MAY 18, 1988 // CONNOR JULIAN MERCER is born a military brat, the second son of ▇▇▇ and julianne mercer. his brother, ▇▇▇▇ MERCER, is five years older than him. he does not get along with his brother.

UNKNOWN // HE’S THE OUTCAST. before he learns how to ride a bike, he learns about guns and war and the absence of a father. he spends much of his time learning rather than playing, and when he’s old enough, he thinks that there’s not much to his future aside from the army. he attends ▇▇▇▇▇ high school and graduates with honours, having focused heavily on school and extracurriculars to escape the fragile home-life where his family was typically non-existent. it wasn’t to say connor didn’t love them, but he felt like a ghost around them some days.

JUNE 2006 // AT EIGHTEEN, he’s enrolled into the army; initially in the united states army basic training (aka BCT). it’s time and commitment, nothing he struggles with other than physical exhaustion. time flows and he’s graduating from BCT and moving on up into the real world; and then the years pass, each one going slower than before. he’s adjusting to the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth. the vibration of weapon recoil, the ringing of a shot in his ears. but he must fight to protect. he moves up the ranks to ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ by 24. he travels to foreign countries, making rounds to help others in need, foreign intervention on the side ( though he feels like there’s something inherently wrong about stepping on their soil and saying they know what’s best ).

SEPTEMBER 2012 // WAR IS HIS DOWNFALL. he wonders how many people are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, siblings. his stomach is queasy, but he learns quickly to suppress it and carry out the mission. the mission, soldier. eyes up, ears sharp. what keeps him sane are the friendships and brotherhood, the peculiar characters and the hardass (not really) soldiers that make up the entire squadron. he becomes the leader of a small team due to exceptional performance.

it shouldn’t be any different from usual, but the team he leads splits up into fours to cover more ground. he laughs and jokes along with said friends, a camaraderie you can’t get anywhere else, until they ease up to their destination. tone goes from playful to serious— he’s the first to poke his head in, but he sees a young boy, no older than fifteen, surely, and he hesitates. then his ears are ringing and he’s slumped against a creaky, worn-down, wooden door, breathing heavily and blinking slowly.

[ i shouldn’t have survived. end of story. ]

NOVEMBER 2012 // THEY SAY THAT SOLDIERS AREN’T THE SAME WHEN THEY RETURN. discharged from the army, bullet holes in him are tender when he thinks about the found family he failed. meanwhile, his biological family wants little to do with him— how could you disgrace our family line like this? so much for trust and love.

JANUARY 2017 // HE TRIES TO BECOME SOMEONE NEW. it’s not easy to build on something that doesn’t exist. with no family and friends, he has to pave a path for himself that he’s never known of before. he can’t sleep most nights, and the slightest noise will keep him awake; paranoia and insomnia are a deadly duo.

he’s become NEW YORK’S ACCIDENT-MAN, an individual who takes on contracts to eliminate people but make it seem like an accident. connected to his roots, he believes that he still must serve and protect. he’s got a tendency to target the corrupt and the abusive. he knows he’s not judge, jury, and executioner, but it’s his desperate means to survive. he’ll drown in his uncertainty, shame, and guilt, if he must.

PRESENT DAY // IT’S A LIFE ON THE RUN. people don’t know who exactly the accident-man is, but they know he exists. drinking is occasionally his companion, as is the night sky. he can’t scrub the blood off his hands. he’s killed parts of himself to survive. the system has broken him, along with the people he believed he could trust.

this character has been in development since 2018. do not steal.

1.1 main // he resides in manhattan, new york city, but tends to jump around the city frequently, otherwise usually found in the bronx. a professional at what he does, he blends in with the crowd, living his life as any other citizen of nyc. new york’s heard of the accident man, though they’ve never spotted him in action before, nor do they know who the man is. connor intends to keep it that way. he dedicates his life toward eliminating low to high profile targets that actively threaten humanity. the question of right or wrong has never been black and white for him, but he feels a certain duty to protect people, even if he must sacrifice his sanity and skew his moral compass.

