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〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉

CHARACTER NAMES: Duo “Father” Maxwell (aka Shinigami/The God of Death):

On the NETWORK, he posts as SHINIGAMI;
In CIVILIAN LIFE, he uses FATHER MAXWELL;
In the CONSTELLATION, his alias is CHARON;
Certain individuals (Adachi and the Phantom Thieves) are aware of the codename 02;
He and his fellow Gundam pilot Quatre fource use the name DUO between themselves in private.


CHARACTER AGE: ~45 (appears a little older)

SERIES: Gundam Wing

CHRONOLOGY: Frozen Teardrop: End of Vol. 1, just after Relena leaves the Mars Preventer base (+ Cape & Cowl memories)

CLASS: Hero

HOUSING: De Chima Apartment Housing (formerly his son's, secondscythe)



BACKGROUND:

Wiki for his canon history. I've added an expanded FT history below for more detail.

CAPE AND COWL:

(Here is Duo’s post history, to reference his activities there)

A few months after Endless Waltz, Duo is ported into The City (early November 2008 City-time). Taking up the mantle of “Shinigami” once again, he prioritizes arming himself and laying low to gather intelligence about his new surroundings and powers. The first person Duo meets would be the most influential on him throughout his time in The City: M, a mysterious and caustic arms dealer. Upon a few interactions, Duo is amused enough by the man’s reactions to his prodding that he would purposely instigate him. Ironically, Duo ends up roomed in the MAC next-door to a man M had warned against, going by “Justice”. Although "Justice" seemed to be insane, Duo was curious enough about M's severe reaction to keep digging for information. A combination of slipped info leads to Duo learning of the existence of real Shinigami in M and Justice’s world, capturing his interest in M and those from his universe.

Duo begins to post more publicly in December through January, chatting up fellow imports and making note of who to ally with or befriend. Naturally a loudmouth, he quickly makes new acquaintances including Tabitha Smith/Boom-Boom, Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Sirius Black, Eve, and Mamori Anezaki. M remains a person of interest, with Duo directly approaching him regarding efforts to return home. The more he pesters M- whose full codename he discovers is Mello- the more each finds that they work surprisingly well together despite opposite personalities. Duo becomes active in the movement to gather info about “Iron Man” and the Porter, taking the mission as readily as he involved himself in the fight against OZ. Soon, Duo’s fellow pilots are ported in- first is Chang Wufei, who comes from the same time as Duo, and Trowa Barton, who arrives from their past, early on during Operation Meteor. Already a secretive person, Trowa distances himself somewhat from the other two pilots due to his early perspective, but still allies with them. Not long after, Heero Yuy and Quatre Raberba Winner also arrive, and the 5 Gundam pilots plan their course of action in the City.

The most important event that irrevocably changed Duo within the City was set off by the arrival of the Joker, Batman’s infamous archvillain. Duo was already familiar with some of the other Gothamites in The City, notably Catwoman, whose skills and demeanor he respected and identified with. When in the absence of Batman it’s suggested that Jonathan Crane, not yet openly the fear-based villain Scarecrow, may have information on Joker, Duo sneaks into his office to find the Joker’s files in late January. The mission goes sour when Crane catches him, and when Duo tries to needle the information out of him, Crane activates his porter-given powers on Duo. Crane's powers, which allow him to control a victim’s nervous system, delve into Duo’s memories and force him to vividly relive traumas of his past. However, they also have an unexpected effect: Duo's brain, which had in the past been forced to use the ZERO System which interfaces directly to the pilot’s brain, suddenly thinks that it is connected again to ZERO. This unique switch combined with the trauma Crane was inflicting results in a double-edged sword; it breaks Crane’s connection and allows Duo to escape, but also causes him to go into a psychotic rampage as ZERO had induced in others from their world, everyone around Duo registering as an enemy. Escaping from Crane’s office, Duo flees into the streets, where he comes upon Mello and attacks, nearly killing him if not for the intervention of Quatre and Heero.

In the aftermath, Duo goes into hiding, haunted by the memories Crane dug up and guilt-ridden over nearly killing his friend. As a soldier, Duo tightens his bootstraps and gets back into things as quickly as he’s able, but the damage done to his mental health was deep, and had an effect on many of his questionable decisions to come: namely, entering a relationship with Mello which began with mindgames and slid slowly into dangerous codependency. While their interactions had been playful on a surface level for some time, there was an element of danger in how close Duo had come to killing Mello, and an element of challenge with Mello viewing Duo as a potential intellectual rival, along with an understanding of each others’ flaws and motivations. Mello initiated in challenge and Duo, between defiance, his guilt, Crane having dredged up his fears of abandonment and loss of those close to him, and a recognition of familiarly attention-seeking traits in Mello, relents. The development of this relationship further influences Duo’s emotional state for the rest of his time in The City.

