[Bigby Wolf]

OOC Information:

Name/Alias: Rian.
Age: 22~
AIM Contact: caraway1914
E-Mail: moc.liamg|4091yawarac#moc.liamg|4091yawarac
Past experience: Mm. Negatory.
Character journal: iiiiiiiiidk yet.
Images: [image http://i29.tinypic.com/mmr9uf.jpg here!]

IC Information:

Comic character.
Name/Alias: Bigby Wolf/The Big Bad Wolf.
Publisher/Universe: Vertigo.
Powers: Heightened lupine senses and something of a healing factor, though the second is really more of a preventative measure than a regenerative one — that is, he rarely gets ill, and his constant smoking has not had nearly the effect on his body it should have. He also looks a few years younger than he is, but no significant gap. As far as his senses go, it follows the general canine enhancement: his senses of smell, taste, and hearing are on par with the fittest dogs (a fun game is to blow a dog whistle in his vicinity and see what happens; no guarantee it won't end in a punch to the face), which can make some basic functions — like walking in a crowd or being on the subway — somewhat difficult. Like Bigby, to combat the onslaught of tastes and smells, he smokes constantly, which keeps those observations to a more manageable capacity. He does not turn into a wolf, though he can seem much more wolf-like when angry or caught in the heat of the moment. Though not really "powers," per se, they do come from being part wolf: his eyes shimmer at night, the colors he can perceive are severely limited (please see here for explanation), and he has much better night vision than humans.
Status: Semi-known. The management knows, several people at Orbis know, most people from his tale recognize him right off the bat. He doesn't make a secret of it, but he doesn't talk about it either. However, he's begun to answer increasingly more to "Bigby" than "Frank," which is…something of a problem.

Character.
Name: Franklin Green.
Age/Birthdate: 1961.
Sexuality: Heterosexual. The ladies like him, and for the most part, he likes the ladies.
Occupation: Army veteran. He was honorably discharged late last year, and receives a regular pension from the military. He also works as a handyman for some extra income, but it's nothing to speak of. His main income comes through Orbis, who has hired him out vis-a-vis Crossover as an "Information and Control Specialist." He is, for lack of a better term, the town sheriff.

Appearance: HE'S THE KING OF GONDOR.
PB: Viggo Mortensen.

Personality:

• Frank and Bigby have, for lack of a better word, merged, with Bigby carrying a lot of his traits over onto Frank. Frank himself was once something of a pushover: a surly, mouthy, selfish pushover, but he would have much rather gone along with something and worked it to his benefit than exhibited any kind of honor or ~virtue~. Bigby has largely beat that out of him. He is still somewhat surly and certainly unafraid to speak his mind (or complain), but everything is driven by a series of loyalties: to Snow, to his family, to his community, to his country. Frank rarely acts solely on his own behalf anymore, and he certainly doesn't take part in illegal activities to save his own skin, or to fatten someone else's pockets. Behind the constant facial scruff, the cigarettes, the swearing and the general knowing looks, he's a good guy. He's got the medals to prove it.
• His social skills could use some work. Frank tends to say the wrong things; the only time he's a smooth-talker is when he needs to be, and most times, he doesn't. He will happily call people on their stupidity, and, like Bigby, tends to be too hard on troublemakers and loudmouths. He often comes across as a bit of an asshole, but he's not all rough angles. A stern word will quiet him, and he's no match for a pretty girl with a sharp tongue. Most women who aren't dippy blondes, actually; he has no patience for teenagers and twenty-somethings, but a grown woman who can flay him six ways from sunday without uttering a single swear? He'll practically go weak in the knees.
• He's no good at comforting. There is no secret teddy bear here, and his hugs feel like they're lined with shrapnel and tobacco smoke. He would rather leave people be if they're stressed or angry or grieving — or fight them out of it, since he knows there's nothing like a good shout when you feel like you're about to break into pieces. On the other hand, while the actual cuddling/hugging/kissing part of it is beyond him, he can be very understanding. Between Bigby and Frank, they've seen damn near everything. They know how people work, what they need, and what they don't need. On top of that, that lupine nose can practically smell when someone is grieving, even if they won't show it. He can't give you great advice after, but he's happy to let you cry about it.
• No PTSD, thankfully, but his time in Iraq — both times — isn't something he talks about. He's seen pieces of people, and that doesn't leave a good taste in your mouth. Most people can guess he's a big guy under his rumpled trench coats and wrinkled ties, but very few know he's ex-army unless he tells them. Which, by and large, he doesn't.
• It should also be noted that Frank and Bigby aren't necessarily a cooperating entity. Frank has taken up a lot of Bigby's traits, but Bigby has been and will always be the dominant trait. When Frank came back from Iraq, there wasn't much left for him to hold onto as himself, and he has increasingly begun to pass the reins onto Bigby, who doesn't feel much compulsion to resist his weedy, selfish host's wishes.
• He hates the network. Gorram contraption. :|

