[hider=Gene Watson][CENTER][h1][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjk2Ljg4NWUyOC5SWFZuWlc1bElGZGhkSE52YmcsLC4w/reward-personal-use.regular.webp[/img][/h1]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkWML41wUCo[/youtube][/CENTER]
[i]"Just “Gene”, thank ya kindly."[/i]
[table][row][/row][row][cell]
[center][img]https://44.media.tumblr.com/35df811e3095efc472eef65dfbd502cb/49c10c6f5c6e3ef7-ba/s540x810_f1/f265e4b65ace9ea0371cbd728a67bd777d087081.gif[/img]
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
[sub][colour=peru]Eugene Kurt Watson

He/Him   [b]|[/b]   31   [b]|[/b]   Caucasian  [b]|[/b]   6’0  [b]|[/b]   142lbs	 
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
Deceit
[sup]_______________________________________________[/sup]
Skills & Talents[/colour][/sub]
[i]"I learned this one at bible camp."[/i]
[sup]___________________________________[/sup][/center][hider=]
[sub]

[b][colour=peru]Lockpicking  ⫻[/colour][/b] A talent, naturally, kept hidden but Gene is a savant when it comes to picking the locks of doors, cars, even a safe on one or two occasions. He does naturally require some kind of tool, especially the more complex a lock it is, but he has yet to encounter one he couldn’t make sing.

[b][colour=peru]Engineering  ⫻[/colour][/b] His apprenticeship of choice, he’s not a specialist and his expertise tends towards factory machine maintenance but Gene is comfortable with a toolkit and can work his way around stubborn cars or a faulty toaster if needs be.

[b][colour=peru]Urban Survivalist  ⫻[/colour][/b] With his upbringing below the poverty line and his choice of work later in life, Gene is something of an expert in making it through the days on the streets. Shoplifting dinner, pickpocketing bus fare and keeping a low profile during it all. Mama would be proud.

[b][colour=peru]Slickster  ⫻[/colour][/b] A master at spinning elaborate webs of deceit, designed to separate some poor fool from their money. Gene is charming and deceptively good at reading people. Even those who can tell the superficiality in his words have often found themselves still wanting to believe them.[/sub][/hider]

[/cell][cell][sub][b][colour=peru] Appearance[/colour][/b][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"Nothin’ special about me, friend."[/i]

[indent]Gene Watson is both unremarkable enough to not stick in your memory and unique enough as to not seem like he’s trying too hard to blend in. He always appears laid back and affable but with some strange guard surrounding it, like speaking to a coworker you don’t know all that well. There’s always some level of performance to his mannerisms. He may not monologue or flair dramatically all that often, but he clearly enjoys listening to himself.

In keeping with his relaxed demeanour, Gene sports a long and messy head of black hair, more on the "mop top" side than the mullet side. Along with a scraggly beard that, coupled with his lithe figure and unkempt style, straddles the line between charmingly roguish and "rat-like". The only failing in his air of civility are his eyes, half-closed and dull grey yet always alert - either in focus or in preparation to flee as the situation may warrant. While his frame is very lean, bordering on gangly, his job under the hot Texas sun has given him an athletic, if not well-defined, body. The only giveaway of anything close to a hard life are the occasional faint bits of scarring on his hands and face.

Gene's dress sense is more than a little conspicuous from the point of view of the average person but generally right at home within Texas. Black stetson hat to combat the sun combined with generally loose-fitting clothing to keep as cool as can be in the dry air. He avoids darker colours for the same reasons and tends towards an overshirt over a graphic tee that also serves to hide his build. Ensemble completed by light coloured chinos and dark brown cowboy boots. A climate fitting wardrobe and a deceptively good one to obscure yourself with.[/indent]

[/cell][/row][/table][sub][b][colour=peru] Psychology[/colour][/b][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"Hey, bud, can you keep a secret? There’s this Nigerian prince…"[/i]

[INDENT][b][colour=peru]MAIN GOAL  ⫻[/colour][/b] To emancipate himself from the exceedingly soul crushing existence that is working full time for minimum wage and with zero hope of progression. He’d escaped it once only to be forced back in by necessity. More unrealistically, he’d also enjoy not looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life and keeping his head down.

[b][colour=peru]PHILOSOPHY  ⫻[/colour][/b] People are, broadly speaking, snakes with varying levels of depths they’re willing to sink to in order to survive. If someone gets upset at you ripping them off, it’s really only because you did it to them first before they could do it to you. Gene doesn’t go out of his way to be an asshole and isn’t quite at the level of a sociopath but his experiences in life have taught him that greed exists in every person, the only way to not end up as a statistic or a sad story is simply to weaponize your own immorality better than others.

[b][colour=peru]SECRETS  ⫻[/colour][/b] Eugene Watson of Ward County, Texas is an alias. In truth, he is Floyd Dillinger from Macon, Georgia. A wanted con-man, stick up artist and criminal, living hidden in plain sight after changing his appearance and erasing his identity.

