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succore · 1 year ago

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⊠ ɪᴅ . . . ʟᴏᴀᴅɪɴɢ ›› mercy headquarters is pleased to officially introduce SOCORRO QUISPE. they have been a part of the organization for twenty years, serving as A BIOMEDICAL agent and has been assigned the codename AGENT GAUZE. it's worth noting that their file indicates they have undergone the solaris treatment and host ENHANCED SPEED. according to our dossier, the agent exhibits a combination of GREGARIOUS and REFRACTORY traits, fitting for someone reminiscent of hawkeye pierce – life, liberty, and pursuit of happy hour. prior to embarking on any mission, they find solace in listening to the song “johnny b. goode“ by CHUCK BERRY.

FULL NAME. socorro ross quispe.

NICKNAMES + ALIASES. agent gauze. doctor quips. rock ‘em sock ‘em.

AGE. sixty. not feeling like it. very much not acting like it.

DATE OF BIRTH. 4 july 1989. the fireworks are always for him, thank you very much.

PLACE OF BIRTH. arequipa, peru.

PRESENT RESIDENCE. apex city, washington, the good ol’ u.s. of a.

GENDER. cis man.

PRONOUNS. he + him.

ORIENTATION. bisexual.

MARITAL STATUS. divorced.

EDUCATION. graduated from a great university with an avalanche of accolades (a biomedical engineering phd being his first) and a server-squashing amount of voicemails relating to affairs marital and/or martial.

OCCUPATION. biomedical agent for the mercy organisation.

NOTABLE FEATURES. a set of alcohol-stained teeth stiffened into a smirk. windswept hair greying at the temples. dark eyes that never find what they’re looking for. sneakers almost as bruised and battered as their owner. a rope necklace with his name written on in pink crayon. he retouches the text daily at 9am and 9pm sharp.

FACECLAIM. benjamin bratt.

+ TRAITS. conscientious + dutiful + intelligent + passionate + pacifistic.

- TRAITS. argumentative + blunt + egotistical + neurotic + obsessive.

LIKES. animals + beaches + cheap beer + deadlines + rock music.

DISLIKES. cars + combat sports + doctors + holidays + winter.

HOBBIES. coin collecting + crosswords + needlepoint + sidewalk chalk art + overly competitive jogging.

MBTI. entp-t.

MORAL ALIGNMENT. chaotic good. at least, that’s what he wants to believe. closer to chaotic neutral.

FATHER. santiago quispe guerrero. a small-town pediatrician whose overprotective nature made him a terrible match for a family of martyrs. died in 2040 at age 82 of shock and awe about certain mercy-related developments.

MOTHER. angela ross. retired photographer. any doomscroller worth their earth salt has seen her series on the 2007 peru earthquake. currently resides in an upstate nursing home where she lays waste to fellow widows in psychological warfare/sunday night bingo using her cutthroat casino tactics and her son’s choice in career.

SISTER. america quispe. an ironically named activist and journalist who would’ve despised her baby brother’s job had the genetic lottery rolled her half as much brain as she did heart. died in 2003 at age 22 of abstruse causes socorro has attributed to his own adolescent cowardice.

EX-WIFE. [redacted]. another woman he disappointed. another coworker he exploited. another love of his life lost to mercy in every manner that matters.

CHILD. he and [redacted] never could decide on a name. they’re old enough to be a junior agent now, though socorro’s done everything he can to stop that from happening, between making

A BRIEF HISTORY. warnings: adultery, alcohol, death, and divorce.

there’s an art to running that most folk don’t figure out until they’re running out of time, blood and bones and flesh full of rotting regrets reaching out for hands that aren’t there, facing the rest of forever by their lonesome on hospice beds that’d be softer had the mayor approved of replacing the mattresses with slabs of concrete. socorro quispe isn’t most folk. he’s been running stitches since the doctors at a clinic that was half debris and half distinguished medical professionals sewed his poor mother’s stomach back into one and a half and running in stitches since his sister taught him how to pick the lock splitting the measured-in-square-inches nursery room. the siblings, after all, were treated like strays by the rest of the family, like scraggly, parasitic denizens of their ancestral palace in arequipa tolerated only for a waning obedience to the elders. olive branches quickly snapped into backhanded scourges as cousins challenged them to climb that volcano, to retrieve that toy, to knock on that neighbour’s door. that volcano would take its cue, coughing out phreatic poisons, confining socorro to bed just in time for the school fair. that toy would be an appendage of violence terribly inappropriate to be caught with right after sunday mass, stuck in territory belonging to their cousins’ tormentors. that neighbour would be an irate fisherman with endangered itching to find new apprentices. so socorro learned how to run from his parents.

