Jonathan Sheena
Jonathan Sheena
Seamus' boyfriend, who was there when he was shot. An intern at Decameron, spying for the Mayor's election campaign
In Game
Character Hint
You are Jonathan Sheena, and you are still shaking.
You're a journalism major, and were sent in to intern at Decameron Enterprises a couple of months ago, to spy on them for your current boss, a local political fixer. You wound up making friends with your target, and a few weeks ago found that you were falling for him.
And then, this morning, he went on some kind of rampage, shooting several people in the office before getting shot in the head himself, right in front of you. You don't know what to think, but you're horribly scared that this is somehow your fault. And you can't stop seeing him, disconsolate and terrified, just before his face blew up horribly...
Costuming: office casual. (A little bit of blood spatter on the shirt would be entirely appropriate.)
Character Sheet
(Stop thinking of his face. Stop. Calm. Think of other things.)
You are Jonathan Sheena, and a part of you is quietly terrified that this is all your fault.
You're a senior at Violet City University, majoring in journalism. You've got a knack for the investigative side of things, but it's not easy breaking into the field, so you got curious last year when you met Simon Mercer, a sort of "fixer" who works for various politicians and public figures when they need help. He is currently managing Mayor Ferdinand's campaign for the Senate, and said that he might be able to use someone with your skills. When he called you a couple of months ago and said that he had a job for you, you made him promise that you wouldn't be doing anything too illegal or unethical, and he swore that this was just the opposite: the goal was finding what unsavory acts other people were getting up to. It seemed reasonable, so you agreed.
The job was undercover, sort of -- not that you ever lied about anything, although you can't claim you've been completely honest with everyone. Simon set you up as an intern at Decameron Enterprises, a local engineering company. (He even got the Mayor to make the introduction to Roger Cameron, the CEO, which was pretty neat.) Officially, you've been spending the early summer assisting Samuel Antonino, the Office Manager, a very nice if rather old-fashioned guy. You were afraid it was going to be nothing but scutwork, but it turns out that the Office Manager is a sort of jack-of-all-trades job, doing everything from ordering the coffee to managing the day-to-day payroll, to intervening with IT when something goes horribly wrong.
All of which turns out to be convenient, since your actual job here is to look for any improprieties you can find, especially any historical ones. Decameron was co-founded by Fred Ronit, now a State Representative, who is running for Senate against Mayor Ferdinand. Ronit is your basic Tea Party nutbar, all rah-rah, guns, motherhood (whether you want it or not), no taxes for the rich, the usual -- not exactly your kind of candidate, so you have no problem looking for ways to take him down a peg. He was on Decameron's Board of Directors, and acted as the manager of Sales and Marketing, until he went into politics six years ago. So your main goal has been to look for dirt on him.
After you'd been there a fairly short time, Simon told you to look for anything you could find about an "accident" about fifteen years ago. Talking with Samuel, you gather that Decameron started as a "model rocketry" company -- basically, they made little rockets out of balsawood, in the form of actual spacecraft, that kids would take out into fields and shoot up in the air. (You have friends who do similar things in school, of course, but nowadays it's all about drones and cameras.) But the market for that apparently collapsed in the 90s, and the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy until, in the middle of a hot summer, the company's warehouse burned down, taking all the stock with it. (From the newspaper clips you found, it was apparently one heck of a blaze.)
There were accusations of arson, of course, and the insurance company tried to fight it, but in the end they had no choice but to pay a substantial settlement, which kept the company afloat as it changed directions. The details are all confidential, but it's well-known that the firm went into government contracting, apparently using all that experience with rocketry to get into building stuff for the Defense Department, which was splashing out money like water at the time. It has gradually rebuilt since then, and is once again a fairly substantial player in Violet City.
So -- was it arson?
So far, you haven't found any smoking gun. But a month or so ago, you went poking through the company's books after hours one evening (helping to burnish your image as "the hard-working intern", working after everyone else had gone home) -- fortunately, Jamie Rickie, the company accountant, has lousy password-management practices, and you found him passwords on a sheet of paper in him desk -- and turned up an interesting detail. Starting not long after the fire, Roger Cameron began making regular payments of $5000 a month. He sort of clumsily tried to hide it, but digging through the invoices and such, it was totally obvious that the money was going to somebody named Tagh O'Malley. Which was especially interesting, because one of your co-workers here at the company was Seamus O'Malley.
You told Simon about it, and he instructed you to get closer to Seamus, and see if you could learn more. Which was fine, because you were already falling into his circle anyway, and this just gave you an official excuse to think about schmoozing at work as you real job.