[b][colour=peru]SEXUALITY  ⫻[/colour][/b] Gene is heterosexual but has only had one romantic relationship with a genuine emotional connection.

[b][colour=peru]FEARS  ⫻[/colour][/b] Seemingly fears the “regularness of life” and, to a lesser extent, living with the things he’s done that have ultimately brought him right back where he started. More saliently he’s also terrified at being caught and arrested.

[b][colour=peru]WHO IS ELEANOR BLACK TO YOU?  ⫻[/colour][/b] Partner-in-crime, best friend, lover. Eleanor rescued Floyd from a life of petty existence and the duo cut a swathe of scams and robberies across the deep south.

[b][colour=peru]FLAWS  ⫻[/colour][/b] Floyd Dillinger began as - and deep down still is - an earnest and not-all-that-bad guy whose brain naturally leans towards dishonest solutions for the multitude of problems he faces. But time has hardened him into a man who wears the skin of an extravagant slickster like a shield. He is prone to taking the low road and thinking the worst of people and situations because it’s never steered him wrong. His need for importance or screwing over established power structures is borderline pathological even when trying hard (though not hard enough) to move beyond his chequered past. He is prone to cowardice, self-loathing and introspection, which is then covered up by showmanship, manipulation and deceit.
[/INDENT]

[sub][b][colour=peru] Backstory[/colour][/b][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"I’m boring, friend. You wouldn't wanna hear about me."[/i]

[indent]Eugene Watson was born in Ward County, Texas. He studied communications at Texas State University. He works as a gas station attendant at Chevron. He has a cell phone number, a passport, driver’s licence and social security number. He spends his days at work and his evenings and weekends at home by himself.

Eugene Watson does not exist.

Floyd Dillinger was born in Macon, Georgia. The third son of a struggling working class family. His mother a cleaner and his father slaving in a dead end factory job. As a small boy, Floyd would accompany them on their shifts - due to not being able to afford a babysitter - and routinely saw bosses, customers and co-workers alike take advantage of his parent’s good yet naive and weak natures. In spite of his protests, they routinely tried to instil the same values into him, about working hard and treating people with respect even when it wasn’t earned. By the time he regularly attended elementary school, Floyd had already begun stealing money from the worksites for himself.

Determined to not follow the same path as his family, Floyd started hustling other kids well into his teens. Falling in with a bad crowd who alleviated their boredom via theft and random acts of vandalism. When things started getting serious, it wasn’t long until the police were involved. Facing the very real threat of a juvenile detention centre snapped some sense into Floyd, coupled with how hard his family fought for his side even when he really hadn’t deserved it. Out of a desire to change things and more than a degree of sympathy for his family, Floyd knuckled down his last few years of high school and managed to secure an apprenticeship after graduating.

It wasn’t too bad, initially. There was a sense of purpose that Floyd hadn’t anticipated and he felt more than a little happy at how proud his family were of the man he’d become. The issues began arising a year in when his apprenticeship ended. He wouldn’t be kept on. Despite jumping through the hoops and dotting his i’s all he got was a handshake and a “maybe next quarter, son.” He found himself working a minimum wage factory job just like his father in short order. His family were supportive but it fell on deaf ears, he’d ended up as the very kind of person he was terrified of becoming.

Then, one day, she showed up. A woman claiming to be an inspector of some importance with all the paperwork to back it up. She took a tour of the factory while the boss kissed up to her at every turn. It made Floyd sick. That was, until lunch. When the factory floor was mostly empty and he happened to see a certain inspector of some importance pocket the wallets from every coat in the office before nonchalantly leaving the office then right out the front door. He was pretty sure she winked at him from the corner of his eye. Cutting his shift short, Floyd followed her. A confrontation ensued, demands for an explanation, threats, mistrust. Until Floyd started criticising her approach, pointing out with the speed she went at she could’ve taken everything during the morning break and been out the factory much faster among other flaws in her scheme. She smiled, then she held out her hand, shutting him up.

Her name was Eleanor Black.

Floyd put in his notice a day later and left town not long after. Barely giving his family a goodbye before he hopped in a car with Eleanor and the two drove off with no destination in mind save for their shared distaste of modern life and desire for thrill.

Together, the duo cut a path of debauchery throughout the south. They started small, bars and restaurants where they'd concoct elaborate stories to trick people out of the contents of their wallets. Wasn't long before they added full on thefts and B&E's to their repertoire, along with the rare hold-up of service stations or corner stores when they needed to quickly refill the coffers. The police reports shot up wherever they went, and soon enough their fame started catching up to them.

Their standards of living shot down as they'd routinely camp out far from towns so as not to get recognised but they didn't care. It wasn't about the money or the things it afforded, Floyd felt alive. More than a statistic or a number on a badge or a troublemaker or a criminal. He felt like he existed, he and this wonderful woman who may have stoked his worst impulses but understood him in a way no one else did.

