the steering wheel melted away. By the eighties, he was only big in that he'd recovered the naturally muscle-bound stature of healthy bugbears. By the early nineties, he'd done far more than simply prove his worth on crime scenes – he'd become a Detective of his own. It's also during this decade that he finally managed to benefit from the development of Neuropsychology as a field of study, allowing him to understand just how it was that he happened to essentially be a human stuck in the wrong body. As this finally buffed away at the last embers of guilt he'd been carrying, he no longer had any cares for his parents' and other kinsmen's judgment. Liberated on all fronts, he was able to earn the fame he deserved without having to second-guess himself.

All the while, however, he was being made coarser on one side and more refined on the other. His diagnosis allowed him to stop trying to “normalize” his actions and to simply be who he happened to be. Increased congeniality would always have its place, however, as would increased antagonism. They both became tools he used in a ruthlessly effective manner, merely remarkable interrogation runs turning into little ditties of Machiavellian manipulation his successive precinct colleagues surreptitiously watched on tape after hours. Nobody had expected a bugbear to turn out to be an ace at grilling prime suspects – but there he was, opening and closing files like clockwork, refusing dinners with Chief Alderan along with a handful of medals. Mundane crime, especially, seemed to be his strong suit. He was a Wyldfae who couldn't help himself but to reason in mortal terms and who'd seemingly never gotten around to figuring out how Oaths worked. He once tried it at the behest of a curious colleague, only to feel the binding threads of the Oath fizzle out like emotional soda bubbles as soon as they were spoken into being. Instead of bemoaning this, he instead adapted it into an oddly useful means of making just about any situation instantly awkward. It might sound strange, but putting mundanes off-guard as quickly as possible can have some useful dividends...

Today, you'd have to be a citizen of some renown to remember a time in which Harry Benson slept his sorrows away and ate his turmoils out of existence. What he stands as today is one of the more quiet giants in town, someone with just enough hard-boiled credit to spawn a few bar-side stories and sufficient fluff and self-esteem to survive casual get-togethers.
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: Harry Benson

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Leam, I think you meant Morgana, not the Morrigan. Wrong Celtic myth figure.
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IamLEAM1983
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Re: Harry Benson

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Fixed!
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