History:

• Esther June Grünbaum was born in Hollywood in 1941 to a pair of German-Jewish accountants, Ytzchak and Rachel, who had luckily escaped their home in Dusseldorf before Hitler's Final Solution had come into play. While initially settling in a small apartment in Queens, the pair banked on American Idealism — a trait that would pass onto their daughter — and pursued dreams of making it big in Hollywood. Rachel spoke a little English and Ytzchak a little more, but their acting skills were non-existent; on top of that, they were Jewish in a very Aryan climate, even in Golden America. Acting just wasn't going to happen. Relying on Ytzchak's math skills and Rachel's friendly salesmanship, they joined an accounting firm, where they remained for 25 years.
• Esther grew up on starlets and Beverly Hills and Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She bought into the American Dream 100%, and though her parents insisted on learning her heritage, she shunned traditionalism Hebrew lessons. Though she was too young to be a real supporter of WWII, she leaped into the 1950s with gusto, embracing everything from poodle skirts to beatniks. She wrote poetry; she was on the cheer team; she wore pigtails and idolized Marilyn Monroe and tried to convince her parents to build a bomb shelter in the Cold War. She started going exclusively by her middle name, and was convinced her little job as secretary for an orange grove would get her places. It was the Golden State, after all. Anything could happen.
• Something did: namely, one Adrian Wilcox, owner and CEO of the grove Esther — now June — worked for. Adrian was a hands-on type, having started the business from the ground up; more over, his hands-on approach was something of a notoriety among the women of the office. When he set his sights on June, who had begun studiously bleaching her hair and stuffing her bras, there was little doubt in anyone's mind that the somewhat careless 18-year-old would fall under his sway. And she did — hard. June wasn't so much stupid as she was flighty and young; her parents' stories of war times and what they had endured in WWI and the beginning of the Third Reich didn't impress anything on her except that America was great. When this man who was basically a symbol of all that was the American dream — a soldier, a businessman who had pulled himself out of poverty, drop dead gorgeous — started courting her, it was all she could do to hold out for a few months.
• Ultimately, Adrian won her over, and they "dated" (read: he slept with her and largely ignored her in public) for a while. June was three months pregnant and beginning to show when Adrian sold the grove to a rich buyer, effectively putting all of its employees out of work. But it was okay! She was having his son, so Adrian would have to help her.
• Lol no.
• All attempts to contact Adrian failed. Her parents made it very clear that they were unhappy with her unwed pregnancy, that it had been with a man who had run off and ultimately left her jobless (and, soon enough, homeless), that he wasn't Jewish, that he was twice her age — a whole laundry list of reasons that, in the end, left 19-year-old June completely on her own. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her, and as none of their families had made it out of Europe, there were no grandmothers or cousins or aunts to take her in.
• Things were unbearably tough for a while. June had little "real world" experience, was still flighty and young, and now had a well of anger being a single unwed teen mother (which were far, far less common in those days). Still, if nothing else, she had a remarkable sense of perserverance and a knack for gathering people who Wanted to Help Her. After that unbearably tough period — spent in shelters and street corners, none of which Frank knows about — a series of friends helped her get an apartment in the utterly awful suburb of Inglewood; but it was a roof over their heads, and that was what mattered. June grew harder, but retained that indescribable quality that drew people to her, creating a web of pseudo family members for her growing boy. Frank didn't mind so much, even when she slipped and told him he had a father and grandparents out there; as far as he was concerned, the Green line (as his mother was going by now) started and ended with June.
• Still, it wasn't the easiest or happiest of lifestyles. June's string of friendships and men who brushed just a little too close, whose hands lingered just too long on her shoulders, left her son sullen and distrustful of people outside their two-person circle. He spent most afternoons at home under his mother's eye, reading or doing math, which he had an early proficiency for. He got beat up in school, and tackled more than once on his way home. He never muscled into his teens, growing up lean and sinewy and short, but as the string of his mother's acquaintances grew longer, and the times he had been beaten up and mocked outnumbered the fingers on both hands, Frank got mean.