This particular circle apparently dates back to last year, when Roger Cameron decided to hire a bunch of young engineers in order to "rejuvenate" the company. (And get cheaper labor.) He hired a bunch of people right out of college, so they're all just a bit older than you. Seamus was one of them, doing some kind of aeronautics stuff from the sound of it. Shrivatsa Kiran does some kind of mechanical engineering, and Paula Vasilios is a programmer. They've all been working on a project nicknamed "Sureshot" -- you're pretty sure that it is some kind of weapons development, but it's all classified and nobody's been willing to talk about it in any detail. Paula has clearly been frustrated by it, though: her complaints about this not being what she wanted to do with her life are part of why you think it's weapons development.
Along with all of them, there's also Ainsley Cameron, Roger's 17-year-old daughter. She apparently grew up around the office, and has been hanging out there a lot the past couple of months. You kind of took her under wing: she's cute, eager and smart, and if she was a little older you might even go for her. From what she's said, her usual mentor-figure was Helen, a friend of her parents' who is on the company Board, but they had some kind of falling out a little while ago. So Ainsley spends a lot of her after-school time around the office, chatting with all of you. You feel a little guilty using her to find out more about the company, but she's been quite eager to tell you all about it. You've wound up oddly close, enough so that you've come close to letting things slip once or twice.
You fell in with them pretty much from the start, since they were the people closest to your age anyway, and deepening the friendships wasn't a chore -- you really liked all of them, especially Seamus. He was the cute and shy one. easily embarrassed and way too gentle to be working on a project like that. He set off your gaydar from the moment you met him, and it took a while to realize that not only was he not out of the closet, he hadn't admitted it to himself. Which actually made things weirdly awkward: you were attracted to him, but how do you ask out somebody who doesn't know that you're his type?
But Simon had asked you to get "closer" to him, and you had to admit that that sounded awfully appealing. So you eventually steeled your nerve a few weeks ago, sat down with him privately, and had the awkward conversation. And while he denied being "like that" at first, by the end of the evening he was in your arms and demonstrating a pretty good talent for kissing, for someone who hadn't done it much. So the past month was a pretty happy one, hanging out with Seamus, teaching him about sex and mostly having fun.
Of course, Simon was on your back to learn more about his father Tagh, but you couldn't actually find much out. His Dad apparently came from Ireland when he was 18, became a local cop, worked his way up to detective, married with two sons -- fairly normal American story. But about 15 years ago, when Seamus was still a kid, Vasily Leonard (the loudmouth reporter at Fox) got wind that Tagh had been involved with the IRA in Ireland, accused him of being some mad bomber, and got him drummed out of the force. According to Seamus it was a big exaggeration -- his Dad apparently left Ireland specifically to avoid getting sucked into the IRA -- but the damage was done. So he's worked in construction, dockwork and other odds jobs ever since, while raising two boys by himself. (Seamus' Mom died not long after the whole scandal blew up.) They're clearly not rich, but they do seem to have been fairly secure for a family with one erratic salary. You could believe that Tagh has been taking some kind of backhander from Cameron to keep things steady, but Seamus didn't give any hint of knowing anything about it.
And it all seemed great, until a couple of days ago.
Seamus came into work the other day, quite visibly upset. He didn't want to talk about it with everyone, so you eventually got him into a corner and convinced him to talk. He had sat down his older brother, the priest, the evening before, told him about your relationship, and that went about as well as you'd expect. You hadn't even realized he was thinking about coming out to his family this early; you probably would have recommended against it, at least until he was a little more self-confident. Now, he was angry with his brother, and feeling confused, hurt, and guilty.
The "guilty" part was strange, so you let yourself pry a bit more, and it turned out that it was partly about work. He was still cagey with the exact details, but let slip that they were building some kind of new "supergun" for the military. It bothered him a little to think he was building something that would be used to kill even bad guys, but he'd recently started reading into the history of guns, and realized that anything built for military use eventually falls into civilian hands. Which means that sooner or later, this thing was going to wind up on the streets of Violet City, and he was having nightmares about his friends and family being killed by it. He felt it was just too dangerous to exist, so he was scared and frustrated.
So you told him to calm down, and think about what he could do about it. You've always believed that the right information in the right hands can change the world. You encouraged him to call Christina Nikolaus, and tell her about it. If this was that dangerous, then it might just take a leak to fan public controversy and stop it.