1.2 army // encompassing the timeline from when he first enrolled into the army and ranking up to sergeant where he was in charge of his own team (3 other soldiers including himself, found here). several missions were carried out as a team, varying from reconnaissance to extractions on enemy territory.

2.1 marvel comics/mcu // SHIELD takes up interest in connor the second supposedly corrupt people in positions of power begin dying. they were all stamped as accidents with zero evidence of any meddling, until one day SHIELD picks up the ‘accident man’ on the radar. tracked down and given an ultimatum, it was either serve for SHIELD to potentially do some good, or rot in jail. he chose the former option, a second chance to repent for his sins.

2.2 mcu specific // this deviates slightly based on the timeline from connor’s history and accommodates to an mcu timeline. CONNOR IS BORN MAY 18, 1986. in the SUMMER OF 2004, he joins the army at eighteen. he serves for the army UNTIL FALL 2009 where he’s discharged. from the WINTER OF 2009 — SPRING 2010, he’s an accident-man, and carries out several assassinations on somewhat influential and corrupted politicians, journalists, abusers, and other positions of power. in the SUMMER OF 2010, he’s recruited into SHIELD. connor works primarily as a foot soldier with LEVEL FIVE clearance.

post - CA:TWS (2014), when it’s revealed HYDRA had long infiltrated SHIELD, connor finds himself teetering in disbelief that the organization he’d been almost honoured to serve for had been camouflaged with lies. despite his begrudging annoyance with his justice-fueled doppelganger, he aids in the fight that leads to SHIELD’s downfall. later, he turns to work as security for tony stark, before blipped out of existence, only to return years later. he returns to working security, but only part-time, and also returns to being an accident man.

3. gotham city // gotham city has always been known to be a mess. connor’s known as a local bartender who works the earlier shifts in the evening, though much of his late nights are spent being an assassin for hire. money can be a motivator in a city like gotham, but at what point will his luck run out when people discover the reality of his night-time job? he tries not to let money be the only thing pushing him forward: most of the targets he eliminates tend to have their own hands dirty with drug dealing, trafficking, and other nasty crimes.

4. borderlands // he goes by his last name, mercer. no one really knows his first name given that the man hardly trusts another on this planet. he’s merely a man who minds his own business, making money as a bounty hunter. he’s good at his job, even if he gets his clothes a little wet with blood on the occasion, and tries not to step on anyone’s toes in town. he resides in pandora; operates out of sanctuary. the townspeople don’t see him often; he’s a bit of a night owl while also conducting business often enough that he’s not around town to be seen on the streets frequently.

5. post apocalyptic // loosely centered around the video game from naughty dog, the last of us, this verse will be the hub for anything post-apocalyptic related. ex-military sergeant and ex-accident-man before the world went to shit, he’s familiar with the ways of stealth, killing & hunting, and death. he often travels on his own, hunting for food and murdering folks where necessary if they pose threats. those that pass by peacefully get his mercy, of course, but he knows nothing and nobody is as it seems. and all these supposed militia resistances (ie. the fireflies) fighting to find a cure earn little of his trust, if none at all; and trust is a fickle thing in a world so dark and dangerous. (supposedly) terrifyingly cold and callous, fighting for no one but himself, he carries around a deagle with .44 magnum rounds, a bow and arrows, and frequently sharpened combat knife… but would you trust him if you needed his help with anything?

6. historical/mafia // born may 18, 1920, he did not grow up with much money or privilege, facing loneliness and lack of love with steel fists. although an excellent student in class, he enlisted into the army soon after graduation. connor’s father served in world war i, and then both sons (connor & his brother) served in world war ii, though in separate platoons. dishonourably discharged right after end of the second world war due to a dispute of nearly going MIA (missing in action) and supposedly getting his team KIA (killed in action), connor disappears into the streets of boston with the money he had obtained from being a soldier, making his way to new york city, away from the family that cared solely about their reputation. building a name for himself as an accident man, gang leaders, their middle-men and messengers, and their low-level pawns, are losing their heads and their money and business, but they don’t know how— everything just seems to be purely accidental.