There was one time, beneath the stars on a humid night in Florida. They were both drunk out of their minds - courtesy of the "generosity" from their latest mark. Eleanor, who guarded her own past with humour or coy deflection, began telling Floyd about herself. Where she lived, what it was like, why she left. "Swamptown USA" Floyd had laughed. "If you still don't want to tell me, don't worry about it." He said, then turned and fell into a heavy alcohol-assisted slumber.

The following morning they went into town for one last scam for the road before splitting state for somewhere else. Eleanor was distant, quiet. She got like that sometimes before an act, focus maybe. They stepped into the store, pieces kept securely in their pockets. No one ever got hurt, they were smart about it, preform with enough force and people will fold however you want them. Floyd hadn't even fired his gun once throughout their career.

"Empty the register!" He yelled with a click as the clerk found himself eye-to-eye with a nine millimetre. Behind Floyd, Ellie worked crowd control just like they always did. The clerk hesitated, as they always did, but a more forceful repeat of the request by Floyd made him co-operate. Their bag halfway full, a bell and a crash rung behind Floyd. He whipped his head around to see someone charging out the store, screaming for help, he turned further to find the store empty. No customers, no Eleanor. When he turned back, the clerk had hidden under the counter and pressed an alarm. Floyd could already hear sirens.

What followed was a blur. The pure survival instinct of a wild animal beset upon by hunters. Flashes of red and blue, running from alley to alley, hiding beneath cars and debris. Spending the night in a drain with the rest of society's shit. In the early hours after stealing new clothes from a washing line and keeping a thirty metre berth from any passer-by, Floyd made it to a payphone. He punched in the number Eleanor had made him memorise. It went through to a hardware store in South Carolina. Phrases were exchanged and all Floyd was left with with was a two day timezone to lay low and vague directions on where to go to be picked up at dawn of day three. By some divine miracle for a guy that really didn't deserve it, Floyd made it. Shuffled into the back of a hardware van and tucked amongst tools and furniture, being told his new name, history, likes and dislikes as he was whisked from car to car towards his new life.

The first few months were hell. Gripped in paranoia and constantly second guessing every decision, lest it blow his cover. He'd long since grown out his neatly-cut dirty blonde hair into a long dyed black mane along with his clean shaven jaw giving way to a scraggly Jesus beard. But it never felt enough. It wasn't until the support from his "disappearers" stopped when his money dried up and he was forced to begin providing for himself did he regain some semblance of normality. Working quietly in a shitty job in some nowhere town. Only this time he didn’t have Eleanor or his family to fall back on.

Then, one day, he saw a news story that ran about one half of a notorious stick-up duo being arrested in Chicago. Partner and lover of the notorious “Pretty Boy” Floyd Dillinger, Elizabeth Burrows. It stopped Gene cold. She was different… radically different actually. She’d gone so above and beyond the changing of the identity thing that she was like a completely different person. Horrified for her and panicked for his own safety, Floyd took three different buses to the furthest away library and logged in to their computers (then enabled private browsing as if that made any difference). Searching Elizabeth Burrows turned out several results for all kinds of cons committed by the two of them. But searching Eleanor Black turned up very little of anything. Had she really trusted him so little as to not even tell him her real name? Every clip he watched of Elizabeth seemed wrong in a vaguely familiar way, like she was a memory of Eleanor instead of the woman herself. It filled him with dread as he frantically looked through everything pertaining to both names.

She was going to fold on him, tell the world where he was and how to get him, she wasn’t the real Eleanor, it was some kind of sting to get at him, it had to be! Then he stumbled across a forum on page twenty-seven of the Eleanor Black search. People describing the woman he knew, details about her life that they couldn’t possibly have known. Lives she’d led that she couldn’t possibly have done so. Confused, scared and against his better judgement, Gene joined the forum under a pseudonym and joined the conversation.

“Swamptown U.S.A”. That’s where they were going.

Maybe they were all just a bunch of nuts, maybe Gene really had lost his mind, maybe Eleanor really never cared about him and that truly was her being held by the state. Or maybe she was in Louisiana, calling for him with a con only he would know.

Whatever it was, Gene left with a renewed sense of purpose. Texas had long since gotten old anyway…[/indent]

[sub][b][colour=peru] Paranormal-Abilities[/colour][/b][/sub]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"Magic? Sure, feller, an’ I got a bridge to sell ya."[/i]

Other than a magically loose set of morals, Gene is blind.

[sup][b][colour=peru] Other[/colour][/b][/sup]
[sub][sup]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sup][/sub]
[i]"Believe me, ain't no honour among thieves... 'cept for you an' I, of course."[/i]

[indent]As part of his "hiding in plain sight" disguise, Gene tends to use foundation make-up to hide some of his more obvious scarring, eliminating the public pool from his already narrow list of possible activities.

A lot of the Gene Watson character is based on westerns that Floyd seen growing up, therefore his performance can occasionally veer into hammy or overplaying it at times.[/INDENT]
[/hider]