Outgoing, confident, and easy-going, Simon works best when he's given broad orders that he can interpret freely — but he wants those orders, he's not the sort to make up his own mission.
Intuitive Pattern Matching |
After years of looking at piles of data, Simon has honed an already existant talent for spotting patterns in seemingly random noise. It served him well reading defenses as a high school quarterback, it's done a lot more for him as a spy. |
CIA Trained, SHIELD Polished |
After more than a decade in the field, Simon has a certain set of skills. Infiltration (Benchmark 4), espionage (3), sabotage (3), impersonation (4), counter-espionage (3), recon (3), training-in-unconventional-warfare (2), marksmanship (4), hand-to-hand combat (4), and more. Since transferring from the CIA to SHIELD, he has learned to use the latter organization's more advanced technology, but he can still do the job with "lesser" tech and frequently complains about spies depending on their gear. |
Linguist Of Hot Places |
Despite his complexion (or perhaps because of it), Simon has spent a lot of time in hot places for each of his jobs, and his natural linguistic talent has followed that direction. He is fluent in Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, and Hindu, and he understands conversational Marathi, Tamil, Turkish, and Hebrew, but his own speaking ability is closer to tourist level in those languages. |
Gift Of Gab |
It's not as eloquent as a silver tongue, but Simon is a very personable sort most of the time. He's generally very good at putting people at their ease (Benchmark 5), which helps quite a lot when he's on assignment. |
Names Upon Names |
As a veteran of many, many CIA field missions, Simon is used to working under aliases and cover identities (Simon Green isn't even his birth name, for that matter, that's actually Bradley Butler, but he hasn't gone by that name since the Army). He has a fantastic memory for names and details as a result. This makes him great at schmoozing, or remembering which cover identity to play if he hears an old name shouted across a crowded room. |
Somebody Else's Problem 1 |
Simon is a magic user. Or rather, he has been unknowingly granted a single magical ability by a grateful Sorcerer after he saved the man's temple as part of one of his early missions for the CIA. He doesn't know that it's magic, but with concentration, he can make himself "Somebody Else's Problem." People still see him, he still shows up on recordings, but those watching while he's still concentrating simply consider him to not be their problem, even if he is sneaking into the headquarters they are guarding. This ability applies to inanimate objects he is carrying or directly interacting with (a door, for instance), but not to other people, even if he is touching them. As soon as an item gets about a foot or so away from him, people start caring about what it's doing again. So if he opens a door, walks through it, and closes it behind him (touching it or nearly so the whole time), no one will care, but if he shoves a door open and bursts through it, people will care that the door just flew open. Those watching recordings after the fact or those more than a mile away will be able to see and notice him without problem. |
Somebody Else's Problem 2 |
Becoming somebody else's problem takes a great deal of concentration. It's not the sort of thing one does while firing a gun, or driving a car, or running along a tightrope. Moving slowly through difficult areas is fine, running through open areas is fine, hiding behind cover in a firefight is fine — basically if someone could play a chess game (or two, depending on their ability) in their head while doing it, Simon can concentrate enough to become someone else's problem while doing it. This concentration also takes physical effort along the lines of running at an even pace — it's not so bad for 20 minutes, but an hour is difficult, three hours is brutal, and it takes a special sort of crazy to go much longer than that. |
Somebody Else's Problem 3 |
When Simon is concentrating on being nobody's problem, he is literally nobody's problem — even his teammates won't be concerned with what he's doing. This can be incredibly dangerous if he gets in their line of fire, or set off a detonator before he's out of the blast radius, or… you get the picture. He has to be careful when he uses the ability. Written notes help with remembering him, but only if they reference what he's doing, not him precisely (noting that the guard-house is being dealt with will keep someone from firing a missile into it, but noting that Simon is going to sneak into the guardhouse and dose the guards with sleeping gas won't help at all, just result in "Who's Simon?"). |
Somebody Else's Problem 4 |
Simon's SEP Field is a Benchmark 7 magical ability that could, with further practice (especially against metahumans) rise to 9 or 10. While unaugmented humans have no chance of sensing him, those with supernatural senses or defenses against magic will be able to resist to varying degrees. Those at an equal Benchmark to him get a vague sense that something is wrong, those with one point above him get a similarly vague sense, but directionally focused. Those with two points above him can sense him fuzzily, and those with three points or more above him can sense him precisely. |
SHIELD Arsenal |
While Simon may complain about agents who can't get by without their newfangled toys, he has access to the newfangled toys, and enjoys that access greatly. |
I Know A Guy… |
Simon has been around the world several times, and has met a lot of people doing so. He's even left some of them very happy to work with him again. Most of these prospective contacts are in Middle Eastern or South Asian nations, but some of them have been transferred to the UN or US, or work in the CIA or other agencies. |
Lobster In Waiting |
Simon burns badly in the sun. He turns lobster red, peels, turns lobster red again, peels again, and eventually recovers with some more freckles when he's out of the sun. He can get by in the Tri-City Area in summer with SPF 50, but anywhere hotter and brighter than that causes him a great deal of discomfort (naturally that's where he's spent most of his career). |
Names Without End |
Simon has been a lot of people in the past, and it's not unknown for someone to address him by one cover identity while he's talking to someone who knows him under another. It's definitely awkward. |
Red In His Ledger |
The CIA does not train choir boys. Simon has done some bad things, and he's made some bad people (and some who were probably good from another point of view) very angry. Not only is there a pretty solid well of regret buried deep beneath his happy-go-lucky exterior, but if the people he's done bad things to in the past connected his past identities to either his current one or to Bradley Butler, there would certainly be targets for them to attack, from his friends from his apartment building to his mother, now retired in Springfield, MA, his stepfather, and his (19-years-younger) half-sister and (21-years-younger) half-brother.. |
Allergic To Routine |
One of the reasons that Simon has been out in the field so often in his career is that he gets easily bored in an office setting, especially if he has to do the same thing day in and day out. While he doesn't go off half-cocked in the field, he's liable to jump at opportunities well above his weight class just to get -into- the field. |
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