it was strange, that how they met was the one topic his mother never breached. his father was reticent from the start, hunched over his rubber mallets and patient reports as though his life was tethered to those he’d met mere seconds ago to assess whether they were healthy or healthier. before, the ever-odious offspring had assumed the rollicking renegade of the cathedral’s shame wall had been killed by expeditions to the distant wilderness to treat now socorro hypothesises it was some fear that sensitivity was contagious on an airborne level rather than a genetic one. his career day stories were ones of turning curtains into splints in the industrial bowels of a chinese province and cracking dislocated joints out the rocks of kilimanjaro, so permission from his wife to lull their little boy to sleep was scarcely appointed. if there had been a goddess of hypocrites, though, she’d blessed mrs quispe from birth. socorro was made to memorise lullabies about doomsday 2000 and other events of mass hysteria by his mother so he’d be prepared for anything.

why? because he needed to be prepared for anything.

why? because he needed to protect his sister.

why? because his parents wouldn’t always be around to protect them.

why? because his parents weren’t prepared to have him.

doctor quispe was a man of means, for any medicine dispensers with degrees to back such claims to life were rare in the region, never mind them being handsome, kind, and young. it was routine for parents of his patients to keep their home first aid kits fully empty so they might see mister santiago again, with his sickly tempting sense of style outside the office and sumptuous collection of memories spanning continents. little did they know that one such memory, situated in the recesses of the 80s recession after a sordid interview, had cast him in the leading role of renowned photojournalist angela ross’s life. he didn’t know that, either. therefore, he was content to serve his procreational purpose and marry that irate fisherman’s even crabbier daughter, to father a girl named after the nation he dreamed of returning to every night. angela still visited, though, when her publication company allowed her holidays, and most of her visits ended with the not-so-good doctor paying a hefty sum to the good laundromat. their supposed final meeting was followed not a month later by angela announcing that she’d be moving to peru to raise her child. their child, as he was informed during his daughter’s eighth birthday party. the fisherman’s daughter disappeared and everything was broken water under the bridge.

so socorro learned how to run from his parents. uncovering this information in the cookbooks of his senile grandmother was an experience, to say the least, and from then on it seemed the sun was always beckoning him towards a greater power, towards a greater purpose, towards the prospect of being better than everyone. morals-wise, muscles-wise, who minded the difference? having a half-and-half chance of accuracy in answering questions from teachers or relatives made him a better actor. spitting on the shoes of his asthma diagnosis and lacing up for football team tryouts made him a better sportsman. kicking the ball off the court to figure if he’d broken another player’s knee made him a better doctor. not that anyone ever acknowledged this betterment. the maelstrom within him looked like a light breeze to the rest of civilisation, for expecting recognition as an average sweat-slicked schoolboy who played football and wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps when it came to selecting a future trade was like expecting recognition as a speck of dust in the atmosphere.

better not dwell on the past or the future, young man, as america brought change. literally, as her admission to an ivy league on a full-ride scholarship was a welcome excuse to move into an apartment owned by angela’s parents in the heart of washington. the siblings, formerly locked at the hip, flourished into independence of a sort. while america studied writing as a weapon against empires built on battles they hadn’t fought, socorro studied speaking as a weapon against lives he hadn’t lived. no longer was he a confused jumble of limbs and unrewarded justice-seeking; he was the sole survivor of an earthquake at his old school, he was the documenter of the new decade’s first hurricane in his hometown, he was socrates’s namesake, he was the youngest person to learn cpr, he was annoying as all hell and he was loved by peers at last. before he’d looked to america for instructions when it came to even the easiest tasks. now he looked to her as a leech would lick its six lips upon seeing its next meal. before he was licking wounds that weren’t even his, sympathetic to a fault so large it could’ve cracked wide open into a canyon. now he was apex predator to the concrete jungle, a swaggering raconteur reselling his mother’s articles as his autobiography. the confidence did wonders for his grades, as did the copying of formulae and factoids inscribed into the bottom of his water bottles. four years after the fact he’d graduated to vandalism (and providing his friends with masks when they wanted to make more elaborate art, because it’s safe and responsible crime for them, thank you very much) and relished in the momentary notice he got from his parents, from the police. a slap on the back was schrodinger’s cat–admonishment or applause.

