Johnny Zhanshi

Man in Gray
Outpost LA0999
New World Order
Kitakai Overwatch

Description

~Mix black and white and you get gray. Standing taller than most Chinese men, "Johnny" epitomizes that color fact. Lean and keen like a hawk, Johnny wears that off-the-rack Haggar suit fairly well. The gray slacks end in black, well-polished leather shoes. His matching jacket is clasped around a black button-up shirt -- no tie. Johnny's ink-black hair reveals a few gray ends; this mop is kept fairly short on his head. Loose bangs occasionally drift in front of deep-brown eyes. His gaze surveys the area with silent appraisal. His thin lips often embrace a long cigarette. The trail of smoke seems to help conceal the 30ish man behind an even expression and plain features. Mix black and white and you get Johnny.~

OOC: Appearance 2; Cloaking 3



"The war for reality isn't fought on the Front Lines or in the debate halls of Symposiums. It's fought within the ranks of the enemies themselves. We are the Men in Gray: disseminate, deceive, deliver."

History


Youth

"Life isn't black and white", people said, "It's a mix of gray areas." And then they enforced core values like truth, justice, compassion, patience, and confidence. These virtues were drilled into Zhanshi Chon from youth. His parents were traditional Chinese folk when it came to morality. Chon's mother stayed at home to care for the only son of the family. His father served in the Chinese military, a mid-ranked officer stationed in Beijing. Chon's father also encouraged social responsibility. Chon learned to be a patriot and to respect the government. Chon learned to think fairly but courageously, to judge people based on what he knew to be truth, not assumption.

Of course, Chon attended public school. His grades stayed passable throughout his academic career. However, the boy participated in all sorts of extracurricular activities. He played football (soccer), ran experiments in the science club, and served as an officer in the school government (usually the sergeant-at-arms, but he occasionally made president). In his final years, he took optional psychology courses. Finally, Chon found his calling, his academic talent. He excelled in the class as genuine interest propelled his study.

Enlightenment & Training

Then Chon was ready to graduate and move on with his life. Through psychology, he developed a keen interest in how and why people behaved the ways they did. Still, he wanted to follow his father's footsteps and join the People's Army. His grades were just good enough to warrant him for military intelligence. In the summer before his recruitment, however, Chon turned his psychological interests on people around him. Chon tested theories on friends, family, and even strangers. He left money or wallets out to see if people would pick them up and keep them. At one point, a stranger aimed to make off with his wallet full of cash. Chon stepped forward to claim the wallet. So paranoid was the thief that he gave the wallet back, terrified that he had been watched purposely. Over the course of the next months, Chon continued such socialistic experiments. And many more times, Chon witnessed people react with fear and guilt. By the end of the summer, Chon came to a terrible and enlightening realization. The people he affected weren't just reacting to the event based on their natural psychological reactions. His moral behaviorism was instigating those reactions! He was provoking and instigating those feelings and him alone. Chon knew that that he could direct the same effects over and over. But he didn't tell anyone how much of a psychological manipulator he became. He went on with his plans to join the army and MI.

During training, Chon made squad leader and the drill sergeants' best friend. He dreamed up more ways to pragmatically apply moral socialism to his fellow man. Cadets and officers alike were subtly directed to keep basic training smooth and easy (at least on Chon!). The only real issue Chon developed while in training was a bad habit of smoking cigarettes. Everyone in basic smoked and he couldn't escape it. But otherwise, Chon was manipulating the crowd.

After training, however, his recently Enlightened state was recognized. The New World Order was well aware of his social prowess. He was drawn from MI studies directly into the Union. He learned that the NWO and Technocracy overall was the agency behind the agency - the true and global government. Directed by Enlightened Scientists like him, the Union was Big Brother to the whole world. To help shift his Communist loyalties to the Technocracy, Chon was put through the indoctrination of Room 101. There he underwent psychological exams and tests in an academic cubbyhole. All were under the illusion that his knowledge was being tested. But they actually forced his choices on the test to accept the Union's perspectives and visions. He realized through that test that by working for the Union, he was working for all of mankind and not just China.

So with that initial conditioning installed, Chon's formal training began. For the next nine months, Chon spent his life under the watchful hand of Supervisor Fu Wei. His combat training was improved for starters. He learned more urban tactics especially. He studied modern investigative techniques. And he began to learn formal Procedures that adapted his scientific knowledge of psychology and physics.

MiB: The Early Years

Then in 1989, Supervisor Fu sent Chon on the young agent's first mission. Tianemem Square, he learned, was the site for a major demonstration of students. He needed to go there quickly and determine the source of this civil trouble. Chon went and interviewed several students right before the main march. He learned of their hunger for freedom and knew it was especially due to the wants of their educated minds. The crisis was suddenly upon them all as the students took to the streets - and the Red Army met them. He ran from his hotel to watch in horror as tanks ran the People down. In vain, he tried to rescue a young woman nearby before she was crushed. But a soldier struck him with a rifle and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

With all of those Beneficiaries' deaths, Chon couldn't help but question the Union's humanity. He posed his doubt to Fu Wei. The Supervisor calmly reassured him that the Union didn't have total Control over the governments of the world. They were slowly exerting greater influence, sure. But such tragedies would always occur until total Control was obtained. Chon seemed dubious, so Fu suggested that he write an essay on how he would have either prevented or resolved the matter of Tianemem Square. Chon wrote a long document on how he would have resolved the crisis. Having dealt with the People involved, Chon was aware of their resolve. Prevention was an impractical option. He would have issued orders to the soldiers through their commanders, altering their mentalities through his moral behaviorist techniques, in order to maintain a cease-fire at all costs.