• He threw his first punch at 12, cracking the jaw of a boy twice his size. People stayed away from him after that, and as he moved into high school, he garnered a reputation for being tougher than he looked. He fought dirty, and he fought hard; his teenage surliness made schoolyard brawls a common thing, and a young wolf in the back of his head made them easy prey. By 11th grade, he'd made a name for himself with people outside of the school, and acted as a conduit for drug and gun trafficking to the teens in his neighborhood (it should be noted he didn't use drugs, and though he kept a pistol on him, rarely fired it; likely, again, due to the indescribable lupine presence, he never felt the need to). His studies suffered, but he learned calclulus and percentages doing business deals on street corners and in shady buildings; he knew how to read people by age 17, how to pre-empt someone pulling a gun, how to watch their weight shift when they went on the defensive, or stopped seeing some weedy teenager as a threat. Frank wasn't necessarily proud of anything he did, but the security it afforded him in school and on the street — and the security it afforded his mother, as long as Frank made it clear he was loyal to no particular gang — were good enough.
• Of course, being a scrawny amateur bookie and thug won't get you places forever, and when Frank graduated high school, he found himself with a few choices: live with his mother forever (not a bad choice, but…it was living with his mom forever), join up with one of the gangs he did business with, or…join the army. The decision was made for him in 1980, when President Carter retroactively re-established the draft. Frank registered.
• He was, as ever, a little shit in the military — but his head for numbers and planning and dealing with unforeseen situations made him an ideal candidate for the officer track. It took time and more than a little breaking of his spirit, but Frank did, in fact, excel in the army. A lot of the mouthy, surly, bratty teenager he was on entering the military was beaten into focus, direction, and cleverness. He trained for two years in the Air Force before being shipped to Iraq to aid in the Iran-Iraq War. After being promoted to Staff Sergeant, he was transferred with the 86 TFW to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to train recruits and serve in combat control operations at the base.
• In the meantime, however, you couldn't beat every bit of the less-than-legal high schooler out of Frank. Obtaining contraband items for the soldiers was nothing new, and Frank certainly wasn't the first to buy and sell drugs and porn and women (he was never stupid enough to move into weaponry or trade secrets to foreign militaries; lucrative a trade as it might have been, he had never seen it work out in the end for the fencer); still, he was one of the best, and made a killing, especially in Iraq where goods were scarce. His trade was small-time: cigarettes, pot, opium, porno mags and videos in Germany, connections with strippers and hookers — who were exceptionally fond of Frank, as he always treated them well and brought them business — extra rations, alcohol.
• It was in this way he met his wife, a struggling waitress named Beatrix Henner. Born in East Berlin, her family had escaped to the West, her father and brother shot in the process and her mother's entire family left behind. It was only Beatrix and her increasingly ill mother in Mainz, outside Ramstein. She sought Frank out first, desperate for money and goods for her mother, after she had heard he was the man to see on the base if you needed cash or goods. While initially decided she would make the most and serve her purpose best as a call-girl for the soldiers, it became abundantly clear to Frank that some part of him wasn't going to let that happen. Instead, he found Beatrix civilian work that paid well on the base, and snuck her materials and money when he could. She fell hard for him, fast, but she was as smart as she was pretty, and she didn't marry him right away.
• Which proved something of a problem with the 86 TFW was deployed to Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. Without Frank in the immediate vicinity to keep her close, Beatrix found her position tenuous among the soldiers in the base. She was propositioned and cajoled into bed more than once, and her regular supply of goods for her mother was gone. And, of course, the man she loved (who had no idea at the time) was in a war zone.
• They wrote regularly, she sent photos, he kept his stories of the war minimal. During Desert Storm, he received both of his Air Medals, one for airborne maneuvers and another for his duties on land. Strategic Air Command was shifted into Air Combat Command in 1991, coinciding with the end of Frank's tour of duty, and he was shipped back to Ramstein, where he and Beatrix were promptly married.
• Now that Frank was in the reserves and not required to live on base, he and Beatrix moved back to America, to LA and then New York, where they lived for the next fourteen years. The city was different for Frank. The brash young wolf that had been banging around in his head as a child had grown, just as he had grown, and he found the constant stimuli of Los Angeles suffocating at best. There were no aerial maneuvers or air combat training drills to keep him focused; only his mother (who he moved out of her duplex to a one-bedroom in LES) and his wife, now pregnant with their first child, and the stifling business of Manhattan. Jobs for tactical command specialists were scarce, and he fell back on his old standby: math.