7. cyberpunk 2077 // being in the military did not serve him as well as he thought it would. when he’d been discharged after a mission gone terribly awry, he’d gone to new york city, but it was no longer the same city as it once was. plagued by abhorrent snowfall in the winters and elevated crime rates despite arasaka’s efforts to lower crime for the past two decades, connor found it was not a place he wanted to stay in for long. further escaping his past and his family, he fled down to night city, working as a freelance hitman, or, well, a merc. known simply as ‘M’, he now plays a rather significant role in interrupting the daily dealings of night city’s crime with his own. with cybernetic implants and a city that never rests, he’s never bored. the only question is if he’s getting sucked into the shadows like the rest.

8. assassin's creed // once a man in the troops of the american army alongside his father and brother, he had a fallout with his family that resulted in him leaving. confronted with a more complicated future than expected with the path he chooses to pursue, neither the assassin’s brotherhood or the templars exist to him. he works in-between, taking up contracts and bounties wherever the winds take him. but, of course, there’s money on his head, too.

9. pacific rim // born may 18, 1996, he witnessed the first kaiju on the news in 2013. by 18, connor enrolled into the PPDC jaeger academy. through academy training, he met arthur maxwell+, and the two turned out to be drift compatible. they got along as close friends, and soon enough, met two others who became part of the friend group (and were drift compatible with each other) named trevor wu+ and marcus braddock+.

two years after standard training as a team, they’d all been assigned their rightful jaegers as rangers. connor and arthur piloted cobra bravo, built to be slimmer and faster to get close, with a flaming whip and tracking missiles. trevor and marcus piloted vulcan romeo, primarily built to attack at a long range with a variety of weaponry from missiles to gatling guns and grenadiers.

during this time (2015), connor and his team defeated their first kaiju, a category two named “talonjaw.” the team continued to battle and defeat several kaijus over the years.

by september 2020, cobra bravo and vulcan romeo were deployed to take on a category two named frostclaw. they’d been winning the fight until last minute, where a category four kaiju dubbed the “metaljacket” ambushed the team. being overwhelmed by two forces, vulcan romeo got their legs torn off, and due to system errors, were unable to eject. braddock and wu lost contact and drowned, unable to escape their conn-pod. outnumbered, outpowered, and severely damaged with a detached arm and partially-clawed out conn-pod, cobra bravo refused to give up the fight. with a self-destruct option, connor commanded arthur to eject immediately, but upon ejection, frostclaw had knocked the ejection pod down and stepped onto it, effectively killing ranger arthur maxwell. connor, having initiated self-destruct, ejected last second. although the self destruct option took out both kaijus, connor escaped gravely injured, and alone.

after being located by the PPDC recovery team, he was hospitalized for a brief period of time to let his wounds heal. heavily traumatized by the events, connor was discharged from being a jaeger pilot and reassigned to train new recruits. he declined and left the PPDC entirely.

in the following years, he worked as an independent contractor to eliminate rogue jaeger builders who had interests in rebelling against the PPDC. when the breach was closed, connor continued his work as a hitman. but... would he be called back in the future due to the uprising of hybrid kaiju?

+characters of my own creation/lore. please do not steal. refer/click here.

10. the old guard // (post-nile) upon being discharged from the army and starting up his own service, he has always been exceptionally careful about his work. he prides himself on knowing all the details, having backup plans to plans, and backup plans to backup plans; but of course, no matter how many plans one can have, something goes wrong. he’s an improviser, too, but one second of doubt, of hesitation, can make that castle of sand collapse.

connor scouts for a week. nothing seems too out of the ordinary. just some supposed scummy drug dealer who’s been targeting vulnerable youth. it’s easy work. problem is, it ended up as a set-up, and though he’d not been entirely surprised when it all dawned on him, he hadn’t been entirely prepared, either. a quick in-and-out job ended him with a quick out instead.

and then? a quick back in. like he was on the goddamn football team in high school that got quickly pulled off the bench to sub.

it’s the second time he remembers that he, vividly, should be dead. (except this time, he really should be dead.) so, really… what the fuck?