Learning of the existence of the HIVE, a villainous city on the west coast, the pilots decide that it may be necessary to pursue the necessary evil of mobile suits. Obtaining blueprints and access codes to piloted Sentinels, the pilots are able to hijack units for themselves and destroy the remaining during the scramble to secure the Porter that follows the import of the real Tony Stark, causing the unpiloted Iron Man suit to abandon the Tower in search of him. Duo also takes part in downloading information from the Porter and Tower computers, learning that reversing the Porter would be nearly impossible. With returning home looking unlikely, the mood in The City turns grim.

Realizing a brewing war when he sees one, Duo focuses on converting the Sentinels into mobile suits in order to destroy others that appear in the world. He researches the technology available and is able to help create facsimiles of familiar weaponry and systems, swearing to his mutant contacts to purge the “kill code” within the units before allowing them to go into operation. The swift preparation proves to be in the nick of time- the HIVE attacks the City, attempting to take the Porter. The pilots help drive back the HIVE airship with their newly outfitted Sentinel-suits, and Duo is convinced that unfortunately, mobile suits would be necessary in the City. However, he also remains convinced that nothing good could come of allowing the technology to spread, and pushes for them to destroy any similar technology that popped up. He goes on a trip to find a Sentinel factory rumored to exist near the Canadian border and acquaints himself with some of the human-friendly Cybertronian "Transformers" in the City after battling one of their enemies.

Furthering Duo's instability is the arrival of two of the Endless, Death and Delirium. Duo immediately recognizes Death as the Shinigami he has lived his life in respect and fear of, and panics for what she heralds. Although she assuages his initial fears with her calm and friendly personality, her presence continues to unnerve him. She along with Delirium, who Duo knows more clearly now thanks to Crane, leaves Duo even more off-balance than before, especially after Delirium opens the door to her realm causing a temporary City-wide decrease in sanity.

In June, the “Iron Bot”’s erratic behavior finally leads to revelation as it’s destroyed, the “ghost” that had appeared in its programming shown to be the true intelligence behind the City. Although Duo never learned Lachesis’ true identity, her reveal caused him to set plans to investigate her and infiltrate the HIVE into motion with his allies.

Alongside these events, the Porter brings more changes in Duo’s personal life. Heero Yuy, the pilot who Duo considers his best friend, is deported. Perhaps due to his sense of loss, and partly thanks to Mello having temporarily deported only to return with a renewed perspective of the City versus his planned death back home, the caution between them begins to dissolve, the two growing genuinely closer. It wasn’t to last though, with Mello ported out for good not long after. Seeing that Death had known Mello, Duo knew he met the same fate as all others he cared for.

Duo lays low until the reappearance of Heero, albeit without his previous memories. Reinvigorated by Heero's return, Duo returns to working towards their mission. Catching wind of development of mobile suit-like machines in North Korea, the pilots launch a surprise attack and destroy the North Korean base. Soon after, an offensive is launched on the HIVE, which the pilots participate in partially to gather information on the attack’s organizer The Major, a Nazi obsessed with war. Discovering proof in the aftermath that the technology had been spread by The Major, they assist in arresting him.

Duo is deported from the City exactly a year after his arrival in November 2009.

FROZEN TEARDROP:

Setting:

Twenty years prior to Endless Waltz, terraformation of Mars began. Industrialist Nove Noinheim spearheaded the effort and essentially ruled Mars from that time. Life on Mars is rough and somewhat lawless, with life still only possible within terraformed domes. Like the worker suits in space which gave birth to military mobile suits (MS), Martian worker suits give rise to new “Mars suits” (MS). Because the Martian orbit is drastically different from Earth’s, citizens of Mars count the years using the Mars Century (MC), where 2 Earth years = 1 Martian year. Earth and its colonies continue to use After Colony (AC).

In April of AC 197, an armed group led by the Noinheim hold Relena Peacecraft-Darlian hostage. Forcing her to activate a nanomachine virus affecting everyone on Mars that will kill all infected if a particular 'target' is killed, Relena complies but chooses herself as the target as a failsafe, then enters cryosleep so her death wouldn't cause the death of millions. Heero Yuy, despairing his failure to prevent the plot, follows her into cryosleep. They remain frozen for 30 years.
–––

Ten years after Endless Waltz, Duo and Hilde finally break off their relationship, and Duo emigrates to Mars. While on Mars he contracts a virus which causes his natural physical aging to rapidly increase. In his 4th year on Mars, he gets into a serious motorcycle accident. Rescued and brought to the hospital by Trowa, he is visited by a worried Hilde who has also emigrated to Mars as a nanotech researcher. They rekindle their relationship over the next several months and finally marry. However, Duo remains a restless spirit and soon disappears again once he has recovered. When he returns to their home a year later, Hilde has been put into debt thanks to the local priest they'd befriended who died and left his orphanage (and its debts) to the two of them. She demands a divorce from Duo, who takes on the role of the priest while bounty hunting to pay off the debts. At this time, he takes on the alias “Father Maxwell”- just like the priest who took him in as a child, and Hilde becomes the caretaker nun at the orphanage.