• An accounting firm hired him out in 1992, called Barneby & Bristol LLC. Frank quickly grew restless, but with a newborn daughter and a wife whose love for America — and for American things — seemed insatiable, he could hardly rely on his reserve pension. Bigby — or whatever Bigby was there, pre-publishing — kept his nose increasingly clean as much as he could, but when it became increasingly apparent that B&B wasn't as straight as they seemed on the outside, the amorphous Big Bad couldn't wrangle Frank's naturally crooked disposition.
• Turned out Barneby & Bristol did some bookkeeping for one of the bigger crime names in New York, and when Frank began nosing among papers, it was either kill him or hire him on. Frank chose the latter, and using all the skills he'd learned in high school, he cooked the crime books with the best of them for 12 years. His pay suddenly inflated; he found himself getting bonuses he didn't ask for if he found mistakes in another accountant's bookkeeping (and that accountant mysteriously losing his position, or car, or house). Beatrix's taste for the lavish increased with every payraise, and his daughters grew up — perhaps not wanting for nothing, but certainly upper middle class.
• Things got worse into the new millennium. After September 11th, Frank found himself constantly fighting with his daughters, who were terrified their father would be recalled to active duty; his wife threatened him with divorce when he made it clear that if he was recalled, he would go. Demands at the firm grew worse, pushing him into longer hours and more dangerous calculations as the police clamped down and began zeroing in on Barneby & Bristol. He was saddled with increasingly wolfish thoughts, cravings for red meat, memories of red hoods and axes and little pigs. He could smell his wife's scent under her perfume — from across the house. In a startling event, an argument with his eldest, Sonja, left his eyes flashing and his teeth looking bizarrely sharp. Shaving proved ineffective on his constant five o'clock shadow. He began smoking to dim the constant barrage on his newly keen senses (they had always been perfect, but now it was like an assault on his head at any given moment). His wife spent more and more of their money; his mother passed away in 2002, and they declared bankruptcy in taking care of funeral and hospital bills.
• And then Fables was published. Bigby came out in full force, the increasingly solid presence at the back of Frank's head a suddenly very real, very knowledgeable voice. Bigby made it clear that Frank wasn't doing what he ought to with his life — that this bookcooking thing was beneath him, and that if he didn't get his act together, he'd lose Beatrix and the girls. Frank had done good things, they both knew; but this? Crooked accounting? Letting his wife walk all over him? Bankruptcy? A cubicle? What was he doing?
• Frank fought it at first, but Bigby was a far stronger presence now that he was on the page, and he was more than happy to take the reins if Frank refused to. First on the docket: his family. Beatrix had grown hard and selfish in her time away from Germany; her mother had died not long after their leaving, and Frank had lost some of his charm, cooped up in an office, doctoring spreadsheets. She was unhappy and holding onto what they used to have; but now that Frank was becoming gruffer, rough around the edges — he smoked like a chimney, and where he had used to simply nod or acquiesce when she put her foot down, he was making it very clear that he was head of the household. She didn't like it. Neither did his youngest, Bridget, who could no longer run to Daddy when she wanted a new ipod or needed money for shopping with her friends. Sonja tried to be more understanding, having always been close with her father — until he quit his job.
• Bigby was fed up with the bookcooking. Sure, he could do illegal shit with the best of them, but not when it was just to fatten some crime lord's pockets. When the firm made it clear that they could make his life very difficult if he didn't comply, Frank — with Bigby steering — lit up a cigarette and made it clear that he had information on them like they wouldn't believe. He had all their files on record since 1992. He knew who they had paid to knock off. He knew where they lived. He knew where their wives and mistresses and children lived. Whatever they did to him, or tried to do, he would do ten-fold to them. He walked out, and he took his information with him.
• The threat came less than a week later. The hitter targeted Frank and Sonje on their way home from her evening dance class. He made the mistake of trying to threaten Frank first, warning him that "This is from Mr. Gallo" as the Green's car was stopped at a light. It was all the time Bigby and Frank needed. Frank knew how bodies moved, from both his time in the army and his time on the street; Bigby was fast and knew how to handle himself, whatever body he was in. It took half a beat for Frank to reach out the half opened window with one hand, shoving his daughter down with the other, and pull the man's arm — gun and all — into the car, where he slammed it repeatedly at the most painful angle possible into the steering wheel. The man dropped the gun. Frank broke his arm in three places, dissembled his gun, and told him if anyone from that family came after him or his family again, he'd make them regret it. Sonje, obviously, was traumatized; but the incident brought her closer to her father, who the whole family had written off as not caring about their well-being.