Chon's written response is how the Convention determined his Methodology. Fu Wei welcomed Chon to the Operatives. He was to don the uniform of the Men in Black. Chon was assigned to an amalgam of four other "lesser" MiBs. Chon learned that through advanced biology, they were sentient constructs - clones. He ran the unit, keeping a wary eye on the constructs known to have "problems" related to their artificial origins. Together, Chon and his comrades policed the "hard streets" of Beijing. Chon and his fellows dealt with criminals, trigger-happy military police, and unruly citizens.

Then in 1992, Chon's amalgam encountered and was directed to deal with a new and violent tong. The Blazing Leopards trafficked in slavery, pornography, and drugs - true slime. To make matters worse, the head of this tong was one of the so-called Wan Kuei. Vampires in superstitious parlance, Chon knew them as Reality Deviants whose very existence and practices threatened the safety of the world and the progress of mankind. So Chon timed his amalgam's intervention to arrive during a deal with other gangsters from Shanghai. Wearing military riot gear (so as to be indistinguishable from Sleeper enforcement agencies), Chon and his team raided the huge warehouse. A huge gunfight ensued, machine guns blazing all over the place. Chon's training and instinct overwhelmed all sense of self-preservation. Many tong soldiers fell to his weapons. Two of his teammates also perished that night, their bodies dissolving instantly. Perhaps it was their unnatural demises that spooked the vampire. Chon raced after the RD through the streets by car. The high-speed chase ended with a wrong turn into an alley wall. Chon rushed after the vampire before it could escape by hopping completely over the high wall. He grabbed the edge of a small barrel of crude oil. Employing his trainer's lessons of stance and centrifugal force, he hurtled the heavy object into the vampire's back before it got more than a few feet off the ground. The RD crashed to the ground, half-drowned in the waste fluid. Before it could counter-attack, Chon lit a match and tossed it at the vampire's feet. The rest was barbecue. Chon returned to the warehouse to help his remaining comrades clean up the tongs.

Witnessing the carnage left behind, Chon was hit with another flash of insight. The nature of raw force was clear to Chon: as unavoidable as it must be, such brutality only disturbed the ultimate goal of security and peace. He knew in the future that enforcement-related tasks should not be for the goal of victory, but pacification. Nevertheless, Chon earned a reputation as a real "hard-boiled" agent back at his Construct headquarters. For the next few years, Chon and his amalgam saw a great share of violence. It was as if the Men in White were purposely assigning the "hard-boiled" MiBs to such missions.

But finally came an opportunity for Chon to demonstrate his quality as more than a mere soldier. A corrupt Associate of the Syndicate, Fien Hu, picked up with his Triad ties where the Blazing Leopards left off five years ago. Working alone, Chon met with Fien under the guise of a disenchanted agent. Though suspicious, Fien's pride encouraged him to attempt Adjustments to insure Chon's genuine interest. Chon played along very well, pretending to be affected by Fien's Adjustments. Within an hour of their meeting, Fien trusted Chon's compliance enough -- right until Chon put a bullet in the mobster's back. The suppressed pistol was not noisy, but by pure luck a Triad guard walked in on Chon's smoking gun. The MiB was forced to shoot his way out of the wealthy estate's compound.

MiG: First Assignment

Still, his assassination of Fien Hu was recorded by Chon's well-hidden micro-bug. The clever ruse was slick and Man in Gray-style. So his peers and then superiors recommended him for a promotion to that class. In 1998, Chon began special training for infiltration and persuasion. He learned how to pose as a traitorous "mage", an Enlightenment man who relied on antiquated methods and was therefore a Reality Deviant. So Chon trained harder at the martial arts since so many Chinese mages specialized in it as part of their "magick".

Chon's first assignment as Man in Gray was to discover a chantry of several old banner Wu Lung mages. A school of Tiger style kung fu was suspected to be one of their fronts. Chon was instructed to pose as an Akashic Brother, a more fractious lot. Relations between the Wu Lung and Akashic Brotherhood were believed strained but it was still Chon's best and most feasible bet. Chon approached the prestigious school as a prospective student, or at least a colleague of the martial arts. The sifu, Shashi Lu Bao, was as standoffish as Chon expected. He disarmed Shashi by admitting humility and Tiger School superiority to his own martial arts, which Akashic Brothers just called Do. He wanted to learn the Wu Lung way. Shashi sent him away but did confer with his elders. A week later when Chon returned, he was admitted on a probationary level. As he began to train in that kwoon, Shashi subtly performed his magickal auguries. But Chon was prepared for a background check. He had a psychological profile completely defined on paper and more importantly ingrained in his own psyche. This fooled all forms of mystical evaluation with its complete nature.

