Malcolm McKinney

Concept

Profile

Vital Statistics

FULL NAME: Malcolm Walker McKinney.
AFFILIATION: Shusai
AGE/DOB: 31. October 26^th, 2043.
GENDER: Male.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.
OCCUPATION: Police detective. Ex-Captain in the military.
THEME SONG: Stop and Stare by OneRepublic.
RESIDENCE: Malcolm lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Wyngate. The decoration in his apartment is plain and in touch with the times—in fact, his place looks more like a magazine advertisement than someone's home. It definitely doesn't look like a bachelor's home, save for in his bedroom, which tends to be messy and generally in disarray. Luckily, he's about the only person who ever sees it.

Appearance

HEIGHT: 6’3”.
WARDROBE: Generally, most people see him in a suit for work. Not a very expensive one, either. Occasionally he'll be seen in a more traditional police uniform, but that's rare; he earned the right not to wear a uniform after a few years in the military. When off the clock, he wears the current casual styles. Nothing adventurous.
MISCELLANEOUS: He has a tattoo of an arrowhead on his left shoulderblade.
PB: Ryan Reynolds.

Personality

PERSONALITY: If one were looking for the model Shusai citizen, they could find it in Malcolm McKinney. Malcolm is a man who has built his entire life around society’s rules. From a very young age, society’s moral compass was drilled into his mind. He obeys the letter of the law, not just the spirit—and as such, he’s incredibly pent-up. On the surface, he appears very one-note; so indoctrinated with the Shusai morals that there’s nothing else to him. But that isn’t exactly the case.
…..Most people know him as the good guy. In fact, he’s so good that it’s almost unrealistic. He’ll always do what is right and proper, no matter what his feelings on the issue. If someone comes to him with a problem, you can guarantee that the answer he gives will perfectly aligned with that of the Shusai Corp. He’s always pleasant in conversation, never touching on subjects that would be verboten. If what he wants—say, his interest in a woman—contrasts with moral expectations, those will always come before his own desires. He has an unwarranted amount of trust in the establishment, as a product of the way he was raised.
…..In fact, it would be easy to say that he has no independent thoughts at all, but that’s untrue. He does, in fact, sometimes wonder about the validity of certain rules, particularly those involving the behavior of women. Although he’d never say it out loud, he does sometimes ask himself why women are expected to be so subservient to men, when he has known several women whose intelligence matched his own. But he, of all people, should know what happens when you question the government; he enforces those codes. So any thoughts or objections he might have are kept carefully under wraps, and it would take a great amount of prompting (and trust) for him to admit to any of it.
…..Because he is so pent-up and concerned with the image that he’s expected to keep, Malcolm’s temper is kept carefully locked up as well. As such, it’s not unusual to find him using unnecessary force when he deals with suspects—and it’s not as though anyone bothers to call him on it. He’s especially harsh on suspected rebels. He sees them as worthless scum that don’t appreciate what the government has given them—and the way he lost his fiancée their ideals doesn’t help. There’s no one in his life that he wouldn’t hesitate to turn in, if they showed themselves to be sympathetic to the revolution.
…..In terms of relationships, there’s very little interest left for him in actually pursuing one. The setup of society doesn’t easily allow true affection to grow before marriage, and he has decided that the risks of an uninformed union far outweigh the benefits. The setup he has currently with Johanna suits him perfectly. He’s not mourning the loss of the relationships that could have been, really. While he does feel some regret, he has himself nearly convinced that he didn’t know enough about either woman to warrant any kind of upset over the loss—but the truth is, he’s incredibly bitter over both losses. Were he to encounter either woman again, that carefully-restrained temper would rear its head.
…..There’s an incredibly different side to him when he’s angry. He can be downright cruel in instances, and while he might later regret it, he has not yet found reason to apologize. He shuts down when he’s pissed off, and no amount of prodding will open him up again. He needs time to himself to cool down before he’s able to display his customary calm. While he may see to be the perfect Shusai gentleman, it’s not as simple as that—but very few people will ever know.