• Three days later, just to make sure to make sure they knew he was serious, Frank found Mr. Gallo himself. It would have been hard for Frank, but Bigby knew who to ask, and where to look, for that kind of guy. He introduced himself kindly, sitting down at Gallo's table at dinner where Gallo was sitting with his family. Frank pulled no punches because children were there; after all, Gallo had pulled none with his daughter. He set the gun, wrapped and cleaned, in Gallo's youngest's hands, and told them their car was rigged to explode — you'd be surprised the things ex-military could get their hands on — as soon as they put the key in the ignition. Frank suggested they take a cab home, and never bother him or his family again, and left. Whatever Gallo might have thought, the Greens were no longer bothered.
• Which was good, considering Frank was recalled to active duty in 2005. His wife, who had separated from him after his leaving B&B in 2004, came back in tears, terrified he wouldn't come back. Sonja and Bridget pleaded, but Frank wouldn't budge. He was on a short tour — 9 months — and not in active combat; he assured them he'd be fine. He deployed to David Monthan AB in Tucson, where he spent his first 6 months training new USAF recruits, and then it was off to Iraq to aid in Combat Control.
• Two months before the end of his tour, his wife notified him she had filed for divorce, and he had a month to contest, but that she "rather hoped he wouldn't." For the first time since Bigby had taken over, the two silently acquiesced to Beatrix's request. Papers came, and through a military lawyer, Frank signed his portion. He signed off everything but his military pension to his wife — the apartment, the cars, the random shit they'd bought, everything — agreed to joint custody with his children, and signed on for a second, long-term tour.
• It was in his second year in Iraq, 2008, he would earn his Silver Star, on top of the miscellaneous medals earned for length of service and commendable duty. He was in Baghdad on orders at the time; a large truck bomb exploded in the nearby marketplace, taking 68 people and two buildings with it. Frank and the soldiers he was with — all NCOs ranked beneath him, making him the commanding officer — ran in, where the remaining militants had opened fire on the square. Three US soldiers went down; Frank took three shots in the arm, but as soon as Bigby took the reins, that was it. Later reports would cite a figure moving through the debris and rubble smoke like some kind of animal, slipping out and attaching himself the gunmen, who would go down hard, bleeding from the throat or legs, where a knife or teeth had torn open vital veins. Frank-as-Bigby pulled people out of the rubble; he hid his own wounded; he called for aid and ordered which specific choppers they had on base would be needed to carry out the injured. He was the only man standing when the rescue troops arrived. On top of receiving his Silver Star, he was given a Purple Heart. Later on, he would earn an Air Medal for his efforts during an aerial rescue mission, in which the helicopter came under ground fire while attempting to pull injured into the body of the aircraft. Frank, his copilot, and the soldiers escorting them, once the tail of the helicopter was lost, managed to land the chopper, find their injured, and coordinate a new rescue vehicle to pull them out while defending against Sunni attackers. He received a second Purple Heart for this, and was honorably discharged when his term ended later that year.
• There wasn't much to come back to in New York. His wife slapped him with sole custody papers as soon as he returned from Iraq, which Frank is still in the process of contesting. It's an uphill battle. He was contacted by Crossover in early 2009, a few months after he had settled back in the States, and after all he had seen and the voice in his head, reincarnated comic characters weren't all that hard to swallow. Bigby himself pricked up at the idea of seeing Snow, whoever she was this time, and he has settled comfortably behind Frank's eyes to look for her since. During the quakes, he put his military training to use once again — a little terrifyingly vicious at times, but largely of the search-and-rescue type. Crossover has, because of this, recently hired him on — through Orbis — as something of a "town sheriff" for the community. It's not quite the role Bigby's used to, but with so many members and the insanity with the Joker a few months ago (no pun intended), some sort of regular, loyal muscle is a good thing. Frank is in charge of keeping people in line and, more importantly, keeping an eye on them.
• He's also found out, through a series of conduits, that one Adrian Wilcox is his illegitimate father.
• So that's cool.