You thought you'd calmed him down, but according to everyone he got into a towering argument in Roger Cameron's office yesterday afternoon -- you're pretty sure that it must have been about the project. And then he ran out of the building in a rage. You tried to call him a couple of times yesterday evening, but couldn't get through: the line was busy both times, and he didn't respond to your voicemails.
And today, he cracked.
It was early in the morning; you were in the copier nook, doing some routine paperwork for Samuel when you heard the first bang, off in the distance. You didn't pay it much mind: you've heard too many strange noises come out of the Lab from time to time, and it wouldn't do for you to look too obviously nosey.
Then another a minute later -- closer, and sounding more clearly like a gunshot. Now you were getting nervous. You stopped what you were doing, carefully set the papers down, and tried to listen more carefully.
Then a scream and a third gunshot. At this point, you were scared -- there's no point denying it. You backed into the nook, against the wall, trying terribly hard to blend into the furniture, your mind almost blank for things to do. There was nothing to hide behind, and you were afraid that coming out enough to get into the hallway to the lobby would make you too visible.
And then Seamus came running down the hallway, crying "nonono" over and over again, crying and distraught -- and he had a gun in his hand. He saw you, turned to you, and your heart almost stopped when he raised his hands, the gun in them, but he didn't point it at you. He was just babbling incoherently, apologizing, crying, saying "This wasn't supposed to happen" and things like that.
And in the middle of him saying "I'm sorry" yet again, Paula shot him in the head.
You hadn't even seen her approach, you were so focused on Seamus. But she had apparently come up near him and just shot him. And his face just kind of blew open, and
(Stop. Try to calm the heaves. Don't think about what he looked like.)
You just slowly sank to the floor, numb. Neither of you said anything -- neither of you moved. You were vaguely aware of Ainsley seeing it all and running away. Finally, after what seemed like forever but was probably just a couple of minutes, you realized that Carla Lennart was talking to you. She was telling you that you had to leave here -- that this was a crime scene, and everyone needed to go wait in the lobby until the police showed up. You let yourself be herded that way, trying hard not to even think about anything. You and Paula shuffled into the lobby, collapsed on a couch, held each other and just started crying uncontrollably.
Eventually the sobbing gave way to a sort of shocked calm, enough so that the police could start answering questions, which you've answered as best you can. Fortunately, nobody has pried too hard at you -- in your current state, you'd probably just admit things you shouldn't.
And now it's an hour or two later. The shock is just beginning to abate, although you're still having shakes on a regular basis. But you're starting to get angry. This was a man you were really falling in love with, who was driven to do something horrible. Why? Seamus wasn't some axe murderer. What made him do something so terrible?
(Don't think of his face. Not like that. Remember him smiling last week. Fix that in your mind. Keep it centered there. And try to stop shaking...)
Who You Know
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Seamus O'Malley: Until a couple of hours ago, you were starting to think of him as the love of your life. Now, he's a goddamned story. Well, if that's going to be, then you're going to make sure it gets told right.
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Simon Mercer: Your actual boss, the political spymaster. You probably can't actually blame him for what happened here, but damn you wish you could.
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Samuel Antonino: You notional boss, the Office Manager at Decameron. A bit old-fashioned and stuffy, but a good sort. Older, single, and you still haven't decided whether he is gay or not.
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Paula Vasilios: One of your closest friends at Decameron. You're sure that she felt she had to shoot Seamus, under the circumstances -- but you don't know whether you can forgive her.
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Shrivatsa Kiran: Another close friend, an Indian immigrant who came to the States for college and hasn't left. One evening when you were out for drinks last month, he admitted that him visa has long since expired, so he is technically an illegal immigrant and is kind of nervous about that.
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Ainsley Cameron: The CEO's boss, who you have taken under wing as a sort of student of life. Smart and -- well, "perky" comes across as condescending, but it's kind of right. And she's lost her father, so she's probably in even more pain than you are.
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Tagh O'Malley: Seamus' father. You met briefly a few weeks ago, and he seems to be what Seamus described: a fairly normal blue-collar sort of guy. Simon wants to know what the deal is between him and Roger Cameron; we'll see if you have the heart for it.
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Aidan O'Malley: Seamus' brother, who is the priest at the church up the street.
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Helen Derren: Ainsley's traditional mentor-figure. You're still not sure why Ainsley seems so pissed at her.
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Jeri Ferdinand: Your grand-boss, sort of -- the Mayor of Violet City, currently running for Senator. Simon Mercer works for her.
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Fred Ronit: Tea Party loony who used to be Decameron's head of Sales and Marketing, now running for Senate. You are still trying to tie him to unsavory business there.