But this infiltration was no easy task. Even when Chon's background check proved him harmless, a lot of mistrust continued to fly. But Chon was a patient Operative. Over time, he befriended Shashi as one of his most faithful students. Chon didn't see many other Wu Lung come through the school. It appeared to be geared to the public only. He discussed Shashi's motivations for running the kwoon. The Wu Lung replied that he just liked to share the self-improving benefits of the martial arts with his fellow man. Chon was rather shocked. He honestly believed it was just a way for the Wu Lung to weasel their obsolete beliefs into the Masses and make money off of it, too. But Shashi had a genuine and humane purpose. This doubt, however, only helped Chon seem to grow closer to the Deviant (as Control likely observed).

Finally, the day came that Shashi invited Chon to his chantry where other Wu Lung studied. There he met other Wu Lung en masse. He engaged in a long group discussion with them all. Apparently, the talk was to share philosophy and related beliefs. But his friendship with Shashi was put aside as he took this time to evaluate the gathered mages. Chon searched for signs that these Wu Lung were as humane as the honorable and noble Shashi. And he found that a few, especially the two young women of the Phoenix School of healing arts, were. But most, he realized, were as bad as his Supervisors said. They were selfish, greedy, obtuse, and dangerous due to the dealings they entertained with "spirit" entities.

So a four year long undercover mission finally yielded concrete results. Chon took his data back to headquarters that same day. He knew he had to get out of that chantry before its wise and old masters penetrated his deception. Chon reported to his Supervisor about the chantry's location, architecture, and defenses. He also reported on which mages should be captured and suborned instead of terminated. Shashi was of course the primary target for capture. His Supervisor agreed with all of Chon's findings and authorized the assault mission. A show of great force was planned to force submission.

Unfortunately, someone in the local NWO must have owed the local Iteration X a favor. They spoiled Chon's hard-earned data and the Iterators went on the warpath before the MiB were assembled. When the agents arrived, the chantry had already been burnt down. Many Wu Lung were slain but several escaped. Chon was relieved to learned that Shashi avoided this undeserved and brutal fate. And Chon was quite outraged by this other Convention's actions. But there was nothing that could be done. Chon was dismayed but his Supervisor reassured him he wouldn't take the blame for that cluster-fuck. It was all Iteration X's fault, along with someone in the NWO having loose lips. An investigation was underway. Chon was invited to participate and aid the investigation. He knew that this would be an opportunity to pave his way to a promotion to the Men in White. But he felt sick at the idea of fueling his ambition with the carcasses of the dead. Especially dead people that could have been much better alive (after reeducation).

Project: Twin Dragons

So Chon went on a brief vacation. He relaxed at his apartment home awhile, going out now and then for old-fashioned fun. That must have been how Shashi Lu Bao found him. One night when he was half-drunk, he entered his house to find the Wu Lung waiting. He was accused of betraying his friend. Chon tried right there to persuade Shashi to join the Union. Shashi scoffed and suggested that only a duel would settle it. If Shashi won, Chon had to quit the Technocracy. If Chon won, Shashi would join it. But Chon knew the odds were against him. He pleaded with the Wu Lung to reconsider. But Shashi attacked -- so Chon shot him three times. As Shashi died, he accused Chon of being a true Technocrat. And Chon in turn called him a true Wu Lung. He said it without venom or sarcasm, however, revealing his respect. It was not respect for the Wu Lung, but Shashi himself and the man's fierce loyalty to family.

Of course, after that episode, Beijing's Symposium decided Chon's safety was compromised. And they offered Chon a new mission abroad. It was entitled Project: Twin Dragons. It required Chon to go to the USA. The Chinese Union wanted to observe the Zaibatsu (Japanese Technocracy) and its representative amalgam's activities in Kansas City's Little Asia district. The Chinese Union just wanted someone to keep an eye on this Kitakai amalgam. And they also wanted one of their own to observe the local Reality Deviants and collect data.

So Chon spent the next six months "on vacation". Of course, that meant he had to hole up in the Construct's basement. He studied hard at English and learned all he could of genuine American culture, not just what he saw in the movies. Finally, in 2004 he transferred to the Dispatch Center LA-0999. He was assigned another squad of four MiB constructs. Chon anglicized his name to "John" or "Johnny" (taking the idea from the Jackie Chan movie Shanghai Noon). He posed to the Masses as a security agent of the People's Republic of China, with diplomatic license, while he posed to the other Technocrats of the outpost as just another Man in Black. He was actually a Man in Gray, but he was determinedly focused on his beliefs and goals. Because despite his experiences, Chon knew life really was only black and white. You just have to know where to draw the line.

Weakness
In the Heat


While typically a very rational human being, Johnny finds himself occasionally getting carried away with the passion of his sentiments for the Union's crusade. How can he hope to control others if he cannot completely control himself?

Likelihood of Corruption


Average.

Johnny is morally staunch. However, his duties place him in dangerous situations of confusion and temptation.

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