[b]Name:[/b] Thomas Dempsey 
[b]Alias:[/b] Nailgun

[b]Personality:[/b] Dempsey is a nervous wreck. He’ll jump if you talk to him and his eyes always seem to be roving, searching for an escape route. He carries a nervous, building energy about him that tends to make other people uncomfortable, particularly in combat situations where the order is to remain calm. Too bad, since Dempsey is never calm. He seems constantly convinced he’s going to die and hell, you can’t decide if he’s terrified or excited about the possibility. He speaks in fast jumbles, panics when he lies, and laughs to cover it up. Dempsey doesn’t like to be touched and will physically flinch if made contact with, which his official file blames on PTSD. He spends most of his time modifying or fiddling with his weaponry, which is both creative and compulsive. The man is surprisingly intelligent and has a lot of knowledge packed in under all that pent-up anxiety. He’s very much a follower, doing what he’s told and cowing to the whims of others in a disagreement. If there’s one thing Dempsey can be counted on for, though, it’s a steady trigger finger. He might be terrified, but he’s no coward—he’ll stand his ground and deliver when the going gets tough.


[b]Appearance:[/b] Dempsey appears to be about thirty years old. Average in height and weight—lean build if not for extensive combat training, which shows in broad shoulders and wiry upper body strength. Probably the first thing your eyes would be drawn to would be his hair, which is… large. Thick reddish-brown curls spring at least to his shoulders, which he typically keeps tied back or under a hood/helmet on jobs. When unbound, the sheer volume of hair becomes something like an afro, dwarfing his long, narrow face. His complexion is pale and slightly freckly, with an outthrust jaw and patchy red stubble. He has very light gray eyes. There’s some kind of scar visible on the left side of his face, but it’s not clear what caused it. 


[b]History:[/b] From a paramilitary family, Thomas Dempsey Jr. never had much resemblance to his father. His father was a high-ranking officer in EPOL and was widely respected by others in the ranks for his leadership and other abilities. From the time he was born, Dempsey was trained and groomed to enter EPOL. Before she died, his mother desperately tried to cultivate other options for him, forms of self-expression or trade that didn’t require such a violent lifestyle. For a mediocre child with little natural ability in any one field, however, combat training won out. You didn’t have to be talented to shoot a gun and do what you were told. Skill would come with time.

He was young when he was officially accepted into the academy (via connections, not by merit) and began going out on EPOL missions, and (while nobody dared tell him or his father) the general consensus was disappointment. He was no prodigy, despite his origins, and Dempsey had to work twice as hard just to satisfy the sergeants and instructors. Even now, the rumors that he wasn’t actually his father’s son began to spread as those in the paramilitary force sought a reason why he fell so short of the mark. Embarrassed and disappointed, Thomas Dempsey Sr. effectively disowned him, claiming his wife had been unfaithful and turning his back on his son.  

Trapped in the system nonetheless, Dempsey was a solid long-range sniper and his first unit began to specialize on raiding illegal weapons caches in the south Wards. Exposure to seemingly every kind of bootleg gun available seemed to spark some creativity in Dempsey’s mind and he began to modify his own weapons, which he got in major trouble over once the officers found out. There was no room in EPOL for ingenuity from a nameless scrub. To punish him—or maybe to test him—he was reassigned to “front lines” in supposedly the most dangerous territory. Gang members and civilians all blended together, and sometimes there was no distinguishing between the two. He risked his life every day in often radioactive territory, and though they never saw him behind the EPOL helmet, he saw every one of their faces, which still haunt him.

It wasn’t through compassion or sympathy that he left his new squadron, however, even after he was moved back to weapons cache raids. Strange things had been happening to him, and people had started to take notice. Incidents where they were under fire and an invisible force would suddenly sweep his squad members off their feet, or a gun would shatter in his hands. It took a raid where a surprise assault in a weapons locker blew out every wall, crate, and gun except the one in Dempsey’s hands before he realized it was him. He was ejected from EPOL as a loose cannon, volatile, someone developing signs of supernatural ability without control. It didn’t take long for Ultralight to find him.

Five years have passed since Dempsey became a contractor for Ultralight, and he’s become somewhat of a weapons specialist. His kinetic bursts remain unstable and inconsistent, so he’s seldom assigned to the field anymore since the initial trial period where he attempted to master control of his ability and came away so shell-shocked that some weren’t sure he’d ever leave the safe house again. In that time he’s recovered some and subsists off of frequent small jobs, essentially “pest” extermination of smaller youkai and monsters. He’s never stayed with a cell for long, but frequently acts as a resource for contractors who need special mods to their guns or to pick his brain for his weapons knowledge.


[b]Capabilities:[/b] Dempsey is excellent at long-range combat and is most useful (and safe) as a sniper, far away from actual danger. It’s not that he’s not skilled at a more melee range as well—he’s trained with pistols, shotguns, etc, and he makes pretty good snap decisions in a fight on the spot. He’s definitely a more “defensive” fighter at closer range. The problem is actually his more supernatural ability, which specialists estimate has been developing slowly over time spent in the more radiation-heavy wards (or possibly in response to some emotional turmoil, though that’s just the psych evaluation’s opinion). Dempsey seems to build up and then semi-randomly discharge kinetic energy, which bursts from him in a kind of shock wave. The size and strength of this wave varies, doing anything from simply shattering people’s glasses at a party to blowing out a building. He really has no control over it, but analysts note it seems to happen when he’s scared (always) and that taking stress in combat seems to amplify the effect. 

[b]Equipment:[/b] Sniper rifle (magnetic, modified scope) Pistol x2 (cartridge) Shotgun (cartridge, experimental model taken from Los Lados warehouse) Protective vest, light body-armor. Wears a lot of black.