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Christina Nikolaus: A close friend, kind of a mentor to you. (And by happy coincidence, turned out to have been a close friend of Seamus' in college.) She is a few years older than you, and a passionate believer in new media as the future of news. She runs an outspokenly progressive vlog, and doesn't really care for any politicians, but reserves the real bile for the right wing.
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Roger Forrester: Reporter over at CBS. He has always appeared to be a decent person, and fairer than most TV people these days, but he really doesn't get new media at all. From what you've read, he still believes that TV news is just going through some kind of cyclical downturn, and doesn't realize that it is on the way out.
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Vasily Leonard: Reporter for Fox. You admire him passion and tenacity for getting at a story, but man -- you don't ever want to wind up that far in the grip of the corporations.
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Isaiah Zubin: An older and often grumpier engineer at Decameron, who apparently isn't working on this Sureshot thing. He has apparently been around forever -- maybe you can pump him for information?
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Brian Truman: You haven't met, but he is the Board member representing Greyrock Investments. The details are a little murky, but the company apparently is deep in hock to Greyrock.
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Robert Gervasio: A homeless veteran who lives in the park -- you've spent an evening talking with him, and found that he seems like a really good person, if a little broken from the war. One of your major reasons for really respecting Samuel Antonino is that he apparently has welcomed Robert into the office, befriending him and letting him use the facilities whenever needed. He can often be found in the company lunchroom in the morning, sharing coffee with the employees.
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Carla Lennart: The company's VP of Sales and Marketing. Very smart, remarkably well-put-together, and frankly kind of sexy for a 30-something. Paula has a horrible and not-very-well concealed crush on her; you try to pretend this isn't totally obvious. Not a bad person, but very corporate, and you always get the feeling that she is hiding things.
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Jamie Rickie: Decameron's in-house accountant, the one with the bad password-management policies.
On top of that, while you were poking around in him files and taking a serious look through the books (thank God for that Accounting 101 class your mother made you take sophomore year), you realized that he has been embezzling a good deal of money from the company, pretty much forever. Oh, there are invoices for all of it -- and if you aren't paying enough attention, you might not realize that they are signed in him handwriting. So you did a little research, and confirmed that there's a good deal of money billed from companies that don't actually exist. The company's Audit Committee clearly doesn't try very hard.
So he might be someone you can press for more information. You don't really have a problem with him, mind -- but Simon always says that there's no such things as too much leverage...
GM Notes
Has been merged with
L Madhu, which results in a much stronger character.
Make hir more interesting. Given that
F Ronit used to be involved with Decameron, say that sie is actually working for
S Mercer. Sie was instructed to apply for the internship about eight weeks ago, specifically with an eye towards learning anything about Decameron that might be damaging to Ronit's election campaign. Hence, sie is not simply a nosey kid who fancies hirself to be Sherlock; sie is
actually undercover, using hir real identity but under somewhat false pretenses, and has learned a good deal about everything going on here.
Is actually a journalism major, which is how sie wound up involved with
S Mercer. Is pretty strident by nature; playing the meek undercover intern has gone against hir grain. Now that it's all gone to shit, sie is seriously tempted to start getting in peoples' faces.
About a month ago,
S Mercer asked hir to start getting closer to Seamus, and see whether he knows any dirt on his father's history with Decameron. She did so without much luck -- as far as he knew, Tagh didn't know Decameron at all -- but found herself rather liking the shy, geeky engineer, and they've been dating for a few weeks.
She's also wound up fairly close friends with
P Vasilios, Seamus' best friend, and has wound up kind of mentoring
Ainsley Cameron.
Would love to impress one or more of the journalists present. Has known
C Nikolaus, the vlogger, for a couple of years now, and views hir as a semi-mentor, if not the most reliable one. Introduced Seamus to hir a few weeks ago, and knows that they've been talking a lot.
Note that this character is now specifically male, and bisexual. He had wound up falling into a relationship with Seamus a few weeks ago -- initially because it was convenient for the spying, but got genuinely fond of him. Had shared his suspicions that there was something shady going on at Decameron a couple of days ago, and is now rather torn up with the suspicion that that fed into Seamus' shooting spree.
Has been buddying up with Ainsley, who is part of what she calls "the Gang", and answering her questions. She's inquisitive, smart and fun, not to mention cute -- if she was a little older and he wasn't involved with Seamus, he might even make a pass at her. He's gotten kind of dangerously open with her, even referring to himself as "James Bond" in an unguarded moment of wanting to hint to somebody that he's acting undercover.
To Do