History

NPCs/FAMILY MEMBERS: Joseph McKinney (Deceased) — Father, 82 at time of death. Passed away shortly after Malcolm joined the police force. He was always a strict disciplinarian, and while he and Malcolm were never particularly close, he always looked up to his father.
Mathilda McKinney (Retired) — Mother, 83 and currently in a retirement home. Mathilda is suffering from severe Alzheimer's, and while Malcolm still visits her, she doesn't know who he is. It's particularly depressing for him, since he and his mother were always close when he was young. He spends every holiday with her.
Sophie Foster — 27, location currently unknown. Malcolm's former fiancée, who he turned in when she showed inclinations of turning toward the Rebels.
Johanna Smith — 34, widow who lives in Malcolm's building. The two sleep together occasionally, as a sort of convenience to both. He has also been known to look after her two children as a favor.
HISTORY: For years after he was born, Mathilda McKinney would call her only child her “miracle”. After thirty years of trying, at the surprising age of fifty-two—and with a husband of sixty—Mathilda managed to conceive and deliver a healthy baby boy. They were an oddity in a neighborhood filled with empty-nesters of their own generation, and new parents of the next, but they managed. Joseph’s job as a high-profile psychologist both paid the bills and gave the family some prestige, while Mathilda stayed at home to take care of Malcolm.
…..Growing up, his life wasn’t much different than any other child in his position. He was well provided for, and was in a position to have an excellent education with the promise of a good future. Even as a youngster, he displayed a remarkable amount of restraint in adult company. He learned early—probably thanks to a few very painful spankings—that rules were to be obeyed without exception. If there were ever any marital problems in the McKinney household, they were kept behind closed doors. Mathilda and Joseph kept their son very sheltered, and it would be years before a few beatings at the Academy would teach him that the suburban lifestyle didn’t apply to the rest of the world.
…..For the most part, he spent his time with boys of his own age, playing games of war and boasting about his own strength. They wrestled, but it was the wrestling of boys that had to go home and the end of the day and explain to their mothers just why their best Sunday clothes were in tatters. It almost never got out of hand. As a youth, most of his interaction with girls was at friendly neighborhood dinners. There was one girl in particular—the daughter of a family that both his father and mother greatly liked—that caught his eye. She was his first crush, and as such, he avoided speaking to her at all costs.
…..Surprisingly enough, his crush didn’t fade. Maybe it was a lack of females in his life, or maybe it was something in the values he’d been raised with—but either way, by the time he left for the Academy, his interest in her hadn’t diminished. He’d even reached the point where he could hold a conversation with her without tripping over his tongue in the process. Yes, things were looking quite promising.
…..School was a quick dose of reality after life in the suburbs. His parents thought it would be good for their son to serve in the military for a short time before he eventually went to college. For the first year, Malcolm was the subject of repeatedly cruel treatment at the hands of his older peers. He wasn’t that strong, coming in, and he learned the hard way that weakness wasn’t tolerated at his new school. But after the misery of his first year, he learned his lesson; he worked harder, until he was one of the ones helping to weed out the weaklings from the first years. Perhaps even more important than strength, however, he learned to obey the Shusai doctrine unquestioningly—and he learned it well.
…..In his summers at home, he attempted to woo the neighbor girl with all the awkwardness of a teenager who hadn’t the first clue how to win the hand of a pretty girl. While he may have toughened up physically, he was still naïve in many respects—namely, in the way that he’d send gifts as a “secret admirer”, only to have other suitors take the credit. But Malcolm always learned from his mistakes. The last summer in particular, he thought he had a real shot.. and then school started up again, and he went straight from being a cadet to being a recruit. He had no summer break, and the neighbor girl returned to school before he could see her again.
…..Shortly after finishing the Advanced Individual Training, he shipped off to the Middle East to a Shusai base near a company controlled oil line. The area was rough, and the presence of the controlling Shushai Corp. wasn’t appreciated by the country’s residents. Aside from technological advances, the area hadn’t changed much. Politics were still tumultuous, tensions still ran high, and skirmishes were frequent. He spent several years overseas, serving more than one tour and eventually reaching the rank of Captain before he returned to the City.