First person sample:

Writing sample: oh god D:

Plot ideas: I REFUSE TO THINK ANYMORE AFTER CHURNING OUT THIS MONSTER

Soundtrack

NOTES

• Used to be somewhat mild-mannered. Always big, always somewhat lumbering. When he was younger he used to be a bully, but Something Happened — senior year? freshman year of college? — and he dropped the Big Man on Campus facade. Very possibly got into less than legal deeds during college? Idkkk. Always had the potential for Bigby, but didn't actually get Bigby until 2001 or so, whenever the first year Fables was published was. Changed him completely. Resisted at first; wanted to stay mild-mannered and unassuming. Had a wife and kid(s) he was happy with, but Bigby vs. not!Bigby was — well, it was a one-round fight. Bigby's personality completely overwhelmed not!Bigby's, and he made a somewhat 180 degree change from a guy who had probably done white-collar illegal things under the radar — embezzling, drug trafficking, fraud, etc. — to a rough-and-tumble, scruffy jerk. Not!Bigby — especially in the beginning, before Bigby had settled down in-comic with children and a wife — was more of a conduit for Bigby to make it through to this world than anything else. By the time Bigby had settled down in his world, married to Snow and with seven cubs to look after, not!Bigby's family was long gone, unhappy with the changes in him; Bigby and not!Bigby began to live somewhat symbiotically, but not!Bigby had withered, and given up any chance of being himself again. When he finally could, there just didn't seem to be any point.
• Is very much like Bigby nowadays, but not exactly. Whereas Frank was sort of mild-mannered and something of a doormat (at least in his everyday life; he was notably more forceful in his illegal dealings, but still a pretty weedy sort of guy), a little skeevy and sneaky, Bigby knocked much of that out of him. Bigby incorporated much of himself into Frank: always thinking twelve steps ahead, very quiet and somewhat brooding, extremely hands-on.
• Fables: first published in 2002. Possibly started getting Bigby pangs in 2001, and then BAM it was all there, all at once? Had a lot of Bigby traits before then, though, but no powers or anything.
• Side effect of Bigby: can never really be clean-shaven. Has to shave a couple times a day just to keep relatively presentable, and his hair is almost invariably shaggy. When he slicks it back, he pretty much looks like a creepy gangster.
• Weakness for fine suits. He wears crappy coats and Hanes boxers and grotty old shoes, but the man can't pass up a well-made suit. Most have been given to him in exchange for services, and he has three tailored Armanis and one Versace.
• Is slowly losing bits and pieces of Frank to Bigby. In ten years, it's likely there will be nothing left of Frank at all but a dim voice in the back of his head, and neither really knows what to do about it. Frank even goes by Bigby on the networks, and has lost several of his earlier memories to Bigby's extensive lifespan.
• http://asylums.insanejournal.com/icondust/288818.html#cutid1 , http://paycheck.insanejournal.com/1650.html , http://hollow-art.com/base/viggo-mortensen-aragorn , http://hollow-art.com/base/viggo-mortensen , http://asylums.insanejournal.com/looseapbs/5268.html#cutid1