america, meanwhile, began and ended her history with local law enforcement after inviting her pathetic angel of a baby brother to assist in. it seemed logical, given that one of them had inherited their father’s surgical precision while the other had inherited her mother’s premature arthritis. it seemed safe, given that it was a peaceful sit-in. it seemed fun, given that all he’d have to do was cut some pieces of cardboard into catchy slogans and mope about acting all mysterious and brooding and applying snatches of his sister’s concealer to some unfortunately arranged acne. it was, as socorro’s very existence was to be forevermore, tortuous and torturous and in dire need of a tourniquet around the neck so as to induce amnesia. a blackout struck the street and the batons came buzzing after. socorro ran, never to see his sister again.

one in the morning, green day shirt stained by crimson slashes, coffee cup crashing on the ground as his parents finally pay attention to what he’s done, he says his last lie: she ran away.

socorro wasn’t the good kid but he was good enough to graduate, good enough to get into college, good enough to become better. he didn’t just clean up his act, okay? he sterilised it, plunged a syringe into his past until it was shriveled up like a tumour. the people at med school made jokes about it, how he probably spray painted an anatomy lesson on the mural a few blocks away when he was younger, and none of them ever found out how close they were to the truth. for once, forging friendships took a back seat in the already-crashed car. what he lacked in natural aptitude he concocted a cocktail worthy of iv bags worldwide with determination. he attended every lecture, annoyed every lecturer, got mistaken for a raccoon by every librarian in the region. using every dollar his sister had saved for his education, he passed the usmle and got accepted into an august honour society soon afterwards. the only way to be worthy to serve the suffering, he found, was to suffer even more.

obviously, the next step was to get married and have a kid. his extensive networking (read: bothering) thrust him into hands-on experience sharpish, and during preludes to plunging his hands into that chest or lackadaisically conducting that lobectomy, he regressed into the conjurer of charisma that had spent all of med school pounding at his heart’s enclosure. at thirty-six his promotion to clinical professor of thoracic surgery cinched the intrigue of a coworker, and at thirty-seven his bachelor status at last became unconfirmed. he wasn’t there for the birth of his child (heart bypass on an octogenarian over being screamed at for not bringing her pickled lucuma? it wasn’t much of a dilemma) but was determined to be better than his father. he wouldn’t be distant, that much was clear. after a life of arbitrary ambition, socorro needed to save people as much as he needed to control them.

an old student of his had the same idea. sort of. they both wanted to help humanity, that was what mattered. they’d approached him after his father’s funeral–never mind moving to peru and wallowing in mediocrity; with the student’s connections and socorro’s medical expertise, they’d never let the solaris drug fall in the wrong hands. he dithered. again he was in the crackling chaos of the protest. could anyone be prepared for such power?

the student defected. the wife divorced. now all socorro has is mercy and dive bars and stopping the heroes of tomorrow from dying. there's not much glory hound in him anymore. bloodhound's more like it.

PLAYLIST.

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

that old student’s mission partner pleek. i am on my knees begging for some not-so-amateur sleuthing content

drinking buddies. he will save you from the wall of shame by filling it up by himself i promise

biomedical agents. bffs or rivals or awkward acquaintances i want it all (but also a sort of beefing with your coworker because you think he should be happy with the pension plan and leave connection would be top tier)

frequent patient. his codename is gauze for a reason and it’s not because he’s boring and doesn’t get greek mythology. forget batman’s utility belt he has a first aid kit in his fanny pack 25/7

a sort of mentor/mentee thing could be fun. beware of many batman beyond bruce/terry parallels because his temper can flip like a coin at the slightest of slights

#mercyorg:intro #tldr hes mr miyagi with 50% less moral fibre

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