…..He’d returned with a specific thought in mind—to propose to the girl that he’d been interested in for so long before returning to duty. However, things didn’t go as planned. He wasn’t her only suitor, and in what probably should have been an obvious turn of events, she chose the other man. For Malcolm, it was completely unexpected. He knew himself to be handsome, educated, and nearly guaranteed to keep rising in rank in the military. While he wasn’t exactly cocky, he knew that, logically, he wasn’t a bad choice. He had a future. But apparently, the future of his rival was brighter.
…..After that failure, he failed to return to military duty as well. He resigned his commission and left active duty, taking a position on the police force instead. While less prestigious, it suited his tastes for remaining on his home soil, and accommodated his diminishing ambition. With no beautiful girl to impress, and parents who were already disappointed in his failure to ensnare the woman he’d informed them so certainly that he was going to marry, he didn’t feel the need to fight.
…..For several years after that, his life remained in stasis. He worked a regular beat, ate at the same place every day, and retired to bed at the same time every night. Every week he’d go out one night for a quiet drink with the guys at a local bar-slash-restaurant. The routine was simple, satisfying, and above all, the life of a model Shusai citizen. All he lacked was a wife, and while he showed no inclination to find one, one found him all the same.
…..It was Sophie’s first night waitressing at the bar when Malcolm showed up with his fellow officers. While it wasn’t what you’d call love at first sight, she was the last thought on his mind before he went to bed that night, and remained so over the following weeks. Eventually, he started frequenting the place on nights other than the guys’ night out—nights he knew that Sophie was working. Visiting led to dating, which finally led to Malcolm on one knee at a fancy restaurant, with a ring too large for his still-budding affections.
She said yes.
…..They set a date six months from the proposal. His parents were thrilled; at twenty-six, their son was finally getting married. Malcolm wasn’t sure what he felt about it—he certainly cared about Sophie, but the wedding date wasn’t exactly a point of excitement for him. His affection for her was, he assumed, something that would grow with time. More importantly, this was what was expected of him. That was what truly mattered.
…..It likely should have been an indication that something was amiss when Sophie made the radical suggestion that they forgo waiting for the wedding night and sleep together. They were, after all, married in all but fact. While it did strike a few warning bells and certainly wasn’t what he was supposed to do, he was still male, and a virgin. Sex with his wife-to-be didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. So they did it. More than once, in fact (which was certainly not a bad thing, considering his less-than stellar performance their first go at it).
…..The wedding never happened. Several months into their engagement, Malcolm stumbled across some information that—while it failed to directly incriminate Sophie—made it fairly apparent that her loyalties didn’t entirely lie with the Shusai Corp. He confronted her about it, and she admitted that she was toying with the ideas of the Revolution. He ended the engagement right then and there, citing irreconcilable difficulties to family and friends. Quietly, he reported Sophie as someone who possibly needed to be reeducated in the proper values of their society. He didn’t see her again after that, though he doubts she suffered a fate any worse than a stint in jail.
…..Oddly enough, this incident helped to renew his ambition. He wanted off of the streets, so he worked his way up to the position of police detective. His ambition for marriage, however, had faded. After two failed attempts at finding a wife, Malcolm had all but given up. Instead, he settled into a routine in his new position. When he’s feeling the need to “relieve some stress”, he turns to a widow who lives in his building. Morality dictates that he can’t sleep with an unmarried woman, nor can he sleep with a married one—so Johanna has become the perfect solution. She’s about the only excitement in his life, which is dictated so entirely by the Shusai’s vision of the world that he has forgotten to question it.

Relationships

Proposed to (and was rejected by) Lainey Monroe.
Formerly engaged to Sophie Foster.
In a convenient sexual relationship with Johanna Smith.