• ILLEGITIMATE SON OF ADRIAN WILCOX YESSSSSSSSSSSSS. His mother was one of the start up employees at Adrian's orchard in the early 60s, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, and when Adrian started to make eyes at her, she fell right into his hands. He had been married once and run off already, but June was willing to forgive him anything — until he dumped her, three months pregnant. And then made no effort to salvage her job when he ran off with the company that bought out his orchard, leaving June pregnant and out of a job, not to mention estranged from her family for taking up with her boss and having a kid out of wedlock.
• They got a tiny duplex in Inglewood, which was not really a nice area, but Carolyn was sure She Could Manage. She was sweet and naive, if jaded by her recent burn from Adrian, but her neighbors warmed to her quickly. If anything, she had a knack for making people like and trust her, and had she been anything less than self-sacrificing and good-hearted, it was a talent that could have gone horribly awry. That isn't to say it didn't, considering how often she found herself being taken advantage of, but more often it meant she found a friend or a helping hand when she needed it; as Frank grew, it also meant a series of temporary father figures and "aunts" and "uncles" with no actual blood relation to his mother. As far as Frank was considered, the Green line started and ended with Carolyn, and he had enough of an extended family that he never really wanted to meet his "real" grandparents.
• SHIT HE CAN FLY: F-16 figher, F-22 Raptor (Operation Enduring Freedom/), F-15, HH-60 Pave Hawk,
• SHIT HE WAS IN: 316th Air Division, 86th Tactical Fighter Wing, 1988-1991. Flew F-16s, primarily. Operation Desert Storm, 1990. Realignment of 86 TFW to 86 OG in 1991; term over, put into Individual Ready Reserve. 12th Air Force, 355th Wing, 2004-2008.
• OPERATIONS: Desert Storm, 1990-91; Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2005-2008.
• Recalled to Active Duty in April 2005 for War on Terror. Sent to Iraq (second time since Gulf War).
• TRAINING: please see here. Two years, about, 1980-82?
• Sent to Iraq to aid in Iraq-Iran war, 1982/3-1988. Halabja Gas Attack (1988).
• Reassigned to 86th TFW —> 86 OG in 1991 after Desert Storm. Part of TAC. Put on IRR after TAC converstion to ACC.
• Moves back to USA. California? Never much liked it. Increasing desire to be settled somewhere away from society. Has kids instead — two daughters, Sonja and Bridget.
• 2005: Recalled to active duty, sent to Davis-Monthan AB. Reassigned to ACC from defunct SAC. 12th Air Force, 355th Wing. Operated in training recruits and enlisters at DMA, then shipped to Iraq to perform ACC duties on the ground. Occasionally called to perform airborne duties. Short tour; 9 months. Wife divorced him during this time. Took a long tour for another two years in Iraq. Came home late 2008.
• Air Force Overseas Short Tour Service ribbon; Air Force Overseas Long Tour Service ribbon; Airman's medal; Air Medal (2); Silver Star (from second tour in Iraq, after his wife left and Bigby was in full force).
• Air Force Specialty Code: J1C251 (Airborne-qualified Operations-group Combat Control at Journeyman level).