Two years later, Duo comes across Zechs- going by the alias “Cyrene Wind”- and his daughter Naina. Zechs is on the run from the Noinheims and a nano-clone of himself, and entrusts his daughter to Duo so that she can be hidden in the orphanage. It takes a year to travel, and when they finally arrive he is shocked to find that a 4-year-old boy resembling him has come to live there. Hilde insists that the boy just showed up one day, assuming Duo had fathered him with some other woman- but he contemplates that given the age of the boy, he must have been conceived while he and Hilde were still together. The boy, who Hilde has named Duo as well (hereafter referred to as Duo Jr.), has a sour attitude but shares Duo’s aptitude for machines. He visits Duo Jr. 3 years later for Christmas, helping thwart the attempted kidnapping of Naina, who returns to her father.

Sometime after this, the orphanage is attacked and Hilde seemingly killed, and Duo takes Duo Jr. into his care. He begins to train Duo Jr. as a pilot like himself as the political turmoil on Mars grows towards a boiling point. Quatre and Trowa begin co-developing new Gundams, one of which Duo helps design for Duo Jr.’s use.

In MC0022, Relena Peacecraft is awoken from cryosleep by the Noinheim Konzern to act as a figurehead President. Duo and Duo Jr. head to Preventer’s Mars base at the behest of Wufei, now the head of that base, to wake Heero from cryosleep. Duo introduces them to his now 15-year-old son who will fight alongside Heero and others recruited into becoming the new generation of Gundam pilots (Quatrine Oud Winner, cloned sister of Quatre; and Phobos, a boy recruited by Trowa and Quatre). Almost immediately as soon as Heero is awoken, the base is attacked, and Quatrine reveals her defection from the group. Wufei, Heero and Duo Jr. go to battle while Duo stays behind to act as support. In the midst of the battle, Duo receives a surprise visit from Relena. Although the meeting is initially tense, Duo recognizes that Relena’s memories have been tampered with, and allows her to take the data files of world history used to restore Heero’s memories so she may repair her own.

It’s as the battle is concluding and Relena returns behind enemy lines that Duo is pulled (back) through the Porter.



PERSONALITY:
Duo is, on the surface, a friendly and easygoing guy with a self-styled and mildly eccentric personality. He jokes, he's very chatty, and he can be a bit of a dork. However, the deeper beyond this you go, the more apparent it becomes that this is something of a mask to make up for a very tragic past. Deep down he is in actuality someone who forms deep connections out of a loneliness born of being an orphan who seemed to turn everything he touched to crap- bad luck, in a sense. Because everyone he grows to care about dies horribly not long after meeting him, he came to call himself Shinigami, or the God of Death- and has continued to use this nickname throughout the times that he’s taken part in conflicts. When it comes down to an actual mission, his more sarcastic, serious side comes out- he's still prone to making joking remarks but they take on a much more sardonic tone, almost bluntly realist at times despite what one might expect from his typical joking self. He's wise beyond his years- for example when sitting in on a meeting of colonist rebels as the group White Fang began to form, he's able to perceive that despite the intentions of these rebels to free the colonies, their methods are just as bad as the enemy they wish to fight, OZ- and so he refuses to join up with them.

Duo's self-given name is more than just a name. It's a hint as to his true nature, a duality. On the surface it refers to himself and Solo ("If you'll always be with me, we'll be Duo."), however it also refers to his hypocritical existence- killing while wanting to end war, claiming he'll "run and hide but never tell a lie" when he's constantly lying about his true feelings, not to mention all the lies he tells in the process of his undercover work, the lies he tells posing as a priest, and his unfaithfulness to Hilde. His motto is something of an ironic joke on his part. The fact is, the entire cheery persona that he puts on is a huge lie, he's just really good at hiding it- and in some ways, doesn't believe it all himself.

Following Solo's death, the leadup to his adoption by Father Maxwell implies that leadership of the orphan gang passed to Duo. It was here that he first gained leadership experience that would show in his time as a pilot. Once taken into Maxwell Church's care, it was there that Duo learned the love and warmth of a family. The scene in which Sister Helen first gives Duo a hug- a form of motherly affection he didn't seem to understand at first, or rather was surprised by- is incredibly important in shaping who he would be as a person. It was Father Maxwell and Sister Helen that shaped him as a kind person after losing his gang to adoptions. Duo was adopted out several times, however each time he was sent back for being too unruly- this formed a phobia of being thrown away. If not for Father Maxwell and Sister Helen's unwavering love, Duo's reaction- feeling unwanted, like trash from the street- would have been far worse. This is why their eventual deaths have even more of an impact on Duo. Father Maxwell's wish was for Duo to become the greatest priest in the history of the colonies: Duo knows as the soldier he's become, this is impossible, but explains the irony of the undercover persona he's chosen in Frozen Teardrop.

Although he dislikes his 'role' as Shinigami, he understands that in a war, fighting is something that can't be avoided and that words alone aren't enough for peace, and though he prefers not to kill unless he must, he also won’t shy away from ‘shooting first’. He's also very proud of his skills- for example, when he first meets the man who created Gundam Deathscythe, he refuses to tell the man how he disabled his security systems and got on the ship, calling it a 'trade secret'. As a second example, in a battle against two mobile suits programmed with the battle data of two other Gundam pilots, he shouts not to underestimate the abilities of a real Gundam pilot before destroying both suits. Shinigami is more than just a role for him, closer to a religion: he tells Sister Helen and Father Maxwell that he doesn't believe in God, because he's never seen a miracle but he's seen "lots of dead people". While in C&C, Duo was able to meet Death firsthand, and acknowledging her to be the Shinigami he had always believed in, this meeting solidified his personal beliefs even despite the presence of other celestial beings such as Lucifer.

As he’s aged, Duo's political and military intuition has only grown sharper, sensing the war brewing on Mars from years down the road and acting as an outside agent for Preventer to find bounties with personal connections to their political interests. By this point in canon, Duo has mellowed out from being quite as much of a loudmouth as he was as a teenager- his son neatly filling that role instead, but his sense of sarcasm has doubled. He still fights in the hopes of achieving peace, but the reality of history has set in, no longer naively believing they can change the course of human nature. Restless and unable to adapt to civilian life, he’s taken up a list of vices including picking up women, drinking, and gambling, and laments distantly how he’s screwed up with Hilde as well as with raising his son. As his time in the City was incredibly rough on him, this self-reflection of being a screwup would only increase once he regains those memories. Being in the City made him far more paranoid than usual of the information he allowed to let slip, and he trusts far less readily- although he doesn’t wear this wariness on his sleeve. After all, he much prefers to talk information out of others than give it himself.



POWER:
”Active Cloak System”: Identical to his powers when he was in The City, Duo’s ability is stealth cloaking a la his Gundam Deathscythe Hell, which gives him the trifold of invisibility, inaudibility, and scentlessness. He can spread the effects of his powers to other objects/people through direct contact. It works on a physical level rather than an illusion, and as a result of this, his powers still work against those who can see through illusions and cameras. He can still be detected with heat-sensing or pressure-sensitive technology, and for example his movement still causes perfectly detectable air currents. He can also still be detected through passive telepathic or empathic means. The transformation is triggered by an impulse sent from the brain, so detached limbs/blood spilled outside the body would not cloak. However, the process spreads to other people as an illusion- thus they are not given the same protection as Duo himself from cameras and those with illusory blocking. Because the entire process is caused as a conscious command triggered by the brain, if the nervous system’s commands to the body are disrupted somehow, his powers are also disrupted.

In order to spread his powers to other subjects, he needs to make a conscious decision to cloak them. Because it's an illusion, it takes some concentration for him to project. The larger/more complex the object, the more concentration it takes him. He's pretty much fine with cloaking humans no problem, but a large object (like a mobile suit) he can only cloak for a few seconds before he overextends himself.

Back in C&C, Duo mentally trained himself to have his powers to be in a constant state of use- that is, instead of causing a command for his powers to activate, he instead trained himself to trigger a command for them to deactivate to whomever he chooses, so that he wouldn’t be caught unawares. In addition to this, he practiced holding up his endurance with regards to extending his cloaking to large objects, and was able to extend it to the point that he could cloak his mobile suit for up to 10 seconds.



FINAL NOTES: While Duo/Father Maxwell has no superpowers in canon, he has plenty of skills: He’s one of the 5 original Gundam Pilots, meaning in addition to excellent general soldier skills (firearms knowledge/skill, combat instinct), he also has highly specialized skills in stealth infiltration, intelligence gathering, hacking and machinery, as well as being one of the best mobile suit pilots alive. In terms of piloting alone, Heero Yuy even says in Endless Waltz that Duo exceeds him, (in turn, Father Maxwell later says that his son has exceeded himself). Although Duo has rapidly physically aged by Frozen Teardrop and is no longer in the peak shape to get tossed around like he did as a Gundam pilot, he still works as a bounty hunter, and is shown to retain peak gunslinging and piloting/driving skills, as well as sharp political and military instinct and crisis management. Of note while within the City, Duo also learned to pilot and work mechanically with Marvel-616 O*N*E Sentinels, which he and his canonmates captured and refitted to operate like mobile suits.